Ownership of the Chappaquiddick ferry clearly seems a good deal
to a lot of people, judging by the offers Roy Hayes has received since
he revealed that he is looking to sell after 19 years.
It’s not hard to see why someone would want the business
— a monopoly service with an assured and growing demand.
Peter Wells stands in the sun between Chappaquiddick and Edgartown on the On Time III, the Chappaquiddick ferry, which come Monday he will own, after a third of a century spent behind its wheel as captain.
In researching The Chappy Ferry Book, author Tom Dunlop asked his fellow Islanders what they thought was the most spectacular thing to hit the boat in its 200 years of operation
“I’ve gotten some good answers: a whale, a meteorite,” Mr. Dunlop said in an interview this week. “To a man and to a woman they stop and stare at me when I say, ‘No, an airplane hit it.’”
Excerpted from The Chappy Ferry Book: Back and Forth Between Two Worlds, 527 Feet Apart, by Tom Dunlop, with photographs by Alison Shaw and a short film on DVD by John Wilson (Vineyard Stories, 2012).
This excerpt is taken from chapter five which tells the story of James H. Yates of Edgartown, who owned the ferry from 1920 to 1929. He was the last man to run the Chappy ferry as a rowboat.
Folks on both sides of the harbor love Jimmy Yates. But folks on the Chappaquiddick side loathe the ferry Jimmy Yates runs.
