Very soon the operation of the Chappy Ferry will no longer be my personal responsibility. That 24 hours a day, seven days a week obligation will be taken up by a younger person. I look forward to going home at the end of a ferry driving shift and leaving the worries about what happens after I head home to someone else. For the past 20 years, I have been in constant contact with the ferry captains as they make their repeated crossing in all kinds of weather with all kinds of passengers and vehicles on board. I have observed the activities of the ferry through the miracle of web cameras. I check the webcams several times an hour throughout the day. After midnight, when the ferryboats float idly in their slips, I check on them remotely every couple of hours. If the ferryboats are fidgeting due to wind or waves, I occasionally go down to check on them in person.
If there is an emergency in the middle of the night on Chappy, I hear about it through an alert from the communications center via a pager tuned to a specific radio frequency and an activation tone unique to the Chappy Ferry. The on-call ferry captain hears about it at the same time. I pick up my iPad from the window sill above my bed, click on the ferry webcams and watch the clock to see how long it takes that on-call captain to get to the ferry. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the ferry’s deck lights are on and the engine is running before the ambulance or fire trucks show up. The police cruiser can sometimes get there first, but they have a head start as they are already out and about.
I have had a pager in my pocket for the past several decades. Before that, it was a scanner in the house near the foot of the stairs so that it could be heard both upstairs and down. In those days, the Chappy station had a siren and the in-town station had a horn, just in case you were out of hearing of the scanner. There was even a horn out at the Katama forks and one out in Ocean Heights, hard wired to the Edgartown system. They were all set off by the folks at the communications center. When we got the pagers, the horns went silent after a few years. We saw no reason to wake up the whole town for every false alarm. The Chappy siren was abandoned when the new firehouse was built.
The pagers give you a couple of choices for receiving alerts. The pager can be silent until activated remotely by the communications staff or you can leave it turned on continuously and monitor every transmission on that frequency. I like to hear everything that’s going on across the Island regarding the fire department and ambulance. It gives me a perspective of how busy the emergency services are at different times of day and different times of the year.
It also gives me an appreciation for the positive attitude that those voices convey over the radio while dealing with constant human crisis and calamities. Often, during a transmission announcing a need for the ambulance to respond to an emergency, in the background you can hear another person calmly giving instructions over the phone about how to perform CPR. When you hear that it’s infant CPR, it’s heartbreaking. Imagine being able to help a terrified mother save her baby’s life by convincing her that she can and then giving her clear instructions on how to actually do it.
During stormy times when Chappy Ferry service may be interrupted, I stay in touch with the communications center. That way, among other concerns, if someone calls them to inquire if the ferry is running, they will have the answer. I don’t think that I’ll be able to quit monitoring the pager right away. I’m nosey about what’s going on around the Islands. I also feel too much of a kinship with the communications personnel to give up my association with them. They were the first to get caller identification. When I would call 693-1212 and say, “This is Peter Wells at the Chappy Ferry”, they would say, “We know.” It was very comforting and reassuring.
The folks at the communications center are constantly dealing with humans in trouble. I wouldn’t blame them if they regarded us, the general population, as a bunch of bumbling fools since we keep making the same mistakes over and over again. But they handle every 911 cry for help as if it was the first time that misfortune had befallen that caller. In most cases that is the truth and a reassuring voice helps a whole lot to comfort the person in need.
Out of all of the thousands of transmissions that I’ve heard over the emergency radio over the past half century, the one that stands out in my memory is the time that a young woman was announcing the death of a long-time, respected and loved fire chief. She choked up part way through. A voice in the background asked quietly if she wanted someone else to take over. She said no with a sob. Took a deep breath and completed the telling of the sad news. That is the heart and soul of the many folks whose voices I have come to know through the little pager radio in my pocket. Thank you. I will miss you.
This article appears in June 12, 2026.