USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60
The first known ship to be built was a rather ambitious effort, a brig of one hundred and fifty tons, which leads to the belief that she had a number of smaller predecessors, which had pro- vided the initial school of Waldoborough shipbuilding. This ship bore an un-German name, Yankee Hero, and her construction in the town is based on incontestable evidence, since it was provided by a contemporary, Joseph Ludwig, and passed on by him to Cyrus Eaton of Warren.1 The builder was John Ulmer, senior or junior, more probably the latter as he later was actively engaged in this industry in Rockland. The workmen were local men and the master workman was James Hall who later lived on the Embree farm in Nobleborough near the Waldoborough line. The site of this first major shipyard was in all probability the old Clark yard just north of Alfred Storer's lumberyard. This lot came into the possession of the Ulmer family on February 2, 1767, and while there is no direct proof that the family began its shipbuilding here, it seems a highly plausible assumption that they would do the building on their own land. Since the Yankee Hero was built in 1771, and since it is highly probable that she had her predeces- sors, it may with some reason be assumed that shipbuilding in the town started in the late 1760's, some time perhaps after 1767.
It seems probable that other vessels followed the Yankee Hero from the Ulmer yard, even though direct proof is lacking. It is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that another famous
1Cyrus Eaton, Annals of Warren, 2nd ed. (Hallowell, 1877), p. 148.
3
The Beginnings of the Great Industry
little ship, the Broad Bay, was built here before the Revolution and probably in the Ulmer yard. She was a "topsail schooner" and bore the name of the settlement on the Medomak, which would seem to indicate her construction before 1773, the year in which Broad Bay became Waldoborough. This little vessel became his- toric because of her role in the Revolution. About nine o'clock of the evening of September 18, 1775, a fleet of eleven small vessels weighed anchor at Newburyport and put to sea. These little boats carried Benedict Arnold's Quebec Expedition - the Broad Bay serving as flagship and carrying the person of Arnold to Fort Western on the Kennebec. In some of the journals of Arnold's captains she is referred to as "the Broad Bay schooner," which would seem to point to her place of origin.2 It is not prob- able that this infant industry in the town continued to develop through the war, since commerce was brought to a standstill by the British blockade of the coast, and under these circumstances shipbuilding everywhere in New England came to a halt. Before the war about one hundred and twenty-five vessels had been built annually in Massachusetts which included the District of Maine, but by the close of the war this output had declined to fifteen or twenty vessels.3
The Revolution, however, did not interrupt the Puritan in- flux from the shores of Massachusetts Bay and elsewhere. Among the newcomers there were a considerable number of ship car- penters, blacksmiths, ship captains, and shipbuilders which con- tinually swelled the number, right down to the end of the century, of those versed in naval architecture and navigation. These ship- wrights included Abijah Waterman, Ezekiel Barnard, Jacob Stet- son, Abel Nash, Cornelius Turner, Jr., and Thomas Willet, "the mast maker." Among the blacksmiths were Levi and Abner Keen, Church Nash, and Caleb Howard. There were sufficient captains to make the whole community ship-minded: Charles Samson, Senior and Junior, Solomon Hewett of Scituate, David Vinal, Jonathan Sprague of Marshfield, Cornelius Turner of Bristol, and Stephen Andrews. Among the Germans who turned early to the sea were captains George D. Smouse, Peter Hilt, John Hilt, John Francis Miller, Joseph Miller, George Leisner, and Andrew Schenck. Briggs Turner, Cornelius Turner, and William Sproul were already shipbuilders of experience when they settled here. By these many new accessions to the town the groundwork was strengthened for a quick resumption of the industry as soon as economic conditions might create a demand for ships.
2For more detailed references to the Broad Bay, see Chap. XXI.
3Samuel E. Morison, Maritime History of Massachusetts, p. 34.
4
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
There was no immediate revival of commerce and ship- building following the Revolution. In the years 1785 and 1786 shipping lists reveal few entries other than those made by small vessels engaged in the coasting trade. Waldoborough, however, was bent on handling its trade in its own bottoms, and the move- ment for vessels began even before the return of settled conditions of peace, and despite the fact that foreign trade was cut off in the old triangle of Europe, the West Indies, and New England. In 1784 Squire Thomas purchased one half of the sloop Warren, built by Moses Copeland on his own shore in that town, and the next year a brig was built for Mr. Thomas in the Copeland yard.4
A ship of this type would indicate that the Squire was ven- turing back into the West Indian trade. In these days he provided the outlet for the produce of this area. To his warehouses on the Slaigo inlet there came from the sea, the town, and the deep back- country, dry fish, candles, soap, lumber, shingles, hoops, shooks, and any other products the countryside might produce in hand- craft industries. Mr. Thomas was sometimes the purchaser of such commodities and sometimes the agent. In either case the captain of the vessel would dispose of his cargo at the best price possible in a foreign market, would exercise his own judgment in pur- chasing a cargo either for a return trip or to some other foreign port. If it were a trip to the West Indies, he might ship a new cargo there for Liverpool or London and then return to the river here with a load of English manufactured goods for the local market. In such a case, people over a wide area would pay an early visit to the Squire's stores for purposes of trade and barter.
This foreign trade as well as the great demand for lumber and cordwood in the more heavily populated districts of southern New England served as a stimulus to the shipbuilding industry in these years. Unfortunately the record of such building is most scant, for the vessels may have been registered in any district between Machias and Philadelphia, and in many of these custom- houses the papers have long since been destroyed in fires, as is the case with our own early records and, most important for early shipbuilding, those of Falmouth which were lost in the great Port- land fire of 1866. The registry of Beverly and Salem do show, however, that construction was going on in Waldoborough at least as early as 1787, when the brigantine Success was built here, by whom is not known, but possibly by Cornelius Turner. In- directly it is known that he was building vessels in these years, through a lawsuit with Doctor Dodge of Thomaston who had contracted to have Turner build him a lime-carrier.5
4Eaton, Annals of Warren, 2nd ed., p. 229.
5See Chap. XIX, Section on the Turner Family.
5
The Beginnings of the Great Industry
Captain Turner's original purchase of a homestead site in Waldoborough was Lot No. 15, the original Jacob Achorn lot which embraced a part of the farm of the late Rodney Creamer. Here near the rock where Thomas Creamer built boats for so many years and where Light's Ferry used to shuttle across the Medomak in early days, the channel makes in close to the western shore and here on his own property Captain Turner in all prob- ability had his yard and built vessels through the 1780's and the 1790's.
In the 1780's new trade routes were opened up which in- directly were to affect most vitally the shipbuilding industry in New England, as well as its local economy and standard of living. In 1784 the New York ship Empress of China reached the land whose name she bore. In May 1787 the Salem ship Grand Turk arrived in her home port from the Orient with a cargo netting her owners enormous profits. In the same year John Brown of Providence sent the General Washington to the East Indies and in eighteen months she was back in her home port with a cargo valued at $100,000. At about this same time the fur trade of the great Pacific Northwest was opened up, which provided New England ships with cargoes which they could exchange for the riches of China such as silks, chinaware, teas, and spices. This was the beginning of the great days of American sails. By 1792 the Boston-Northwest-Canton-Boston route was soundly estab- lished, and more and more ships became engaged in its traffic. This development affected the economy of all New England coastal centers including the port of Waldoborough, for Boston and Salem became distributing centers for the products of the Orient and these began creeping into local markets via the active coastal trade. Of the greatest effect perhaps on American shipping was a Federal tariff in 1789, giving protection to American ship- ping against the competition of foreign carriers. The effect of this move was felt immediately and the proportion of American vessels in foreign trade rose from 123,000 tons in 1789 to 576,000 tons in 1796. New England as the main shipping center of the country received its share in this growth and entered on its period of maritime supremacy.
The effect of this new prosperity was felt first of all in the New England coastal towns, and the fishing and the coasting trade especially received a new spur as the distributors of the cargoes brought in the great ships from the Orient to Salem and Boston. Shipbuilding at Waldoborough, at a low ebb in the eighties, in- creased markedly in the 1790's, although the scanty records render an exact appraisal of its growth a hopeless task. The following data gathered from all known and extant sources furnish perhaps as
6
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
complete a record of vessels built at Waldoborough as is now possible to compile:
VESSEL
BUILDER
DATE
RIG
Success*
Cornelius Turner (?)
1787
Brigantine
Neptune **
Unknown
1793
Schooner
Sally
Unknown
1793
Sloop
Betsey **
Unknown
1794
Sloop
Elizabeth **
Unknown
1794
Schooner
Mary & Sally **
Unknown
1794
Sloop
Petersburg Packet **
Cornelius Turner
1794
Schooner
Polly **
Unknown
1795
Sloop
TON-
VESSEL
NAGE MASTER
OWNER
Success*
96
Unknown
Unknown
Neptune **
115
Chas. Ewell
Thomas McGuyer
Sally **
80
Chas. Samson
Chas. Samson, Sr. & Jr.
Thomas Moore, Boston
Betsey **
72
Geo. Leissner
Peter Sidelinger
Robert Turner & Fred
Creamer
Elizabeth **
32
Eph. Davis
Andrew & Anthony Hoffses
Mary & Sally*
57
John Ulmer
John Ulmer
Petersburg Packet*
68
Unknown
Unknown
Polly **
47
Malachi Ewell
Joseph Ludwig Peter Light
*Salem and Beverly Registers, Hist. Colls. (Essex Institute), XXXIX, 185. ** Wiscasset Registry, Me. Hist. Soc. (Portland, Me.), Vol. I.
These vessels were all small. They were one and two masters and were largely engaged in the coasting and West Indian trade, although one should not infer the limits of cruising range from the size, for these little ships wandered in distant places. In 1783 the fifty-five-ton Hingham sloop Harriet started for the Orient and meeting at the Cape of Good Hope a British East Indiaman made a profitable trade on cargo and returned. Nor can one infer the full scope of the industry from the meager list here given, for it is known that Caleb Turner was a shipowner, William Sproul an owner, master, and builder, and John and Joshua Head were like- wise owners and backers of the local industry. Waldoborough car- penters also worked occasionally in the neighboring towns. When James Head built the brig Neptune in Warren in 1796 he secured the services of Ezekiel and John Barnard and Jonathan Harriman from this town. The industry locally was feeling its way along, acquiring skill and experience on smaller ships, and a body of workmen were coming into being fully trained to essay the task of big ships in the great days ahead. In these early years the master carpenters were uncannily clever in building the small vessels.
7
The Beginnings of the Great Industry
They laid their lines and trued their frames by the eye and im- parted their skill to scores of fellow carpenters and young appren- tices.
The trade upon which the wealth of New England was founded - the great fortunes of Boston and Salem families, the homes of Newburyport and Portsmouth furnishing some of the finest examples of domestic architecture in America - was the West Coast and China trade. In these early years Waldoborough shipbuilding had not yet reached a stature where it was building bottoms for this distant traffic. The Atlantic seaboard, the West Indies, and Europe formed the eastern shipping triangle in which Waldoborough ships were engaged. Following a promising start after the Revolution a new European struggle broke out, with its inevitable and disconcerting effect on New England's West In- dian trade, and through it on shipbuilding.
Economically the colonies had always been an integral part of the European order. Independence did not modify this status, and the new American state remained enmeshed in the European system in a score of ways - a system which embraced all the world that America had any connections with except the Northwest and China trade. Our local vessels faced Spain in Florida and South America, and the Swedish, Danish, English, and French in the West Indies, while north of the border and west of the Alleghenies it was British trade again. In fact, every outlet of trade was inte- grated with the European system and suffered or prospered accord- ing to the peace or war status of the Old World. By 1793 the war in Europe growing out of the French Revolution had become general, and as far as commercial policy was concerned this con- dition applied to the dependencies of England and France in the West Indies.
With the advent of this struggle between France and Eng- land, the former country, impelled by its economic need, opened its West Indian ports to neutral trade. England at the same time, moving toward conquest of the French possessions, issued orders for the capture of all American and neutral ships engaged in trade with the French, and in order to profit from neutral trade relaxed restrictions on her own West Indian ports. The French promptly countered with decrees authorizing the seizure of neutral vessels under certain conditions and their dispatch as prizes to French ports. In 1790, 101,000 out of 167,000 tons of shipping to America from the West Indies came from French ports. Thus it was that the New England-West Indian trade was caught between the hammer and the anvil of European strife. During this decade about seventeen hundred American vessels of light tonnage representing an average value of $9,000.00 each were captured by the French, and fully two thirds of these prizes with their cargoes were con-
8
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
demned. New England suffered heavily and Waldoborough shared in these losses. One Waldoborough built vessel which eventually escaped was the ship Hibernia owned by Edward Kavanauh, Mat- thias Cottrell, and James Smithwick of Newcastle. She was cap- tured by the privateer La Jeune Créole in the straits of Guadalupe and eventually released by order of the French Court of Com- merce, which reprimanded the master of the privateer "and con- strained him in all ways from doing further damage."6
The English likewise subjected American commerce to seiz- ure. By 1798 such a policy on the part of both belligerents together with the search of ships by the British and the impressment of American seamen into the British naval service had become un- bearable. In consequence in April of this year Congress at last acted by creating an American Navy and authorizing American merchant ships to arm, to repel by force any attack upon them by the French, and to effect the seizure of any American ships that might have been captured by the enemy. Thus it was that the decade ended with a state of unacknowledged war with France in West Indian waters with its widespread effect on New England economy.
Against this background of uncertainty and loss, Waldo- borough shipping and shipbuilding carried on in the last decade of the century. Squire Thomas continued business with more emphasis on coastal and European commerce, while the local West Indian trade became the monopoly of a younger and more venture- some spirit from the upper waters of the Medomak, Captain George Demuth Smouse.7 Captain Smouse seems to have been the grandson of George Smouse, one of the glass workers brought from Germany to Braintree by Joseph Crellius in 1751 or 1752. A son, George Smouse, apparently came to Broad Bay with others of this migration and was a soldier in the St. George company in the French and Indian War. His son, George Demuth Smouse, was born during the course of this struggle in 1759, possibly in the Mill Garrison.
The original Smouse lot was on the west bank of the river, about one half mile above the Great Falls, the lot now occupied by George Holden. Here in the field across the road from the Holden house is located the old Smouse and neighborhood cemetery. Here young Smouse spent his boyhood amid hard frontier conditions, as the Smouses at this time were as poor as everybody else. How he achieved his rise from poverty is not a matter of entire cer- tainty. There is ground for believing that he took to the sea while a boy in his teens and as a privateersman in the latter years of the
6Document in possession of Ruel Eugley, Waldoboro, Me. "Original German spelling, Schmaus.
9
The Beginnings of the Great Industry
Revolution accumulated enough prize money to establish himself as a maritime trader. In this role he contracted for ships with local shipbuilders, sailed them, had them sailed for him, conducted a store and buying agency in Waldoborough, had his agents in the principal ports along the Atlantic seaboard and in the West Indies,
Rio
C
THE OLD SMOUSE HOUSE, Residence of Capt. George D. SMOUSE
By tradition the first frame house in the town possibly built by David Holzapfel, Cuca 1769.
and moved continuously from one point to another personally supervising his business dealings.
It is not clear just when Smouse started to engage in the West Indian trade, but from 1795 he emerges in the documents as operating on an extensive scale. Prior to this time it is probable that he started trade in a single vessel under his own command. John Paine was engaged in building ships for Smouse by 1797. In this year articles between Paine and Smouse show the former
10
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
constructing a schooner at Broad Cove under Smouse's direction. Paine did the building and Smouse contracted "to furnish and deliver at Freeman's landing, Waldoborough all the timber, planks, masts, spars and trenails." Smouse was to pay $13.17 for each ton. The building was started in April and the vessel delivered August 30, 1797. The one hundred and twenty-six tons, carpenter's meas- urement, cost Smouse a total of $1659.42 for construction.8
Among the ships owned or partly owned and engaging in this trade under Smouse's direction were the schooners Lucy, Bien, Dart, Friendship, Bartholomew, West, and the sloop Rover. His network of agents embraced his uncle, George Demuth, at Waldo- borough, Gorham Parsons in Boston, B. Eyries & Co., in Mar- tinique, Dr. Francisco Ravigo in Trinidad. Smouse when in the West Indies seems to have made his headquarters in Orinoco. He traded in everything the Indies would buy and accepted every- thing in return that was salable in American ports. Like Water- man Thomas he purchased his Waldoborough cargoes from the whole countryside. In a cargo made up at Waldoborough in 1803, he bought lumber from thirty-two different individuals, and red oak staves from eight. This material was cut and fabricated during the winter, and strings of ox sleds transported it over the snows from the deep back-country to the docks at the head of tide for loading during the ice-clear season. Broad Cove too was a shipping center as well as the scene of shipbuilding, for here cargoes could be discharged and loaded when the upper reaches of the river were closed by ice. On this trip Captain Smouse among other commodities brought back to Boston "1843 gallons of rum and 1250 gallons of molasses," a cargo valued at $10,184.10. On an- other trip he took out from Waldoborough 14,339 staves sawed out at local mills and 58,395 feet of lumber. Among his local ship cap- tains were John Light, David Bryant, Captain Howard, and Cap- tain Thomas Burns.
One may wonder how Captain Smouse was able to carry on his trade in these troubled years on seas where vessels were con- tinuously preyed on by British and French warships, by privateers, and Spanish picaroons. But it is known that he did carry on even though such evidence as has been preserved does not reveal the whole story of his enterprises. His ships after authorization from Congress went armed, probably fighting where they had to and outsailing where they could. But in the available data there are bare references to this romantic and exciting phase, and it may be inferred only from casual entries of the Captain as in the two fol- lowing, excerpted from his papers: "What may come out of the
8These data are drawn from the Reed-Smouse papers now in the possession of Mrs. Warren Weston Creamer and Carroll T. Cooney, Jr., of Waldoboro, and Dr. Wm. H. Hahn of Friendship.
11
The Beginnings of the Great Industry
rum, guns .. . of the Rover sleep [sloop] which she left in Neves and St. Thomas cost me $5298.00." Here the reference is to guns. In the following a possible loss by seizure is suggested: "Profit or loss of the sleep Rover, my half share $529.00." This "loss" may have been incurred in the sale of the cargo, but it is more likely that it came about through loss of the sloop, possibly through seizure.
In order to complete the picture of Captain Smouse's activi- ties and of the economic life in the town at the end of the century, there follow a few miscellaneous entries from his papers, which offer glimpses of his ships in Waldoborough and West Indian ports, of his methods, and of his losses and profits:
$50.00 for piloting the schooner, Dart, Capt. Howard to Oronoco; cash paid first voige in the Bien for grass for cattle or muls $48.00. My profit of selling 1/4 of the Bean [Bien] to Ravage for the first voige I went to St. Croix with the Been to fit out, $425.00. My principal put into the Weste and cargo first voige, $6430.00; what is sould of mast and spars til now from schooner, Lucy, to the one mast of mine brought out for the Been, $304.00 . . . the proffit of the 3 voyges of the schooner, Bein, $6077.00.9
In a letter from St. Pierre, Martinique, of August 20, 1800, to his agent "Dear Unkel Demuth" in Waldoborough, he advises the latter to have four bills of exchange, which he enclosed, con- verted into "hard dollars and carry them home and save them for me." At the close of the letter he significantly adds that he must get his affairs in the islands settled soon in order to return home for his health. This he apparently did and while there ar- ranged for the construction of his store for local trade in West Indian goods. He located the building on the south side of the road opposite the site of the old town house. His visit, however, was interrupted by the evil news of the loss of his property in the Spanish possessions, conveyed to him by one of his captains in Trinidad, whose letter follows:
Trinidad, Port of Spain, Jan. 2, 1801
Capt. George
Dear Sir, - I am very sory that I must be the informer of this bad nues to you. This last week there was a lanch Came with Indigo or Contryband without leaf from Orinoco: Ovonoz, Ignaccis, and Augus- tins, all of your old acquaintances, and they tould me to write you and to let you no that your wife is dead and that the Governor of the town sent his Secretary to Mr. Francisco Ravago's House to see what out- standing Debts or notes he had of yours in his Possession and then from thence he went to your House and Demanded all notes and outstanding debts in your name. The Secretary has recorded them all. What the
"Capt. Smouse's use of English render some of his entries a subject for second study.
12
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
Governor is going to do is to keep all for him [self] as you are a fur- rener and Left no Hairs [heirs], he is Hair himself for all furreners. They tell me it is Spanish laws that all furreners whom are dead or absent and have no Hairs, even a wife without Children is called no Hair, the Gov- ernor gets all.
Sir I remain your most obedient and Humble Sarvent.
I shall send the duble of this for
Isick Smith fear one might be miss Carried.
On this letter Smouse made the notation: "The letters from Trinidad from Isack Smith concerning my losses in Oranoco, 2, Jan. 1801." Such a notice was sufficient to start Captain Smouse for the West Indies again, probably with health unrecovered. It seems that the property in Orinoco never was restored and that Smouse had no further dealings with the Spanish. Meanwhile a letter from the Waldoborough agent, George Demuth, shows the work moving ahead on Smouse's trading post in the town, and other items revealing business activities in the local center. On May 2, 1801, the frame for the new store was ready, but "Peter Schwartz would not raise it nor put the sleppers in for $80.00 . . . then I a greed with Mink for $80.00 to put in sleppers and all raty for Bording."10
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.