The Boston Tea Party

TT

We picked up a mooring in the downtown Boston waterfront from Boston Harbor Sailing School. What a deal. $47 for the night with the water shuttle included in a world-class city.  I like Boston because you have two ways to get around the city. Take the Boston T train, aka subway, or just look down while you walk and follow the line in the sidewalk. Its the Freedom Trail and takes you to a bunch of old history stuff and past most of the Starbucks in Boston.

We took the Freedom Trail and stopped at the Old North Church made famous by the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem about Paul Revere:

Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,--
One if by land, and two if by sea…...

Of course in those days the church was known as the North Church, not the Old North Church.
Paul is buried here – or at least somewhere within about 100 feet of here, as they have a tendency to move the headstones in Boston when they get in the way of the sidewalks and walkways. Paul’s birth year is engraved in the headstone as 1734, but Wikipedia knows better. Apparently there was some change in the calendar between then and now and in our calendar it was actually 1735.’

Paul Revere was born in the North End of Boston on December 21, 1734, according to the Old Style calendar then in use, or January 1, 1735, in the modern calendar

I’m thinking of using the New Style calendar for soliciting dates on Facebook – makes me look younger --- and the Old Style for applying for Social Security.
Paul Revere was born of a French Huguenot father. Dad spelt his name Rivoire. The French were really pretty key to the success of the Revolutionary War – not withstanding Freedom Fries.
  This is the organ that Mr. Revere and his compatriots ran past when they headed up the stairs to the church tower to signal the British were coming. Not sure if the yellow Don’t Tread on Me flag was hanging at the time.
Copp’s Hill Burying Ground (1600’s) – where a bunch of real old dead people are, including Paul Revere. The location was selected because it was well-protected from the “three great annoyances, of Woolves, Rattle-snakes and Musketos”.
Here’s Chris turning the crank of the Benjamin Franklin designed Glass Harmonica. I guess the monkey who normally handles the crank was off on a banana break. Fascinating sound.

And Benjamin himself gracing the front of the former city hall and the site of the oldest public school in America built by Puritans in 1635. Attended by Benjamin, Sam Adams and John Hancock. It’s now a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. Lucky Ben was not a vegetarian.

 

The Old State House, apparently before they leveled the streets.

A historic recreation in period dress of the Boston Tea Party from the deck of SV Georgia in Boston Harbor.

Revolutionary War Guinness flag.

We left Boston passing close by the Boston Light. The second oldest lighthouse in the US. This one was rebuilt in 1783 from the ruin of the 1718 light. Kinda cool to think of all the trans-Atlantic ships that have passed by here in the last few hundred years. Another lighthouse at the entrance of the harbor sits on a ledge known as The Graves; that’ll get your attention.

Paul

In Cod We Trust

We continued south and stopped in Gloucester, Mass, for a few days. Gloucester is the oldest fishing port on the East Coast. They are famous for being involved in massive Cod fishing industry of the past three centuries, leading to the over-fishing of the great banks offshore here. Today, the fishermen are still at it – those that are left. It is a tough business and getting tougher.
There’s a fair amount of conflict between the government fish managers, the Gloucester fishermen and the fish farms. The conflict is most clearly seen in the in-depth presentation available on bumper stickers,as in this store-front window we passed:

Tilapia is not fish
National Marine Fisheries Service: Destroying Fishermen and their communities since 1975
 and, my favorite

In Cod We Trust

Gloucester is probably most famous these days as the home port of the star boats that were in the 2000 movie The Perfect Storm. That’s the Andrea Gail heading up the face of that impossible wave.
We caught these tourists visiting the 1925 memorial to the thousands of lost crew and ships of Gloucester.
When we arrived at the dinghy dock we were greeted by our old friends Larry and Lena. They are our favorite token power boater friends (and incidentally sailboat circumnavigators), on their trawler Hobo. Our blog reader might recognize the renown black dog Captain Morgan pacing the dock – known for his famous 2011 Panama Canal Transit so ably documented on this blog.

They sure grow them big here, lobsters that is.

 

Gratuitous Maine boat porn picture

Paul

Island Time, Maine Style

Sequin Island with the second oldest light house in Maine sitting on top. The original light was authorized by George Washington.

Today the light keepers house operates as a place for the volunteer summer caretakers to live and as a small time B&B. The B&B is cute, but the night life and restaurants are pretty limited --- in other words if you want anything beyond your breakfast muffin you have to pack it in from the mainland, along with packing out your own trash.

You can’t anchor in the bay here because of cables on the bottom that feed electricity to the island. Here’s Georgia and Kokomo rafted together on the Coast Guard mooring.

We packed a Victorian picnic lunch and hiked up the trail to the top.

It would have been a lot easier to just take the tram up. This thing is still in use to move supplies up the hill, but they wouldn’t let us take a ride. Some story about how the lighthouse family and dog and supplies in 1949 were being towed up when the cable let loose. The father and son jumped off, the mother threw the baby into a bush and the dog and mom crashed. She got severely hurt and the dog died. The baby that survived unscathed actually returned to the island with a TV film crew this summer for the first time since 1950. True story or not, we had to walk instead of ride in style.

The first order Fresnel lens is still in use. It now uses an incandescent bulb instead of having to have the mantle lit each night by the lighthouse keepers.

Next stop was Jewell Island where they have my favorite tourist stuff – rusty things. These are World War II lookout posts and gun batteries that were used to protect the Maine coastline from German U-boats. There were two of these multi-story cement spotter towers.

The view the WW-II soldiers had of the coastline while on watch.

Chris tried to steal some lobsters from a local’s pot and they threw her in jail.

I immediately took cover and blasted her free – good husband that I am.

While a bored Jewell Island caterpillar watched.

Paul