Drake Samuel Adams
Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast
CHAPTER XII.
THE ISLES OF SHOALS —continued
" – There be land-rats and water-rats, water thieves and land thieves; I mean pirates." —Merchant of Venice.
My next excursion was to Smutty Nose, or Haley's. Seen from Star Island it shows two eminences, with a little hamlet of four houses, all having their gable-ends toward the harbor, on the nearest rising ground. Round the south-west point of Smutty Nose is the little haven already alluded to in the previous chapter, made by building a causeway of stone over to Malaga, where formerly the sea ran through. This Mr. Samuel Haley did at his own cost, expending part of a handsome fortune on the work. Into this little haven, we are told, many distressed vessels have put in and found safe anchorage. The chronicles, speaking by the pen of a fair islander, say old Mr. Haley, in building a wall, turned over a large flat stone, beneath which lay four bars of solid silver; with which, adds tradition, he began his sea mole. I should have thought, had this precious discovery gained currency, no stone would have been left unturned by the islanders, and that Haley's wall might have risen with magical celerity.
It is certain these islands were in former times the resort of freebooters, with such names as Dixy Bull, Low, and Argall (a licensed and titled buccaneer), who left the traces of their own lawlessness in the manner of life of the islanders. It was a convenient place in which to refit or obtain fresh provisions without the asking of troublesome questions.110 The pirates could expect little booty from the fishermen, but they often picked them up at sea to replenish their crews.
In the year 1689 two noted buccaneers, Thomas Hawkins and Thomas Pound, cruised on the coast of New England, committing many depredations. The Bay colony determined on their capture, and dispatched an armed sloop called the Mary, Samuel Pease commander, which put to sea in October of that year. Hearing the pirates had been cruising at the mouth of Buzzard's Bay, Captain Pease made all sail in that direction. The Mary overhauled the outlaw off Wood's Hole. Pease ran down to her, hailed, and ordered her to heave to. The freebooter ran up a blood-red flag in defiance, when the Mary fired a shot athwart her forefoot, and again hailed, with a demand to strike her colors. Pound, who stood upon his quarter-deck, answered the hail with, "Come on, you dogs, and I will strike you." Waving his sword, his men poured a volley into the Mary, and the action for some time raged fiercely, no quarter being expected. Captain Pease at length carried his adversary by boarding, receiving wounds in the hand-to-hand conflict of which he died.
In 1723 the sloop Dolphin, of Cape Ann, was taken on the Banks by Phillips, a noted pirate. The able-bodied of the Dolphin were forced to join the pirate crew. Among the luckless fishermen was John Fillmore, of Ipswich. Phillips, to quiet their scruples, promised on his honor to set them at liberty at the end of three months. Finding no other hope of escape, for of course the liar and pirate never meant to keep his word, Fillmore, with the help of Edward Cheesman and an Indian, seizing his opportunity, killed three of the chief pirates, including Phillips, on the spot. The rest of the crew, made up in part of pressed men, submitted, and the captured vessel was brought into Boston by the conquerors on the 3d of May, 1724. John Fillmore, the quasi pirate, was the great-grandfather of Millard Fillmore, thirteenth President of the United States.
It is affirmed on the authority of Charles Chauncy that Low once captured some fishermen from the "Shoals." Disappointed, perhaps, in his expectation of booty, he first caused the captives to be barbarously flogged, and afterward required each of them three times to curse Parson Mather or be hanged. The prisoners did not reject the alternative.
No doubt these pirates had heard of the sermons Cotton Mather was in the habit of preaching before the execution of many of their confederates. In his time it was the custom to march condemned prisoners under a strong guard to some church on the Sabbath preceding the day on which they were to suffer. There, marshaled in the broad aisle, they listened to a discourse on the enormity of their crimes and the torments that awaited them in the other world, this being the manner in which the old divines administered the consolations of religion to such desperate malefactors.
New England could contribute a thick volume to the annals of piracy in the New World from the records of a hundred years subsequent to her settlement. The name of Kidd was long a bugbear with which to terrify wayward children into obedience, and the search for his treasure continues, as we have seen, to this day. Bradish, Bellamy, and Quelch sailed these seas like true followers of those dreaded rovers who swept the English coasts, and sent their defiance to the king himself:
"Go tell the King of England, go tell him thus from me,
Though he reigns king o'er all the land, I will reign king at sea."
They have still the ghost of a pirate on Appledore, one of Kidd's men. There has consequently been much seeking after treasure. The face of the spectre is "pale, and very dreadful" to behold; and its neck, it is averred, shows the livid mark of the hangman's noose. It answers to the name of "Old Bab." Once no islander could be found hardy enough to venture on Appledore after night-fall. I shrewdly suspect "Old Bab" to be in the pay of the Laightons.
In 1700, Rear-admiral Benbow was lying at Piscataqua, with nine of Kidd's pirates on board for transportation to England. Robert Bradenham, Kidd's surgeon, says the Earl of Bellomont, was the "obstinatest and most hardened of 'em all." In the year 1726 the pirates William Fly, Samuel Cole, and Henry Greenville were taken and put to death at Boston, after having been well preached to in Old Brattle Street by Dr. Colman. Fly, the captain, like a truculent knave, refused to come into church, and on the way to execution bore himself with great bravado. He jumped briskly into the cart with a nosegay in his hand, smiling and bowing to the spectators, as he passed along, with real or affected unconcern. At the gallows he showed the same obstinacy until his face was covered.111
The various legends relative to the corsairs, and the secreting of their ill-gotten gains among these rocks, would of themselves occupy a lengthy chapter; and the recital of the fearful sights and sounds which have confronted such as were hardy enough to seek for treasure would satisfy the most inveterate marvel-monger in the land.
Among others to whom it is said these islands were known was the celebrated Captain Teach, or Blackbeard, as he was often called. He is supposed to have buried immense treasure here, some of which, like Haley's ingots, has been dug up and appropriated by the islanders. On one of his cruises, while lying off the Scottish coast waiting for a rich trader, he was boarded by a stranger, who came off in a small boat from the shore. The new-comer demanded to be led before the pirate chief, in whose cabin he remained some time shut up. At length Teach appeared on deck with the stranger, whom he introduced to the crew as a comrade. The vessel they were expecting soon came in sight, and after a bloody conflict became the prize of Blackbeard. It was determined by the corsair to man and arm the captured vessel. The unknown had fought with undaunted bravery and address during the battle. He was given the command of the prize.
The stranger Scot was not long in gaining the bad eminence of being as good a pirate as his renowned commander. His crew thought him invincible, and followed where he led. At last, after his appetite for wealth had been satisfied by the rich booty of the Southern seas, he arrived on the coast of his native land. His boat was manned, and landed him on the beach near an humble dwelling, whence he soon returned, bearing in his arms the lifeless form of a woman.
The pirate ship immediately set sail for America, and in due time dropped her anchor in the road of the Isles of Shoals. Here the crew passed their time in secreting their riches and in carousal. The commander's portion was buried on an island apart from the rest. He roamed over the isles with his beautiful companion, forgetful, it would seem, of his fearful trade, until one morning a sail was seen standing in for the islands. All was now activity on board the pirate; but before getting under way the outlaw carried the maiden to the island where he had buried his treasure, and made her take a fearful oath to guard the spot from mortals until his return, were it not 'til doomsday. He then put to sea.
The strange sail proved to be a warlike vessel in search of the freebooter. A long and desperate battle ensued, in which the cruiser at last silenced her adversary's guns. The vessels were grappled for a last struggle, when a terrific explosion strewed the sea with the fragments of both. Stung to madness by defeat, knowing that if taken alive the gibbet awaited him, the rover had fired the magazine, involving friend and foe in a common fate.
A few mangled wretches succeeded in reaching the islands, only to perish miserably, one by one, from cold and hunger. The pirate's mistress remained true to her oath to the last, or until she also succumbed to want and exposure. By report, she has been seen more than once on White Island – a tall, shapely figure, wrapped in a long sea-cloak, her head and neck uncovered, except by a profusion of golden hair. Her face is described as exquisitely rounded, but pale and still as marble. She takes her stand on the verge of a low, projecting point, gazing fixedly out upon the ocean in an attitude of intense expectation. A former race of fishermen avouched that her ghost was doomed to haunt those rocks until the last trump shall sound, and that the ancient graves to be found on the islands were tenanted by Blackbeard's men.112
These islands were also the favorite haunt of smugglers.113 Many a runlet of Canary has been "passed" here that never paid duty to king or Congress. It must have been a very paradise of free-traders, who, doubtless, had the sympathies of the inhabitants in their illicit traffic. "What a smuggler's isle!" was my mental ejaculation when I first set foot on Star Island; what a retreat for some Dirck Hatteraick or outlawed Jean Lafitte!
I rowed over to Smutty Nose in a wherry. The name has a rough significance. Looking at the islands at low tide, they present well-defined belts of color. First is the dark line of submerged rock-weed, which led some acute fisherman to hit off with effect the more popular name of Haley's Island; next comes a strip almost as green as the grass in the rocky pastures; above these again, shaded into browns or dingy yellows, the rocks appear of a tawny hue, and then blanched to a ghastly whiteness, a little relieved by dusky patches of green.
I remarked that the schooners of twenty or thirty tons' burden lying in the harbor were all at moorings, ready to run after a school of fish or away from a storm. It is only a few years since three of these vessels were blown from their moorings and stranded on the rocks of Smutty Nose and Appledore.
In 1635 the ship James, Captain Taylor, of Bristol, England, had a narrow escape from being wrecked here. After losing three anchors, she was with difficulty guided past the great rocks into the open sea. The curious reader will find the details quaintly set forth in the journal of Rev. Richard Mather, the ancestor of a celebrated family of New England divines.114 She had on board a hundred passengers for the Massachusetts Colony.
While lying on our oars in this basin, where so many antique craft have been berthed, it is perhaps not amiss to allude to Thomas Morton, of Mount Wollaston,115 alias Merry Mount. To do so it will not only be necessary to clamber up the crumbling side of the ship in which he was being sent a prisoner to England, but to surmount prejudices equally decrepit, that, like the spectre of "Old Bab," continue to appear long after they have been decently gibbeted. The incident derives a certain interest from the fact that Morton's was the first instance of banishment in the New England colonies. The only consequence of Thomas Morton, of Clifford's Inn, gent., is due to the effort to cast obloquy upon the Pilgrims.
In the year 1628 the ship Whale was riding at the Isles of Shoals, Morton having been seized by order of Plymouth Colony, and put on board for transportation to England. What manner of ship the Whale was may be gathered from Morton's own account of her. The master he calls "Mr. Weathercock," and the ship "a pitiful, weather-beaten craft," in which he was "in more danger than Jonah in the whale's belly."
The cause of Morton's banishment is often asserted to have been simply his licentious conduct, and what some have been pleased to call indulgence in such "hearty old English pastimes" as dancing about a May-pole, singing songs of no doubtful import, holding high wassail the while, like the mad, roystering rogues his followers were. The Pilgrim Fathers are indicted by a class of historians desirous of displaying to the world the intolerance of the "Plymouth Separatists," as distinguished from the liberality which marked the religious views of the settlers east of the Merrimac. Our forefathers, say they, did not come to the New World for religious liberty, but to fish and trade.
Morton's offense is stated by Governor Bradford, in his letters to the Council for New England and to Sir F. Gorges, to have been the selling of arms and ammunition to the Indians in such quantities as to endanger the safety of the infant plantations. He was arrested, and his association of Merry Mount broken up, after repeated and friendly efforts to dissuade him from this course had been met with insolence and bravado. It stands thus in Governor Bradford's letter-book:
"To the Honourable his Majesty's Council for New England, these, Right Honourable and our very good Lords:
"Necessity hath forced us, his Majesty's subjects of New England in general (after long patience), to take this course with this troublesome planter, Mr. Thomas Morton, whom we have sent unto your honours that you may be pleased to take that course with him which to your honourable wisdom shall seem fit; who hath been often admonished not to trade or truck with the Indians either pieces, powder, or shot, which yet he hath done, and duly makes provision to do, and could not be restrained, taking it in high scorn (as he speaks) that any here should controul therein. Now the general weakness of us his Majesty's subjects, the strength of the Indians, and at this time their great preparations to do some affront upon us, and the evil example which it gives unto others, and having no subordinate general government under your honours in this land to restrain such misdemeanours, causeth us to be troublesome to your Lordships to send this party unto you for remedy and redress hereof."
The letter to Sir F. Gorges116 is in greater detail, but its length prevents its insertion with the foregoing extract. The Governor of New Plymouth makes a similar allegation with regard to the fishing ships. It is noticeable that all the plantations took part in this affair, Piscataqua, the Isles of Shoals, Edward Hilton, and others paying their proportion of the expense of sending Morton out of the country.
Morton's offense, therefore, was political and not religious, and his extradition a measure of self-preservation, an inexorable law in 1628 to that handful of settlers. If, at the end of nearly two centuries and a half, the Government those Pilgrims contributed to found deemed it necessary to the public safety to banish individuals from its borders, how, then, may we challenge this act of a few men who dwelt in a wilderness, and worshiped their God with the Bible in one hand and a musket in the other?
Morton defied the proclamation of the king promulgated in 1622, saying there was no penalty attached to it. Its terms forbade "any to trade to the portion of America called New England, being the whole breadth of the land between forty and forty-eight degrees of north latitude, excepting those of the Virginia Company, the plantation having been much injured by interlopers, who have injured the woods, damaged the harbors, trafficked with the savages, and even sold them weapons, and taught them the use thereof."117
Of the May-pole, which the Pilgrims regarded with grim discontent, Stubbes gives the manner in England of bringing it home from the woods.
"But," he says, "their cheefest jewell they bring home with greate veneration, as thus: they have twentie or fourtie yoke of oxen, every oxe havyng a sweete nosegaie of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and these oxen drawe home this Maie-poole, which is covered all over with flowers and hearbes, bounde rounde aboute with stringes from the top to the bottome, and sometyme painted with variable colours, with two or three hundred men, women, and children followyng it with great devotion. And thus beying reared up with handkercheifes and flagges streamyng on the toppe, they strawe the grounde aboute, binde green boughes about it, sett up Sommer haules, Bowers, and Arbours hard by. And then fall they to banquet and feast, to leape and dance aboute it, as the Heathen people did at the dedication of their idolles, whereof this is a perfect patterne, or rather the thynge itself."
Smutty Nose, the most verdant of the islands, was one of the earliest settled. The stranger for the first time feels something like soil beneath his feet. There is a wharf and a little landing-place, where a boat may be beached. When within Haley's little cove, I looked down into the water, and saw the perch (cunners) swimming lazily about. This was the only place where the old-time industry of the isles showed even a flake, so to speak, of its former greatness. There were a few men engaged in drying their fish near the landing. Clear weather with westerly winds is best for this purpose; dull or foggy weather spoils the fish.
At a little distance, shorn of some of its former adornments, is the homestead of Samuel Haley, who with his two sons and their families occupied the island many years ago. Not far off is the little family grave-yard of the Haleys, with the palings falling in decay, and the mounds overgrown with a tangle of rank grass. At one time, by his energy, Mr. Haley had made of his island a self-sustaining possession. Before the Revolution he had built a windmill, salt-works, and rope-walk; a bakehouse, brewery, distillery, blacksmith's and cooper's shops succeeded in the first year of peace – all going to decay within his lifetime. By all report of him, he was a good and humane man, and I hereby set up his prostrate grave-stone on my page:
"IN MEMORY OF MR. SAMUEL HALEY
Who died in the year 1811
Aged 84
He was a man of great Ingenuity
Industry Honor and Honesty, true to his
Country & A man who did A great
Public good in Building A
Dock & Receiving into his
Enclosure many a poor
Distressed Seaman & Fisherman
In distress of Weather."
A few steps farther on are the graves of fourteen shipwrecked mariners, marked by rude boulders. It is entered in the Gosport records: "1813, Jan. 14th, ship Sagunto stranded on Smutty Nose Isle; Jan. 15th, one man found; 16th, six men found; 21st, seven men found." The record sums up the number as twelve bodies found, whereas the total appears to be fourteen.
Although the ship Sagunto was not stranded on Smutty Nose Isle, the wreck of a ship, either Spanish or Portuguese, with all on board, remains a terrible fact but too well attested by these graves.118 The horror of the event is deepened and strengthened by the simple word "Unknown." When this ship crashed and filled and went down, the Sagunto was lying, after a terrible buffeting, within a safe harbor.
It was in a blinding snow-storm, and a gale that strewed the shore from the Penobscot to Hatteras with wrecks, that a ship built of cedar and mahogany was thrown on these rocks. Not a living soul was left to tell the tale of that bitter January night. The ill-fated vessel was richly laden, no doubt, for boxes of raisins and almonds from Malaga drifted on shore the next morning. On a piece of the wreck that came in a silver watch of English make was found, with the letters "P. S." graven on the seals; and among the débris was a Spanish and part of an American ensign, for it was war-time then between England and the American States. The watch had stopped at exactly four o'clock, or when time ceased for those hapless Spaniards. There were also found some twenty letters, addressed south of New York. Conjecture said it was a Spanish ship from Cadiz, bound for Philadelphia.
This is the story of this little clump of graves, and of the wreck, to this day unknown. It has been told many times in prose and poetry, but not often truly. Samuel Haley had been quietly lying in his grave two years. The reader may or may not believe he found the frozen bodies of some of the crew next morning reclining on his wall. Here is a wild flower of island growth, of a handful cast upon these fading mounds:
"O sailors, did sweet eyes look after you
The day you sailed away from sunny Spain?
Bright eyes that followed fading ship and crew,
Melting in tender rain?"
I wondered that these fourteen the old sea had strangled and flung up here could rest so peacefully in ground unblessed by Holy Church. Perchance the spot has witnessed midnight mass, with incense and with missal: no doubt beads have been told, and a pater and ave said by pious pilgrims.
It is not pleasant to think that the island has become more widely known through the medium of an atrocious murder committed here in March, 1873. Formerly the islanders dated from some well-remembered wreck; now it is before or since the murder on Smutty Nose they reckon.
On the morning of March 6th the Norwegian who lives opposite Star Island, on Appledore, heard a cry for help. Going to the shore, he saw a woman standing on the rocks of Malaga in her night-dress. He crossed over and brought the poor creature to his cottage, when it appeared that her feet were frozen. She was half dead with fright and exposure, but told her tale as soon as she was able.
John Hontvet, a fisherman, occupied one of the three houses on Smutty Nose; the third counting from the little cove, as you look at it from Star Island. On the night of the 5th of March he was at Portsmouth, leaving three women – Mary, his wife; Annethe and Karen Christensen – at home. They went to bed as usual, Annethe with Mrs. Hontvet in the bedroom; Karen on a couch in the kitchen. It was a fine moonlight night, though cold, and there was snow on the ground.
Some time during the night a man entered the house, it is supposed for the purpose of robbery. He fastened the door between the kitchen, which he first entered, and the bedroom, thus isolating the sleeping women. Karen, having awoke, cried out, when she was attacked by the intruder with a chair. The noise having aroused the two women in the bedroom, Mary Hontvet jumped out of bed, forced open the door leading into the kitchen, and succeeded in getting hold of the wounded girl, Karen, whom she drew within her own chamber. All this took place in the dark. Mary then bade Annethe, her brother's wife, to jump out of the window, and she did so, but was too much terrified to go beyond the corner of the house. Mary, meanwhile, was holding the door of the kitchen against the attempts of their assailant to force it open. Foiled here, the villain left the house, and meeting the young wife, Annethe, was seen by Mary, in the clear moonlight, to deal her three terrible blows with an axe. But before she was struck down the girl had recognized her murderer, and shrieked out, "Louis, Louis!"
After this accursed deed the man went back to the house, and Mary also made her escape by the window. Karen was too badly hurt to follow. The clear-grit Norwegian woman ran first to the dock, but finding no boat there, hid herself among the rocks. She durst not shout, for fear the sound of her voice would bring the murderer to the spot. There she remained, like another Betty Moody, until sunrise, when she took courage and went across the sea-wall to Malaga and was rescued. I was told that when she fled, with rare presence of mind, she took her little dog under her arm, for fear it might prove her destruction.
It resulted that Louis Wagner, a Prussian, was arrested, tried for the murder, and condemned as guilty. The fatal recognition by Annethe, the figure seen with uplifted axe through the window by Mary, and the prisoner's absence from his lodgings on the night of the murder, pointed infallibly to him as the chief actor in this night of horrors. To have committed this crime he must have rowed from Portsmouth to the Islands and back again, on the night in question; no great feat for one of those hardy islanders, and Wagner was noted for muscular strength. It is said he was of a churlish disposition, and would seldom speak unless addressed, when he would answer shortly. He was not considered a bad fellow, but a poor companion.
I went to the house. Relic-hunters had left it in a sorry plight; taking away even the sashes of the windows, shelves, and every thing movable. Even the paper had been torn from the walls, and carried off for its blood-stains. Hontvet described, with the phlegm of his race, the appearance of the house on the morning of the tragedy: "Karen lay dere; Annethe lay here," he said. I saw they were preparing to make it habitable again: better burn it, say I.
We had a sun-dog at evening and a rainbow in the morning, full-arched, and rising out of the sea, a sure forerunner, say veteran observers, of foul weather. Says the quatrain of the forecastle:
"Rainbow in the morning,
Sailors take warning;
Rainbow at night,
Is the sailor's delight."
I spent a quiet, breezy afternoon in exploring Appledore. The landing from the harbor side has to be made in some cleft of the rock, and is not practicable when there is a sea running. Passing by the cottage at the shore, I first went up the rocky declivity to the site of the abandoned settlement of so long ago. It may still be recognized by the cellars, rough stone walls, and fragments of bricks lying scattered about. Thistles, raspberry-bushes, and dwarf cherry-trees in fragrant bloom, were growing in the depressions which marked these broken hearth-stones of a forgotten people. The poisonous ivy, sometimes called mercury, so often found clinging to old walls, was here. Some country-folk pretend its potency is such that they who look on it are inoculated with the poison; a scratch, as I know to my cost, will suffice.
Here was a strip of green grass running along the harbor side, and, for the first time, the semblance of a road; I followed it until it lost itself among the rocks. A horse and a yoke of oxen were browsing by the way, and on a distant shelf of rock I saw a cow, much exaggerated in size, contentedly ruminative. Clumps of huckleberry and fragrant bayberry were frequent, with blackberry and other vines clustering above the surface rocks.
I am inclined to doubt whether, after all, the habitation of Appledore119 was abandoned on account of the Indians, for Star Island, as has been remarked, could give no better security. Probably the landing had much to do with it. Without some moving cause the inhabitants would hardly have left Appledore and its verdure for the bald crags of Star Island. The choice of Appledore by the first settlers was probably due to its spring of pure water, the only one on the islands.
The year 1628 is the first in which we can locate actual settlers at the Shoals. Mr. Jeffrey and Mr. Burslem, then assessed two pounds for the expenses of Morton's affair, are supposed to have been living there. By 1640 the Rev. Mr. Hull, of Agamenticus, paid parochial visits to the Isles, and some time before 1661, says Dr. Morse, they had a meeting-house on Hog Island, though the service of the Church of England was the first performed there. The three brothers Cutt, of Wales, settled there about 1645, removing soon to the main-land, where they became distinguished. Antipas Maverick is mentioned as resident in 1647. Another settler whom the chronicles do not omit was William Pepperell, of Cornwall, England, father of the man of Louisburg, who was here about 1676. The removal of the brothers Cutt within two years, and of Pepperell and Gibbons after a brief residence, does not confirm the view that the islands at that early day possessed attractions to men of the better class sometimes claimed for them. Pepperell and Gibbons left the choice of a future residence to chance, with an indifference worthy a Bedouin of the Great Desert. Holding their staves between thumb and finger until perpendicularly poised, they let them fall, departing, the tradition avers, in the direction in which each pointed – Pepperell to Kittery, Gibbons to Muscongus.
The first woman mentioned who came to reside at Hog Island was Mrs. John Reynolds, and she came in defiance of an act of court prohibiting women from living on the islands. One of the Cutts, Richard by name, petitioned for her removal, together with the hogs and swine running at large on the island belonging to John Reynolds. The court, however, permitted her to remain during good behavior. This occurred in 1647. It gives a glimpse of what society must hitherto have been on the islands to call for such enactments. No wonder men of substance left the worse than barren rocks, and that right speedily.
I walked around the shores of Appledore, stopping to explore the chasms in my way. One of them I could liken to nothing but a coffin, it seemed so exactly fashioned to receive the hull of some unlucky ship. On some of the rocks I remarked impressions, as if made with the heel of a human foot. In the offing Duck Island showed its jagged teeth, around which the tide swelled and broke until it seemed frothing at the mouth.
