Spindler's Restaurant Celebrates Their First Anniversary on Thursday, Dec 29th

Spindler's restaurant, at 386 Commercial Street, will celebrate
 its first anniversary on Thursday, December 29th, from 4 till 7 PM

Spindler's restaurant opened their doors at this time last year, giving Provincetown a brief preview of the great food they would begin offering in the following spring. They will celebrate their first anniversary tomorrow, December 29th, which also marks the 94th anniversary of the sinking of the ship Annie L. Spindler, which would become the namesake of this wonderful new restaurant in PTown's Gallery District.
She was a British schooner that Provincetown folks had dubbed the "Rum Runner," regularly carrying contraband to this vicinity during the era of Prohibition in the United States. The manufacture or sale of alcohol on American shores was outlawed from 1920 to 1933.
At that time ships would bring rum up the coast from the Caribbean, distilled spirits like gin would be carried across the Atlantic from England, and champagne would find its way here from France. Ships would wait far offshore, out of local jurisdiction, for boats that would venture out in the middle of the night to strike a deal on as many cases of illegal hooch as they could afford or carry.

The Annie L. Spindler, aground at the Race Point Coast Guard Station, 1922.

The Spindler, having sailed out of Nova Scotia loaded with Canadian whiskey, famously ran aground on Race Point Beach, within a few yards of the US Coast Guard station.
The schooner had been powerless against the high winds and heavy seas of a nor'easter, as the crashing waves of that brutal winter storm tossed the boat up onto the shoreline early on the morning of December 29th, 1922. Read my original article The Wreck of the Annie L. Spindler and learn more about the humorous side of this event, and about the rescue of the crew by breeches buoy.

I try to order something new every time I eat out so I can tell you
about it, but Spindler's charcuterie board is so good that it will be very
hard not to order it every time I go there. It's the best in Provincetown.

Since I eat at every restaurant in town every summer, I only made it to Spindler's once during their first season. So I looked them up on Yelp today to read comments other diners had made. They scored a solid four-star rating. I left my own review there as well, reading something like this...

Spindler's Charcuterie Board is the very best in Provincetown, right down to their house-made mustard, which is the best I've ever tasted. Generous servings of premium salumi include chef's selections of handmade regional specialties like Genoa salami, tartufo, prosciutto di Parma or chorizo Seco, the dry-cured spanish style chorizo.
The chef will also choose a couple of pâtés or terrines for you, such as a house-made pâté de campagne, a duck rillette or a wonderful chicken liver mousse. Each is delicious. Crusty French bread is accompanied by the chef's exceptional hummus. Garnishes and accoutrements like tiny cornichons, perfectly pickled red onions, and that superb grainy mustard I mentioned, complete the board. You can also order a board of selected cheeses, or the chef will choose an assortment of meats and cheeses for you.
I had a nice roasted chicken entrée that night as well, and excellent service. My visit was during their opening week, and my waiter and other staff ran to the kitchen several times to find answers to all my questions, without a hint of aggravation.

Join Spindler's 1st anniversary party Thursday, December 29th,
from 4 till 7 PM. Free admission includes tastes and tidbits,
with a cash bar for you to enjoy one of their fine libations.

Spindler's is a great addition to PTown's list of very good restaurants, and, happily, we can look for them to soon begin operating year-round under their new license, recently approved by the Town. With luck, everything will fall into place somewhere in the early part of January, so keep an eye out for their upcoming 1922 special, celebrating that year's "landing"  of the Spindler on Provincetown shores.
Watch for an Early Bird dinner special that will offer a three-course meal, served at a bargain price in the early evening. A salad, followed by an entrée, as well as dessert, will be offered for only $19.22.
I can't wait!

Also, click the link below to visit Spindler's website and find out about all the New Year's festivities they have planned, like their six-course tasting menu and dinner party with champagne toast on New Year's Eve. There will be two seatings. On New Year's Day they'll present their Bloody's and Corpse Reviver Brunch. Call 508 487-6400 for reservations for these two events.
Go to www.spindlersptown.com for tickets to Sparkles@Spindler's, a cocktail party from 4 till 9PM on New Year's Day, serving plentiful hors d'oeuvres and Spindler's "Rum Runner" punch, and promising "an evening of music, fireworks, fun and friends." Tickets for this event are limited, so hurry.
In the meantime, be sure to stop in at Spindler's 1st Anniversary Party on Thursday, beginning a 4 PM. There will be free hors d'oeuvres and tastes, and all are invited. A cash bar will also be in operation, so beer and wine will be available, along with their lineup of specialty cocktails. The chilly weather will keep the party from spilling out onto the outdoor patios, so it's bound to be a bit crowded, but be patient. If you come by and can't squeeze in, come back a little later and try again. It'll be worth the effort.
Find Spindler's is at 386 Commercial Street, at the Waterford Inn. See you there!

The Wreck of the Annie L. Spindler, 1922

On the morning of December 29th, 1922, the British Schooner Annie L. Spindler, sailing out of Yarmouth, in the Canadian maritime province of Nova Scotia, ran aground on the shoreline of Race Point Beach. The ship, dubbed "The Rum Runner" by those who knew her, came ashore almost exactly in front of the U. S. Coast Guard Station at Race Point, carrying what else but around 600 cases of Canadian Whiskey!
A lookout on duty at the station had spotted the vessel some ten minutes before she struck the shoreline. A terrible storm had churned up the waters, and the lookout could see that the ship's captain and his crew of five men had lashed themselves to the ship's rigging to keep from being swept overboard as the ship was tossed about by the enormous waves pushing it ever closer to the shoreline, its distress signals flying.
The seas were too rough to launch the surf boat to rescue the ship's crew, so Coast Guard Captain Irving Collins used a small canon called a Lyle gun to shoot a line out over the bow of the ship, and a breeches buoy was set up to rescue one man at a time as the pounding waves began slowly breaking the ship apart.
Picture a rope pulled taught between the mast of the ship and a crew of men on the shore, with a lifesaving ring, or buoy, hanging like a doughnut floating in the fryer, from a pulley attached to that rope. Got the picture? Now imagine a pair of breeches (a pair of pants,) attached to the buoy as if it were a huge waistband for the pants, which were hanging beneath the buoy, with the legs dangling in mid air. One at a time, a man on the ship would climb into that pair of pants, with the buoy circling his waist, and be pulled ashore by the crew of men on the beach. This breeches buoy, or beach apparatus, as it was sometimes called, was used to save the lives of hundreds of sailors over the years. Click the following link to see a four minute movie showing how the breeches buoy worked.
Despite the snow flurries in the air that day, and the bitterly cold wind from the north, local people gathered on the beach by the hundreds all day long, watching as the receding tide left the ship lying broadside on the beach, completely out of the water, as the waves continued to thunder ashore and slowly dismantle the ship.
This was in the early days of Prohibition in the United States, when it was illegal in this country to manufacture or distribute alcohol. Some of the folks gathered on the shoreline cared less about the rescue of the ship's crew than they did about the possibility of getting their hands on a case or two of whiskey, but no such luck, apparently.
According to one account I read, they all went home empty-handed after spending most of the day waiting for cases of whiskey to be washed out of the hold of the ship, all the while trying to keep themselves warm against the winds and the storm.
I've read legends about folks rowing or even swimming out after cases of whiskey bobbing on the waves, which seems rather unlikely given the severe weather and dangerous seas that day. Of course, after all, this was Provincetown, so anything might have been possible.
Another report mentioned a couple of hundred cases of recovered whiskey stored in a sort of warehouse shed while the Coast Guard, courts, and customs service determined what should be done with the contraband, but when the shed was opened following the proceedings, all but a few cases of that good Canadian whiskey had mysteriously disappeared.
Other accounts I read raised the ships cargo of whiskey to some 800 cases, and one told of a house-to-house search by the authorities, looking for any sign of the purloined hootch, with not a single bottle being found. Of course, Provincetown fishermen and their families were all certainly clever enough to have hidden a few bottles where they would never be discovered.
I'll write more about the rum runners, shipwrecks, and the early U.S. Life-Saving Service, which evolved into today's Coast Guard, in future posts. Meanwhile, read the original New York Times article on the wreck of the Annie L Spindler here.