I’m not much of a sailor. Ask my wife, Jill, who spends as much of the summer as she can out on sailboats amid the Boston Harbor Islands. Much of that is through her membership in Courageous Sailing, an organization that provides access to the water “for people of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities.”
I’ve gone out with her, and with friends, just a few times. I have nothing against the water. I can actually enjoy being out on the “bounding main.” It’s just the “bounding” part that I guess you can say I don’t have the stomach for.
But when Jill and her friends wondered how one particular area of Boston Harbor known as Hypocrite Channel got its name, she knew who to ask. I’ve been researching and wring about word and phrase origins, including place names, for years.
There are rocky areas or narrow channels in Boston Harbor with colorful names that have served for centuries as warnings to sailors. Devil’s Back. Sunken Ledge. Half Tide Rocks. The Roaring Bulls.
(There is also The Graves, a rocky outcropping and the site of the Graves Light lighthouse. But that name comes not from a final resting place for sailors; it’s named for the 17th century English admiral Thomas Graves.)
But Hypocrite Channel?
The earliest mention I’ve found is in an 1827 edition of The American Coast Pilot by Edmund M. Blunt.
Blunt called it Hypocrite Passage in this and later editions of his guidebook, before changing it to Hypocrite Channel in the 18th edition in 1857.
Like many 18th and 19th century books, Blunt’s guide had a long subtitle telling you what’s inside:
By 1857, the guidebook was 740 pages long. On page 235, the one-paragraph description of Hypocrite Channel, ending with this warning:
“Hypocrite Channel is not safe for strangers.”
The name shows up again in an 1865 short story by the humorist Benjamin P. Shillaber in which one of the characters says these lines ….
“When I was master of the sloop Sally Ann, and mistook Hypocrite channel for Broad Sound, and went ashore on the Outer Brewster, I didn’t get a chance, due to an easterly storm, to get on the mainland for two weeks….”
…. and an 1869 article in the Boston Daily Advertiser ….
…. and regularly after that.
But, again, why “Hypocrite”?
One definition of hypocrisy is “a feigning to be what one is not.” (Merriam-Webster). The word has its roots in Greek hypókrisis — “playing a part on the stage” — and made its way to English via Latin and Norman French.
So what makes this channel a hypocrite, something that is not what it appears to be?
The question was asked of an old sea captain in an 1893 Boston Globe article about improving access to Boston Harbor for large steamships.
“‘Oh, I couldn’t say — perhaps because it’s crooked,’ [he replied] with the inevitable sea dog shrug,” reported the Globe.
Not just crooked, but a challenge to navigation. As a 1994 Globe item on the name noted:
“Swift currents can swing you to port or starboard. Plus, if you look at it seaward, the path could be one of three other channels; they all look perilously alike.”
According to United States Coast Pilot, a publication of the Office of Coast Survey of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, now in it’s 54th edition (2024), Hypocrite Channel….
“…is a natural channel leading between Green Island on the north and Little Calf Island on the south.”
Echoing Edmund Blunt’s 1857 description of the channel, the guidebook added that it
“has several unmarked dangers and is not recommended for strangers or for large vessels.”
