b"Chapter SixI ndays of yore -distant yore -ocean-crossing passengers lived with certain rigors hardly familiar today. Aboard the Mayflower, the 102 Pilgrims stayed 'tween decksthe crew didnt want them above: theyd only get in the way. The men, women and children had several four-pounder cannon as bunk mates, and little or no privacy for the three mothers who gave birth during the 66-day crossing. Undoubtedly it was a trifle odorous: crew-members treated themselves to one bath a year. The menu? A tasty selection of salt beef, salt fish, peas porridge, oatmeal, dried fruits, and beer.When bodily functions called for relief, voyagers had two options. Up forward, in the Beaks Head, theyd find a privy, if that was to their liking. If not, they could crawl out on a channel, a black shelf sticking out over the ocean, and hang on for dear life as Mayflower pitched and rolled. Yes, it was a grueling trial for these landlubbers.1On dropping anchor off Plymouth just after Christmas 1620, Mayflower had indeed reached fair harbor. Three and a half centuries later, boaters cruising toward Chathams waters reached a harbor fair but increasingly foul, far more so than anything Mayflowers Master, Christopher Jones, could have imagined. That condition, some Stage Harbor skippers of the 1980s recognized, would have to be fixed. That was where the activists of Friends of Chatham Waterways and their allies came in.Martha, have you seen the brown scum floating on Mill Pond? Several times in years past, Mrs. Stone had received phone calls like that. I had no idea where the scum came from, she says. But several of us wondered, 'Is that sewage that were noticing? It was a discomfiting possibility, even if not true.In the best of all possible sailors worlds, it should not have been true. But, true or not, FCW had made a firm commitment to get at the causes of waterway pollution in its childhood months, and so it engaged with this issue.An actual framework of regulations had been in place for some time. Federally, a Refuse Act had been law since 1899; it prohibited throwing refuse of any kind into waters of the United States. Following up, the Coast Guard laid down basic standards. Among them: pulverized or ground wastes could not be81"