19141776 Club
After three centuries of proposals, a canal finally opens across Cape Cod
Boston, Cape Cod and New York Canal Company opens the waterway on a limited basis, seventeen days before the Panama Canal.
Ships had been wrecking and sailors losing time on Cape Cod's outer shoals since the colony's earliest days. On July 29, 1914, August Belmont Jr.'s Boston, Cape Cod & New York Canal Company opened the canal on a limited basis, a 7.4-mile channel through the Cape's narrow neck connecting Cape Cod Bay to Buzzards Bay. Full completion followed in 1916. Engineer William Barclay Parsons had widened and deepened old tidal rivers, shortening the trade route from New York City to Boston by 62 miles compared with sailing around the Cape's dangerous outer arm. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt watched from the destroyer McDougal as the first vessels passed through…
