The Sacred Cod | Up Close

The Sacred Cod that currently hangs above the Massachusetts House of Representatives chamber has been a symbol of the state’s heritage for 232 years. But for all its pomp and circumstance, the effigy has also seen its fair share of codswallop, from a Depression-era abduction plot to a near-miss with the Department of War.

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The replica is made from solid pine, weighs about 80 pounds, and measures 4’11” long. That’s nothing compared to the largest Atlantic cod ever caught, which weighed a whopping 212 pounds and was found off the coast of Massachusetts in 1895.

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The Sacred Cod pays tribute to the fishing industry of Massachusetts. Cape Cod was named so in 1602 by Bartholomew Gosnold, who first noticed the fish swarming his boat. Unfortunately, by the 1990s, Atlantic cod populations had dropped to less than 5 percent of their historic maximum, and they are still considered a vulnerable species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

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In 1798, the Massachusetts Legislature relocated from the Old State House—where the cod had lived since 1784—to their new chambers on Beacon Hill. Draped in an American flag, the Sacred Cod joined the procession, carried by several Statehouse messengers.

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The Massachusetts State Senate, not to be outdone, has its own piscine tribute: a brass fish known as the Holy Mackerel.

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During WW II, the solid-pine Cod was almost melted down as scrap metal. Officials at the Aluminum-for-Defense Drive had received some faulty intelligence that the fish was made of solid aluminum. Unfortunately for them, aluminum wasn’t even discovered until 1825, 41 years after the fish was made, but House officials quipped that the Drive was welcome to investigate the Senate’s Holy Mackerel.

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In the late 1920s, a likeness of the cod was stamped on Massachusetts license plates. This caused public outrage, however, as the fish more closely resembled a “small guppy” and was swimming away from the word “Massachusetts.” It was soon removed.

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On Wednesday, April 26, 1933, three staffers from The Harvard Lampoon entered the Statehouse with wire cutters and a flower box on a surreptitious cod-napping mission. Legend has it that they waited until no one was looking, snipped the wires, hid the fish in the flower box and waltzed right out. The alarms were raised later that evening, and for 50 hours the Commonwealth and the city of Boston were in a full-out panic. Then, on the night of April 28, Charles Apted, chief of the Harvard Yard Police got an anonymous tip that led him on a 20-minute car chase down the West Roxbury Parkway. Two men allegedly leapt from the car, tossed him the fish, and sped away. Order was restored to the Statehouse, and the Sacred Cod (which suffered only a few nicked fins) was hung again, this time six inches higher than before.