Slide show
This is a true story about a schooner, a moonlit night, and how I walked a "Widow's Walk" in the way that they were intended. I'm prompted to share this now that ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
birchknoll has joined Peaks Island Bloggers, since it's about her house.
In the fall of 2001, my family and I moved out of our tiny cottage on the Backshore so that we could gut it and winterize it. For most of the winter, we rented an 1800s Georgian Revival home on the north side, looking out over Portland. But when the owner returned, and we still weren't done with our place, we were stuck.
birchknoll came to our rescue, allowing us to move into their place on Winding Way. The spacious cottage sets up high, looking out over the Backshore toward Cushing Island and Portland Head Light. The shingled cottage is crowned by a Widow's Walk, a rooftop platform with a protective railing around it that allows you to watch shipping traffic from atop your home.
When the snow was still flying, my husband was invited to help crew the historic schooner, Bagheera, from Chesapeake Bay to Portland harbor. The Maine-made schooner had to be trucked across country from San Francisco and then sailed up the coast so that it could serve the fledgling Portland Schooner Company. Come May, Bagheera's crew (all islanders) was sailing around the clock for four days, headed for Portland harbor. There were no cell phones on board. No email. Although families had a general idea about the night that they should arrive, it wasn't precise.
That night the moon was nearly full and shone brightly. I'm a worrier and so every half hour or so, I'd trek up the stairs to the Widow's Walk and look out on the calm water, hoping to see the masts show up on the horizon. Each half hour until two in the morning, I rested my hands on the railing and looked for Bagheera. There were no sounds, no ships, just a stunning view that softened my frustration. I finally gave up and turned in for the night. Not long after, the Bagheera did sail in to Portland's shipping channel and docked next to the ferry landing. Its tired crew tied up the schooner and walked home to their respective cottages.
Thank you,
birchknoll, for your friendship and for letting me walk your Widow's Walk. And thank you, Bagheera, for bringing my husband safely home.
I wonder if the invisible train in J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" was inspired by the notion of an "underground railroad?" I'm not talking about trains that ran underground like subways, but rather the escape routes of slaves from southern states toward Canada prior to and during the Civil War. People have escaped slavery for as long as slavery has existed, but the the term "underground railroad" didn't exist until the early 1800s when locomotives became available in the U.S. to transport passengers.Most maps of the Underground Railroad, like this one, bypass Maine altogether. Or, the arrows give it a glancing blow. Like most things historical, Maine seems to fall off the pages of the book. If it didn't happen in Massachusetts, it seems, it didn't happen at all. Okay, I exaggerate. Fortunately, a number of Mainers have dedicated years of their time to document and commemorate this hist
ory with Portland's Freedom Trail project.Mainers owned slaves, like other inhabitants of the British colonies. Fortunately, they got around to embracing abolitionism and threw their Yankee ingenuity and maritime cunning into the effort. Portland hosted quite a few resident abolitionists. As I have been exploring with students, one of them, Charlotte Thomas, had strong ties to Peaks Island. She liked to spend her summers on the island at the Valley View House, pictured here. Since she hosted the likes of Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, I wonder if she ever gazed back at Portland from Trefethen landing with them at her side?
You're officially a history geek when you see it everywhere you go and hidden in everything you do. Yes, even when skating. Just before the holidays, my family and I were skating on Peaks Island's "Ice Pond." This photo, taken from the middle of the Ice Pond, shows how you can skate and see Hussey Sound on the horizon at the same time. At first glance, you might think it's called the Ice Pond for obvious reasons. It freezes in the winter and people skate on it, right? But, there's a hidden story here. The line of trees at right marks the location of a small, man-made dam. Generations ago, the dam was built to deepen the pond and to allow entrepreneurial islanders to harvest the ice. This was big business on Peaks Island.
As this ad from the collection of the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum shows (above), if islanders needed ice for their ice boxes (this is pre refrigerator days, remember), then they put ice cards in their window. The one at right is an example, again, from the Fifth Maine. The "Ice Pond" was just one of several ponds on the island where ice was harvested, and it wasn't just islanders who were customers. Schooners bellied up to wharves and the ice was loaded into the hold of the ship and packed in sawdust for long-distance shipping, most likely to the southern Atlantic states and the Caribbean.
That line of island business is long gone now. As we seek to reduce our carbon footprints, progress one of these days may mean ditching the refrigerator and going back to the ice boxes. I hope it means I won't have to hang up my skates.
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patriciaerikson- patriciaerikson
- Heritage in Maine
