Long Island Sound:
Introduction to a Storied Seaway by Peter Stanford For a long time no one but the orig ina l Indi an inhabitants of the region seemed to know it was there . Giovanni da Yerrazzano dropped anchor in New York Harbor on hi s way along the North American coas.t in 1524 ; dri ven to sea in a summer squall , he then sail ed east along the Long Island shore. Sailing by Montauk , at the end of Long Island, he saw a body of water opening out to the north west, but kept on east fo r Bl ock Island. Nearl y a hundred years later Henry Hudson made hi s famo us voyage up the Hudson Ri ver. Like Yerrazzano and others before him , Hudson was interested onl y in pushing through the obstructi ve land mass of the Americas to get to the fa bled wealth of the Orient beyond, and had no incl ination to seek out byways along the coast. He may never even have become aware of the body of water that twice dail y sends salt water pul sing around Manhattan to pour into Hudson' s great ri ver, that enchanted she ltered seaway, Long Island Sound . It was n' t until fiv e yea rs after Hudson 's voyage of 1609 had opened European eyes to New York and its environs that a Dutch skipper, Adri aen Block, who had been sailing several seasons in Hud son' s wake to pursue the fur trade with the Al gonkian Indi ans on Manhattan Island, took a 42-foo t sloop up the East Ri ver (whi ch is reall y no ri ver but a tida l passageway) and on th ro ugh the Sound to the eastward . He set sail in May 16 14, just 375 years ago, hav ing been forced to winter over in Manhattan after his shi p, Tyjgre (or " ti ger") had burnt pas t sa lvage the preced ing autumn . Block was a reso lute intruder on the native American scene. During the winter he built hi s new sloop to repl ace Tyjgre -a vesse l 42.5ft long in hull , with a beam of l 1.5ft. He named hi s little ship On rust , meaning " restless ." (Onrust is also, it turns out, the name of a Dutch prov ince; but looking at other names, fo r example Block 's con sort ship Fortuyn or "fortune," one comes to be lieve that the name meant just what it says.) In thi s vesse l he threaded hi s way through the narrow passage between Long Island and the Bronx , a passage he named He ll Gate. He made hi s way pas t landmarks fa miliar to those who sa il the Sound today; pas t Execution Rocks, on which the US Government was be latedl y to build a lighthouse in 1850after the roc ks had taken, and too long continued to take, the to ll of shipping which earned them the ir name. (The re is nothing to the griml y fan c iful story that the British used to execute Patriot pri soners by chaining them down to the roc ks in a ri sing tide. The name long antedates the Revolution.) B lock sa il ed on by the Norwalk Islands, Thimble Islands, and Duck Island , up the beautiful Connecticut Ri ver (which he prosa ically named " fresh ri ver"), and on th ro ugh the Race and out of the Sound. He passed on east to name Bl ock Island and Rhode Island (" red island"), and so passed into hi story. He picked up a lift home off Cape Cod and apparentl y never returned to the Americas, ending hi s days in Amsterdam, where he died in 1627, aged about60. Hi s ga ll ant Onrust went on to the De laware for further ex plorations. He ll Gate, at the western end of the Sound , is no treat to sail through tod ay, with its j agged rocks and hurtling, swerving currents. But it was much wo rse until success ive bl astings of obstructing rock ledges , late in the last century, cleared a deeper passageway than Block had to contend with . T he eastern ex it of the Sound , whi ch Yerrazzano g limpsed , is more open, but more complex ; the main body of w ater goes out through the Race , a seven-mile stretch, w ith side shoots going through Fi sher 's Island Sound on the north, or Connecticut shore, and Plum Gut on the south , Long Island shore. A lot of water has to get through these narrow apertures and it creates a ferocious chop even in the re lati vely broad waters SEA HISTORY , SUMMER 1989
of the Race. Many a small boat sailor bowling along in a goodl y breeze has been startled to fi nd himself confro nting snarling fi ve-foot seas as he sailed o ut past Race Rock into Block Island Sound . T hese daunting entra nce and ex it passages may have delayed Europeans opening up the Sound , but Block knew before he went into it that Hell Gate led to a body of water that exi ted at the other end into the Atlantic-a fac t he undoubtedl y learned fro m the Indians with whom he had been trading, in fr iend ly fas hi on, for several years.
Cradle of Culture When the Indian tribes that settled the area fi rst came upon the North American scene, someti me before 10,000 BC (well before, recent fi ndi ngs suggest), Long Island Sound was a true inland sea, or perhaps more acc urately a giant fres h-water puddle left behind by the retreating g lacier that covered most of North America in the Ice Age. Sea level has ri sen some 350 fee t since then, as water locked in the great g laciers returned to the oceans. Much ev idence of the arc ha ic Indi an coasta l presence and culture is pro babl y lost to us underwater. But a pretty clear picture of the culture of the European contact period emerges from survivin g archaeo log ical evidence and from the fa irly sophi sti cated interchange that proceeded between Ind ians and the European- mainl y Engli sh- immi grants who began to settle both shores of the So und in the 1630s and 40s . The new arrivals fo und a native population who were acti ve fa rmers and trade rs, as well as hunters and fis hers. Indi an ag riculture up and down the coast had saved starv ing Engli sh colonies at Jamestown and Pl ymouth , and on Long Island the new ly-arrived Europeans tended to settle in cul tivated Indi an fie lds-that' s the deri vation of Old Fie ld Po int, a famili ar seam ark halfway down Long Island just west of Port Jefferson. Still more striking was the degree of commerc ial development. Trade ro utes-probabl y concussive, or fro m tribe to tribe, rather than mainta ined th ro ugh long-haul trips brou ght stone fo r spearheads from as fa r as Labrador, and di stincti ve pottery fragments show interchange maintai ned inl and to the G reat Lakes and south to the Chesapeake. Wampum , fi nely crafted beads made from clam or oyster she ll s, served as a uni ve rsa l currency and al so as ornament signify ing prestige-muc h as the E uropeans used gold (and still do) for both these purposes. Because of the acti ve trade in furs, wampum immed iate ly became an intercultural medium of exchange, extensive ly used by the European arri vals, and even manufac tured by them. The local suppl y of furs was soon ex hau sted, so by the 1650s and ' 60s the Indi ans were reduced to trading away their land fo r European products, including the not very soc ia ll y benefi cia l guns and gunpowder. Perhaps even more de leteri ous was the rum distilled from West Indian cane brought into the area through the maritime trade routes maintained by the European settlers with the Caribbean plantations. Guns introduced po litica l and criminal problems that Indian law and custom could not dea l with , strong as these were for the ir own cultu re, and the same seems to have been true of the soc ial problems induced by rum , which an overstressed Ind ian populace just couldn ' t to lerate. On the north shore, the warlike Pequot tribe, centered around Mys ti c, j ust inside Fisher ' s Island at the east end of the Sound , had exerc ised s uzerainty over ne ighboring tribes. They vigorously opposed European settl ement. The o utcome of thi s was the Pequot war of 1636-37, a war of extermination in whi ch the remnants of the tribe were pursued fro m the 15