Radio Script #893

Little Talks on Common Things
May 16, 1971

Today I want to continue the account I started two weeks ago about Maine before the Pilgrims. It was the Newfoundland fisheries that opened up more frequent voyages to the Gulf of Maine. Two weeks ago we showed how for 400 years before Columbus our coast had become increasingly known to voyagers, and how five years after Columbus’ discovery it was the Cabots who planted the British flag on North American soil. In 1548 the British Government passed an act to encourage fishing off Newfoundland. But the Portuguese were ahead of them. As the Portuguese and British fishing fleets came into conflict, and especially as the British proved stronger, Portuguese boats wandered farther and farther from Newfoundland. At least a hundred years before the landing of the Pilgrims, they had a regular, annual fish-drying station on Monhegan Island, and may indeed have had a station on the mainland of the Pemaquid peninsula.

The first French to visit our part of the New World came not under royal decree, as did the Cabots and some of the Portuguese, but were independent ship owners from Brittany and Normandy on the coast of France. It was the fishermen of Brittany who gave name to an island they discovered, calling it Cape Breton, the oldest French name on the North American coast. Gradually, on Nova Scotia and on Newfoundland, as well as on Cape Breton, the Bretons and Normans went from fishing to farming on the land. Thus they carried the language and customs of western France to Northeastern America, where for many years they were more influential than either the Portuguese or the English. Of course those French of the early 16th century had great influence on discoveries and settlements in Maine. Adjoining the French settlements on one side and the later English settlements on the other, Maine was destined to be the battleground for the two nations’ desperate conflict for supremacy in America.

In 1527 a merchant of Bristol named Robert Thomas was in Seville, Spain, whence he sent a letter to his English king. Henry VIII, urging him to catch up with other nations in the search for western lands. Henry sent out an expedition under John Rut to seek the northwest passage. In mid-summer, Rut arrived at Newfoundland, and at once sailed south. He landed where ancient maps labeled the area Norumbega, but his description makes it plain that he was somewhere near Mount Desert. This gives John Rut the honor of being the first Englishman who we can be sure actually stepped on Maine soil, though it is possible he was preceded 30 years earlier by Sebastian Cabot.

By 1530 the royal court of France had picked up interest in the western world. Jacques Cartier came to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1534 and discovered Prince Edward Island. He sailed also into a bay which was so hot on the July day when he discovered it that he called it Bay de Chaleur. He had thus sailed nearly around the Gaspe peninsula. It was on his second voyage in 1535 that Cartier discovered the St. Lawrence River. Up that river he sailed until he came to a place that he considered right for a French settlement and named it Mount Royal. During his winter at that place, Cartier was visited by Indians from New Brunswick and Maine.

Meanwhile the English were not idle. A navigator from London called Master Horne, set out to find the northwest passage in 1536. He later reported that he had been to Cape Breton and to Newfoundland. Then, turning south, he encountered bad weather and provisions ran out. The ruthless ways on the high seas at that time are revealed in these words from Horne’s report: “Such was the mercy of God that there arrived just at the right time a French fishing vessel well furnished with victuals. After a sharp fight, we became masters of that vessel and left the Frenchmen to their fate. Hence we sailed safely to England.”

Before 1540 Cartier had made more voyages to the St. Lawrence, and in that year the French King named Jean Robeval viceroy of the new countries of Canada, Belle Isle, Saguenay and Labrador. Cartier was authorized to carry to the St. Lawrence soldiers, priests, men and women, and all articles needed for planting a colony. This time Cartier did not use his former winter quarters, but built a fort at what became the city of Quebec. From there he explored well up the river and up its branch, the Saguenay. Another expedition took him into the Bay of Fundy, off the coast of Maine. Cartier’s carefully preserved accounts describe the course of rivers in the eastern part of Maine. What a pity that some of the early explorers of Penobscot and Casco Bays did not do the same.

The next stage in our Maine story is surprisingly involved with South America. The first plan for a Protestant colony in the New World was made by French Huguenots, and was intended for Brazil. The expedition reached Rio de Janiero in 1555 and founded there the first European settlement. Five years later it was taken over by the Portuguese. One of those who fled the Portuguese invaders was the Huguenot, Andre Trevet, who sailed north and later wrote a careful description of the Maine coast. His account said: “Having left Florida, we came to a river, one of the finest in the world in a land called Norumbega. Several other streams empty into it, and on its banks the French formerly erected a fort about ten leagues from its mouth. Some pilots told me this was in the proper country of Canada, but I know this is impossible, because Canada is in latitude 50° to 52°, which we were only at 43°.”

It seems clear that Trevet was writing about the mouth of the Penobscot, at least that part of the Penobscot Bay between Belfast and the sea. One island that he described in detail must certainly have been Islesboro, and a green mountain near it is surely Mount Battie at Camden. If Trevet is right that the French had earlier built a fort on the Penobscot, it was the earliest built by Europeans anywhere in Maine, but it is more probable that Trevet’s informants confused the Penobscot with the St. Lawrence, since they told him the river was in Canada. And of course there had been an early French fort up the St. Lawrence.

In 1603 the French King Henry IV granted to Sieur de Monts all of North America between the 40th and 46th degrees of latitude. That extended from the mouth of the Hudson River to Cape Breton. The de Monts grant was called Acadia. De Monts himself landed near what is now the town of Liverpool, Nova Scotia. Sailing around Cape Sable Island, he entered the Bay of Fundy in May, 1604. He selected a place for a colony and called it Port Royal. Crossing the Bay of Fundy, he discovered the St. John River. and sailed on to Passamaquoddy Bay, where he entered the St. Croix River to an island of some fifteen acres. There he spent a severe winter. At last in May, 1605 the survivors were able to leave.

They continued west, entered Penobscot Bay. and cast anchor at the mouth of the Kennebec. There de Monts raised a cross and took possession in the name of the King of France. After crossing Casco Bay, he returned to Port Royal. Determined that the French should not come far south of the St. Lawrence, the Earl of Southampton and other Britishers fitted out the ship Archangel under Captain George Weymouth, and sent it to the coast of Maine in 1605. He came to Monhegan Island, and claimed it for the English King. He visited other islands and came ashore near Boothbay Harbor. He was friendly with the Indians, but made the mistake of kidnapping six Indians and taking them to England.

On the last day of May in 1607 two vessels, the Gift of God and the Mary and John, sailed from Plymouth, England, under auspices of Lord John Popham, head of the Plymouth Company, that had been formed to promote colonies in America. Passing Monhegan they came in sight of a promontory identified as Cape Small point, at the western end of the present town of Phippsburg. They cast anchor a few miles east of that cape and near Pemaquid. Soon afterward they chose for settlement a site at the mouth of the Kennebec near the Phippsburg promontory. They gave the settlement the name of Sagadahoc Colony, because that was the Indian name for the part of the Kennebec from Merrymeeting Bay to the ocean. There they built the first European-style vessel ever constructed on the New England shore, a small 30 ton sloop they called the Virginia.

Had the Popham settlement been successful, it would have preceded the Pilgrims at Plymouth by 13 years as the first permanent New England settlement. But that was not to be. The winter was so severe, the deaths so many, and the survivors so eager to see England again, that in the spring of 1608 the place was abandoned.

Finally, as we approach 1620, let us not forget Pemaquid. It was off its shore that Weymouth had taken his Indian captives, and he had seen, near the present site of Fort William Henry at Pemaquid Beach, the drying racks of the itinerant fishermen. Though the place would not be permanently settled until after the Pilgrims had landed at Plymouth, Englishmen had come there regularly with the fishing fleets for many years. So we can be confident that in the spring of 1621, when a friendly Indian hailed the Pilgrims in English, that Red Man had learned his English at Pemaquid.

So now, in two broadcasts, I have told you how Maine was known to Europeans long, long before the Pilgrims came to Plymouth Rock.

Year: 1971