Bernard Collins
Tales of Cape Cod
The Tales of Cape Cod Oral History Collection consists of interviews of life long residents of all the towns in Barnstable County conducted between ca. 1972-1978. Louis Cataldo, then president of the Tales of Cape Cod board, oversaw the project, staff included Franklin S. Klausner, Roland Barabe, David J. Boudreau, Charles H. Hodgson and Renee Magriel, and interviewers included Betty W. Richards, Lee Anne Sullivan and William Pride. Interviewers asked older Cape Residents about changes in transportation, the arrival of electricity and telephones, their memories of school, holiday celebrations, foodways, family histories and more. Residents shared stories and anecdotes about summer people, the fishing and cranberry industries, agriculture, local businesses, the Great Depression, World Wars I and II, Prohibition, race relations, economic change, major storms and much more. For more information, contact the William Brewster Nickerson Archives in the Wilkens Library at Cape Cod Community College: http://www.nickersonarchives.org/
National Capital Contracting
Born in 1896, Mr. Collins describes his childhood experiences living next to a Life-Saving Service Station on Nauset Beach in the early 1900’s. He also describes his harrowing experiences helping his father save lives when the Italian Bark Castagna went ashore in Wellfleet in a freezing cold in February, 1914. He describes the life of the men who were members of the U.S Life-Saving Service, walking the beaches looking for ships in distress, the equipment they would use to save lives of sailors on the ships which would crash on the outer Cape shores. He describes the use of the Breeches Buoy and the seven-man surf boats.
Notes: The Tales of Cape Cod Oral History Collection is housed at the William Brewster Nickerson Archives in the Wilkens Library at Cape Cod Community College in West Barnstable, Massachusetts. For more information about the collection, please contact the Nickerson Archives, http://www.nickersonarchives.org/.
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