The Marine Topography of New England

The Marine Topography of New England

Not the weather, and not the landscape either…

Cape Sable to Cape May (1864 chart)

The coastal edge of NE – eastern Maine to Ptown to Greenwich, Ct. –about 400 miles by air
Traced Coastline -- < 800 miles
Traced Shoreline -- > 6000 miles

Maine – 228 miles of coastline/3500 miles of shoreline [15 to 1]
Calif. 700 miles of coastline; 2000 miles of shoreline [<3 to 1]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

State	Coastline (miles)	Shoreline (miles)	Includes islands	Ratio/S/C
Conn	285	618	618	2.2
Maine	228	3478	3478	15.3
NH	13	131	131	10.1
Mass	192	1519	1711	7.9
RI	40	384	424	9.6
New England	758	6130	6362	8.4

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Banks

Coastal shelf extends out 200 miles (California > 50 miles)
”Soundings” well offshore --

Grand Banks
Georges Bank
Stellwagen Bank

Islands
Gulf Of Maine – 57
Boston Harbor – 34 (Noodles Island/Samuel Maverick)
Nantucket/Martha’s Vineyard/Elizabeth Islands
Narragansett Islands – Block Island

Fishers Island (NY); Thimble Islands
Eastern Long Island
Gardiners Island
Plum Island
Shelter Island
Robins Island
Fire Island

Capes – Cape Ann/Cape Cod/Point Judith

Tidal Rivers

Maine:

St. Croix
Machias

Penobscot
Damriscotta

Kennebec

Androscoggin

Saco

Kennebunk

Piscataqua

New Hampshire:

Piscataugua

Massachusetts:

Merrimack
Mystic
Charles

Seekonk
Taunton

Rhode Island

Sakonnet
Providence

Connecticut

Thames
Mystic
Connecticut

Housatonic

Coastal topography:
Rocky coasts of Maine -- Winslow Homer
Salt marshes of Massachusetts – Merrimack River mouth (Newburyport) – Martin Johnson Heade
Sandy beaches of Cape Cod, Newport and southward to Connecticut – John Kensett

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Population Distribution
Little immigration after 1642 – as compared with South and Mid-Atlantic
Heavily concentrated in coastal counties throughout the colonial era
Maine district – no counties without a coastal side
Only inland population centers on tidal rivers – Hartford/Springfield à Worcester??

Coastal towns
Boston
Newport
Salem
Providence
New Haven

New London

Newburyport
Portsmouth, NH
Falmouth (Portland)

All nine original Mass. towns through 1630s all on coast or along tidal stretch – Plymouth/Salem/Charlestown/Medford/Watertown/Boston/Roxbury/
Dorchester/Weymouth -- Concord first inland town

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Coastal farming
Access to fertilizer – sea weed/fish guts
Natural fencing against predators/establish ownership
Least heavily forested – cleared by nature/ by Indians
Ease of moving produce to market for cattle
Hay grass in wetlands/salt marshes à spartina grass
Martin Johnson Heade, “Newburyport Meadow” (1870)

Coastal farming compatible with fishing, clamming…
Island pasturing in summers…

Winthrop farm on Mystic River – half-hour sail to Boston

RI (Gloria Main) – “The tidal salt marshes fringing estuaries became the most prized acreage in the region because the grasses
were more nutritious, began growing earliest in the spring, and ceased growing latest in the fall.”

Salt hay was worth three times as much as fresh.

Not much of interior NE suited to agriculture – livestock pasturage/orchards/lumbering
Soil thin; season shorter than England (though more southerly latitude)
Lower Connecticut Valley the best land – some wheat/tobacco

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Making of Maritime New England

Earlier attempts at landfalls -- establishing settlements:

1000 – Vikings to Newfoundland
1497 – John Cabot to Newfoundland

1524 -- Giovanni da Verrazzano – 2 pleasant weeks in Narragansett Bay; unwelcome stopover in Maine

1530s – Jacques Cartier in St. Lawrence Bay/River region

1602 -- Bartholomew Gosnold – as per Elizabeth Islands – 1602 [as per Gabriel Archer/John Brereton]
1603 -- New Hampshire – 1603 – Martin Pring

1607 -- George Popham – 1607 – Kennebec River, Maine -- Driven out by cold – much colder in NE than comparable European latitude
1600s -- French explorer Samuel Champlain coasting southward off New England
1609/1612-14 -- Henry Hudson and Adriaen Block into New York/Long Island region

Adriaen Block’s map of New England (1614)

John Smith on promotional visit in 1614 (“New England”) – talks up fishing possibilities

William Wood, New Englands Prospect (1634)

Region remains a tough sell in England – fish/furs/lumber – all a lot of work….

What’s Needed
Before English make the first permanent move to New England – do so after declaring their alienation from English religious orthodoxy
Nature of their religious disagreement – insufficiency of Anglican distancing from Catholic practices/structures

Separatists one form of Puritanism – Feel compelled to permanently separate themselves from polluting Anglican orthodoxy
Have no interest in reforming/purifying/displacing Anglicans [Marcus Garvey in 1930s?]
Pushed from old England more than pulled to New England – Taking religious refuge – tried Leyden/Holland first – too cosmopolitan

Pilgrims not coming to America in pursuit of stuff -- not consumers/operators/entrepreneurs – in flight from stuff
Need to prove the purity/non-materialistic quality of their undertaking

Bradford’s Plymouth Plantation – anti-promotional tract
terrible crossing … the horrors of seasickness … cold/wet/ …nasty, brutish crew -- inhospitable circumstances
Not out to attract main chancers; ambitious chaps
Suspicious of those turning to profit-making --
Not sailors, not fishermen, not Indian traders, not commercial farmers – but become all these in a generation

Bradford acquires skills as a coastal sailor

Plymouth never that prosperous, populous – dispersal
Absorbed by Massachusetts in 1692

Plymouth to Mass as Roanoke to Virginia?? Failed forerunner??

The Great Migration – 1630s
John Winthrop as its principal leader

Less self-denying than Pilgrims – less inclined to withdrawal
But not to New England to set up business – to be a city upon a hill…

Subsequent story – of adaptation or submission

Given lemons, New Englanders make lemonade…..

Fish for local consumption and, salted, for export to labor-intensive locales (Caribbean/Chesapeake)

Easily harvested from the beach – clams, scallops
Francis Higginson, New England Plantation (1630)

Small boats pretty close into shore – limited capital required
Later in larger boats out onto the shallow banks – Georges Bank/Grand Banks/
NE’s water proximity to regions not wasting its labor on foodstuffs

Coastal whaling in 17^th century

Boatbuilding

Requirements;

Supply of lumber suitable for framing (oak) and masts (pine)
Tar/pitch for caulking
Some iron for fittings/anchors/cannon

Tidal rivers for building floating docks

Skilled craftsmen (skills of carpenters transferable)
Canvas mostly imported

Early attempts:
Virginia – 30-ton pinnace built in Maine in 1607 on Kennebunk River

Onrust – Adrian Block-built yacht in 1614
John Smith saw NE’s future as shipbuilding center
Pilgrims in Plymouth built fishing boats for fishing off Maine
Blessing of the Bay – 30-ton brig built to John Winthrop’s specifications in 1631

New England political leaders learn to be comfortable on the water:
Bradford/Winthrop/Roger Williams/John Winthrop, Jr.

1642 – Migration era over – some return to England
Most decide to stay – 5^th generation by 1770s
Reversion to subsistence/ primitivism made a virtue

The problem of “returns” – what do they have that other folks, particularly those with the stuff that
bespeaks civilized existence, want?
Land not particularly bountiful – relatively short growing season/interior low-lying mountains
Furs/lumber/masts/ -- of value in England
Not foodstuffs/livestock/fish – develop alternative markets –
Fish to Mediterranean/Ibera/Wine Islands
West Indies where sugar dominates economy

New England – Not just Massachusetts and certainly not just Boston

Think New Hampshire/Maine/RI/Conn

Become the provider of seagoing exchange – produce the ships, the mercantile infrastructure, the merchant sailor and sea captains of the Atlantic world

The environmental hand they drew turned them back toward the sea – not the plan
and put them in contact with all parts of the Atlantic world – cosmopolitans in spite of themselves
Did not entirely throw over their religious first purposes

Few of first English settlers from coastal England (East Anglia/West Country)
Farmers more than fishermen/sailors/shipwrights
First leaders not familiar with the sea – William Bradford – hard on seafaring
John Winthrop
Roger Williams –
dealings with Winthrop about their islands
in Narragansett Bay
John Wheelwright
Thomas Hooker
But soon along many prided themselves on their saltiness

Mathers salt their sermons with nautical metaphors, “sea deliverances”

Ships built for coastal trade and trade with West Indies
Ships built after 1650s for English market (as protected by Navigation Acts) – half its shipbuilding for export beyond NE

Sawmills/shipyards/ropeworks/sail lofts/cooperages…. taverns/brothels … college/poor house
18^th-century Harvard grads into maritime commerce

Sailors/captains/factors/investors/merchants/insurers/stevedores/prostitutes/tavernkeepers….

Chartmakers – Cyprian Southack (1662-1745)

Newspapers – news of sailings/arrivals/prices…. “The shipping news”

Privateers – Merchants turned commerce raiders in imperial wars (Quincys’ Bethel (1748))

Lawyers conversant in maritime law à John Adams/Josiah Qincy, Jr., Robert Treat Paine

à A complex urban-based economic structure intimately connected with other coastal colonies and with Europe

Boston in the 1690s – The Bailyns – “One of the major maritime centers of the Atlantic world. In magnitude its shipping
was easily the most important in America; its equivalent was the ancient port of Bristol, second only to London in the British Isles.”

1699 to 1714 à1,113 new vessels (60,000 tons)

More ships built in Boston than in all of Ireland and Scotland (200 registered ships in 1697)

Boston Harbor, by William Burgis (1`723)

Close to one out of three adult males in Boston investing in seagoing vessels…
Considerable wealth accumulated by leading maritime merchants (Hancocks/Wentworths/Browns)

New Englanders became the providers of ships for the trade of others
Lacking “returnables,” they turned to becoming the carriers of other folks’ returnables

Goods carried – salted fish/livestock/lumber to Carolinas/West Indies
Acquire wheat in Mid-Atlantic

18^th Century

Molasses as returnable from Caribbean – distilled in NE into rum à export to Africa

Boston experienced competition in both maritime commerce and shipbuilding from Philadelphia and New York in late colonial period,
as well as from smaller NE ports (Newport/Newburyport/Salem)

Post Fr & Indian War economic depression in 1760s
Uncertain response to tightening of imperial regulations in 1760s/70s
Business interests do not favor break from Britain as much as professional/laboring classes