know the tales told by the commercial sailors on the Sound then digging a clam from its beaches or pulling a fish from its when he was growing up on its waters a hundred years ago. depths on a line left trailing astern in hopeful fashion. One gets a picture of old timers who knew the Sound like the And there is the Chesapeake bugeye Little Jennie of 1884 back of their hand-but nothing beyond. He reports: at the Long Island Maritime Center, a most promising venture In my early days I knew old sloop skippers who after long that embraces also a passenger launch of 1910 and uses both lives of voyaging confessed that they had never been boats to run very active historical and ecological programs beyond the Race .... Another old fellow who sailed out of from Huntington Harbor. And one cannot overlook the splenEastchester Creek had never passed east of Eaton ' s Neck, did Suffolk Marine Museum on the south shore at Sayville, and looked upon the waters beyond as a fearful place. Long Island, home to the oyster sloop Modesty , the schooner But he also notes: "No doubt the Sound trade was the breeding Priscilla of 1888 and other small craft native to the shallows and training place of those mariners for whom in after years of the south shore bays. the world grew too small." Indeed! Specifically, Captain Adriaen Block is not forgotten! Six miles up the ConnectiHenry Champlin, master of the sloop Superior burnt by the cut River at Steamboat Dock in the old shipping town of Essex British in their raid on Essex, on the Connecticut River, in is the Connecticut River Museum , presenting a lively, su1814, went on to become a pre-eminent captain and co-owner perbly detailed picture of the uses of the waterway through of the famous Black X Line in the tough Western Ocean time, and its complex relation to the Sound, whose tides it packet trade (see SH 36, 10-1 I). And N. B. Palmer, discoverer carries on occasion as far north as Wethersfield (see SH36). of the Antarctic Continent, sailing in the bitter waters south of While no floating exhibits are maintained, the Museum Cape Hom in 1820, had come of age dodging British patrols summons them in classic yacht regattas, and this year will hold in a coasting sloop trading between his native Stonington and a waterfront celebration honoring Adriaen Block's passage up New York (the full length of the Sound) in the War of 1812. the river, on August7-9. Milford,just west of New Haven, will From the first, as we've seen, the colonists had to tum back hold Harbor Awareness Days, August 4-6, with a fleet of to the sea to support their nascent civilization. And they built visiting ships honoring the 350th anniversary of its settlement theirown ships to do so. As early as 1647 the vessel Tryall was in 1639, and Norwalk will hold its annual Oyster Festival built far up the Connecticut at Wethersfield for the West September 7-10. Among the ships in these movable feasts are Indies trade, and today's sleepy town of Setauket, across the the replicas of HMS Rose, British frigate of the Revolutionary Sound in Port Jefferson , launched her first recorded ship in War, based in Bridgeport, and the Continental Sloop Provi1662. Before the game played out, ships launched into this dence from Seaport 76 in Rhode Island, and the little brigantine little estuary had sailed in Atlantic and Mediterranean trades, Black Pearl (see p.31) sailed out of South Street Seaport in and one, the bark Urania, built for the coffee trade between New York. New York and Brazil, traded to China and served for a time as * * * * * a packet between Shanghai and Nagasaki! What with one thing and another, Long Island Sound has Sound dwellers also·picked up where the Indians left off in become the most populous and popular body of coastal water fishing local waters and in sending out small boats to catch the in the Americas. Will success spoil it? Is its deeply instructive whales that paddled along the south shore of Long Island. The and inspiring heritage to be forgollen and its environment whale trade led to worldwide voyaging as the local stock was finally destroyed in an orgy of pleasure-seeking? The answer killed off. Sag Harbor, on the southern jaw of Long Island ' s to those questions is clearly, and thankfully, No. People, who eastern end, and Cold Spring Harbor, at the western end of the have generated some problems, can solve them, and are Sound, became major centers of this industry, which greatly setting about doing so. Perhaps the Indians, who lived for unknown millenia in enriched both towns (with whale oil selling in the mid- I 800s for the then-pricely sum of $1 a gallon) until the trade faded fine balance with the Sound, piling up oyster shells in their away in the 1880s. New London, Greenport, and other Sound waterfront encampments to the fantastic depths mentioned towns shared in the whaling trade as well , but Cold Spring and further on in these pages, offer by example the most important Sag Harbor led. counsel. Earlier we noted their recreational use of the Sound, Both these towns, and others on both shores of the Sound a quiet, non-disruptive use woven into the fabric of their lives then became noted yachting centers , as they remain today. As with reverence and a sense of shared proprietorship and celein Nantucket and New Bedford, the accumulated wealth of the bration of the deeds of mighty hunters .... Aren ' t those the best vanished industry left a gorgeous heritage in sea captains ' and ways to enjoy the Sound today-and tomorrow? .i. shipowners ' homes built in a very happy period of American domestic architecture, as even the most casual visitor immeFOR FURTHER EXPLORATION: Thomas Fleming Day , diately sees. What else remains of this noble heritage in far-voyaging famed adl'Ocate of life afloat , and early editor of Rudder wooden ships? There ' s the packet Charles Cooper, built of maga:ine , wrote an admirable brief histo1y of his favorite Connecticut oak and launched from William Hall's Black crnising ground in 1910, entitled: "The Dei•il' s Belt: History Rock yard in 1856. Now a hulk in the Falklands, she is owned in Long island Sound." Picked up in The Rudder Treasury by New York's South Street Seaport Museum. And that's it ( 1953 ), this is long out of print; NMHS can supply a Xeroxed for the Sound-built deepwatermen. The whaling heritage of copy for $3 .50 postpaid. Fessenden S. Blanchard's Long the Long Island Sound seaports is fortunately represented by Island Sound ( 1958) is a full length exploration of the Sound the Charles W. Morgan, the 313-ton, I 06-foot whaleship that a generation ago , by another lifelong devotee of its byways set out from her Massachusetts homeport on her world- and its lore. But there is no good general history . The nearest girdling career in 1841. She is to be seen today, with the local thing to it is to he found in Between Ocean and Empire: An Noank fishing sloop Emma C. Berry and other vessels, great Illustrated History of Long Island, ed. Robert B. MacKay. a and small , at Mystic Seaport Museum. The oyster sloop Hope 304-page richly illustrated work embracing essays by leading of 1947, last of her breed, is on exhibit at the Norwalk authorities on subjects ranging from the native American Maritime Center, which also presents a series of living exhib- rnltures to the development of the great estates of the Cold its on the drama of natural life in Long Island Sound-a real Coast. Published in 1985 , it's a1•ailahle from the Society for eye-opener for one who has only sailed across its sometimes the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities, 93 North County glittering, sometimes dour and unsmiling surface, now and Road, Setauket NY 11733-for $24.95 plus $2.00 shipping. SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1989
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