Newtucket Island

By Richard Hughes and Lavinia M. Hughes

A new island, 165 miles long, suddenly emerges out of the cold Atlantic ocean, just off the coast of Cape Cod. It's about 1000 feet high. One side is composed of blue-gray rock--both unique and attractive, just the thing tourists might want to chip off as a souvenir of their island trip. But tourism is a long way off as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States federal government meet to discuss who will own this island, test it for hazardous materials, develop it with infrastructure, and set up a brand new government for a place that's not even populated yet. The suddenly circling and chattering dolphins mysteriously provide the world with some answers for the Rising.

 

Technologically, the island may be suitable for fish farming and great for research and educational enterprise, solar & wind energy projects, and many other eco-friendly pursuits. But would the allure of alcohol, drugs, entertainment-fueled nightclubs, golf courses, theme parks, self-indulgent vacationers, cruise ship passengers, real estate developers, and Dubai-style high-rise hotels win the real estate ground war instead?

 

Only time would tell if this new place built from the ground up would be a sustainable world or one ripe for exploitation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Waquoit Wordsmith Press
• Release date: Aug 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201789817

Richard Hughes and Lavinia M. Hughes

Richard Hughes graduated from Mass. Maritime Academy with a B.S. in Marine Transportation, then obtained an MBA in Business from Lesley University. He operated a safety training center on Cape Cod with his wife and fellow author Lavinia M. Hughes. His books include Bringing Down the Safety Guy, SeaBlameworthiness, Deep Sea Decisions, and the Cape Safety, Inc. - Danger Dogs Series—a collection of novels detailing the exciting lives of a top-notch safety consulting firm based in Woods Hole, MA. Lavinia M. Hughes, with an A.S.Degree from Massasoit Community College, is the author of Enter Through the Crawlspace—a collection of paranormal short stories, and An iGen Cookbook for the Unskilled, an instructional cookbook. Her Enter Through the Bulkhead treats the reader to a new set of paranormal short stories. The couple has also co-authored Training Ship. They live and write in their home in the seaside village of Waquoit, MA.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

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If you were a global citizen of North America when it happened, the day will stay with you forever, not unlike the attack on the Twin Towers, the first man on the moon, or the assassination of J.F.K.

Younger people who were not around during those events had no comparable moment in their lives so this became their seminal moment as world citizens.

It became recognized as the time when the outside world first shook younger people abruptly from their sheltered reality. The day the earth radically changed without their concurrence or their parents’ advance knowledge and consent. When an altered world order came to be, with no iPhone-requested permission.

For the birth of a completely new place—full of promise, easily inhabitable, and reasonably accessible—opened everyone's minds to new possibilities. These possibilities could only be realized when or if agreement was reached on what the new land would become, and who would own and govern it to make such determinations. The need for such decisions began on the day it happened.

Was it another island to simply be put under the control of Massachusetts and the United States? Was it an independent country? Was it safe to inhabit? Would it possibly disappear as suddenly as it appeared? Was the earth's geography likely to provide more and similar land masses? Did the United Nations have prevailing authority for nature-made land or did the nearest country?

Every day seemed to bring more questions than logical answers. This was no little atoll or burp in the ocean. This was a hefty new land mass.

The year was 2026, the day August 10.

The day was like so many others that summer. Hot, muggy and overcast in the northeast of North America where the change as the world first called it, began. The kind of weather that caused the cardboard covers of paperback books, once seen everywhere and now a novelty, to curl back. The kind of weather to cause dehumidifiers to fill their water trays in mere hours. The kind of weather to cause ladies to lament about bad hair days. But not the kind of day that anyone would predict would be cataclysmic. That is exactly what kind of a day it was and how it would always be remembered. The closer you were, the louder and more violent it was, but experts were stunned that the damage was not far more extensive.

Of course, the 27 ships in the immediate area and approximately 110 fishing and pleasure boats were immediately swallowed and lost, but the massive tidal wave as most people referred to what technically was a tsunami, did not come ashore with the expected violence ocean observers would imagine.

Geologists suggested, and oceanographers confirmed, that when the eruption brought the staggering landmass to the surface, a hole in the ocean floor simultaneously occurred that nearly equaled the displaced ocean water as the landmass broke the surface. Satellite photographs documented several ocean vortexes at the time that appeared to behave almost as giant drains beyond George's Bank on the ocean border of Eastern Canada and the United States. Images appeared to prove these vortexes swallowed about as much Atlantic as the new island displaced. Yes, there was an ocean surge that raised boats from southern Nova Scotia to South Carolina, snapping thousands of docking lines, and shooting hundreds of dock cleats literally into the air, but few of these vessels and ships were beached or even drifted far offshore. Sporadic damages were reported, primarily to those who failed to heed breaking news warnings of an impending seismic event.

As waterlines noticeably receded, this was a visual warning that the incoming tidal reaction would occur when the ocean reversed. Two American merchant ships, six Navy and Coast Guard patrol ships and one Canadian fishing boat sailing through this area were never seen again, nor were their crewmembers. Debris trails were never found nor were emergency messages ever received. It all happened essentially in a long eye blink.

One of the merchant vessels, a container ship, went down with an underwriter calculation of 7,800 containers and a cargo value of $69 million. The other ship, a roll-on roll-off (Ro-Ro) new car carrier had a full load of 6,200 cars, all 2025 Toyotas, heading into New Jersey on what was originally a Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) Japanese ship sold to Nigeria in 2023. A crew of 13 Nigerian nationals were never seen again but the media, to no surprise, spent more ink and talk bemoaning the tragic fate of the 6,000+ new cars than they did the 13 crewmen.

Since the Trump Activist Supreme Court's (TASC) killing of the Jones Act in 2022, foreign crews had basically taken over what was left of American shipping activity, and American sailors never caught another wind, or in landlubber language, other ships.

American sailors were essentially workers from history books now with ships on every coast, the Great Lakes and the mighty Mississippi principally crewed by non-Americans, the consequence of Jones Act revocation enthusiasm.

The birth of this new land extended approximately 15 miles east of the tip of Cape Cod in Provincetown, Massachusetts. South from here it extended approximately 165 miles, ending as far south of the existing Nantucket Island as the tip of Provincetown is north of it, with the width of the new island somewhat in the shape of a letter I[1]. The widest landmass was a 17-mile wide seamount to the south reaching to a dramatic height of nearly 1,000 feet above sea level, reducing to a four-mile width approximately east of Chatham, Massachusetts, back to a 12-mile hook at the northernmost point by Truro and Provincetown. It became a similar land mass in length to New York's present Long Island.

The southern seamount had a dramatic feature of a wall of blue granite, actually riebeckite. Early geologists allowed on the island identified this rock as crocidolite, one of the six recognized types of asbestos. Despite its distant beauty, this blue asbestos was considered to be health hazardous to man whenever processed or disturbed.

Navigationally the fresh island obviously created new issues. The stronger east coast ocean current, between the new island and the mainland, was already noticeably bothersome to the mariners making the trek. Because of this south to north Gulf Stream current set and drift—truly the earliest form of basic navigation—it had become a constant topic of conversation for sailors ferrying between the two islands. A simple straight course from Point A on the Cape Cod mainland to Point B on what mariners called the Rising would, in no way, land you at Point B. Fog stories after the event offered several examples of experienced sailors leaving from Eastham or Wellfleet being set so far to the north, due to the dramatic current drift, that they actually overshot the new island, finding their ship heading to Europe before recognizing their navigational anomaly.

But such colloquial matters of navigation were no match for the worldwide geopolitical discussions that had emerged, first as mere conversation, soon escalating to verbal conflict, and now threatening to potentially lead further.

Those who long have accused the United States of imperialism finally had their smoking gun and were waving it like drunken cowboys.

Arguments abounded.

Why should proximity be a deciding issue for the habitation of this new land simply because it has approximation to two other islands, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard?

Why shouldn't Rhode Island and New York be considered the new land's home state since its southern points extend off of their coasts also?

Maybe most dramatically, why shouldn't the destiny of this island be determined not by the United States but by the United Nations and the world community, as a new country, fully capable of self-determination?

But self-determination by whom? The U.S. Federal Government had, so far, forbidden anyone to go forth on any part of the island until decisions had been reached for both its safety and end use.

Sure, some temporary Shiftpod and Shelterpod structures were built for approved island Homeland Security personnel, government geologists, and every manner of governmentally connected scientist to call headquarters; but drone patrols throughout the island guaranteed that no one sailed over to camp, squat, build or otherwise raise an indeterminable territorial flag.

Initially, nature did her own security to discourage visitors with a rather foul stink, probably to be expected when a massive stretch of ocean floor is suddenly exposed to sun, wind, and air—specifically the oxygen and nitrogen blend of earth's atmosphere.

The earliest weeks after the emergence no one was allowed to actually go upon the island, even experts, the fear being so great of bad air quality. Secondarily, this also mollified the government's deeper liability worries that the sudden apparition would just as suddenly vanish back into the sea.

The U.S. Navy, Canadian Coast Guard, and even a British frigate for a short time patrolled the island's perimeter often sending drones ashore when more detailed investigation was warranted. Dozens of shipwrecks from wood to steel were identified and first explored from the air. Oceanographers from Woods Hole, the scientific village in Falmouth, Massachusetts, and from as far as Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, had their own ships anchored off the east side of the island awaiting permission to Zodiac their professionals ashore to begin studying the island aggressively with boots on the ground as the military would call it.

But the sea life that was exposed to the sun, as the landmass emerged, began to rot and the mile upon mile of festering decay afforded an olfactory drift, all but eye-watering to the folks of the islands of Nantucket and eventually to the folks on Martha's Vineyard and the Cape Cod peninsula, too. Celebrities with multi-million dollar properties on Nantucket, despite the excitement, were deciding almost to a diva, to temporarily delay their Nantucket summer vacation visits, as reports of the repugnant odors reached their Manhattan condos and west coast estates.

The drone and personal satellite photographs first taken revealed some astounding sights.

Initially, ships like SEACOR'S Bahamas Express would be called upon to provide initial support supplies to the island like lumber, tarps, generators, bottled water and canned food. Ships like this were designed to dock and offload in areas where there was either a draft limitation or a limitation as to shore side port infrastructure. This island had both shortcomings.

Several WWII vintage T2 and C2 tankers and cargo ships lost to Hitler's U-boats were finally rescued, albeit far too late for their courageous merchant seamen.

A U.S. Navy supply ship was also revealed causing a quandary as officially the Navy's position on sunken military craft, defined by the Sunken Military Craft Act of 2004, was full prohibition on disturbing, injuring, or removing anything from a United States military vessel lost in wartime. What constituted disturbance was becoming a hotly discussed matter in both the Pentagon and the media.

After over 80 years in their ocean graveyard, most hulks were more rusticles than plating. Nevertheless, relatives whose grandfathers or great-grandfathers were lost as crewmen on these ships expected some opportunity for visitation and ceremony, another source of high-toned verbal exchange. Of course the maritime vultures, AKA salvage firms, were already lobbying in Washington for access to these hulks. Just the thousands of pounds of bronze simply used in the manufacture of a ship's propeller could earn about $500,000 now in the world bronze scrap market.

In at least ten areas, full whale carcasses were putrefying in the company of hundreds of hungry seagulls, terns and cormorants. Of no surprise whaling museums among others were petitioning for first crack at the bones. Provincetown whalers long ago used the phrase turning out for returning smelly whale carcasses back to sea. The phrase was again in use. The rest of the landmass was also a smorgasbord of stinky sea life but also seafood for the not very discriminating pallets of seabirds, seals, and an intrepid Boston pigeon or three that somehow got the word that the new offshore island had better pickings than the peanut strewn stairs of Fenway Park.

Naturally, after these early weeks, the uncountable seaweeds began to dry out, likewise the decaying sea life, and the foul smells retreated from unbearable to unpleasant to acceptable to barely noticeable. But time alone was the healer.

Hundreds of sunken pleasure boats were also revealed once more to the earth's sun and stars. Most of these small vessels arrived here due to the viciousness of nature; but some were in better relative condition and were probably more recent entries to Davy Jones locker, sunk purposely following their careers as shore runners for the drug trade or as drug mules between ships. These exhumed wrecks all featured non-existent drainage plugs, attesting to the unnatural cause of their deep ocean demise.

Simultaneous with the island's resurrection but bursting from diverse corners of America's mainland emerged a new exploitative media influence.

Voices tried desperately to break into crowded airwaves by opportunistically using this island rising as their portal into the talking head global communications stream. Mixing together pseudoscience, the occult, and new interpretations of traditional religious messages into a brand new dialogue for the jaded masses, proclaiming an existing knowledge of the geological event that no one on the planet had, voices were now providing 24-hour coverage explaining the true reasons for the land mass appearance.

Not a moment of radio or television airtime was free of the contrived explanations from these sociological, religious and spiritual charlatans, all elbowing through to make themselves household evangelicals of a new world explained.

So went the early weeks before all had the confidence that the island was here to stay and that a cadre of specialists would be allowed to land and begin exploring much as Governor Carver and the Mayflower's crew did in nearby Plymouth way back in 1620.

But following an Oval Office meeting and a written order from the President, it had been decided that there would be no equivalent Plymouth Rock or Neil Armstrong historical moment.

Too much uncertainty still remained as to what the hell had happened in nature, how the U.N. was reacting, and whether American expansionism to the east for the first time would be politically, economically, socially, even spiritually advisable to the country's future.

Newtucket Island Aid to Navigation Adjustment to Nautical Chart

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CHAPTER 2

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November 10, 2025, President Kamala Farris walked across the floor of the Oval Office in stocking feet leaving her business heels beneath the historic Kennedy desk that tiny John John Kennedy had been photographed peeking out from back in the days of Camelot in the early 1960’s.

Following her elevation to President with the health resignation of President Biden in 2024, the Kennedy Museum in Boston acceded to her request to borrow the original Kennedy desk and it was loaned back to the White House for the length of her Presidency. In her thoughts as a California-born and raised Hindu, she felt the desk represented a better and more hopeful time for America. A time when civil rights for all was an inspirational goal for the country, putting a man on the moon was a realistic policy mission, and when Nikita Khrushchev's shoe banging made obvious to America who it was that clearly thought ill of western ideals.

It was a time before the Federal Government needed to run public service ads against sophistry, or more commonly understood, subtle deceptive reasoning or argumentation. Arguments seemingly correct in form, but actually invalid due to their true attempt to otherwise deceive inspired by a fake news mission to subvert truth. The elevation