Adam Bolonsky submits-
Poll: the following story is true or false:
True: I was there and I saw it happen. We made frogs’ legs stew out of the frogs stuck in the mud
False: no way a 12-gauge shotgun could scare that many seagulls
Probably true: winters in Gloucester were a hell of a lot colder back then. Most winters kids from Magnolia iceskated to GHS by way of Normans Woe and the Blynman Canal
Reporting in the Gloucester Daily Times more than a few years back, none other than Joe Garland was accosted downtown by Ray Davis, deliveryman for the Railroad Avenue Market:
Ray jabbed a finger in my chest and asked why I didn’t mention the day Niles Pond disappeared.
“You mean the day back in the twenties when Jack Prentiss tried to drain it to under twenty acres so it wouldn’t qualify as a Great Pond and he could claim if for his private puddle?
“Naw,” said Davis. “This was way back, a terrible hard winter. Niles froze right deep. Came on so fast an awful crowd of gulls there got their feet froze in. Next morning one of the guys was tramping through that way, and thought mebbe he could save ’em if he could scare ’em off.
“So he went home and got his twelve-gauge shotgun and went back and fired both barrels up in the air. Them gulls all started flying at once, and they lifted the whole of Niles Pond right up off the bottom and flew away it over Brace Cove to the no’theast.”
Good Morning Gloucester 
Don’t know about Niles Pond, but my father, born in 1922, remembered when the Annisquam River froze over solid enough for someone to drive a Model T from Cambridge Avenue Beach across to Wingaersheek. Given that the river is salt water, and moves well at the tides, that’s cold.
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Great history here – and really enjoyed the history of parents and U-boats home page.. If I remember my history correctly Nauset Beach, located in Orleans, Massachusetts. Was hit and activity in Alantic during WWII. My mother and grandmother told me of the coast guard walking the shores and outposts along cape ann during this time.
World War II -The Continental U.S. would be shelled again twice in 1942 by Japanese submarines during the Pacific War. These two engagements are known as the Bombardment of Fort Stevens along the northeast Pacific coast of Oregon, and the Bombardment of Ellwood near Santa Barbara, California…
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I remember hearing about the harbor being frozen.
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