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Sloop Logs and Ledgers: Discovering Southport's

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Sloop Logs and Ledgers: Discovering Southport's Sloop Logs and Ledgers: Discovering Southport’s Maritime History Pequot Library Special Collections 6/20/2019 CONTENTS Introduction ........................................................................................................................ - 2 - Sailing Terms: .................................................................................................................. - 3 - What is a Sloop? ................................................................................................................. - 4 - ............................................................................................................................................ - 4 - th Sailing in the 19 Century .................................................................................................... - 5 - Sea Shanties ............................................................................ Error! Bookmark not defined. Pirates ..................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. Southport’s Place in Coastal Trade ...................................................................................... - 5 - Commerce in the Harbor .................................................................................................... - 6 - Southport in the Civil War .................................................................................................. - 7 - Southport Then & Now ....................................................................................................... - 7 - Disaster on the Sound! ........................................................................................................ - 8 - List of Items ........................................................................................................................ - 9 - - 1 - Introduction Southport has long been defined by its relationship to the water, in name as well as action. After purchasing the town lands in 1660 from the local Sasqua tribes, colonial settlers re-named the new town Mill River. In these early years, Mill River’s primary industry came from its grist mills. Mill River was a farming community, but one that relied on the resources that the water provided, and one that was poised to make the river a much larger part of its life and economy. After the Revolutionary War, Mill River emerged as a shipping center. Prior to the war, Mill River was a collection of about eight buildings, and one sloop sailed out of the Harbor to Boston and New York. The clearest indication of Mill River Harbor’s growing importance comes with early improvements made to the Harbor. In October of 1799, the town of Fairfield voted to sink the channel of the Harbor to accommodate more and larger vessels. At this point, the Harbor had been busy enough to cause some commotion. Before the 19th century, most commercial activity was done out of Fairfield. However, as Southport’s farming and manufacturing grew, Mill River Harbor became a more important part of local commerce. The town exported a number of goods, and it was convenient for local farmers to take their goods to Mill River. The size of Mill River made it challenging for larger vessels to navigate, but ships of up to 100 tons could comfortably sail in and out. In 1825, the Mill River fleet consisted of one brig, five schooners, and twenty sloops, and some twenty commercial buildings lined the Harbor’s west side. The captains of these vessels shipped grain, lumber, rye, flour, apples, hay, and other products to New York and to the southern states. Successive improvements to the Harbor followed an upward trajectory in Mill River’s importance as a shipping center. The outer breakwater was completed in 1831, which extended the mouth of the Harbor. This was also the year that Mill River was officially chartered as the Borough of Southport, a new name that reflected the growing town’s recognition of its transition from a sleepy farming community to a bustling port town. By 1836 Southport had exploded to 60 or 70 dwellings, along with eight stores, a school, a post office, a bank, and a church. For a town of its - 2 - size, popular wisdom held that more shipping was owned in Southport in proportion to its population than any other port between New York and Boston. The years after 1840, with the development of the famous Southport Globe Onion, were ones of even more prodigious growth and expansion. This exhibition will walk you through some of the history of Southport in its commercial heyday. We will explore the lives of Southport’s captains and tradesmen, through the personal and professional traces they left behind. We are especially pleased to share a glimpse of one of Pequot Library’s great treasures, the journals of Captain Jonathan Bulkley, which record life in Southport between 1802 and 1858. As you move through the exhibition, we invite you to reflect on what has changed between now and then; many early homes still stand, but the muddy, busy streets full of ox carts and sailors have faded into the past. Peel back the layers of Southport history with us! SAILING TERMS: Moor: fastening a boat by cable or rope to a shore or anchor Windward: direction the wind is currently blowing Leeward: opposite direction from where the wind is blowing Astern: behind or beyond the back of a ship Fleet: a group of ships Yaw: to veer off course Hull: the part of a boat’s body that rests and floats in the water Barnacle: a small shellfish which sticks to the bottom of ships Bumboat: a private boat used for the selling of goods Doubloon: a valuable Spanish gold coin Ghost: to sail slowly when there is little or no wind Grog: a mixture of rum and water given to seamen Old Salt: an experienced and/or old sailor Scrimshaw: to adorn whalebone, ivory, shells, or other nautical materials with etchings - 3 - What is a Sloop? A sloop, described as the purest type of sailing, is distinguishable by its single mast and shallow draft. The length of a 19th century sloop varied between seventy to ninety feet with an average length of fifty feet. During that time, an abundance of single-masted dredging sloops worked the Long Island Sound, with numbers reaching into the hundreds at the height of the oyster industry. Schooners were the most common type of vessel sailing the Sound, distinguishable with their two or more masts and fore-and-aft sails. Yet the sloop remained popular especially for short voyages due to its speed and maneuverability. Packet service with regularly scheduled departures was established with sloops transporting people and light freight up and down the coastline. - 4 - Sailing in the 19th Century Single-masted sloops made up the majority of market vessels in the Southport Harbor that sailed to New York once or twice a week. In 1870, the Southport Chronicle reported, “It was nothing to see the loaded wagons and ox carts lined from the Harbor, up Main Street and Pequot Avenue, all the way to the Bronson Road railroad bridge on each shipping day.” Because the onion season ended in the fall, shipping commenced at that time and continued well into the winter. Sailing at that time of the year was no easy feat. In January of 1804, Jonathan Bulkley wrote in his diary, “The Mill River froze over last Wednesday night and still continues to be froze so hard that no mast can get out. There is 3 vessels loaded and ready to sail but cannot get out on account of the ice.” Another weather-related complication was noted in the Chronicle in 1870 regarding the schooner the S.E. Faulkner’s narrow escape from destruction because of hurricane-like conditions. Southport’s Place in Coastal Trade In the early days of the nineteenth century, Fairfield was the center of coastal trade, but as the village of Mill River began to produce lucrative crops, it acquired prominence in its own right, becoming a center of commercial, maritime trade in the middle part of that century. In fact, it became so important, that the name of the village was changed from Mill River to Southport during that time. It produced a number of crops, from lumber to apples, but its most prolific export was the onion, and the town acquired national renown with the Southport Globe Onion. These produce items were shipped out of the Harbor on sloops and schooners which traveled most frequently to New York and other domestic coastal cities. Because of the shallowness and smallness of Southport’s Harbor, larger vessels were precluded from coming and - 5 - going, which meant that longer, ocean voyages could not be undertaken. When the Southport onion declined in the 1880s, maritime commerce settled on the Long Island Sound’s rich supply of oysters. Although steamships came into vogue, these newfangled vessels were never popular in the smaller harbor. And so Southport’s place in maritime trade diminished in the beginning of the twentieth century, but it should not be forgotten that the small village and harbor were instrumental in securing North America’s place as a goliath of coastal commerce. Commerce in the Harbor In the 19th century, Southport was still primarily a farming community, but the Harbor provided the means by which local agricultural products reached buyers. Even after the int roduction of the railroad in 1848, Southport’s market fleet was still the most desirable way to ship goods. Not only were the captains of these ships known and respected members of the community, consisting of the Jennings and Meeker firms, among others, but cargo carried in sloops was packed in better insulation than
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