On Sept. 27, 1854, off Cape Race, New York, a Collins steamer, the Artic, collided with a small French steamer, the Vesta. The Arctic went down with a loss of 233 passengers and 135 members of the crew. Among the victims was Edward Collins’ wife, the former Mary Ann Woodruff, and his son and his daughter. The master of the Arctic, Capt. James C. Luce, of Martha’s Vineyard ancestry, held his own child in his arms through the awful scenes of panic. As he was about to launch a raft, some debris from the paddlebox struck and killed the child. Then came the second blow. The steamer Pacific of the Collins Line put out from Liverpool on January 25, 1856, with 45 passengers and a crew of 141. She was never heard from again. No clue to her fate was ever turned up. Meanwhile Collins had been having his troubles in Washington, and now they were piling up. A public clamor was on; the general theme was that the Cunard Line competition was too keen. Congress withdrew the second subsidy. A contract was made with the rival line of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Gradually the Collins Line sank to failure and the panic of 1857 put a period to its glorious adventuring. Fortunes were lost by investors in the line. PROVINCETOWN---- _Its Town Seal Reads, “Birthplace of American Liberty”_ Millions of Americans do not know the complete story of the founding of our nation. Many history books and most orators fail to begin at the beginning when the pioneering of the Pilgrim Fathers is related. Plymouth Rock is the accepted symbol and the starting point. The important, earlier events on Cape Cod are passed up, particularly the contribution the Pilgrim Fathers made to our form of free government during their Cape Cod stay, before sailing across the bay to establish their settlement at Plymouth. If you began at the beginning of the Pilgrims’ story on this continent, you would find that the Mayflower did not sail direct to Plymouth, as is the common impression. She first put in at the outer end of Cape Cod on Nov. 11, 1620, (O. S.), after a violent, 63-day voyage from Holland, and it was on the sands of what is now Provincetown that her weary passengers first set foot on American soil. Here they found haven for a full month, here they signed the historic Mayflower Compact, establishing their system of self-government. They began their reconnoitering, found their first drinking water, their first corn and had their first encounter with the Indians on Cape Cod. HOW OUR FREEDOM BEGAN