As the steamer Nobska slipped past the Chops on the ebbing tide late yesterday afternoon, there was none of the celebration that greeted her arrival in these waters just about 50 years ago.
Her decks were empty, her boilers cold. When she left Nantucket slip yesterday she didn’t sound one long blast on the steam whistle people hereabouts have come to know as hers just by the sound - she was on the end of a Coastline Towing Company hawser.