Most American history students learn that King William’s War began in New England as an extension of the war between England and France, when in July 1689 the French governor of Canada incited the Indians to brutally attack Dover, N.H., then known as Cochecho. By then, according to the letters of Edmund Andros, governor of New England, Maine had already been deeply embroiled in the conflict for a year. 

Andros was appointed governor by the Catholic King James II of England in 1686. To test the boundaries of his jurisdiction, Andros raided the home and fort of the French Baron de Saint Castin in March of 1688, absconding with his furniture and family’s personal effects. Castin had lived among the Penobscot Indians for 20 years and had married the daughters of chief Madockawando, the most powerful of the eastern sachems, or tribal leaders. The baron and his family were forewarned of the attack and had taken to the Penobscot woods, but the insult ruptured the tenuous peace that had existed between the Maine Native Americans and the colonists since the end of King Philip’s War. There is evidence that Castin did arm his Indian brothers, but at first their violence was mostly directed at livestock.  

Tensions built during the summer of 1688. A handful of North Yarmouth Indians, who had reportedly been drinking, threatened to shoot one of Henry Lanes’ hogs. The Abenaki tribe at Saco was meanwhile being deprived of many sources of food. A 1678 treaty with the English stipulated that the tribe be paid so many bushels of corn each year in exchange for territory. The colonists had ignored the debt. They were also stretching their fishing nets across the Saco River, thereby preventing the migration of fish to the Indian fishing grounds.  

In August of 1688, Saco Indian families complained several times that the colonist’s cows were eating their crops; about the only source of food they had left. Their complaints were ignored. When the cows got into their corn again, the Native Americans shot at the cows, wounding some. Saco Justice of the Peace, Benjamin Blackman, felt justified in taking drastic action against the Indians, especially in light of the hog incident at North Yarmouth.

He rounded up 16 to 20 members of the Saco tribe who had participated in attacks against the colonists during King Philip’s War and sent them to Boston. Two weeks later, New Dartmouth and North Yarmouth were attacked in earnest by avenging Indians. They let it be known, in no uncertain terms, that their actions were in retribution for the imprisonment of their brothers from Saco. Andros released the prisoners but it was too little too late. Several members of the Barrett family were killed and others kidnapped by members of the Saco tribe at Cape Porpoise on Oct. 11, 1688.

Andros, who was generally despised by his mostly Protestant constituents in New England, organized an army to overtake the enemy in Maine. When none of his regular officers were willing to go, Andros decided, with disastrous results, to lead the men himself. An army of 500 men was easily detected and the enemy disappeared into its native forest. The only casualties of the expedition were English soldiers who froze to death or died of disease in the cold Maine winter.

While Andros was in Maine, his boss King James II abdicated the English throne. William of Orange succeeded him in February of 1689, but word of his coronation didn’t reach the colonies until the end of March. It was good news for the colonists, who hoped their old charter would be restored under the new Protestant king. Andros had by then returned to Boston, leaving his soldiers stationed in makeshift forts along the Maine coast. His commanding officers wrote to him repeatedly requesting ammunition and supplies but the Catholic governor ignored their requests. He was focused on protecting his own political future.

A rumor began to spread among the soldiers in Maine that Andros had sold them out and was negotiating with the Indian sachems to make Maine a Catholic territory. On March 28, 1689, Andros received notice that 17 soldiers at Saco Falls had deserted their majesty’s service. Mention was also made of mutinous actions by soldiers from Cochecho and other garrisons.

On April 12, 1689, Andros ordered Capt. John Floyd, commander of the Saco fort, to go after his AWOL soldiers and arrest those unwilling to return. He also ordered Floyd to relieve Lt. John Puddington of his command at the Cape Porpoise fort and send him to Boston to account for releasing his soldiers against the governor’s orders. The soldiers from Saco and Cape Porpoise were long gone, already marching to Boston to participate in a movement to depose Androsm when Floyd received his orders.

On April 18, 1689, Andros was imprisoned by his subjects in Boston in spite of his efforts to escape by dressing in women’s clothing. After the soldiers had vacated the forts at Saco and Cape Porpoise, both defenseless villages were attacked by “Indians well known to them.” Two houses were burned at Saco and several inhabitants were wounded. John Barrett of Cape Porpoise was killed as his father and brothers had been the previous autumn. The “unprovoked” Cochecho massacre, often referred to as the beginning of King William’s War, was still three months away.                                 Sources

 

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 23^rd.

 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 6^th 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.

Chicago’s Sears Tower had two arrivals from Kennebunkport on Memorial Day 1981. Only one was invited. Frank Handlen, your “Old News” illustrator, had sold 14 paintings meant to grace the walls of Sears Corporate Headquarters. Around the time the crate was delivered, Danny Goodwin, Kennebunk High Class of ‘74, appeared at the west side of the 110-story building in a handmade spandex Spiderman costume. He intended to scale what was then the tallest building in the world.

As a boy growing up on Fishers Lane in Cape Porpoise, Goodwin writes in his recently published memoir, “SKYSCRAPERMAN,” he loved to climb trees. “So much so the police tried to arrest me for climbing one of the tallest in Portland, Maine. But despite their use of a cherry picker, they weren’t able to catch me.”

Goodwin was 25 years old and about 20 floors up when a Sears security guard angrily held a note up to the window demanding he descend. Spider-Dan, who was climbing up the window washer track, stuck a suction cup over the note and proceeded up the side of the building. Ambulances, hook and ladder trucks and helicopters were dispatched to the scene. At the 35th floor, Dan became aware that a window washing machine was descending the track in his path and that the window next to him had been removed from inside the building. Using suction cups equipped with stirrups, he scooted horizontally away from his would-be captors. Some six and a half hours and 1,450 feet into the climb, Dan duct-taped an American flag near the top of the Sears Tower.

“It was my way of thanking my father for fighting in the Korean War,” he writes.

Meanwhile, his father, Dale Goodwin, was back in Cape Porpoise, completely unaware of Danny’s plans until he was contacted by a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Though proud of his son’s courage, Dale was grateful he hadn’t known about the stunt ahead of time.

“If I’d known he was going to do this I would have been a nervous wreck,” Dale Goodwin told a reporter for the Biddeford Journal Tribune.

Brenda Buchanan, a correspondent for the York County Coast Star, talked to local folks about the feat.

“That’s Danny for you,” they told her in unison, “always looking for another adventure. Danny Goodwin — daredevil, track star, mountain climber, skier, gymnast and stuntman. Danny Goodwin — bohemian, dancer, dreamer, wanderer, always looking for something to be afraid of, climbing the cliffs over the ocean because there was nothing higher to climb.”

Well, Danny had found something higher.

As soon as he reached the top of Sears Tower he was taken to jail overnight on charges of disorderly conduct, criminal trespass and criminal damage to property.

After celebrity appearances on Johnny Carson and the Today Show, Dan pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct. His fine was only $35, but Fire Commissioner William Blair threatened dire consequences should Goodwin ever attempt to climb another building in his jurisdiction.

That was a challenge Danny couldn’t resist. On Veteran’s Day he scaled Chicago’s John Hancock Center while the gathering crowd below chanted, “Let him climb. Let him climb.”

Enraged, Commissioner Blair ordered his firemen to wash “Spider Dan” Goodwin off the side of the building with a fire hose. The defiant climber clung to the building 300 feet off the ground. Unwilling to be responsible for the death of a beloved comic book hero, the Mayor of Chicago ordered Blair to shut the water off and Spider-Dan finished his ascent. Damages to the building and other expenses reportedly totaled $16,000.

This time, the sentence was a year’s probation.

When asked what possessed him to take such risks, Spider-Dan replied, “I have a new idea, a new concept for fire rescue. I needed a forum to present these ideas to the public.”

In his memoir, Goodwin writes that he was motivated to climb buildings by two life-altering experiences. After witnessing the MGM Grand Hotel fire in Las Vegas, he was haunted by the reality that firefighters had no way to rescue victims trapped on the middle floors of a skyscraper fire.

And then, a few months after the fire, Dan sustained serious injuries in a car crash. During his recovery from the accident he vowed never again to be dissuaded from his dreams.

Spider-Dan climbed the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York on Memorial Day, 1983, nearly falling to his death when the window washer track pulled away from the building. Mayor Edward Koch was not impressed.

“These stunts endanger participants, police officers and onlookers,” he said to the press. “And it cost taxpayers $4,235 just in police department man-hours and equipment.”

Somehow, Dan Goodwin always evaded authorities long enough to finish his intended climbs. Until July 1983, that is. Dan was escorted away from the Bald Head Cliff by officers of the York (Maine) Police Department.

“But three days later, he returned, after notifying local newspapers,” Brenda Buchanan wrote in the Boston Globe. “He told the officers who met him at the bottom of the cliff that he was determined to make another ascent.”

Unlike police forces in Chicago and New York City, York’s finest were able to take Spider-Dan into custody when he was just a couple feet up the cliff.

Charles A. Lindbergh completed the first solo transatlantic flight on May 21, 1927. The handsome 25 year-old air mail pilot and his single engine monoplane, Spirit of St. Louis, became world-famous, overnight. Along with fame came public adoration and the omnipresent paparazzi… even in remote Maine waters.

“Lindy” – as the press had nicknamed him- was already overwhelmed by all the attention when he flew to Maine two months after his record-breaking flight. A man had been killed by an unruly crowd during his public appearance on the Boston Common, July 22, 1927. The tragedy was fresh in his mind as thousands gathered to see him land his famous monoplane at Scarborough Airport. Pea-soup fog obscured the runway for two days and the pilot was finally forced to land at the less secure Old Orchard Beach airstrip. After dutifully fulfilling several promotional obligations to massive crowds in Maine, the pilot made his way back to his plane at Old Orchard Beach. There he found another mob pressing up against the Spirit of St. Louis as he tried to take off.

When Lindy asked Ann Morrow to marry him in 1929 the whole world speculated about the details of their nuptial plans. Rumor had it that the Lindbergh wedding would take place in late June at the Morrow summer cottage in North Haven, Maine. One Monday afternoon in late May, a small group of family and friends were invited to attend a charity event hosted by the bride’s mother at her Englewood, NJ home. After lunch, they were surprised to discover that they were all guests at a wedding. The understated affair was over in a flash. Ann wore a simple dress and carried a handful of larkspur that the groom had picked from his in-law’s backyard.

By the time the press got wind of the secret marriage the couple had slipped away on a 38-foot honeymoon yacht Lindy had purchased a week earlier. The owner of Elco Boatworks in Bayonne, NJ, resisted the free publicity as long as his professional ambitions would allow but finally gave reporters a very detailed description of the aviator’s new yacht, the “Mouette”.

The honeymooners were tracked from New London, Ct to Provincetown, MA by land, sea and air. In an effort to thwart positive identification the Lindberghs broke marine law by covering the name of the vessel with a piece of canvas. Newspapers all over the world carried a daily account of the little boat’s movements.

They were spotted off Isle of Shoals on June 6th by two New York press planes. The next day the Mouette tied up for gas and provisions at Hartley Philbrick’s fish wharf in York, Maine. Try as he might, Hartley could not engage Mr. Lindbergh in meaningful conversation. While they were loading supplies in relative silence, a 13 year old girl recognized Lindy and ran off to spread the word at the town’s high school graduation celebration. Within minutes, more than 100 people crowded onto Philbrick’s wharf to get a snapshot of the elusive aviator. Anne Lindbergh remained inside the cabin until the Mouette was safely offshore.

The boat put into Cape Porpoise Harbor and anchored very near Goat Island Light for the night. Melville Freeman wrote in his 1953 “History of Cape Porpoise” that residents of Cape Porpoise were unimpressed by Lindy’s visit and were completely discreet out of respect for his privacy. An article that first appeared in the Portsmouth Herald June 8, 1929, told a different story.

Captain Jim Anderson, keeper of the lighthouse, was offended that the little launch failed to answer his customary salute of three bells. He grabbed his powerful binoculars and was able to identify Lindy and Anne moving about the boat. Anderson called to his wife and children so that they might get a glimpse of the celebrities. The following morning, the lighthouse keeper revealed to a Portsmouth reporter that the honeymooners turned out their cabin light at 8:25 p.m.

Jack Seavey and John Martin rowed out to the Mouette under a cloak of darkness. They quietly made their way to the stern of the yacht and lifted the canvas that covered her name just as Lindbergh appeared on deck. Thinking quickly, the Kennebunkport boys claimed they were there to see if he needed assistance. After thanking them wryly for their kind offer, Lindy said if they wanted to help they could leave him alone. The boys left as requested but not before studying the woman silhouetted in the cabin door.

The Lindberghs left Cape Porpoise Harbor first thing the next morning and made their way up the coast to Cape Elizabeth, Pemaquid Point, Rockland, and Swan’s Island. Everywhere they went they were greeted with prying eyes.

On June 13th, the honeymoon cruiser was spotted offshore near Old Orchard Beach. The Linberghs witnessed the lift off of aviators, Jean Assolant, Rene LeFevre and Ameno Lotti on the first French transatlantic flight. The tail of the plane “Yellow Bird” dipped perceptibly as she became airborne. Lindbergh and the rest of the world would later discover that Arthur Schreiber, 22 year old son of a Portland fur salesman, had stowed away on the French plane and was not discovered until some time after takeoff.

Later that afternoon, the Mouette tied up at Cape Porpoise Pier for two hours to get provisions and fuel for the trip back to New York.

When the Lindbergh’s first born son was kidnapped and tragically murdered in 1932, the press mercilessly dissected the family’s every moment of grief, driving them to move to England. Lindy lost public favor for his vocal opposition to American involvement in WWII but he changed his views after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and flew many celebrated combat missions in the Pacific Theater.

The people of Arundel were for the most part in support of American independence from Great Britain. King George III had levied taxes that threatened Arundel’s maritime trade economy. When 400 buildings at today’s Portland were burned by Captain Henry Mowat on October 18, 1775, the threat of war was too close to home to be ignored.

More than a month before the declaration of independence was signed Arundel citizens voted to “engage their lives and fortunes” to support independence. And that they did. Arundel boys were lost at Quebec, Halifax, Valley Forge and Lake Champlain as well as in the disastrous Penobscot Expedition of 1779.

Coastal Cape Porpoise residents, who were engaged in seafaring trade with merchants from Essex County Massachusetts, were particularly vulnerable. In October of 1780 three vessels were captured just outside Cape Porpoise Harbor and their captive crews were carried to Penobscot. The following year three more vessels met the same fate just outside the harbor though a few crewman made it to shore.

A bold attack inside Cape Porpoise Harbor was described in a New-England Chronicle article on October 3, 1782. On the morning of August 8, 1782 sheep and cattle were grazing on the islands as usual and two Newbury Massachusetts vessels were safely anchored in the harbor. One was a large sloop loaded with lumber and fitted out with a canon to protect her cargo. The other was a wood schooner that sailed with her.

An enemy brig of 16 guns suddenly appeared outside the harbor. She sent in a boat with 3 dozen men to capture the armed sloop but the men were surprised by the sloop’s American canon and landed the boat on Goat Island instead. The brig then sailed into the harbor and fired upon the Newbury sloop while an enemy top-sail schooner fired at her from just outside the harbor. The sloop’s crew was forced to evacuate and the enemy took possession of the two American vessels, sending the schooner off to Penobscot. The sloop was driven ashore by a sudden breeze as she left the harbor and was burned by the enemy where she lay at the southwesterly point of Goat Island.

James Burnham Jr., Captain of the Arundel militia, called his men to Trotts Island. From there he successfully advanced on the enemy, still at Goat Island, by ordering his men to wade across the channel under a hail of fire from the top-sail schooner. Wind and tide conspired to keep the Brig from escaping the harbor but she managed to get out just before nightfall by towing and warping her way. The Arundel Militia exchanged fire with the enemy for five or six hours and suffered the loss of one life, that of Captain James Burnham who at the close of the engagement took a musket ball to the chest. According to a witness whom the enemy had taken some time before, and who was on board the schooner during the battle, over 25 of the enemy were killed.

When Charles Bradbury wrote about the battle of Cape Porpoise in 1837, he relied heavily on the memories of his older neighbors to piece together the harrowing events of August 8, 1782. Some of his details varied from the contemporary account and he added a personal story. “Samuel Wildes, who was partially deranged” wrote Bradbury “paddled into the harbor in a small canoe and ordered them to give the vessels up and leave the port.” When he refused to board the brig he was fired upon seven times causing him an injury that lamed him for the rest of his life.

Regardless of his mental health, Samuel Wildes, Sr. had a right to be incensed by the enemy. He knew that his 16 year old son, a privateer crewman, had been imprisoned in England for 15 months. What he didn’t know was that Samuel Wildes, Jr. was at that moment two days out of Marblehead, Massachusetts. Benjamin Franklin had negotiated the release of all American prisoners and they were on their way home.

Most of the British forces had already left Penobscot by August 1782 but the loyalists stationed there were infamous for raiding coastal Maine harbor towns for sheep, cattle and coasting vessels laden with badly needed supplies. Most notable was Loyalist, Richard Pomroy and his 16 gun Brig Meriam.

A few weeks after the attack at Cape Porpoise, the Meriam was cut out of her anchor at Penobscot by Captain George Little in his American Navy sloop Winthrop. The Brig Meriam was triumphantly sailed into Boston Harbor on Sept 16, 1782 along with 3 other prizes. Among them were, privateer schooner Hammond commanded by a Penobscot Loyalist named Doty and an unnamed Newbury wood schooner that was a recent prize of the Brig Meriam.

A letter from the Governor, published in the Massachusetts Archives, relates to the success of Little’s six week cruise. It says “I considered that he had most essentially prevented the depredations on that coast by capturing & sending into this Port near the whole of the armed force they possessed at Penobscot.”

Definitive proof that Cape Porpoise was attacked by loyalist brig Meriam and schooner Hammond, has not been found but if the Governor was correct in his assessment of the remaining Penobscot forces the circumstantial evidence is strong.

For sources see www.mykennebunks.com/revolution.htm

The sparkling jewel of Cape Porpoise Harbor, now under the able stewardship of the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust, was not set without controversy.  Merchants and ship owners of the District of Kennebunk petitioned the United States Congress to build a light house on Goat Island in 1831. $6000 was appropriated for the project.  At the following session of Congress objections were filed by the Marine Society of Portland against the building of a light-house on Cape Porpoise.  The objection was acknowledged but the plan was to go forward.   Eastern Argus printed a request for sealed proposals for its construction in August of 1832.  Both the dwelling and the tower were to be constructed of good suitable split undressed stone.  The cone-shaped 20‘ tower was to be 16’ diameter at the base and 9’ diameter at the top.  Whale oil in Goat Island Light was first ignited in August of 1833. 

Democrat Joshua Herrick, Kennebunkport’s only United States Congressman, served from   1843-1845.  His short term was not without effort on behalf of his home town.  He promoted an elaborate survey and improvement plan of Cape Porpoise Harbor which included the construction of an 852’ pier stretching “from Savin Bush Island to the extremity of an old pier extending from Milk Island, and formerly used for mooring vessels.”  While the fate of Herrick’s plan was being deliberated Kennebunk’s Adam McCulloch filed a claim against the United States of America.  The bill for his relief was presented March 3, 1845, one day before Joshua Herrick’s term expired.  

Mr. Shepperd Cary, from the Committee of Claims, made the following report to the 28^th Congress 2^nd session:

“That it appears the United States have built a light-house upon Goat island, in the State of Maine, and that the title to said island is claimed by Adam McCulloch.”  

McCulloch’s complaint went on to outline some local history.  In 1651, George Cleave, agent of Rigby, granted to Gregory Jeffery two hundred acres of land, and three islands in Cape Porpoise one of which was Goat Island.  Cape Porpoise was depopulated in 1689, during King William’s War.  Land grants were lost in the shuffle and when the settlers returned land ownership needed to be verified.  John Jeffery, son of Gregory, claimed his father’s 200 acres and three islands in Cape Porpoise.  His descendants, John and Benjamin Jeffery deeded Goat Island to Hugh McCulloch.  

“In 1834, Hugh McCulloch being dead, the superintendent of lighthouses for this district offered to purchase of the undersigned (who was the oldest son, and subsequently administrator of the estate of said Hugh) the said Goat Island, if he would give the United States a warranty deed; but not being able to find the deed to his father, and the estate of his father being insolvent, he declined doing it.  The superintendent ultimately took a quit-claim deed from the agents of the States of Massachusetts and Maine, for which he paid nothing; and the money which was appropriated for the purchase of the island was returned to the treasury of the United States. 

The undersigned, being duly authorized by the judge of probate for the County of York to make sale of the real estate belonging to the estate of Hugh McCulloch, purchased the island himself. 

If certain contemplated improvements should be made in Cape Porpoise Harbor, Goat Island would probably become valuable for a fishing stand, for which it was originally purchased; that business being extensively carried on there, and on the increase.  The United States government, however, having erected a light-house on the island, the undersigned is now willing to execute a good and sufficient deed to the United States, rather than to eject the light house keeper by aid of our State courts.  He therefore prays your honorable body that an appropriation be made to pay for said Goat Island.

Adam McCulloch” 

Kennebunkport Historian, Charles Bradbury, offered his impeccable reputation to support McCulloch’s claim.

 “I,  Charles Bradbury, of Kennebunkport, County of York, and State of Maine, having written and published the History of Kennebunkport and having been appointed by the governor of this State to superintend the copying of the early records of Maine, hereby certify that, from a careful examination of the said records, and from an attentive pursuit of the early history of this State, Massachusetts and Maine never had any title to Goat Island, situated in Cape Porpoise harbor, on which a light-house was erected in 1834; nor did they ever claim to have any title to any of the islands on the western shore of Maine till (for the purpose of enabling the United States to erect the light-house in 1834) they quit their title to Goat Island to the United States; nor have they since that time claimed any other islands on this shore, in which they would have equal right; many of which are very valuable. 

I also certify that I knew John Jeffery and Benjamin Jeffery, who deeded Goat island to Hugh McCulloch; and that they owned and resided on the land held by them by virtue of the same grant by which Goat island was holden; and that John Hovey, the justice before whom the deed was acknowledged, was my grandfather, with whose writing I am well acquainted, and the signature on that deed purporting to be his is genuine.  I further certify that I was auctioneer at the sale of the real estate of Hugh McCulloch, deceased, and that Goat island was bought by Adam McCulloch, son of said Hugh, and administrator on his estate; and that the sale was according to law.

Charles Bradbury” 

Certified copies of all the Deeds in question follow in the report.   Testimony from a long-time resident of Trott’s Island also supported McCulloch’s claim.

“I, Joseph Tarbox, of Kennebunkport, in the County of York and in the State of Maine,  aged 76 years, do depose, testify and say: That I have lived on Trot’s Island, on the northeasterly side of Cape Porpoise harbor and contiguous to Goat Island (at low water) for 28 years last past; and previous to that, I lived in the vicinity of said harbor; that I was  well acquainted with Hugh McCulloch, Esq., as I worked for him, more or less, for six years; that he owned Goat and Folly Islands when I worked for him and let one Bradbury Perkins set up a fish stand, and build a store and make fish on them.” 

Eunice Perkins’ affidavit indicates that she owned several islands in Cape Porpoise Harbor next adjoining Goat and Folly Islands.  She had long known those two islands to belong to McCulloch.  

Joshua Herrick certified that “Eunice Perkins is a person of the first respectability and credibility and that her testimony in the case in point would be considered, where she is known, as more important than that of any other person.” 

It is surprising to learn that the Islands in Cape Porpoise Harbor were still populated in 1845. 

The evidence presented was irrefutable and on July 15, 1846 congress approved a payment of $300 to Adam McCulloch for legal title to Goat Island.

To read the quoted congressional reports and the Eastern Argus article describing specifications of the first lighthouse visit www.mykennebunks.com/lighthouse.htm .

Tiny Fort Island, connected at low water to Stage Island, has a rich and colorful history. Cape Porpus Settlers huddled behind the fort there during a 1689 Indian attack. In 1894, Harvard student, Henry F. Knight described colonial artifacts he had collected on the island at a meeting of the Maine Historical Society and again to an audience of summer visitors at the Langsford House.

Melville Freeman, in his History of Cape Porpoise writes “Fort Island was also at one time the scene of considerable granite quarrying”. The Cape Porpoise Land Company purchased it on July 2, 1897. During the year that followed activities on the island were shrouded in secrecy.

The United States had suffered high unemployment rates, recession and bank failures during the 1890s. Alaska’s Klondike Gold Rush, which began in 1897, offered a glimmer of financial hope to many Americans. Meanwhile, a Baptist Minister in Middletown, CT had alienated his congregation by making Catholic-like noises from the pulpit and joined the ranks of the unemployed. Reverend Prescott Jernegan saw a solution to his financial woes in the new public obsession with bling. He claimed to have invented a process for extracting gold from seawater by some secret combination of electrical and chemical reaction.

Several capitalists were invited to accompany Jernegan to a little shack at the end of a deserted wharf on the Rhode Island coast. There he promised they would witness the first test of his mysterious “Accumulator”. The apparatus consisted of a box containing mercury. Two platinum wires ran under water from the box to a homemade battery at the wooded shore. In the presence of the capitalists the accumulator was lowered into the water through a trap door in the floor of the dark little hut.

The minister had enlisted the help of experienced diver and childhood friend, Charles Fisher, who hid nearby in his diving suit until candles were lit inside the shack. Then he slipped into the water and using the platinum wires as his guide found the box, replaced the mercury with gold and returned to the shore undetected.

At sunrise the box was examined and a jeweler in the party certified that the accumulator indeed contained grains of real gold. The capitalists in attendance became excited and begged the minister to let them invest in his invention. Reluctantly, he accepted enough money to set up a full scale operation in Lubec, Maine. The 20 foot tides at the easternmost town in the United States would maximize their gold collection opportunities, Jernegan said and security would be easier to maintain at such a remote location. The Electrolytic Marine Salts Company was incorporated with a capital stock of $10,000,000 in shares of $1 each.

Several of the capitalists who witnessed Jernegan’s successful demonstration were summer residents of Kennebunkport. Rather than purchasing expensive shares of his company they made plans to reproduce his apparatus on Fort Island. May B. Whiting, regular contributor to Henry Ford’s publication, The Dearborn Independent, wrote about the Stage Harbor Gold Rush in 1926. “On Fort Island, off Cape Porpoise, they erected a clubhouse but instead of the customary furnishings they installed pumps of the largest and most expensive make. For a week they pumped. They pumped the ocean side and they pumped the harbor side, but mud remained mud and sand remained sand with never a gleam”.

Melville Freeman wrote “The little building which now stands on the island was built around the turn of the century to house the large water tanks belonging to a corporation which was formed to extract gold from sea water. It was found that gold could indeed be obtained in this manner but at a cost of about five dollars for every dollar’s worth of the precious metal”. In the August 1898 Wave it was reported that the furnished cabin at Fort Island was a perfect picnic retreat. Clearly, all gold prospecting had ceased.

The Lubec Gold Plant proved no more successful. Reverend Jernegan and a large amount of his stockholder’s money disappeared In July of 1898. He was never tried for the crime but paid for it in a bizarre twist of poetic justice. The swindler discovered a British company that claimed to have found the secret of extracting gold from seawater. Believing the process to be genuine, Jernegan invested his entire fortune in the fraudulent company.

Something was amiss with the cosmos during the third week of July 1926. The temperature hovered near 100 all up and down the eastern seaboard and as far west as Ohio. All but convicted murderers were released from the stifling prisons in North Carolina where temperatures reached 107. Hundreds slept out in the open on the Boston Common.

Just before sunrise on July 18th a blinding bluish light filled the cloudless Maine sky from Dexter to Saco. The flash was immediately followed by an explosive sound that awakened the whole City of Portland. Professor Charles Hutchins of the Physics Department at Bowdoin College confirmed to the press that a meteor had exploded over the crook in the Androscoggin River.

Hours earlier a 14 year old boy had witnessed the bursting of a large bright light in his grandfather’s Vermont cornfield. On the morning of July 18th he collected a handful of porous meteor fragments layered with quartz that he found lying on top of the plowed earth. Robert Dunklee, the boy’s father, telephoned authorities at the Harvard College Observatory and promised to send the rocks to Cambridge by express mail.

The scientists, who had just received a call from Professor Hutchins at Bowdoin, were puzzled. Meteors did not typically contain quartz. Furthermore, it was way too early in the season for these incidents to be part of the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. Seven unexpected fireballs had also been documented the previous November and December. One that exploded over Hornell, NY was reported to be the size of a freight car but no fragments of that celestial body were ever recovered.

At 3pm on the afternoon of July 18th the people of Portsmouth and Kittery observed a huge dusky cloud approaching from the northwest. Within five minutes the worst summer storm in their history was upon them. Vivid lightning struck. Torrential rain flooded the streets. Golf ball sized hail swirled into Portsmouth. Some of the hail was actually tiny stones coated in ice. The stones were smooth, polished white quartz like those one might find on a beach. The nearest beach with all white quartz stones was Rye Beach some 8 miles to the south. Hail that fell on Kittery was strange, too; 5 1/2 inch disks of ice indicating 3 separate freezes inside the cloud.

Terrific wind hurled the rocks and the hail in a circular motion breaking hundreds of windows. Thirty minutes later the storm had lifted leaving destruction in its wake. Farmer’s crops were flattened and some of their cows were dead. Storekeeper’s goods were ruined by the water that poured through broken windows. Banks of frozen rocks and golf ball hail had to be shoveled out of dining rooms. There was not enough glass in Portsmouth to repair 1/3 of the broken windows and it hadn’t even rained in Dover, NH.

Meanwhile, the railroad station at Brockton, MA had been destroyed by lightning. 500 seats at Fenway Park were lifted away from their bolts and deposited by a 100 mile an hour gust of wind into the center of the grandstand, twisted and broken. A 90 foot steeple was blown off the Asbury Methodist Church in Springfield, MA.

The damage was still not completely repaired on July 22, when a great brown cloud appeared high over Portsmouth. This time it came from the Southwest in dirty whirlwinds. Though it lasted but 10 minutes the second storm effected a larger area. A Dover, NH house lost its roof. At Gray Lodge in Kittery, Phyllis Gray was giving a bridge party on her front lawn. One of her guests didn’t have time to get up off the lawn pillow upon which she was lounging. She was rolled 100 feet across the grass. Wind swept through York Beach with a force that picked up men, women and children, swirled them in the air and then dropped them banged and bruised on the sand. Several York Beach cottages were blown from their foundations. The bell tower at The Nubble was blown off its base and moved 4 feet to the edge of a deep cliff. Two lifeboats at the Ogunquit lifesaving station were splintered. Three houses were destroyed at Wells Beach.

In Kennebunkport, author Booth Tarkington had put out in his three-ton motor boat, the Zantu seeking relief from the heat. He was accompanied by his secretary Betty Trotter and Captain Harry Thirkell. When they were near an island 6 miles from shore, a fire started on the boat. Tarkington and Thirkell sustained minor burns extinguishing the fire but that was the least of their problems. The ignition wires had burned through and the craft was disabled. Betty and Captain Thirkell began the long row to shore for assistance leaving Tarkington to guard the anchored Zantu. Just as the dingy was reaching shore, storm clouds darkened the sky. The Zantu was buffeted about until her anchor rope parted. Tarkington, headed out alone into the dark open sea, set paper fires in a bucket to make his vessel more visible. His last scrap of paper was burning when Captain John Peabody finally spotted him and towed him back to shore through convulsing waves.

Temperatures in southern Maine dropped from 104 F before the storm to 72 F immediately after. Freak Week on the east coast resulted in 160 deaths and over $1,000,000 in damages. The sudden storms were called cyclones in 1926 newspapers but in retrospect they were more likely tornados.

The lobstering industry did not become organized in Maine until around 1830. Cape Porpoise lobsters were first shipped out of state in the 1840s. After just a few decades, state laws designed to protect the quickly diminishing lobster population on the Maine coast exacerbated acrimony between Cape Porpoise neighbors.

The invention of the well-smack, a boat with a tank built into the hull through which salt water could flow, made it possible to keep lobsters alive long enough to transport them from the Maine coast to Boston and New York. New Haven, Conn. entrepreneur, Captain Chapell, sailed his 50-ton smack “Hulda B. Hall” back and forth between Cape Porpoise and Boston Harbor in the early 1840s. According to U.S. Fisheries Commission reports, Chapell made about 15 trips each season and was supplied by four Cape Porpoise fishermen using dories and hoop nets.

The Bangor Daily Whig reported that Stephen Hutchins and Edmund Ridlon had been the only Cape Porpoise men engaged in the lobster business during the 1850s and that between them they had managed 20 pots. Lobsters were very plentiful then and on average much larger than the ones caught today. The claw of a 51-pound Cape Porpoise lobster was donated to the Essex Institute in 1868. Fifty-pound lobsters were already an oddity, but specimens weighing 20 to 30 pounds were commonplace.

After the Civil War the lobster business exploded. Traps much like the ones in use today were tied together into bunches of 50 that could be worked by one man. Resort hotels and big city dealers bought all the large lobsters they could get their hands on and the canneries in Eastport paid good money for lobsters weighing as little as ¾ pound.

In 1877 Cape Porpoise fishermen were working 1,100 traps, shipbuilder Charles Ward was manufacturing lobster pots on the side, and Langsford had shipped 40,000 lobsters from Cape Porpoise to Boston’s Lewis Wharf in one season. The same kind of growth was occurring in the industry all along the coast of New England to the extent that the lobster population started to dwindle.

Conservation laws were passed restricting the sale of lobsters under a certain length, but they were not easily enforced. Many families relied on lobster income and it was getting harder and harder to find lobsters of any size. To make non-compliance even more enticing, each state had different rules. If a short Maine lobster could be secreted out of New England it brought a good price.

On Christmas Day 1894, a headline in the Boston Globe announced “A lobster war is going on at Cape Porpoise.” The Globe’s Biddeford correspondent reported, “Since the recent big seizure of short lobsters there by a Saco officer, Daniel Wagner has been openly accused of being a spy.” Wagner’s boat was sunk and the argument escalated into a physical altercation in Cape Porpoise square. Austin L. Sinnett was arrested for trying to ship 500 short lobsters out of Kennebunk Depot in an unmarked barrel and for assaulting Daniel Wagner.

The court case was covered in the Biddeford Journal. On Dec. 15, Wagner was passing the post office on his way home from Pinkham’s Store. Sinnett came out of the post office, saw the man he believed had turned him in to authorities, and sarcastically inquired if Wagner had been “up to Saco studying the law?” Someone threw a punch. Someone else punched back and the two men ended up on the ground. Wagner, who had a good 25 years on Austin Sinnett, bore the brunt of the beating. Deputy Sheriff Small testified in court that when he arrested Austin and was transporting him to the Saco jail, the young man was contrite. ” I’m a damn fool; I’m just like my father; he’s got an awful temper and I’m just like him,” admitted the 25-year-old lobsterman.

George Wakefield, the lighthouse keeper and Austin’s future father in-law, testified that Wagner had told him he planned to lick Sinnett first chance he got, but the judge made an example of Austin and fined him $10 for the fistfight and $50 for shipping short lobsters.

The defendant’s lawyer appealed to the Supreme Court and the assault charge was dismissed, but his short lobster fine was upheld. Two months after Austin’s trial the state of Maine declared it illegal to possess any lobster shorter than 10 ½ inches and appointed an army of wardens to enforce the new law. The conservation measures clearly worked. Today’s lobstermen willingly protect the future of their industry.