The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1912-09-26
Maine and Massachusetts
Ports.
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/ Va TOE
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everyone, whether bred beside The
salt water or far inland. has private
notion OF how seaport village ought to
look. If We were separated from the
ocean by leagues of dry land this idea,
was probably borrowed from old enerav.
lngs OF Scotch castles under stormy SIM
sets, from Autographs of ships careenino
past the lighthouses of harbor head.
land or. from the woodcuts in doraared
volumes OF, the English poets, who have
had, at one time or another, some good
things to say of the sea. More recent
generations got theirs from picture and
text of 'David Copperfied" and ''West-
ward Ho!'' or Howard Pyle editions of
Treasure Island.'' By one fashion or
another, the thing is there-the fixed
idea OF the perfect port. and by this is
meant, of course, little port. Big
ports may unroll their epic panorama Of
ships, but they forfeit individuality. For
character, therefore, the port must be
small, and the smaller the spicier,
''Clamport, through which the world
wags, in an esteemed contemporary. it
has often seemed to me would be one of
the perfect ports if it could be pinned to
locality. Nothing could sound more
Cape Codified. Yet the charts of Mr..
Eldredge know it not.
Without wishing to appear disloyal
wish to point out certain defects of our
Massachusetts ports. 1t seems not too
much to expect of a seaport that it
should possess moderate amount of
shipping, yet in most of the seacoast
towns on Massachusetts Bay the chief
drawback is that they are everything
else except ports They are summer
colonies, pleasure beaches, factory GEN.
tres, stone quarries, or tourist meccas,
into which a vessel now and then comes
by accident or necessity. Salem and
NeWburyport are glorious old towns,
crammed with the choicest domestic
architecture on the coast, but one would
wear thankless blisters Oh his heels
tramping their wharves in quest of ships.
Ipswich as nearly approaches the ideals
suggested by Clamport as any place off
the Cape, but its fleet is scrawny as a
diet Of bareback. Gloucester has fleet,
to be sure; but in the summer it is an
open question whether the town exists
for distributing salt fish to a hungry
nation or as an emporium of wates color
sketches and marine paintings in oils.
Since the Cape Cod ports, except
tourist-ridden Provincetown, are, as
ports, lamented memories of marine
glories departed there is nothing for it
but to rule out Massachusetts Bay from
the competition for ports simply as ports,
without any other title to distinction.
Maine wish, if possible, to consider
with strict neutrality. Much may be
said for the Maine coast towns as
Ravens; as picturesque vignettes of
rocky cove, with pine boughs dipped in
surf; as communities still tasting of the
that their days as ports are swiftly
changing into future of summer colo
MES like the Cape. They are ceasing to
be ports in the old sense; Rockland,
august as it is in any schedule of the
coastal steamers, is to the eye crater
of belching lime kilns. Bath enjoys the
distinction of being the place where
more ships are built than any other
coast town in New Notwithstanding
as town; hardly port. Camden offers
a harbor landlocked by piney island
bearing a white lighthouse; a harbor
used chiefly by two coastwise steamers
and a few yachts. Boothbay, on the
other hand, is very much what the
amateur of ports is looking for thicket
of masts, wharf sheds, struggling, billy
streets and the houses of the town set
at eccentric angles to one another where
ever they chance to fit dooryard and
garden, In Boothbay, too, there is a
bit of garden, red-brick homestead un-
der deep n" pie shade up sloping lane
to set artists painting for dear life. The
harbor is not without the requisite huks.
The upper reaches of Penobscot Bay
have their possibilities. Ebb tide I'M
covers huiks enough under the steep
green shores on the strand of red gravel.
There is generally one sound wharf and
two rotting, thus giving choice,
Steamers prefer the sound wharf, artists
the decaying. On the green rolls Of hill
above the water are shaderows of elm
and maple, white homesteads and the
needy spire of the meeting house prick
ing up through greenery with a CLEAN
of sun on it. Such spots as these-Sears
port, Bucksport, Winterport, Stockton
1T must De COIleSSeu, CoIue near W
coinciding with the hopes aroused by
Howard Pyle's pictures and Mr.. Nor
man Duncan's text. Thomaston, for
example, though visited customarily by
spinsterly steamer which carries the
mails to Monhegan, sends up from the
waterside street of white houses under
shade trees such as to invite even an
actor to thoughts of settling down."
Monhegan itself was long ago handed
over gagged and bound to the artist
tribe, who have lavished pigment enough
on its haven and headlands to have
painted Black Head white and White
Head black. To let the artist folk tell
it, you would suppose the perfect port
had been found without stirring one
revolution of the propeller from Mon
hogan. Vinalhaven has the fleet; a
genuine port it is. Trees and hills are
somewhat lacking, Stonington is much
stoning and little ton. The fact is that
Penobscot Bay is turning into a summer
playground and the port idea is becom-
ing Incidental.
This scrutiny of the Maine ports is
necessary to proper understanding of
the discussion: first, because time was
when many of them were all and more
of what is demanded by Ideals of per-
feet port; and again because they link
a. +ropoit;nn from the M ass chI,e 81 re-