e-Newsletter | September 3, 2021 |
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Part 4: “Liverpool, Amsterdam and Cholera”
The 1877 Memoir of Captain Joshua Hale (1812-1894)
Introduced and edited by Kristen Fehlhaber
In the last installment, the author, age 17, had returned from Germany to Newburyport. He resumed office work in New York City but got sick again and decided to continue with seafaring. For previous installments, see here.
During the summer we were away. Uncle Eben Hale and brothers Thomas and Isaiah had a new vessel built, the Brig Alice, 281 tons. For the time she was large and handsome and attracted a great deal of attention and I often heard her called the “dandy brig.”
In the winter of 1830, December, she sailed from Newburyport to Virginia. Brother Thomas was captain, and my brother Edward went out in her as passenger, and remained in Virginia with Thomas until the vessel was ready for sea, and then he came home, and I went on to Norfolk and joined the vessel, and went to sea in her, and so made that my business often.
My grandfather this winter, Josiah Little, fell from a load of hay in coming out of a barn, trying to step over the cross bar, and broke his hip and lived but a little while and Edward was needed at home to help Father and attend to some business of Grandfather, and was employed thus for a year or two. The Alice was loaded with Flour - 4450 barrels for Liverpool, England, and had a short but very rough passage, and lost some of her spar sails, and had to have new ones in Liverpool.
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A brig is commonly a two masted ship with square sails (or spar sails) on the masts. This British brig is off Liverpool - The Brig ‘St. Lucia' in the Mersey, painted by Robert W. Salmon (1775-1851), Merseyside Maritime Museum (detail). (Credit: Creative Commons licensing.)
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We were there for a month and a gentleman we became acquainted with had a pony or small horse for his daughter to ride, and he invited me to take and use it freely to get it used to being ridden and be gentle and safe for the young lady. It gave me a fine opportunity to ride and see the surroundings of the city and I think I saw all within a circuit of ten miles on that side of the river Mersey.
We loaded in Liverpool for Philadelphia, and had some passengers in steerage and on our passage some ludicrous scenes occurred and amused us much among the passengers. Mr. Thomas Brown was the 1st officer and as we were nearing the shore off New Jersey the captain ordered the lead and line thrown overboard to see how deep the water was to judge how far we were from the land. So when all was ready, the way of the vessel through the water lessened, as the water was not deep it was not necessary to heave the vessel too and stop her entirely.
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Mr. Brown caught up the lead lying in the bight of the line and threw it overboard and so the line was not made fast to the lead. So it was lost. Of course we could not get it again. Such a laugh was raised at Mr. Brown’s expense.
The bight is a curved section between the two ends of rope; perhaps the lead weight had a turn around and appeared fastened. (Courtesy image.)
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In a day or two we were sailing up the Delaware Bay & river with a fair wind and a ship was coming down with a fair wind and we came together and passed each other and then both of us were becalmed, and when the wind sprang up, it came so as to be ahead for us and slowed our progress.
We reached the city in due time, discharged the cargo, and took onboard another, and went back to Liverpool again. Mr. Brown did not go in the vessel any more, but returned home, and went to catch whales.
Mr. Isaac Carpenter was 2nd mate, a very good man and sailor, and he was in our employ a great many years. Before I went at all he was with Thomas and continued with me as long as I went on all but two voyages.
From Liverpool we came home to Boston, and so I came home here after the cargo was all delivered for I had taken care of receiving and discharging the cargo after we were in Philadelphia, and saw that all the different articles were received by the merchants to whom they were consigned, and the captain collected the freight money.
1832 - In Boston we took in a cargo of coffee for Amsterdam, and I was called 1st Officer, and thought I had learned all I could and was a comfortably good navigator. I was not as good a sailor. Not having had very long experience but I got along nicely and never had anything to do that I did not know how to do.
We had a safe and good time to Amsterdam, or to the harbor of Nieuwe Diep at the mouth of the canal near Texel and took out two lighter loads of cargo, and then we entered the canal, and with horses to tow us, went up to the city of Amsterdam.
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Horses pull the first ships to pass each other on the 47 mile long North Holland Canal (built 1824). The canal was replaced by the more direct North Sea Canal in 1876. (Credit: Rijksmuseum, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons (detail)).
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Part of the time the wind would be so we could sail, and then the horses would have to go as fast as they could ahead of us so as to have the bridges which crossed the canal opened for us to pass safely through. If we had run against a bridge and broken it, we should have had to pay all damages including detention of travelers who might have wanted to pass over the bridges.
And there were some turns in the canal and it was necessary to have the horses to assist in turning so as not to run into the banks hard. The end of the canal was on the opposite side of the river from the city, and so we had to cross and make the vessel fast to “Dolphins” - timbers driven deep into the river bottom, and very securely and to keep the vessel in her place, and the anchor dropped in the river in front of ship and a chain astern to shore. All of the communications between the vessel and shore had to be in boats, and all had to land at one place and pass through a gateway, and at a certain hour every night the gates were shut and then we had to wait until time to open the next morning. I was taken very sick one night with Cholera Morbus there, and could not get a doctor until the next morning or even let the captain know I was sick.
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“Dolphin” pilings in use in the Amsterdam harbor in the 1600s. “Amsterdam Harbor Scene (detail),” Reinier Nooms, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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Next time, "Recovery from Cholera and Exploring Amsterdam" – K.F.
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Woman on the MOON
Driving Miss Paisley...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
When I was a teenager living in West Newbury, I was the proud owner of the world’s most beautiful, most unreliable car. She was a 1975 Mercedes 300D sedan, tan, leather, matching tan hubcaps – the works.
The OM617 inline-5 diesel sputtered to life about thirty percent of the time. The rust holes on the wheel wells, in the floor, under the gas tank, were a swirl of Bondo, primer, and mis-matched yellow paint. My friend Shelley, always one to see beauty in decay, turned these textured blobs into paisley swirls. We named the beastly beauty Miss Paisley.
But oh, those three times when, after accelerating for two or three hours, she reached her top speed of sixty miles per hour, Miss Paisley was heavenly – soft but solid, with just the right amount of shot-struts squishiness.
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Mary Page (Anderson) Poore and Howard Sumner Poore haying with the old tractor, 1970, and a close-up below. (Courtesy images.) |
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Most days, I marched resolutely out to the car, turned the key to allow the coil to warm up, then attempted a start for ten minutes or so before leaving her to spend another day as a lawn ornament, and I walked wherever it was I needed to go.
My job at Friendly’s on Storey Avenue was three miles away and took about 45 minutes if I hustled. I was generally running late, my automotive optimism unfounded once again, and so I ran down Poore’s Lane, down Garden Street and took a side-skipping right turn onto Middle Street. By the time I turned that corner and waved to my great aunt and uncle, Mary and Howard Poore (Aunt Emily’s eldest brother, for those of you playing at home), I had come to my senses and slowed to a fast walk.
Even late as I was, I always stopped at the little shed by the side of the road where Uncle Howard’s ancient tractor lived, caught my breath, gave it a pat, and picked up the pace again. I jumped over the bump in the middle of the (now derelict) bridge over the Artichoke and said “good luck” under my breath.
I remember when I was learning to drive, I went over the bump a little bit too fast in my great-aunt Emily’s navy-blue K-car, and she said “that’s lucky.” I took it to mean that the bump was lucky, and it became a tradition to pop over that bump and say “good luck” amongst my friends. Later I asked her if she had always thought the bridge was lucky. She snorted. “I think I just felt lucky that I didn’t end up in the river, the way you drive.” Oh, well. The tradition stuck. The race to work ended with a sharp turn at Turkey Hill, and then a sprint down Storey Avenue.
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The tractor retired to its shed, becomes a year-round landmark on Middle Street, West Newbury, Mass. (Courtesy images; black and white image from the Newburyport Daily News.) |
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I walked some of this loop a few days ago. Uncle Howard’s tractor is gone, though the roadside shed is still there. Friendly’s is long gone, of course, my polyester houndstooth dress and red apron consigned to the dustbin of history. Shelley, who lovingly painted the swirls on Miss Paisley, lived in the house across from Dunkin Donuts. CVS is there now. I added and subtracted as I walked. This house is new, this stone wall was always here. My other great-aunt Jeanette lived over here, my mother’s cousin Sue Follansbee lived in the woods back there. I remember the smell of her living room – wool rugs and wood smoke, and her smile.
I walked along the Artichoke on my way back home, past the Quaker cemetery, the site of the 1695 raid that saw nine members of the Brown family taken captive, past the site of the Quaker meeting house. Two swans formed a perfect tableau in a swirl of blooming waterlilies as I crossed the Artichoke bridge on Roger’s Street. A woman approached from the other direction, talking loudly to no one, her Bluetooth earpiece visible only when she was close enough that I was growing concerned. Two others went by at a breakneck pace, eyes on the ground, discussing real estate prices. For a moment I considered being the creepy lady who calls out to the distracted speed walkers, “Look up, you fools! There is so much to see!”
It seems silly to point out that walking is foundational to understanding Newbury’s history, but as I paused at the bridge to watch the swans, I thought about how different the mundane calculations of life would be when you considered that wherever you wanted to go, you had only your feet to carry you.
In 17th and 18th century Newbury, horses were rare. It was the humble ox that pulled the plow and, occasionally, the family wagon. Horses were ridden by those who could afford them or had somewhere to go on a regular basis – judges, ministers, legislators. Most men, women, and children walked everywhere they went.
No surprise, then, that some of the fiercest brawls in the history of this town came about because families simply wanted a shorter walk to the meetinghouse. Prime real estate clustered around the taverns in town for the same reason. Men appeared regularly in the quarterly court record for sleeping off a night at the tavern in a barn, in the road. Thomas Stickney passed out “in the chimney corner” in 1679, unable to walk home. Dr. Anthony Crosby spent a night getting tanked “at Newberry at Dole or March (taverns),” and spent the night next to the Parker River Bridge. His plan, to walk back to his house in Ipswich, seems like a stretch even for a sober man.
In keeping with another old Newbury tradition – when the old Mercedes ceased to function entirely, it was left in the back field until it slowly disappeared, leaving only tires and bits of plastic and metal frame. Its running board sank into the ground. Grass grew over it. A wandering baby goat uncovered it last week, pawed at it and then ate a flower growing through the shredded floor mat. History, in all its incarnations, is everywhere. Just take a walk.
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Premier episode of Applied History takes an up-close look at the planning and skill needed to restore the decorative balcony on the exterior of the Amesbury Police Station. |
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Amesbury Police Station Balcony to be Restored to Original Glory
What do you get when you combine the area’s rich architectural design and a longtime fan of WGBH’s This Old House?
Applied History, the brainchild of local realtor Matt Blanchette, a bi-monthly video series featuring local preservation experts showcasing their knowledge and experience in order to help area antique home owners preserve, restore and rebuild their homes.
It is part of Blanchette's online way point, HistoricHomeTowns.com, a virtual central station for all preservation wants and needs.
Blanchette explains, “Newburyport, and most every other town in Essex County, is loaded with living history. You will find homes and historic buildings that exhibit all, or some, of the features delineated in the four most common stylistic traditions. Our goal is to help people who love their homes and hometown to understand their property better. Moreover, we understand just how hard it can be for owners to preserve, restore and – if need be – rebuild their historic home and we want to help with that, too.”
As a starting point, the major genres of architecture include First Period, structures built before 1725; Federal-style, popular from roughly 1780-1830; Greek Revival, found in cities, such as Newburyport, that were highly industrialized between 1825-1850; and Victorian-era style (circa 1830-1910), generously sized, often colorful homes, with turrets and wraparound porches.
“Buildings developed in transitional periods around the ‘main’ four often blend styles of the surrounding periods,” Blanchette continues. “In fact, renovated homes and buildings would sometimes even exhibit a conscious combination of unrelated stylistic elements, occasionally the product of pure whimsy or eccentricity."
The premier Applied History episode, "Hanging in the Balance," takes a look at the preservation and process involved in restoring the Amesbury Police Station’s balcony on its circa 1921 structure. A decorative piece to the overall structure, the balcony can be seen from the main entrance and leads to what was, originally, the district courtroom. A close inspection of the original corbels and balustrades proved the pieces were in surprisingly good shape, requiring some detailed epoxy work, in addition to a good scraping, followed by proper painting.
Blanchette concludes, “It was great to learn that, especially in the instance of the police station balcony, restoration was much more feasible than replacement. And, for the average homeowner, knowing who to speak to; what questions to ask; and realistically determining the best way to conduct work on your own home is important and invaluable information. My goal with Applied History is to create a go-to resource for anyone looking to preserve and maintain their antique property.”
If you are not sure how to solve a modern problem on your antique home or you have a question or want to see something on an upcoming episode, email Matt @ info@historichometowns.com.
Watch Applied History by clicking here.
Editor's note: The Museum of Old Newbury does not endorse and is not responsible for any consumer content, products, goods or services mentioned in this video. The statements, information and recommendations of businesses or tradespeople contained in this content are solely the opinion of Historic Hometowns/Applied History and does not reflect the opinion of the Museum of Old Newbury or any of its affiliates, managers, officers, employees, agents or representatives.
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Learn about upcoming programs, register, find Zoom links and catch up on previous presentations here. All of our virtual programs are free, however donations are gratefully accepted to help defray speaker fees.
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Register Now: Wednesday, September 8, 2021 |
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Catch up with old friends while checking out the museum's newest acquisitions and executive director.
Museum of Old Newbury Annual Meeting
Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2021
6:30 p.m. | Refreshments
7:00 p.m. | Meeting
7:30 p.m. | What’s New @ the MOON
Space is limited, please reserve your spot now. Click here.
This is a free event for members only. Not a member? Become one here.
Donations are accepted and can be made here.
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Scholars and historians scheduled to present include:
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Manisha Sinha, Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut;
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John Stauffer, Sumner R. & Marshall S. Kates Professor of English and of African and African American Studies at Harvard;
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Kabria Baumgartner, Dean's Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies at Northeastern University;
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Allegra di Bonaventura, Associate Director of Graduate Programs at Yale Law School;
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James DeWolf Perry, Principal Historical Consultant for Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, former Executive Director at Tracing Center on Histories and Legacies of Slavery; and
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Keidrick Roy, PhD candidate in American Studies at Harvard University, to name a few.
Learn more here. Made possible by the generous support of The Governor's Academy and Eastern Bank.
This in-person event requires proof of COVID-19 vaccination (with photo ID) and will follow all masking policies in place as per the Governor Baker's guidelines. Masks will be available at on-site registration.
Register here. Pricing levels include Museum of Old Newbury & Historic New England member/non-member, student and suggested donations for virtual attendance.
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Puzzle Me This...
Reminds me of Newburyport...
The top half of the Noordhollandsch Kanaal, December 1824. It represents a view of the Tolhuis near the Willemssluis, where Joshua Hale travelled.
This image is part of a sheet metal work from circa 1824-1825 with 74 (unnumbered) plates representing some of the most important topographical views and various mores and customs in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Click on image to begin.
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Something is Always Cooking at the Museum
It may be Labor Day weekend, but this yummy cake from Peg McClure is surprisingly easy to bring together.
Red Velvet Pound Cake
Cake
3 cups sugar
3/4 cups shortening
6 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups flour
1 cup milk
2 (1-ounce) bottles of red food coloring
Icing
1 pound powdered sugar
3 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened
3 tablespoons milk
Red sprinkles
Cream sugar and shortening together. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Add vanilla and mix. Mix salt and flour. Add to egg mixture, alternating with milk, beginning and ending with flour. Add food coloring; beat until smooth. Bake in a greased and floured tube pan at 325ºF for 1 1/2 hours. Let cake rest for 10 minutes. For the icing, cream together the first 4 ingredients and mix well. Ice cake and top with red sprinkles. Serves 8.
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During this difficult period of COVID-19, we rely on your support more than ever. We continue to develop new, online programs for you to enjoy and keep us connected and look forward to in-person events as protocols for safety loosen. We hope, if you are able, that you will consider a donation to the museum. Thank you for your continued support.
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Museum of Old Newbury
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