page_title: Buzzards Bay
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Buzzards Bay / History
caption_attribution_description: Zoom into this map at maps.bpl.org. Publisher: Walker Lith. &amp; Pub. Co. Date: 1909. Location: Buzzards Bay (Mass.) Scale: Not drawn to scale. Call Number: G3762.B8A3 1909.B8
context_page_description: Buzzards Bay is a bay of the Atlantic Ocean adjacent to the U.S. state of Massachusetts. It is approximately 28 miles long by 8 miles wide. It is a popular destination for fishing, boating, and tourism. Since 1914, Buzzards Bay has been connected to Cape Cod Bay by the Cape Cod Canal. In 1988, under the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts designated Buzzards Bay to the National Estuary Program, as "an estuary of national significance" that is threatened by pollution, land development, or overuse.
context_section_description: Buzzards Bay was first named Gosnold's Hope by Captain Bartholomew Gosnold. The modern name was presumably given by colonists who saw a large bird that they called a buzzard near its shores. The bird was actually an osprey, and, after a downturn caused by DDT, today increasing numbers of osprey breed along the shores of the bay thanks to restoration efforts led by the Buzzards Bay Coalition and longtime Westport residents Gil and Josephine Fernandez.
  The first naval engagement of the American Revolution, the Battle off Fairhaven, occurred in Buzzards Bay when patriots retrieved two vessels that were captured by the British sloop of war Falcon.  On 14 May 1775, American Captain Daniel Egery and Capt. Nathaniel Pope of Fairhaven in the sloop Success (40 tons, 30 men) retrieved two vessels captured by the British crew of Captain John Linzee (Lindsey), Royal Navy commander of HMS Falcon (14 guns, 110 men).  Crew member Noah Stoddard and the others took the first naval prisoners of the war, 13 British crew; two were wounded and one died.
  The bay was the location, in 1936, of one of only five documented fatal shark attacks in the commonwealth's history.
  In 1987, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution experimented with a new growth structure allowing Blue mussels to grow above the Benthic Turbidity Zone leading to a new commercial scale mariculture technique.
  In 1991, towns located on Buzzards Bay suffered the worst effects from the storm surge of Hurricane Bob.
  The Buzzards Bay disaster happened on April 27, 2003. An oil spill of 98,000 gallons of oil leaked from a barge, destroying much of the shellfish business and killing many birds.
  Ra Ra Riot's John Pike's body was found in Buzzard's Bay. He had disappeared from a party in Fairhaven, Massachusetts in June 2007, and was found several weeks later in the bay.
  On January 7, 2018, due to the 2017–18 North American cold wave, part of the bay froze over.
caption: Birds eye view map, 1909
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