Category: History

Report From Another Era: Nazi Sub Surrenders off Cape May

The German High Command called it “Operation Paukenschlag” or Operation Drumbeat. Not wishing to be outdone by the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, on December 11, 1941, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler ordered his most fearsome and silent fighting force to sortie into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North America.

Cape May’s Role in History: Pathway to Freedom

Harriett Tubman worked as a cook in Cape May in 1852, earning money to help runaway bondsmen. She learned how the Greenwich Line worked, and of routes in Salem, Cumberland and Cape May counties, including obscure Indian trails.

Resorting in Cape May

From 1850 through the early 1900s, Cape May came into its own as a summer resort. In fact, those early tourists didn’t “vacation” in Cape May, says Robert Heinly. “They ‘resorted’.”

From rum to subs: The Coast Guard in Cape May

It was the 1920s. Roaring, people called them. Crazy. The “bees knees.” And the United States was in deep conflict. The Eighteenth Amendment had just been passed — prohibiting the manufacture, sales and transportation of all alcohol. This new law was to counteract what some considered a “decline of morality.” Young people were bobbing hair… Read more »

Spirited Cape May: Do You Believe?

Having grown up in many areas of the country, and almost always living in houses at least a hundred years-old, I’ve had a fair share of “ghostly” experiences. Many, of course, can be written off as coincidence, and some as simple quirks. But there are a few that I, a mostly practical and skeptical person, cannot deny.

At Mother Nature’s Mercy

There have been hundreds of hurricane watches and warnings throughout the centuries yet Cape Island has never felt the truth wrath of a full-fledged hurricane. Northeastern Atlantic coastal storms, however, locally known as ‘nor’easters’ have wreaked havoc on her coast for centuries. Above is South Cape May photographed around 1917.