USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Boothbay > The shipping days of old Boothbay from the revolution to the world war : with mention of adjacent towns > Part 6
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It will be seen by these incidents that a state of uneasiness prevailed locally, and it was at this time that the Government constructed the old fortifications, including the blockhouse at Wiscasset. The Secretary of War, General Dearborn, is said to have visited there in August 1808, and directed the location of batteries, completed during the winter. Cannon were mounted, and on March 17 1809, a salute was fired in honor of the inauguration of President Madison.
WAR OF 1812
Before the actual declaration of war in June 1812, the Administra- tion sent a fast-sailing vessel to European waters to warn American shipmasters, and Congress laid a temporary embargo to preserve shipping in domestic and neutral seaports abroad. The war news came to Wiscasset by 'express' - a horseman-and was duly received in Boothbay, probably with little enthusiasm, as the seaboard inhabitants rightly judged it would be detrimental to fishing, coasting and the
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West Indian trade, on which they were largely dependant for a live- lihood.
The keel of a large armed brig was laid down at Wiscasset without delay, and was off the stocks in fifty days. Pierced for sixteen guns ex- clusive of stern ports, she was constructed on the same model and by the same master-builder of the fast-sailing ship Volante. In the fall of 1812 she was sold in Boston and fitted out at Salem for privateering. Named Grand Turk, she made four successful cruises during the war, capturing many valuable prizes. After the war she went under the Spanish flag at Havana. Fortifications were erected at strategic points in Boothbay, of which remains are visible to-day, and companies for seacoast defense organized to respond to occasional 'alarms,' as in the Revolution a generation before. Little of importance happened except the Enterprise-Boxer naval action.
There were a number of harassing incidents in 1813, however, which may be mentioned. The latter part of March the Liverpool Packet, sloop of war Rattler and her tender, the Bream of six guns, cruising between Monhegan and Seguin, captured a number of coast- ers, permitting the crews to land on Damariscove. An exploit followed worthy of record. The recital, a letter from William Maxwell Reed, of Boothbay, appeared in the Boston Patriot. On April fifth, he wrote:
We have a number of English cruisers on our coast. Last Tuesday 5 sail of coasters were taken between Pemaquid & Damas cove, 16 of the prisoners were put into a boat and arrived here. Wednesday the wind was east and one of the prizes fell to leeward. Thursday A.M. I was informed she was in the offing becalmed. I immediately mustered 20 of my volunteers, took 3 small boats and gave chase. In 2 hours we boarded her without harm on either side. She proved to be the schooner Hannahritta of Cushing with wood & spars. The prize master informed me the capturing vessel was the Brim of 6 guns & she with the ship Ratler were to rendezvous at Townsend that night. In about one hour after I got the prize in, the Ratler came round the Corkles, run up within Squirrel Island, and came to anchor. I fired an alarm and in one hour Capt. Rose was on the spot, with his company from Damariscotta Fort. We set our sentinels at all points. About 12 o'clock the Ratler sent her boat round Spruce Point, and the men landed back of my house, but before they got far from the beach were discovered. They
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were fired upon but made their escape. Saturday morning the Ratler got under way and stood to sea and is now in the offing.
Sunday the Liverpool Packet took 3 sloops & I schooner in sight of this harbour, put all her prisoners on board one of her prizes, a small sloop from Cape Cod for Penobscot, which arrived here about sunset. We continue under arms. Some of our coasters are taken daily.
Incensed at the loss of so many vessels, Lincoln County men fitted out and manned a large sloop under Captain Tucker, an old naval officer of the Revolution, to end the career of the Bream. They cruised about Boothbay unsuccessfully, but did capture the privateer Crown of one large gun and twenty men.
In May two valuable prizes arrived, first, the armed ship Dromo with a very valuable cargo at Wiscasset, captured on her passage from Liver- pool for Halifax by the Portsmouth privateer schooner Thomas, T. Shaw, commander; secondly, a brig also captured by the Thomas and sent into Boothbay with a cargo estimated at 4000 pounds' value. After convoying the prizes in, the Thomas put to sea on another cruise, sighted a sail in June, and after a pursuit of five hours captured off Cape Sable the privateer Liverpool Packet. She had been refitted recently, and was on her way to her favorite cruising ground-Cape Cod-but was taken to Portsmouth.
In June the British privateer Buckskin, a captured Salem sloop, fit- ted out at Saint Andrews, at the mouth of Saint Croix River, with three guns and thirty odd men, captured three coasters near Owl's Head and then a sloop and a schooner from Thomaston, Spear, master. Three of the prizes escaped, one up the Saint George's River, the others by run- ning ashore. An alarm was sounded; and militia hastened to Fox Island, attacking the privateer, at anchor near shore, with a light field piece, killing and wounding many. An officer cut the cable and, on at- tempting to hoist the jib while lying on his back, was severely wounded and the captain killed. The Buckskin escaped after suffering heavy casualties, landing some Americans on board at the White Islands.
Meantime in home waters, the Boothbay schooner Saucy Jack, loaded with government stores for Wiscasset, successfully ran the block- ade the last of June, although hotly pursued into the mouth of the Sheepscot by the privateer Dart. In July the sloop Reliance, Captain
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Hancock, bound to Boston from Saint George's River, was chased into Boothbay; she later proceeded in company with five coasters, and two hours out was captured by privateer sloop General Smith, the coasters also. The Reliance's prize-master was ordered to follow the Smith, which stood to the eastward on sighting the letter-of-marque schooner Siro, from Portland. That evening, when the Reliance had dropped some distance astern, Hancock suddenly wrested away the prize-mas- ter's sword, secured him and escaped with his vessel to Portland. He was enabled to accomplish the feat because the several prizes were under- manned.
While returning from a cruise in the Bay of Fundy the same sum- mer the small American privateer Mary, Captain Joseph Sturdivant, manned by fourteen men and an officer named York, who as a boy of five witnessed from his father's sloop the launching of the frigate Con- stitution, landed a boat near Owl's Head, where it was learned three local vessels had been captured recently by the privateer Fly. Pursuing the enemy and prizes they were found at anchor in Brimstone Island harbor, where an hour's engagement ensued without result, on ac- count of the light calibre of the Mary's two guns. Two boats' crews then put off and attacked the Fly with musketry, driving her crew below. A sailor crept along deck, however, and hove the halliards down the hatch, slipped the anchor cable and steering with a tiller below deck manœuvered the vessel out of the harbor and escaped. The Mary re- took the prizes and proceeded westward until the brig Boxer was sighted, whereon the vessels sought refuge in Christmas Cove until the coast was clear.
The naval battle of brigs Enterprise and Boxer has been told by able pens, therefore it will suffice to give the surviving American officers' account. The Enterprise was known as a lucky ship and had seen service in the French and Tripolitan wars, the smallest craft of Captain Rich- ard Dale's squadron, who was famous as John Paul Jones's lieutenant in the action with the Serapis in 1779. Originally a schooner, she was changed to a full-rigged brig and her armament increased by four guns and additional crew. Early in the summer of 1813 she arrived at Ports- mouth from Southern waters for the protection of the Maine coast trade; captured the privateer Fly in August and chased others away,
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and on a Sunday morning in September was lying in the offing from the Boothbay shores. The officers' report of the action follows:
Sept. 5th. At 5 A.M. light winds from N.N.W. Pemaquid bearing North 8 miles distant, saw a brig at anchor inshore, and made sail on a wind, with the larboard tacks on board. At half-past 7 the brig weighed and fired three shot at a fishing boat, for the purpose of ascertaining what we were (as we learned). At 8.30 the brig fired a shot as a challenge, and hoisted three Eng- lish ensigns and bore up for us. At 9 we tacked, kept away south and pre- pared for action. At 9.30 it fell calm, the enemy bearing N.N.W., distant 4 miles. At 11.30 a breeze sprang up from S.W. which gave us the weather gage, we manœuvered to the windward until 2 P.M. to try our sailing with the enemy and ascertain his force. At 2.15 we shortened sail and hoisted three ensigns, and fired a shot at the enemy. At 3 P.M. tacked and bore up for the enemy; at 3.15 the enemy being within half-pistol shot, gave three cheers and commenced the action, by firing her starboard broadside. We then returned them three cheers with our larboard broadside, when the action became general. At 3.20 our brave commander fell, and while lying on the deck, refusing to be carried below, raised his head and requested that the flag might never be struck. At 3.30 we ranged ahead of the enemy; fired our stern chaser, rounded to on the starboard tack and raked him with our starboard broadside. At 3.35 the enemy's maintopmast and topsail yard came down. We then set the foresail, and took a position on his starboard bow and continued to rake him until 3.45, when he ceased firing and cried for quarters, saying that as their colours were nailed, they could not haul them down. When the sword of the vanquished enemy was presented to the dying conqueror, he clasped his hands and said: 'I am satisfied, I die con- tented.'
The sea fight was witnessed from the heights of Boothbay, Bristol and Monhegan. When the brigs got under way for Portland, the people returned home rejoicing in the triumph of American colors. The vic- tory and the presence of the three-masted privateer Timothy Pickering cruising in Broad Bay had a deterrent effect on the enemy, and cap- tures decreased.
About the first of July in 1814 a man-of-war came into Boothbay, fired on the harbor fort and under cover of a wooded point attempted to land men. With the loss of an American youth they were driven away. A few days earlier a ship-of-the-line had entered the mouth of the
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Sheepscot, landed several boatloads of marines, and on marching in- land they were repulsed by militia and retreated to the boats. In the two attacks the reported casualties of the enemy amounted to twenty-three and the foray was abandoned. The rocky bluff of Daggett's Castle com- manded the upper Sheepscot and, wrote Mr. R. K. Sewall: 'When the British came up in 1814, to lay Wiscasset under contribution, they re- ported this rock to be "as high as Saint Paul's steeple and alive with militiamen." '
The following September a squadron of the enemy's ships sailed from Penobscot Bay, seven were seen off Bristol and three near the mouth of the Sheepscot. Rumor of an impending attack spread like wildfire and militia, estimated to number 2000, mobilized on vantage ground. The exaggerated rumor persisted until thirty sail were said to be off the Sheepscot. In reality nothing happened.
On the ocean an idea of the force opposed to our young navy may be had from British naval statistics of 1814, which list 901 ships, of which 177 were sail-of-the-line. As earlier, Penobscot Bay was a rendezvous for their vessels; for instance a fine brig laden with fish and lumber sailed from Castine for Jamaica, but was captured by the Paul Jones of Wis- casset, a privateer schooner of ninety tons mounting five guns, with fifty men commanded by Captain Hilton. With his prize he arrived at Boothbay in January 1815, and without news of peace then on the way the Paul Jones put to sea.on a criuse and in the fall a schooner so named was cast away on the coast of Santo Domingo.
At the head of Campbell's Cove (now a pond) is a narrow channel between an islet and the shore. There, with evergreens lashed to the masts, vessels lay snugly hidden from the enemy. This seems to have been the location called David Reed's creek, where the English burned two sloops in the earlier war.
At ten o'clock at night February 11 1815 the British sloop of war Favorite, forty days from London, conveyed to New York: 'The Joyful Tidings of Peace, the Great and Happy News.' Forty-seven hours later it was known in Portland. Shipping lay idle in harbors; and the good news was hailed with acclamation and rejoicing.
CHAPTER V
SAIL AND STEAM PACKETS-SHIPBUILDING
E ARLY communication with settlements from Casco Bay to Boston by inhabitants of this vicinity was usually by coasting sloops, for it was easier and safer. Trails and wood roads westerly were difficult and sometimes dangerous on account of Indians. About 1754 a packet serv- ice was started by a Doctor Gardiner, with a large sloop he built, run- ning regularly to the Kennebec in summer and to the Sheepscot in wintertime. The proprietors of the Kennebeck Purchase granted him land on Eastern River and later the present town of Gardiner. Other lines followed and a Boston newspaper, May 21 1787, stated:
The Packet Gen. Knox, burden of fifty tons, running between Casco Bay and Boston, has the most agreeable accomodations for passengers and is constructed for fast sailing. Any person having freight or wanting passage to or from said places, or any other part of the State, may depend on strict attention being paid to them by the master, Joseph Drinkwater.
The following account of a passage to Boothbay in 1790, with Cap- tain Michael Campbell, is quoted from the diary of a passenger, the Reverend Jonathan Gould, local pastor. The latter had been visiting relatives and had purchased a new surtout. The visit over, he started for Boston on horseback with his brother, who was to return home with the horses. On arrival at the waterfront they located Long Wharf, terminal for lines of packets for about a century. It was an old wharf even then, for Cotton Mather mentioned it in 1724 as flooded by an unusual storm the year before. There the pastor met a Mr. Sawyer and the master, with whom he arranged for his passage. Minister and master were in their middle twenties but of unlike dispositions; the former serious minded, the latter, a generous-hearted sea dog, was fond of a good time to which a taste of rum added zest. The pastor wrote:
Monday, Nov. 29th. Went on board Capt. Campbell's.
Tuesday. Went & got Esq. McCobb's newspapers. Gave Mr. Sawyer one crown to lay in sea stores. Carried my things on board. Lay in the lower end of Long Wharf. Went down before the Castle-anchored.
Saturday, 4th. Weighed anchor & went up almost to ye town. Met a Capt. Canada- put about-it looked bad-run as far as Cape Ann & anchored .-
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SANDYS
THE 'SASANOA' AT BOOTHBAY
THE 'WIWURNA'
OVEN'S MOUTH
EAST BOOTHBAY, STEAMER 'ENTERPRISE
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weighed anchor. Capt. Ichabod Pinkham was out all last night, tryed to double ye Cape-had like to have been blown off. Stayed there in harbor- bitter cold. Only two of Capt. Pinkham's sons came on board to see me- Ye old Captain almost froze his hands.
Wed. Capt. Campbell went on shore and on board Capt. Canada's where they had unbounded capers till ye morning breakfast time.
Thur. 9th. Capt. Campbell came on board from his night's siege on board Capt. Canada's. We weighed anchor & come to Salem as did Capt. Pinkham & Capt. Canada. At Salem Mr. Sawyer and Michael went on shore. Heard a number of sail were ashore & some of our townspeople.
Friday. Got under way & made Seguin-had a fine run & anchored in Booth Bay Harbor about 9. Capt. Campbell would take nothing for pas- sage. Set me on shore-Stopped at Capt. Paul Reed's & he walked with me to Esq. McCobb's by about 11. The first time I have put my foot on land for 10 days. Am thankful we are safe landed in Booth Bay.
Sunday. Went to meeting. Most of Esq.'s family went but only about 20 persons at meeting-had but one excuse, etc. Wore my new surtout like a fool & wet it.
Tuesday. Capt. Campbell had a frolic.
There was a more or less regular packet service sailing from Long Wharf for Wiscasset. Thus in 1797 one J. Rowe operated the well-ac- commodated packet-built sloop President and Abraham Jackson, mas- ter of schooner Mary, advertised in April 1801 'to sail the first fair wind.' In 1819 the Wiscasset packet Sophia sailed from Central Wharf, however, her master advertising 500 boxes smoked herring and sixty quintals scale fish for sale. While summer trips were usually pleasant, it was frequently a different story in wintertime. In 1811 the packet Bristol and Damariscotta sailed from the latter place and was blown off shore in a December gale. Ten days out the sloop was abandoned, pas- sengers and crew finally arriving in Rhode Island in a rescuing vessel. In January 1816 Captain Jotham Parsons, of Edgecomb, sailed from the Sheepscot in the Friendship, manned by John Dunton of Edge- comb and William Rand of Boothbay, with five passengers. A gale arose and the small schooner was lost on Schoodic's Island with all on board except Parsons, who reached shore utterly exhausted. Two days later he was taken off by the Mary, Captain Mayhew, and carried to Machias. Late in November 1821 the sloop Packet, Reed, sailed from
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Wiscasset for Boston and the following morning was on a lee shore with a strong easterly gale blowing. Reed endeavored to beat seaward for a good offing, but the vessel drove ashore on the beach at Salisbury and bilged. Two passengers, mother and daughter, lashed themselves to the quarter-deck rail, while the sea made a fair breach over them. When the tide receded they were rescued. On a trip from Boothbay to Portland in 1825 the packet schooner Romp was dismasted in a squall. The sailing packets ran to all important points on the coast, and an account of the Boston-Belfast service may be found in the sketch of Captain Ephraim McFarland.
The credit of the first steamboat service to Maine ports undoubtedly belongs to Captain Seward Porter who, in 1821, ran the sloop Mes- senger between Portland and Boston. Steam navigation was in its in- fancy when he became interested while building a steam sawmill in Bath. He therefore experimented on a boat named Kennebeck, built for his purpose in 1822. Lacking sufficient power, it was unsuccessful. Determination and persistence prevailed, however, and the result was the steamboat Patent. The engine was installed at New York, and on the trial trip in May 1823 the boiler exploded, killing one man out- right and scalding six others so severely that several died. The early days of steamboating were fraught with numerous accidents, and in 1831 the Lynn Mirror, in mentioning the disaster to the steamboat Washington, remarked: 'We believe more lives have been lost by them than fell in the late war. We would as soon trust our head in a cata- mount's mouth, as our foot in one of these un-Christian water-carts.' The boiler was replaced, and four days later the Patent, having landed passengers en route, arrived in Portland. She is described as 'strong and commodious and elegantly fitted up for passengers,' accommodated fifty, and carried light freight. Her engine of fair workmanship pro- pelled her about ten miles per hour, and in August the run to Boston- about 110 miles-was made in seventeen and one-half hours against a head wind and sea. Porter thought the time could be shortened to twelve hours with a fair wind. The Patent was purchased for the Bath- Boston (via Portland) service, and was followed in 1825 by the schooner- rigged steamboat Legislator. Both were comparatively small boats. In 1829, however, Porter purchased in New York a steam packet, 351 tons,
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with copper boiler and compressure engine. Recently built, copper- fastened and brig-rigged with expectation of crossing the Atlantic, she was named Connecticut. Biweekly trips from Foster's Wharf to Port- land were made and sometimes to Bath, although the Patent usually connected at Portland with Kennebec traffic until about 1834. Mean- time, about 1832, a larger boat, Chancellor Livingston, planned by Robert Fulton and completed after his death in 1815, ran as an opposi- tion boat to the regular line.
In 1836 a company was formed at Gardiner, including Rufus K. Page, which purchased the New England, built at Norwich in 1833, to run to Boston. An odd-looking craft with a high stern, she had two high narrow funnels with paddle wheels a bit forward amidships. Under Captain Nathaniel Kimball she ran until a June night in 1838, when she collided with the lime-laden schooner Curlew, near Boone Island, and capsized. The stanch-sailing craft withstood the shock and rescued about seventy. One was drowned. The New England was fol- lowed by the new and fast Huntress. About this time the steam whistle came into use.
The Citizens' Line, in 1847, ran the new John Marshall 'with 250 cabin berths and 30 beautiful staterooms,' so called because rooms first had the names of states instead of numbers, on triweekly Boston- Portland trips. The line advertised 'fare as low as any opposition boat, meals 25 cents.' Competition with rival lines was keen, and fares for a while dropped to a dollar and then fifty cents. The Marshall was a good sea boat, and that year rode out a severe October gale, although it was found necessary to throw overboard valuable freight. The lines were well patronized, and in October 1848 the new steamship Sea Gull, Cap- tain George Davis, made her first trip from T Wharf to Bath, Gardi- ner, Hallowell and Augusta. Four years later a government regulation required the use of red and green lights on all craft.
During the later 'fifties the Governor and later the Eastern Queen ran to Maine. The latter burned at a Wiscasset wharf in 1860, but was rebuilt and continued until succeeded in 1866 by the New York-built Star of the East, Captain Jason Collins, both favorably recalled by patrons now living. Jason succeeded his father, Captain James Collins, in command of the Queen, and in 1889 took the new Bathı-built Kenne-
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bec. Early in 1881 the Star encountered a severe easterly gale with snow off Boone Island. Heavy seas repeatedly broke over her, carrying away a lifeboat, and the course was held with difficulty in darkness and storm. Fear prevailed as suddenly breakers ahead were descried. Cap- tain Collins, unaware of his position, promptly anchored, as clearing weather gave it, a mile westward of Tinker's Island, Marblehead. About ten years later the Star was rebuilt and renamed Sagadahoc. Her career covered a half-century and she ended on Long Island Sound as the Greenport.
As early as 1818 a small boat named Tom Thumb, fitted with engine and paddle wheels, was towed from Boston to the mouth of the Ken- nebec, where she was cast off and ascended the river against the tide to Bath, exciting great interest on arrival. She was in use as late as 1828. Still earlier, in 1815, an unsuccessful experiment in steam navigation was made at Wiscasset with the small Alpha, fitted with crude machin- ery described as 'a screw propeller affixed to the rudder' with an endless chain running to a wheel projecting over the stern, geared to a revolv- ing drum driven by the engine by a similar chain. Steam was generated in a small iron-hooped boiler in which a water-tight fire box was in- serted. Her initial trip was up the Sasanoa to Bath and beyond, a source of curiosity and amusement, for chains and gear made so much noise the boat was called 'Morgan's Rattler' after her master. These were the first steam-propelled boats to run on the Kennebec.
In distinction from the main line, boats running coastwise in Maine may be called the inside line. The first two which so ran were named New York and Maine, the former a brig-rigged steam packet with a wooden working beam. At ten-day intervals in 1824 she made tri- monthly trips from Boston to Portland, Belfast and Eastport. Passen- gers were landed on the coast or rivers by previous agreement. The Maine, fitted out at Bath, is described as the hulls of two schooners connected by crosswise beams, decked over. The paddle wheel was set between the hulls, somewhat like a stern-wheeler. She ran from Bath eastward, and on a trip in April 1825 rescued sixteen from brig Ocean, stranded on Mosquito Island. The Maine Inquirer, Bath, July 8 1825, stated: 'Passengers on board the Steam Boat Maine, which arrived here yesterday from Eastport, inform us that they have been from Boston to
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