Helltown: Provincetown’s fabled fishing outpost

An urban legend unmasked

by Stephan L. Cohen
a project supported by the Provincetown Community Compact (stay tuned for the book)

Imagine a winter encampment of Azorean Portuguese dorymen, living in cobbled-together huts located at the north end of Herring Cove beach from 1870—though references to its exact beginnings vary—to the early 1900s. Many had homes in Provincetown’s Azorean West End, known as “Little Portugal,” but decamped to Helltown to fish for cod during the icy winter months. The name—whether spelled as Helltown, Hell Town, or Hell-Town—lingers in Provincetown’s collective consciousness. The ungodly trip to Helltown involved a numbing trek to Herring Cove on rutted tracks across frozen sands. Once there, the fishermen, at times braving nor’easters and gales, sailed and rowed their two person dories through the icy waters of Cape Cod Bay and the Atlantic to fish for cod and haddock. They built shacks to store fishing gear, but soon moved in full time, sleeping seven or eight to a small cabin on makeshift beds of ropes, “waifs” (unclaimed property washed ashore), and tubs of tackle.

 

After an early day of fishing, they returned to Herring Cove, where they loaded their daily catch onto horse-drawn carts driven by teamsters for transport back to Provincetown. The arrival of railroad service in Provincetown in 1873 was transformative, enabling Hell-Towners to have their fish packed on ice and shipped by train to the lucrative Boston and New York markets. Come spring, the dorymen closed up their huts and many crewed schooners that plied the northern banks and the waters off the Canadian coast.

 

Media Coverage
In Search of Helltown

Stephan Cohen’s story of a place that’s not quite what popular lore imagines
by Katy Abel
Provincetown Independent, Dec 25, 2024

 

Helltown—The End of Cape Cod

by Angela McNerney
Lower Cape TV