Changing Coastline

Billingsgate Island

The disappearance of Billingsgate Island did not happen because of natural coastal processes, but was the unfortunate result of accelerated erosion because of an unsustainable lifestyle by residents living on the island. Billingsgate Island was settled back in the early 1800’s as a fishing and whaling village and continued to have a community living on it as late as 1910. During the mid 1800’s, the island was about a mile long and about a half a mile wide and included about 30 homes, a school house, even a baseball team and the Billingsgate Island Lighthouse.

Not understanding the effect of their actions, settlers cut down many of the trees that were anchoring the sand and allowed their sheep to graze freely around the island for decades, until the island was void of vegetation to the point where the shoreline became destabilized. By 1942 the island had eroded completely away and all that is left now is a shoal that is exposed at very low tide. Clarence Daniels, a local journalist told this story of a resident returned:

The wistful old man, a stranger in town, must have been around eighty, when he stopped a fisherman at Wellfleet harbor one day around 1914. “Could you give me a ride to Billingsgate?” he asked. So the fisherman took the old man to the almost barren patch of sand, all that remained of a once-prosperous fishing village. The old man prowled around the island. Finally, triumphantly, confidently, he announced, “This is where the house stood where I was born!” He picked up a stone to keep for a souvenir. Now not even the patch of sand is left.[ii]

It is even more perplexing for visitors today to travel out to the island, where vestiges of the town can still be found. It is easy to imagine the thriving community that once lived here, even though the landmass has completely changed. Two kayakers gave this account of visiting Billingsgate, visualizing the former community through the artifacts that can still be found:

As we started walking toward “higher ground”, we could see large granite stones set in a circular pattern in the sand. This must be the old lighthouse, we thought…We found many small pieces of slate that looked like they were once used on the roofs of the old homes that once stood here. It was uncanny to think that an entire community once inhabited this 60 acre flat stretch of sand. As we walked, the tide continued to rapidly flow out and we realized that this island has a diameter that was at least a mile wide. It was much larger than we had ever imagined. We walked quietly as if in a trance, taken back in time, looking at all the stones that were once part of the foundations of these old structures. We imagined the force of the water and the wind that could erase all traces of civilization on this large sandy island. We imagined the people living here, children playing here and going to school only to see their homes slowly succumb to the forces of nature.[iii]

Many of the homes that were formerly on the island were floated across the harbor and relocated throughout Wellfleet, the majority of which still exist. Cases like Billingsgate Island and Great Island to some degree, where the erosion has been severe in recent history, should serve as a warning of what can happen if we engage in unsustainable activities that accelerate the erosion that is already steadily occurring. While the coastal management principles of the NPS protect the coastline that is encompassed within the National Seashore, areas outside of the park need to be carefully monitored to protect the shoreline from experiencing a fate similar to Billingsgate Island.