Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast Part 20

"The endless and measureless world of the deep."

In a neighboring ravine I found a spring of fresh water, though rather brackish to the taste; and in the more sheltered places were heaps of mussel-sh.e.l.ls, the outer surface of a beautiful purple. They look better where they are than in my cabinet, though the lining of those I secured have an enamel of mother-of-pearl. Another remarkable feature I observed were the deposits of gravel among the crevices; but I saw no flint among the water-worn boulders wedged, as if by a heavy pressure, in fissures of the rocks. I remarked also the presence of a poor schistus intersecting the strata here and there. Some of it I could break off with my hands.

Another delightful ramble is on the harbor side, from the old fort round to Caswell's Peak or beyond. Pa.s.sing by the little hand-breadth of sandy beach where the dories may land, once paved, the chronicles tell us, many feet deep with fish-bones, I observed with pleasure the green oasis spread out between the hotel and the sh.o.r.e. The proprietor seemed resolved that the very rocks should blossom, and already "a garden smiled" above the flint.

There is a sight worth seeing from the cupola of the hotel; of the White Hills, and Agamenticus, with the sands of Rye, Hampton, and Squam stretching along sh.o.r.e. I could see the steeples of Portsmouth and of Newburyport, the bluff at Boar's Head, and the smoke of a score of inland villages. Following with the eye the south coast where it sweeps round Ipswich Bay one sees Cape Ann and Thatcher's Island outlying; the gate-way of the busy bay beyond, into which all manner of craft were pressing sail. Northward were Newcastle, Kittery, and York, and farther eastward the lonely rock of Boon Island. Sh.o.r.eward is Appledore, with the turret of its hotel visible above; and right below us the little harbor so often a welcome haven to the storm-tossed mariner.[108]

Most visitors to the islands are familiar with the terrible story of the wreck of the _Nottingham_ galley, of London, in the year 1710. She was bound into Boston, and having made the land to the eastward of the Piscataqua, shaped her course southward, driven before a north-east gale, accompanied with rain, hail, and snow. For ten or twelve days succeeding they had no observation. On the night of the 11th of December, while under easy sail, the vessel struck on Boon Island.

With great difficulty the crew gained the rocks. The ship having immediately broken up, they were able to recover nothing eatable, except three small cheeses found entangled among the rock-weed. Some pieces of the spars and sails that came ash.o.r.e gave them a temporary shelter, but every thing else had been carried away from the island by the strong drift. In a day or two the cook died. Day by day their sufferings from cold and hunger increased. The main-land being in full view before them, they built a boat and got it into the water. It was overset, and dashed in pieces against the rocks. One day they descried three boats in the offing, but no signals they were able to make could attract notice.

Then, when reduced to a miserable band of emaciated, hopeless wretches, they undertook and with great labor constructed a raft, upon which two men ventured to attempt to reach the sh.o.r.e. Two days afterward it was found on the beach, with one of its crew lying dead at some distance.

After this they were obliged to resort to cannibalism in order to sustain life, subsisting on the body of the carpenter, sparingly doled out to them by the captain's hand. To make an end of this chapter of horrors, the survivors were rescued after having been twenty-four days on the island. The raft was, after all, for them a messenger of preservation, for it induced a search for the builders.

No one can read this narrative without feeling his sympathy strongly excited for the brave John Deane, master of the wrecked vessel. He seemed possessed of more than human fort.i.tude, and has told with a sailor's simple directness of his heroic struggle for life. His account was first published in 1711, appended to a sermon by Cotton Mather.

Deane afterward commanded a ship of war in the service of the Czar, Peter the Great.[109]

Few who have seen the light-house tower on this lonely rock, distant not more than a dozen miles from the coast, receiving daily and nightly obeisance of hundreds of pa.s.sing sails, can realize that the story of the _Nottingham_ could be true. It is a terrible injunction to keep the lamps trimmed and brightly burning.[110]

Proceeding onward in this direction, I came to the fish-houses that remain on the isle. Tubs of trawls, a barrel or two of fish-oil, a pile of split fish, and the half of a hogshead, in which a "kentle" or so of "merchantable fish" had just been salted down, were here and there; a hand-barrow on which to carry the fish from the boat, a lobster-pot, and a pair of rusty scales, ought to be added to the inventory. Sou'-westers and suits of oil-skin clothing hung against the walls; and in the loft overhead were a spare block or two and a parcel of oars, evidently picked up adrift, there being no two of the same length. In some of the houses were whale-boats, that had been hauled up to be calked and painted, that the men were preparing to launch. They were all schooner-rigged, and some were decked over so as to furnish a little cuddy for bad weather. No more sea-worthy craft can be found, and under guidance of a practiced hand one will sail, as sea-folk say, "like a witch." They usually contained a coil of half-inch line for the road, a "killick," and a brace of powder-kegs for the trawls.

The process of curing, or, as it is called by the islanders, "saving,"

fish is familiar to all who live near the sea-sh.o.r.e, and has not changed in two hundred years. It is described as practiced here in 1800, by Dr.

Morse:

"The fish, in the first place, are thrown from the boat in piles on the sh.o.r.e. The cutter then takes them and cuts their throat, and rips open their bellies. In this state he hands them to the header, who takes out the entrails (detaching the livers, which are preserved for the sake of the oil they contain), and breaks off their heads. The splitter then takes out the backbone, and splits them completely open, and hands them to the salter, who salts and piles them in bulk, where they lie from ten to twenty hours, as is most convenient. The sh.o.r.emen and the women then wash and spread them on the flakes. Here they remain three or four weeks, according to the weather, during which time they are often turned, piled in f.a.gots, and then spread again, until they are completely cured for market."

The "dun," or winter fish, formerly cured here, were larger and thicker than the summer fish. Great pains were taken in drying them, the fish-women often covering the "f.a.gots" with bed-quilts to keep them clean. Being cured in cold weather, they required but little salt, and were almost transparent when held up to the light. These fish sometimes weighed a hundred pounds or more. The dun fish were of great esteem in Spain and in the Mediterranean ports, bringing the highest price during Lent. They found their way to Madrid, where many a platter, smoking hot, has doubtless graced the table of the Escurial. In 1745 a quintal would sell for a guinea.

In 1775 the revolting colonies, unable to protect the islands, ordered their abandonment. A few of the inhabitants remained, but the larger number removed to the near main-land, and were scattered among the neighboring towns. The Shoals became through the war a rendezvous for British ships. The last official act of the last royal governor of New Hampshire was performed here in 1775, when Sir John Wentworth prorogued the a.s.sembly of his majesty's lost province.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

FOOTNOTES:

[97] "Et en la connoissance et experience que vous avez de la qualite, condition et situation dudit pas de la Cadie, pour les diverses navigations, voyages, et frequentations que vous avez faits en ces terres et autres proches et circonvoisines."

[98] Williamson erroneously calls Champlain the pilot.

[99] A little book I have seen translates rather freely in making Champlain say "and on the west Ipswitch Bay." See p. 122 for Champlain's exact language.

[100] Pring came to the main-land in forty-three and a half degrees--his farthest point westward on this voyage--and worked along the coast to the south-west. I know of no other islands between Cape Ann and his landfall answering his description.

[101] De Monts sailed from Havre de Grace March 7th, 1604.

[102] Winthrop's "Journal."

[103] Star Island is three-fourths of a mile long and half a mile wide; White Island is also three-fourths of a mile in length. It is a mile and three quarters from Star Island. Londoner's is five-eighths of a mile in length, and one-eighth of a mile from Star Island. Duck Island is seven-eighths of a mile in length, and three miles from Star Island meeting-house. Appledore is seven-eighths of a mile from Star, and a mile in length. Haley's, or s.m.u.tty Nose, is a mile in length, and five-eighths of a mile from Star Island meeting-house. Cedar Island is one-third of a mile long, and three-eighths of a mile distant from the meeting-house. The whole group contains something in excess of six hundred acres.

[104] The term "Shoals of Isles" seems rather far-fetched, and scarcely significant to English sailors familiar with the hundred and sixty islands of the Hebrides. I can find no instance of these isles having been so called.

[105] Built in 1800, through the efforts of Dudley A. Tyng, of Newburyport, Ma.s.sachusetts. Dedicated in November by Rev. Jedediah Morse, father of S. F. B. Morse. A school was for a time kept in it.

[106] For more than a century previous to the Revolution the islands were prosperous, containing from three to six hundred souls. In 1800 there were three families and twenty persons on s.m.u.tty Nose; fifteen families and ninety-two persons on Star Island, alias Gosport; eleven dwellings and ten fish-houses on the latter, and three decent dwellings on the former. At this time there was not an inhabitant on Appledore, alias Hog Island.

[107] 1691. A considerable body of Eastern Indians came down from the interior, with the intention of sacking the Isles of Shoals, but on August 4th came upon some English forces at Maquoit, under Captain March, and had a fight with them. This prevented their proceeding, and saved the Shoals.--"Magnalia," vol. xi., p. 611.

1692. Governor Fletcher examined three deserters, or renegadoes, as he calls them, from Quebec, who came before him September 23d. They said two men-of-war had arrived at Quebec, and were fitting out for an expedition along the coast, "with a design to fall on Wells, Isle of Shoals, Piscataqua, etc."--"New York Colonial Doc.u.ments," vol. iii., p.

855.

1724. After the Indians had cut off Captain Winslow and thirteen of his men in the River St. George, encouraged by this success, the enemy made a still greater attempt by water, and seized two shallops at the Isles of Shoals.--HUTCHINSON's "Ma.s.sachusetts," vol. ii., p. 307.

[108] _Mountains seen off the coast_: Agamenticus, twelve miles north of the entrance of the Piscataqua; three inferior summits, known as Frost's Hills, at a less distance on the north-west. In New Hampshire the first ridge is twenty or thirty miles from sea, in the towns of Barrington, Nottingham, and Rochester--the summits known as Teneriffe, Saddleback, Tuckaway, etc. Their general name is the Blue Hills. Beyond these are several detached summits--Mount Major, Moose Mountain, etc.; also a third range farther inland, with Chocorua, Ossipee, and Kearsarge. In the lofty ridge, separating the waters of the Merrimac and the Connecticut is Grand Monadnock, twenty-two miles east of the Connecticut River; thirty miles north of this is Sunapee, and forty-eight farther, Moosehillock. The ranges then trend away north-east, and are ma.s.sed in the White Hills.

[109] John Ward Dean, of Boston, the accomplished antiquary, has elicited this and other facts relative to his namesake.

[110] On Boone Island it is said there is no soil except what has been carried there.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CLIFFS, WHITE ISLAND.]

CHAPTER XII.

THE ISLES OF SHOALS--_continued._

"--There be land-rats and water-rats, water thieves and land thieves; I mean pirates."--_Merchant of Venice._

My next excursion was to s.m.u.tty Nose, or Haley's. Seen from Star Island it shows two eminences, with a little hamlet of four houses, all having their gable-ends toward the harbor, on the nearest rising ground. Round the south-west point of s.m.u.tty Nose is the little haven already alluded to in the previous chapter, made by building a causeway of stone over to Malaga, where formerly the sea ran through. This Mr. Samuel Haley did at his own cost, expending part of a handsome fortune on the work. Into this little haven, we are told, many distressed vessels have put in and found safe anchorage. The chronicles, speaking by the pen of a fair islander, say old Mr. Haley, in building a wall, turned over a large flat stone, beneath which lay four bars of solid silver; with which, adds tradition, he began his sea mole. I should have thought, had this precious discovery gained currency, no stone would have been left unturned by the islanders, and that Haley's wall might have risen with magical celerity.

It is certain these islands were in former times the resort of freebooters, with such names as Dixy Bull, Low, and Argall (a licensed and t.i.tled buccaneer), who left the traces of their own lawlessness in the manner of life of the islanders. It was a convenient place in which to refit or obtain fresh provisions without the asking of troublesome questions.[111] The pirates could expect little booty from the fishermen, but they often picked them up at sea to replenish their crews.

In the year 1689 two noted buccaneers, Thomas Hawkins and Thomas Pound, cruised on the coast of New England, committing many depredations. The Bay colony determined on their capture, and dispatched an armed sloop called the _Mary_, Samuel Pease commander, which put to sea in October of that year. Hearing the pirates had been cruising at the mouth of Buzzard's Bay, Captain Pease made all sail in that direction. The _Mary_ overhauled the outlaw off Wood's Hole. Pease ran down to her, hailed, and ordered her to heave to. The freebooter ran up a blood-red flag in defiance, when the _Mary_ fired a shot athwart her forefoot, and again hailed, with a demand to strike her colors. Pound, who stood upon his quarter-deck, answered the hail with, "Come on, you dogs, and I will strike you." Waving his sword, his men poured a volley into the _Mary_, and the action for some time raged fiercely, no quarter being expected.

Captain Pease at length carried his adversary by boarding, receiving wounds in the hand-to-hand conflict of which he died.

In 1723 the sloop _Dolphin_, of Cape Ann, was taken on the Banks by Phillips, a noted pirate. The able-bodied of the _Dolphin_ were forced to join the pirate crew. Among the luckless fishermen was John Fillmore, of Ipswich. Phillips, to quiet their scruples, promised _on his honor_ to set them at liberty at the end of three months. Finding no other hope of escape, for of course the liar and pirate never meant to keep his word, Fillmore, with the help of Edward Cheesman and an Indian, seizing his opportunity, killed three of the chief pirates, including Phillips, on the spot. The rest of the crew, made up in part of pressed men, submitted, and the captured vessel was brought into Boston by the conquerors on the 3d of May, 1724. John Fillmore, the quasi pirate, was the great-grandfather of Millard Fillmore, thirteenth President of the United States.

It is affirmed on the authority of Charles Chauncy that Low once captured some fishermen from the "Shoals." Disappointed, perhaps, in his expectation of booty, he first caused the captives to be barbarously flogged, and afterward required each of them three times to curse Parson Mather or be hanged. The prisoners did not reject the alternative.

No doubt these pirates had heard of the sermons Cotton Mather was in the habit of preaching before the execution of many of their confederates.

In his time it was the custom to march condemned prisoners under a strong guard to some church on the Sabbath preceding the day on which they were to suffer. There, marshaled in the broad aisle, they listened to a discourse on the enormity of their crimes and the torments that awaited them in the other world, this being the manner in which the old divines administered the consolations of religion to such desperate malefactors.

New England could contribute a thick volume to the annals of piracy in the New World from the records of a hundred years subsequent to her settlement. The name of Kidd was long a bugbear with which to terrify wayward children into obedience, and the search for his treasure continues, as we have seen, to this day. Bradish, Bellamy, and Quelch sailed these seas like true followers of those dreaded rovers who swept the English coasts, and sent their defiance to the king himself: