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First-hand account of the wreck of the barque Horace
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Barque Horace ashore at Kennebunk 1838
She was built at Scarborough in 1827. Arundel men owned the greater part of the vessel, one brother being the husband. A capt of Kennebunk owned a piece and also a capt of Arundel commanded her with his brother as mate.
Now, she was bound from New Orleans to Liverpool, with full cargo of cotton near 300 bales. She was a vessel of 389 tons. This was her first voyage. In fact, she had never made a voyage.
She was a good barque, black, sided with some stripes about her. The crew, some dozen or more, gathered at New Orleans, were all strangers, a mixed lot, with some foreigners among them.
Now it chanced that a story passed amongst these men, that the vessel had brought a general cargo from some northern part of the southern city. And that a surplus of the money provided to purchase it was still on board, about $25,000; be that as it may ere long they laid plans to gain possession of the craft. They would kill the captain but not the mate as he might serve them later.
Tales were told that the captain and mate were impetuous but a man who sailed on board as a passenger said it wasn’t so. The sailor’s plot accomplished, then they would scuttle or fire the barque. But it chanced that the cook, a swede, and who also was to perish, overheard the speech and warned the capt and he laid a counter plan of his own to secure them at the first appearance of a mutiny. Ere long several were seized, lashed with cords for there were no irons on the craft. Then in the milee the mate was injured. The vessel being short-handed the capt endeavored to make port at Boston. But wind and ride proceeded and when off this coast he chose to sail for Arundel for there his owner and family were. He also would place the men who refused to do duty on shore, and secure others in their place, would remain over a tide or two only. Ah friend, would that he had not made the mistake of anchoring in an open ??? instead of proceeding to Portland where there was a safe harbor and the US court sat before which the mutineers could be tried. Some persons asserted that the crew believed believed that they were sailing there and that the old observatory on Point Arundel was Falmouth Lighthouse.
However, the ill-fated vessel anchored inside the fishing rock near the rivers mouth on Wed.
May 2, 1838. Now when the report reached Kennebunk Village that the Horace was off the bar boys with spy glasses climbed the belfry of the Unitarian Church to see the vessel.
The mutinous sailors were at once set ashore and transported to Portland.
The wind came up and blew Friday and Saturday and the condition was serious for the vessel at anchor. A person living near the shore who viewed the vessel straining at her chains exclaimed, “ she will not weather the gale.” Several captains and crew members remained on the vessel. The gale was so heavy seawater was in the fields. The barque was with both anchors ??? with chain cables. Sat May 5 one of the chains parted. The captain feared the other would go and at 11:45 slipped it. And at the same time ordered all hands aloft to loosen the sails intending to work the vessel out to sea but in the extremity of tide and wind the barque would not obey the rudder. Ere the men found time to do their work the captain shouted for them to come down for you must know that he heard the breakers (dirge?) They had barely reached the deck when the vessel struck on the half-way wreck off oakes neck there ½ mile from the anchoring ground. Some call this ledge “wash rock” and declare the vessel left her chain lying across them. She remained there for 15 minutes bumping heavily lost her rudder stern post false keel bent an hogged by the rough usage and filling with water.
Had the cargo been ought but cotton or had she laid longer on the rock the vessel would have floundered and all persons on board perished. However, she rose on the ledge with a serge, beat over it and again drifted ½ a mile came ashore upright broadside on with all standing, at night, amid tremendous surf, at first beach some 150 yards from high water mark and hard on 2 acres lot (Lords Point)
The captain, mate and two crewmen swung overboard. He told the owners he would have perished with his vessel if he had it to do again. Operations were begun to remove the cotton and dismantle the vessel. Many people being employed.
Author unknown
Sharon Cummins @ July 25, 2010
Perilous Refuge in Cape Porpoise Harbor
Posted in: 2010 Old News Column | Comments (0)
The fateful December gale of 1850
Cape Porpoise Harbor has always been dangerous to seafarers unfamiliar with its hidden hazards but countless vessels have ventured forth anyway, seeking shelter from countless storms. Many never made it into the harbor, others never made it out.
In October of 1804 The Salem Register reported that a Hallowell packet was lost at Cape Porpoise in a hurricane. Captain Weston sailed her onto the rocks. He, his crew and all 20 of his passengers, including twelve ladies, perished. Only the bodies of Dr. Appleton, Mrs. Appleton and their child, all of Waterville, were ever found.
The American Coast Pilot called Cape Porpoise a “bad harbour” in 1806. “It is not to be attempted unless you are well acquainted, or in distress. A vessel that draws 10 feet will be aground at low water. The harbour is so narrow that a vessel cannot turn round.” Nevertheless, it was advertised as the only refuge in a storm between Portland and Portsmouth. During the years of coasting trade it was not unusual for 100 vessels to seek shelter in one storm, bumping and battering each other in the process. To address the dangerously rocky approach, local ship owners petitioned the United States Congress, in 1831, to establish a lighthouse on Goat Island and a buoy at Prince’s Rock. The whale oil in Goat Island Light was first ignited in August of 1833 and the Prince Rock buoy was placed the following year. Unfortunately, the frequency of shipwrecks was not much abated by these measures.
Joshua Herrick, Kennebunkport’s only United States Congressman, promoted a plan in 1844 to construct an 852 foot stone pier between Savin Bush and Milk Islands, thereby blocking the surge from nor’easters and providing tie ups for vessels seeking refuge. It was proposed that the breakwater, 20 feet wide at its base and 10 feet wide on top, be built economically of stone available on an “unclaimed island” 1/2 mile east of Milk Island. The plan was perceived by Congress as an effort to improve commerce in Cape Porpoise and the bill was forwarded to the Commerce Committee. There it sat for nearly a decade.
During the tremendous storm of 1850, just before Christmas, Cape Porpoise Harbor was littered with disabled vessels. The schooner “Wave” went ashore outside the harbor late on the night of December 22nd. Captain Tolman and his crew were saved but the schooner was a total loss. A few hours later schooner “Susan Taylor” of Frankfort went ashore on Green Island. Schooner “Helen Mar” of Deer Isle, was the next to run aground on the rocks between Vaughn and Green Islands. Her bottom was knocked out and her cargo of lumber strewn willy nilly. Schooner Albert soon parted her anchor chains and drifted afoul of Schooner Elizabeth causing that schooner to go aground. No lives were lost but the crews of Helen Mar, Albert and Elizabeth all huddled together on Green Island, unsheltered from the raging weather until they were rescued late in the evening of the 23rd.
As Deputy Collector of Customs for the Kennebunk District, Enoch Cousens pleaded with Congress in 1853 to approve the Cape Porpoise breakwater project. Additionally, Cousens asked that a lighthouse be built at the mouth of the Kennebunk River. The breakwater bill was again tabled but the proposed lighthouse was approved. A 6th order lens perched atop a 21 foot white frame structure was lit for the first time on January 1, 1857 at the end of the eastern pier. The new lighthouse was unpopular. It caused a great deal of confusion among mariners being so close to Cape Porpoise Light. A storm took it away some time before 1870 and it was never replaced.
Originally most of Cape Porpoise Harbor had a depth of about 13 feet at low tide and the entrance was obstructed by a bar. Under a $70,000 harbor improvement project finally adopted March 3, 1899, the entrance of the harbor was widened to 200 feet and deepened to 16 feet at low water. An anchorage area about 3,000 feet long, 600 feet wide, and 15 feet deep at low tide was completed by the end of 1902. In 1907, the crooked entrance channel was straighten and dug to a depth of 18 feet at low tide for an additional $46,000. These improvements made the harbor much safer as a place of refuge but a few notable shipwrecks occurred during and after the project.
The number of documented shipwrecks in the Kennebunks exceeds 100. Some of the wrecks at Goose Rocks Beach, Cape Arundel and Kennebunk Beach will be explored in a free illustrated lecture at Kennebunk Library tonight, (July 22, 2010) at 7 pm.
Sharon Cummins @ July 23, 2010
Shipwrecks of the Kennebunks illustrated lecture 7-22
Posted in: 2010 Old News Column | Comments (0)
Sharon Cummins @ July 14, 2010
A German Howitzer quietly pleads for peace in Kennebunk
Posted in: 2010 Old News Column, Kennebunk | Comments (0)
A Trophy Gun of Remembrance
Thousands of people wiz by Kennebunk’s War Memorial every day but few are aware of its significance or its origin.
When the citizens of Kennebunk arrived at Town Meeting, Saturday, August 22, 1908, Saco marble dealer, George E. Morrison had already been commissioned to furnish a 21 foot granite figure of a soldier on a seven by eight foot base. The statue honoring Kennebunk soldiers of the American Civil War was to be paid for by the efforts of the Relief Corps and an appropriation by the town.
A satisfactory location for the monument could not be agreed upon. The vote to place it on Centennial Hill passed by a narrow margin but the meeting was contentious. Disgruntled voters grumbled at their neighbors as they left the meeting.
The following Monday, Henry Parsons stepped forward and offered to purchase the land at the corner of Main and Fletcher Streets for $10,000 and donate it to the town for a war memorial. The lot was the perfect choice. It was right downtown and just across the street from the Kennebunk Free Library, which had been built for the town by Henry Parson’s father, George Parsons. Peace was restored. The $4,000 statue was unveiled on October 24, 1908 amid much prayer and fanfare. All the businesses in town were dressed in their finest patriotic buntings.
In 1911, Kennebunk Legislator, Charles Perkins acquired a battle-worn cannon from the Government to be placed near the statue. After World War One, a plaque listing names of the Kennebunk soldiers who served was added to the park. William Barry donated his grandfather’s old ships cannon that had been fired from Centennial Hill to celebrate Armistice Day. Both of these old guns have since been put in storage.
A June 7, 1924 Act of Congress provided for the distribution of captured enemy artillery as war memorials for American cities and towns. Maine was allotted its share of German WWI field guns and the Harold A. Webber American Legion Post was the first to apply for one. The request was passed over even though Kennebunk had sent more men into the World War per capita then any other town in Maine.
Henry Parsons, a member of Kennebunk’s American Legion Post, stepped forward again. This time he was determined to acquire a piece of German Artillery. In 1928 he became aware of 20 captured Howitzers that had been placed with the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. They were being stored on the grounds of War College for lack of space at the museum so Parsons went to Washington DC to examine the collection. He picked out his three favorite guns and wrote an appeal to the Smithsonian Institute on behalf of the Kennebunk American Legion. “The cannons are seriously deteriorating through the rusting of the steel and the decaying of the wood-work,” he wrote. “The Harold A. Webber Post respectfully request that one of these cannon be donated to the Post as a war memorial – all expenses in connection with such donation to be paid by the Post.”
After many letters between the Post, the Smithsonian Institute, The War Department and United States Congressman, Lister Hill, the donation was finally approved. These letters, which have been carefully preserved in scrapbooks kept at the Webber-Lefebvre Post 74, were graciously shared with your columnist by Commander Brian McBride. In one rather terse letter from the Post to Governor Ralph O. Brewster, the Post Commander complained that as deserving as the large voting membership of the Kennebunk Legion was they had been overlooked to receive one of the original allotment of German cannons. He then suggested that the Governor might want to rectify the situation by applying to the War department on their behalf.
In the early part of August, 1928, the German 150mm sFH13 Lang Howitzer arrived at the depot on a flat bottom car. The 4700 pound field gun was unloaded and hauled behind an auto-truck to Town Hall by Henry Parsons, Elmer M. Roberts and Post Commander A.L. Leach. It was riddled with shrapnel and bullet holes; clear evidence of combat against the allied forces. Mobility and fire power made the sFH13 one of the most important pieces in the arsenal of the German Artillery during WWI. The Fried. Krupp Steel Company had delivered 3,409 of them to the front lines by 1918 when Kennebunk’s Howitzer was captured off a French battlefield.
At the beginning of WWII the Howitzer was contributed to a war effort scrap drive, to be cut up for bullets. As it turned out, the Biddeford junkman did not own an acetylene torch hot enough to cut the cannon into pieces for smelting. After several years of storage at the junkyard it was hauled back to the American Legion Hall on High Street. There it remained until the new Legion Hall was opened on Water Street.
It was reported in the Star that Kennebunk citizens voted to accept the Howitzer as a donation from the American Legion in 1977 to keep it in town “since other area American Legion Posts wanted it.” It was placed at the War Memorial and there it remains to remind us of the price of war.
Sharon Cummins @ July 9, 2010
Steamer Clodilda ashore at Wells Beach 1870
Posted in: 2008 Old News Column, Wells | Comments (0)
British Steamer Clotilda
Steamer Clotilda went ashore at Wells Beach on December 13, 1870.
Built in 1863 at the shipyard of J. B. Palmer in Newcastle Upon-Tyne, England, the iron propeller screw steamer was 214 feet long and 28 feet wide. She sailed from Newcastle for the St Lawrence River on October 22 to deliver her cargo of a disassembled 410 ton steam ferry built by the Palmer Iron Shipbuilding Company for the Grand Trunk Railroad. The ferry was to be reassembled in Montreal and used to transport freight cars across the St. Lawrence River. Clotilda also carried 98 tons of soda and 8 tons of glassware.
The steamer ran into rough seas that caused her heavy cargo to move. Her Master, Captain Young, put into Dublin, Ireland where 100 tons of coal was dropped in amongst the cargo to prevent further shifting. Consequential to this considerable delay Clotilda’s destination was changed to Portland, Maine.
Contemporary accounts of the Wells Beach accident were published in the Eastern Argus and the Bangor Daily Whig & Courier. A statement of the “material facts” is also included in a subsequent lawsuit filed against the ship and her cargo by Nathaniel Lord Thompson of Kennebunk. It appears in Volume 1 of Reports of Judgments of Hon. Edward Fox U.S. District Judge for Maine District First Circuit, “The weather at the time was stormy, dark and foggy, and blowing a double reef top-sail breeze with a heavy sea. The beach is of sand, quite flat, affording very poor holding-ground, and is at the head of Wells Bay, exposed to the full force of the winds and waves. The vessel went on at a low run of tides, near high water, and the sea broke heavily over her stern, she being fast in the breakers”. Clotilda’s stern, rose and fell digging her deeper and deeper into the soft sand.
The officers went ashore and found lodgings at the house of Mr. Owen Davis, who lived nearby. Robert Cleaves of Kennebunk approached the captain and offered his services to salvage the cargo. Young proposed to pay 1/4 of the shipped value for the discharge of the cargo on the beach above the spring tides to make the ship lighter and easier to get afloat. Cleaves accepted the proposal and the same evening a written contract was signed. Cleaves paid his men $2.00 per tide and ox teams with drivers were paid $4.00 per tide to unload all the soda, and glass, a portion of the sails and about 3/4 of the ferry parts. As the cargo was removed the lightened steamer moved 500-600 feet up the beach and turned broadside to the water with some of her hull being 13 feet deep in the sand. 150 tons of that sand worked its way into the ship. Having done all he could Cleaves assigned his contract with Young to Captain Nathaniel Lord Thompson of Kennebunk.
Thompson released the ship and her remaining cargo to the underwriters who, in March of 1871, hired the New York Coast Wrecking Company to get Clotilda afloat. An article in the Eastern Argus published July 7, 1871 described their Herculean task. “The wreckers first had to cut her round so that her stern would point off shore. By the aid of two steam pumps, a steam winch of great power, and four anchors weighing 4,000 pounds each, one twenty inch and three sixteen inch cables they turned her and hove her 1,000 feet to where she floated. Five times these heavy anchors were hove home and had to be replanted. As fast as they moved her down the beach they had to fill her with water to keep her from breaking up. On the full spring tide of the second month they expected to get her off, but their anchors failed. It was very difficult to work upon her as she listed so that cleats had to be nailed upon her decks for the men to walk upon”. The steamer finally floated off on June 29, 1871 and was towed to Union Wharf in Portland. Clotilda was not in good condition after sitting on Wells Beach for six months. The Eastern Argus reported, “She is the picture of a wreck: rusted, woodwork off, smoke stack and lower masts standing, dismantled and decks encumbered with the wrecking paraphernalia.”
The steamer was repaired and then sat at Union Wharf under the control of the United States Marshall for almost another year pending Nathaniel Lord Thompson’s lawsuit but was finally cleared from Boston for Liverpool, England in May of 1872.
Sharon Cummins @ June 28, 2010
Kate Furbish and her Drakes Island legacy
Posted in: 2010 Old News Column, Wells | Comments (0)
With practiced botanical eye she roamed
Frequent Drakes Island boarder, Kate Furbish, was no shrinking violet. The single-minded way she pursued her study of native Maine plants, raised eyebrows. Mucking about in the swamp for hours without the benefit of male protection was not considered appropriate behavior for a Victorian lady but she was not to be dissuaded from her solitary endeavor. After being cajoled to allow an elderly gentleman to accompany her for a day of field work, she vented in her diary. “Tis talk, talk, talk, while I want to see, see, see. I am going to see and think for, and by myself, having proved that a day amounts to more spent alone.”
Catherine Furbish was born May 19, 1834 in Exeter, NH, to Benjamin Furbish and his wife Mary A. Lane. When she was still an infant the family moved to Brunswick, ME where she would reside until her passing in 1931.
Benjamin Furbish, a native of Wells, Maine, shared his love of nature with his only daughter on long walks in the woods studying native Maine plants. He sent her to finishing school and paid an extra dollar to ensure that she be taught Latin. He was determined she should develop to her full intellectual potential, in spite of her sex. Benjamin had inherited an independent spirit and respect for education from his own father, Dr. Joshua Furbish of Wells.
Dr. Furbish, born lame, was provided with a good education to help him compensate for his limited physical capacity. He became a renaissance man, excelling in Latin and mathematics far beyond his education. In addition to being a successful cobbler, he was a self-taught inventor with remarkable mechanical gifts. He taught the young mariners of Wells to navigate even though his own mobility was challenged. Joshua also taught himself to play the organ and built two organs for the First Unitarian Universalist Parish in Kennebunk.
Like her paternal grandfather, Kate Furbish never allowed perceived frailties to dictate her fate. In 1860 she attended a botany lecture series in Boston presented by George L. Goodale, of Saco, who would later accept professorships at Bowdoin College and Harvard. The two became lifelong friends and Kate was inspired to pursue her interest in botany. Goodale was in the process of classifying all of Maine’s known flowering plants when she met him. His collection of specimens was housed at the Portland Museum of Natural History in a building that burned to the ground in 1866, destroying years of his research.
After the fire, Kate’s work took on a new vigor and purpose. She worked in every county in the State of Maine, collecting thousands of plant specimens and drawing the four stages of their development; the embryo, the bud, the flower or fruit and the seed pod. She would then reproduce their colors with water-based paint. The plants she collected wilted quickly so she often painted them in the field where they grew and had to work late into the night to capture their peculiarities. In spite of her amateur status, Kate Furbish established a reputation by identifying previously undiscovered varieties that were confirmed by professionals at Harvard and Bowdoin College. At least two varieties were subsequently named after her; Pedicularis Furbishiae and Aster Cordifolius L., var. Furbishiae.
Many of her happiest hours were spent in the marshes of Wells, Maine. Among the flowers she collected there while visiting her cousins at Eatoncroft on Drakes Island were; Slender Blue Flag irises, pure white Myosotis Collina, Arenaria Peploides a member of the Pink family, and Baptisia Tinctoria, a yellow false indigo that her friend at Harvard had never found in Maine. The same plant was later discovered in Alfred and thought to have been introduced there by the Shakers as a medicinal plant.
Kate donated her life’s work to the Harvard Botanical Museum and Bowdoin College Library in 1908. In a letter to William DeWitt Hyde at Bowdoin, she wrote, “I have wandered alone for the most part, on the highways and in the hedges, on foot, in hayracks, on country mail-stages, (often in Aroostook Co., with a revolver on the seat) on improvised rafts,… in row-boats, on logs, crawling on hands and knees on the surface of bogs, and backing out, when I dared not walk, in order to procure a coveted treasure. Called ‘crazy,’ a ‘fool,’ and this is the way that my work has been done. The flowers being my only society and the manuals the only literature for months together. Happy, happy hours!”
Kate Furbish, the amateur, is to this day respected by professional Botanists for her scientific contributions. Unlike the professionals, she had the luxury to concentrate on her field work without administrative distractions. In the 1800s the word “amateur” had a less diminishing connotation than it does today. Rather than implying someone “less qualified than a professional” an amateur was one who required no financial reward for a devoted pursuit; a self-taught, heart-follower. This was an apt description of Kate.
Sharon Cummins @ June 24, 2010
The legend of Francis Fortune
Posted in: 2010 Old News Column, Biddeford Pool | Comments (0)
Where Francis Fortune left his mark
The frequently repeated explanation of how the area of Biddeford called Fortunes Rocks got its name, like most such legends, has a seed of truth that over time has been generously fertilized with imagination.
Francis Fortune, the story goes, was a 15 year old sailor who, after being captured by the British in 1778, was released on account of his youth. He was soon shipwrecked off Biddeford Pool and made it to shore “barely alive.” A local farmer named Rossater and his wife Peggy nursed the boy back to vigor. He repaid their kindness by remaining with them as a farm hand. It is said that after employing the shipwreck survivor for many years Mr. Rossater died. Francis married Peggy Rossater and together they had two sons, both of whom went west in the gold rush of 1849. Uncle Fortune and Aunt Peggy were beloved by the people of Biddeford. They supposedly bequeathed their saltwater farm to the town in exchange for comfortable support through their final years. The area was named after them in appreciation.
Examination of the Biddeford Town Record Book V reveals that Francis Fortune was of Marblehead, Massachusetts when he married the widow Peggy Rositer on March 31, 1824. Marblehead records make no mention of Fortune’s ordeal with the British in 1778 but captive 15 year old sailors were typically released. Marblehead records do prove that Francis married Elizabeth Cloon in 1794 and fathered several of her Marblehead-born children; Samuel Cloon Fortune being the oldest. Elizabeth succumbed to consumption in 1818 and Francis went to sea as first mate aboard the Boston ship “Saco.” A near death experience off Gibraltar ended Fortune’s career on that vessel. He sailed next on the brig “Elizabeth,” of New York.
The morning of December 15, 1823, the “Elizabeth” was headed for Portland, ME in a blinding snowstorm. Her captain, Charles D. Gardner, sailed her into Winter Harbor and dropped anchor there alongside several other vessels seeking shelter from the storm.
Gardner later told a correspondent for the Eastern Argus how he and his crew came to be lashed to the rigging for five hours while the sea washed over them.
“The gale increasing with great violence, snowing very thickly about 4 pm the hemp cable parted and we continued to ride by the chain cable. We sent down our top-gallant mast, fore-top gallant yard and fore-yard; during which time we perceived her to draw her anchor toward the shore, the gale still increasing – and notwithstanding our utmost endeavors to save the vessel, about 7pm Monday she struck on the Lobster Rocks, so-called, near Fletcher’s Neck, in Biddeford, and shortly after bilged. About half past eight, the water being up to the cabin floor she keeled over to the starboard, on her beam ends, the sea, making fair breaches over her. In this perilous situation, we continued to cling to the wreck, if possible to save our lives til morning, not expecting assistance before.”
By 2 am the exhausted crew was greatly relieved to see Winter Harbor men making their way toward the wreck in a boat. The tide had ebbed sufficiently to expose the rocks that were breaking the brig “Elizabeth” apart. One by one the frozen seamen were lowered from her bow on a rope and the Biddeford boat conveyed them safely to shore. It was reported in the Argus that “Captain Gardner was slightly frozen and two or three of the crew were severely so.”
Francis Fortune was about 60 years old when Messrs. Bunker and Hussey of Winter Harbor rescued him from the wreck of the brig Elizabeth, off Lobster Rocks. Presumably, he was one of the severely frozen crewmen carried ashore by widow Rossiter’s neighbor. According to census records, Peggy Rossiter was in her fifth decade when Fortune was delivered to her by sea. Three months later they were married. Both had children by previous marriages but it seems unlikely that Peggy bore any Fortune offspring and none appear in census records.
Soon after Francis married Peggy, his son, Samuel Cloon Fortune, legally changed his name to Samuel Cloon. It was the already wealthy Cincinnati, Ohio merchant, Samuel Cloon who in 1848 paid off John Benson’s mortgage on Francis and Peggy’s oceanfront property. It was he who provided for their comfort during the remainder of their natural lives.
When Francis Fortune died December 10, 1858 at the age of 95, his wife Peggy had already passed. Never in their lifetime, had the land thenceforth known as Fortunes Rocks, ever been conveyed to the town of Biddeford. In 1862 Samuel Cloon sold Fortunes Rocks to William Curtis who later sold it to summer resort developer, Warren C. Bryant.
Francis and Peggy Fortune were simple people who played the cards they were dealt. The lives they actually lived are worthy of acknowledgement.
Sharon Cummins @ June 10, 2010
1770 wreck of the Industry at Kennebunk Beach
Posted in: 2010 Old News Column, Kennebunk | Comments (0)
Last hours of the sloop Industry
The leonine month of March lived up to its reputation in 1960. Nearly a foot and a half of snow fell on coastal York County March 4th. The following week, gale winds blowing from a southeasterly direction scoured Kennebunk Beach in an unusual way exposing the remains of a shipwreck that few remembered.
Bill Calder and Charles Robinson were the first to see crudely constructed ribs projecting 18 inches out of the sand on March 11th and they called George Stevens, photographer for the Kennebunk Star. Some of the ribs were 2 feet wide and a foot thick giving the wreck an ancient appearance. A six inch trenail (a wood fastening peg) removed from the planking had an unusual diamond-shaped wedged hammered into the end of it.
Sandy Brook, Editor of the Star, contacted marine expert and author, Edward Rowe Snow, at his home in Marshfield, Massachusetts and invited him up to examine the unusual wreck. By the time Mr. Snow arrived with Marine Architect, Bror Tamm, the timbers were almost entirely covered again by the shifting sand. Kennebunk’s Fire Chief, Harrison Coleman was persuaded to dispatch a fire truck from the Washington Hose Company and volunteers removed enough sand with a high pressure fire hose to give the experts a good look at the 65 foot wreck where she lay some 70 feet from the seawall on Mother’s Beach.
Mr. Snow, who was perhaps best known as “The Flying Santa Claus” for his annual delivery of Christmas presents to the families of New England lighthouse keepers, returned to Massachusetts to write an article for the Patriot Ledger. In his column, Snow theorized that the Kennebunk Beach wreck was the remains of a coasting packet, the “Industry” built in 1770 by Irish shipbuilders in St. George, Maine. “A colony of ship builders from Northern Ireland settled in St. George. They were the only ones to use a diamond-shaped wedge at a convex angle in the end of their trenails,” explained the maritime historian. Wreckage of the “Industry” superstructure had also been found in this area after she was lost on her maiden voyage.
Fascinated by the story, Dick Bedard, who now lives in Columbia Falls, Maine and three of his friends dug down four feet in an effort to reach the keel of the vessel. “I have a trenail that I carefully removed from one of the rib stumps, and often show it to people,” Dick said recently. The young men also found some broken pottery, pieces of leather punched with small triangular holes, unidentifiable chunks of a heavy, hard, black substance and half a pulley carved from lignum vitae, a wood species only found in South America and the West Indies. Remains of an old leather boot, a bone and a china plate were also uncovered and turned over to the Kennebunkport Historical Society.
According to Cyrus Eaton in his 1877 book, “Annals of the town of Warren,” Waterman Thomas had a store of West Indies goods in St George and leather shoes were made there before 1770 by Jonathan Nutting. The coasting packet, “Industry” was the first vessel ever built in St. George. She was lost on her first trip to Boston in the fall of 1770 and no one onboard was ever heard from again.
Her captain was a promising young man who had invested in the vessel after sailing the coasting route for several years with Reuben Hall. Captain David Patterson, 2nd had built his bride of two years, Anna James, an elegant home in St George and their first child, David, had just been born.
Mrs. Benjamin Packard was also aboard the ill-fated “Industry” with one of her children. Her husband, a carpenter, owned a share in the Industry and likely had a hand in building the ship. He and Anna Patterson, the Captain’s wife, soon commiserated in their grief and married each other.
Captain Patterson’s unmarried cousin, Abigail Patterson was also lost as were George Briggs, John Porterfield, Robert Gamble, John Mastick, David Malcolm of Massachusetts, Alexander Baird and Samuel Watson.
The loss of the vessel was briefly noticed in the October 25, 1770 issue of The Boston News-Letter. “We hear that Capt. Patterson, in a vessel which sailed about three weeks ago from St. Georges, at the Eastward, bound to this place, having on board a number of passengers, is supposed to be lost in a storm which happened the day they sailed, as she has not since been heard of –and ‘tis said the wreck of a vessel was lately seen a little without the capes.”
During the two weeks in 1960 when the shipwreck was visible, a piece of the stern post was examined by Robert W. Morse and Gerard Aycrigg, members of the restoration Dept. of the Mystic Marine Museum. They confirmed that the vessel was more than 100 years old but with such limited examination, would not support or refute Edward Rowe Snow’s identification of the “Industry”.
Sharon Cummins @ May 27, 2010
USS Constitution has Maine ties
Posted in: 2010 Old News Column, Kittery, Portland | Comments (0)
Old Ironsides: A frigate with Maine links
The historic USS Constitution has been tied to Maine history since 1796, when her original eastern white pine masts were hauled out of the woods of Kennebec County.
According to an article published in the Bangor Historical Magazine in 1891, trees for the masts were cut in the town of Windsor, on the north side of Augusta Road between Cooper’s Mills and Bryant’s Corner. “Thomas Cooper, of New Castle, and a man named Gray, who afterward moved to Windsor or Whitefield, cut them and got them to salt water by swamping a road to Puddle Dock (Alna) during the winter of 1796/97.” The following spring, the trees were taken to Wiscasset, where they were yoked together with oak mortises and towed down the coast to the Boston shipyard of Edmund Hart.
Young Edward Preble, of Portland, watched his hometown burn to the ground at the hands of British Navy Commander Henry Mowatt in 1776. On that day he vowed to join the United States Navy to defend his country. By the time the First Barbary War broke out, Commodore Edward Preble was already a seasoned veteran. He was sent to Tripoli in 1803 as commander of the 3rd U.S. squadron, with the frigate USS Constitution as his flagship. The Maine commodore ordered the strategic burning of the USS Philadelphia when it fell into enemy hands.
The USS Constitution served her country nobly during the War of 1812. She earned the nickname “Old Ironsides” when fire from the HMS Guerriere literally bounced off her 21-inch-thick, live oak hull.
On June 2, 1855, Old Ironsides sailed into Portsmouth Navy Yard in Kittery for repairs. Her arrival caused quite a commotion on both sides of the Piscataqua River. Her Navy sailors, on leave after long, loyal service, enthusiastically drank, gambled and caroused. Petty Officer Edward Welch became intoxicated and fell to his death through the hatchway of Old Ironsides. Other sailors were cheated out of their pay in a rigged card game onboard, and the swindlers were chased all over town. Local reporters wrote that the police would have their hands full until the seamen dispersed.
On June 2, 1858, an article appeared in the Charleston Mercury indicating that the frigate Constitution was on the ways at Kittery, having been thoroughly repaired and coppered: “Planking inside and out has been taken off and between six and seven hundred timbers have been replaced. She is now as good as new when first launched in Boston sixty years ago.” Old Ironsides was already regarded as the oldest ship in the Navy when she served as a training vessel during the Civil War.
The old girl returned to Kittery in 1882 after completing her final high seas training cruise and suffered the indignity of being reconfigured into Navy receiving barracks. A large, barn-like structure obscured her graceful lines. On one occasion in 1891, she was adorned with paper lanterns and transformed into a dance hall for the ladies of the G.A.R..
Congressman John F. Fitzgerald of Massachusetts infuriated Portsmouth and Kittery natives in 1897 when he declared the Navy frigate to be on the verge of sinking at her Kittery pier. Her removal to Boston for her 100th birthday was begrudgingly announced in local papers with the caveat, “they had better return her to her rightful home after the celebration because her deteriorated condition has been exaggerated for political reasons.” Old Ironsides would not return to the Portsmouth Navy Yard for another 35 years.
The public was outraged to learn that the Secretary of the Navy recommended the tattered USS Constitution be towed out to sea and used for target practice. Fundraising efforts were undertaken to provide for her complete restoration. Schoolchildren sent in their hard-won pennies and the silent film “Old Ironsides” was produced to raise awareness about the historic ship. Over $600,000 in private funds was raised and Congress approved an additional expenditure of $300,000 to complete the project.
John Abel Lord of Bath, ME was put in charge of rebuilding the USS Constitution in 1925. He researched 18th-century shipbuilding tools and techniques extensively before handpicking skilled shipwrights from Bath to do the work.
The new Secretary of the Navy, Charles Francis Adams, recommended that the restored vessel be towed from port to port to show the people of the United States what their pennies had bought.
Old Ironsides made the first stop of her national tour at the Portsmouth Navy Yard on July 3, 1931. Captain Louis J. Gulliver, of Portland, was at her helm. Some 32,000 people came to see her during the week she spent at Kittery. She was next towed to Bar Harbor and then to Bath, where a huge celebration honored the home boys who had rebuilt her. Old Ironsides spent another week tied up to the Maine State Pier in Portland before being towed away from Maine for the last time.
Many penny donors were disappointed to see Old Ironsides towed on her national tour. Authorities had not thought it prudent to sail the 134-year-old vessel. On July 21, 1997, she finally did sail under her own power for the first time in 116 years, flying a suit of sails made by Nathaniel S. Wilson of East Boothbay.
Sharon Cummins @ May 13, 2010
Nazi U-boats plagued Maine coast during WWII
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- A Night Deposit
German submarines swarmed to American waters when the United States formally declared war on Germany and Italy on Dec. 11, 1941. By the following June, 171 American vessels had been torpedoed off the east coast of the Unites States. Coastal Mainers, many of whom made their living from the sea, felt like sitting ducks.
Maine’s director of civilian defense, Col. Francis H. Farnum, announced on May 22, 1942, that foreign agents both male and female had already landed on the coast of Maine and were investigating shipping prospects. Others, he warned, had come into the state over the Canadian border. No details were disclosed, but he certainly inspired vigilance in coastal Mainers.
Minefields and indicator loops designed to magnetically detect submarines, were installed on the floor of Casco Bay. A mobile artillery unit was quickly deployed to Biddeford Pool. Nearby, an observation tower was constructed of reinforced concrete to look like a church. The whole coast was patrolled by sub-chaser boats and dirigibles. Windows were blackened, civilian lookout posts were manned and curfews were strictly observed.
At about 10 p.m. Nov. 29, 1944, the coning tower of U-1230 pierced the surface of Frenchman’s Bay off Crabtree Neck. Two uniformed German sailors pulled a rubber raft through the hatch and quickly inflated it on the bridge. Two men in American streetwear emerged next, carrying satchels that virtually bulged with handguns, diamonds, and $65,000 in cash supplied by the German government to finance their espionage mission.
William Curtis Colepaugh, an emotionally unstable 26-year-old native of Niantic, Conn., had flunked out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and enlisted in the United States armed forces. He soon became disillusioned with his potential for upward mobility and decided to give the occupation of Nazi spy a whirl. Erich Gimpel was at least the genuine article. Born in Merseberg, Germany, some 35 years earlier, he arrived in the United States intent on sabotaging America’s atomic bomb program.
In a 2004 interview, former CIA covert operative Richard Gay, who has researched the incident extensively, asserted that as the Germans pulled away from the U-boat, a dog started barking on shore. The sailors, Fritz and Konrad, rowed the spies back to the sub to get sausages to quiet the frantic animal before proceeding to the beach.
By the time the four men landed it was snowing hard. Fritz and Konrad earned bragging rights by stepping onto American soil for a moment to flash a “Heil Hitler” before rowing back to their vessel. The plain-clothes spies grabbed their satchels and started off on a four-mile hike to Route 1.
Their city-folk attire was not typical snow gear for a Hancock native, and they were soon spotted by 17-year-old Harvard Hodgkins, who was driving home from a dance. A few miles up the road, Mary Forni drove by them on her way home from a card game. She almost offered them a ride, but something told her to keep driving. When she later mentioned seeing the inappropriately dressed strangers to her husband, he dismissed her concerns.
Gimpel and Colepaugh were resting for a moment in the village when a taxi serendipitously pulled up and agreed to take them to Bangor for $6. Once there the spies caught a train to Portland, where they had breakfast before boarding the 7 o’clock regular to Boston. They travelled on to New York the following day and would have disappeared forever into the city if William Colepaugh had not tried unsuccessfully to slip away from the mission with the bag of diamonds and the $65,000. He approached the FBI and disclosed Gimpel’s whereabouts, claiming to be a double-agent. Both men were sentenced to death but were eventually released after many long years of incarceration. The German, Erich Gimpel, was deported. He published a memoir in 2003 titled “Agent 146: The true story of a Nazi spy in America.”
The U.S. Navy was secretive about just how close the U-boats were to Maine civilians during the war. On April 23, 1945, the U. S. Navy sub-chaser USS Eagle exploded three miles off Cape Elizabeth, tragically killing 49 of her crew and injuring 13. For more than half a century the Navy insisted that a boiler had exploded onboard, but recent exhaustive research proved that the vessel was torpedoed by a German U-boat.
Eye-witnesses recall the night the wreck of the USN sub-chaser blimp K-14 was salvaged at Southwest Harbor. She was “riddled with bullet holes,” but to this day, the Navy blames pilot error for the loss of the dirigible.
When Nazi Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery was the largest American submarine base on the Atlantic coast. Four German U-boats operating in the Gulf of Maine surrendered at the shipyard. One of the subs was displayed in the Piscataqua River and thousands of Mainers travelled miles to see what had so long been the object of their terror.
Sharon Cummins @ April 30, 2010
