Radio Script #1098

Little Talks on Common Things
October 31, 1976

It is well to be reminded occasionally of the once booming river traffic on the Kennebec. Still conspicuous in the river are the small, man-made islands between which booms were attached to keep a channel free for boats when the log drives came down the stream. In fact, those booms served a double purpose. They also helped contain the logs in their passage down the river.

Before the Kennebec Purchase in 1750 few boats were seen on the river above Hallowell. During the 17th and early 18th centuries, the upper Kennebec saw few craft larger than the canoes of the Indians and the fur traders. All that was changed by the building of Fort Halifax in Winslow in 1754. While timber for the fort could be cut near by, and the stone foundations could be made from local quarries, many items, indeed, all metal products like nails and bolts and hinges, as well as the cannon and ammunition, had to be brought from Boston by vessels. The ships themselves could not get above the rips at Augusta, but their cargoes were stuffed into smaller boats, usually the well known whaleboats and propelled up to Fort Halifax partly by sail, but mostly by oars.

As settlers increased and traffic grew, the longboat became a favorite for Kennebec transportation. It was a craft that carried freight and had, at the stern, a small covered area for passengers. It was in a longboat that the first Colby president, Jeremiah Chaplin, with his family and seven theological students, first came to Waterville in 1818.

The longboats were not the first big craft seen on the river above Augusta. The heavy stores brought to Fort Halifax in the 1750s necessitated the use of scows 40 feet long, 10 feet wide, and drawing two feet of water. The popular name for those scows was “gundalow,” a corruption of the Italian gondola.

In the two decades before the Revolution, traffic was brisk between Augusta and the mouth of the river. The Commander of Fort Western at Augusta, Captain James Howard, conducted a profitable trade. In 1763, he was the only person above Georgetown who was licensed to sell tea and coffee. With his two sons, Howard secured a virtual monopoly of the lumber trade. Off to Boston went a steady stream of Howard vessels carrying cordwood, sawed lumber, staves and shingles. Nor did Howard neglect the natural products of the Kennebec Valley. Salmon, shad, alewives, moose skins and furs accompanied his lumber shipments. In Boston, his products were exchanged for flour, molasses, coffee, tea, cloth, and a variety of other merchandise, of course including both West Indies and New England rum.

A few years before the Revolution, another trader appeared further up the river at Fort Halifax. He was William Lithgow. Whether he bought all his goods directly in Boston and made the necessary arrangements for transfer to smaller boats at Augusta, or whether he did some business through Howard at Fort Western is uncertain. We do know that apparently Lithgow and Howard were on good terms with each other. In 1764, the two men joined in a petition to the General Court of Massachusetts for a reduction of taxes.

While there were a few settlers on the west side of the river at Ticonic Falls before 1795, it was in that year that river activity began to develop at what is now Waterville. Joseph Clarke had come to America from England in 1772. During the Revolution he settled at Bath, where he built five vessels. He moved to Waterville in 1795 and started the community’s first shipyard. Among the dozen ships launched from the Clarke yard was the largest vessel ever built above Augusta, the 268 ton full-rigged ship, Ticonic. To enable so big a vessel to get down the river safely over the shallows, empty casks had to be fastened around the hull.

Soon Clarke had a lot of competition. The Stackpoles, the Redingtons and the Moors opened yards close to Clarke’s near the present site of the Hathaway shirt factory below Ticonic Falls.

Nor was Waterville the only place above Augusta where ships were built. A schooner was launched in Sidney in 1798, and four more in the first decade of the 19th century. Several ships were built at Vassalboro, notably John Lang’s Ocean Bird, that made trips to Africa, on one of which it brought back the first peanuts seen on this side of the Atlantic. These upper Kennebec boats were launched in the spring when there was high water. At other times they could not negotiate the rips and rapids between Waterville and Augusta. None of those ships were stepped above Augusta. By “stepped” is meant fitted with masts, spars and sails. What went into the water from the shipyards of Vassalboro, Sidney, Winslow and Waterville, were simply the constructed hulls. Those were floated down, usually to Hallowell, at that time the largest Kennebec port above Bath, where the masts and rigging were put on.

Most of those vessels were never again on the river above Augusta.

There were meant for coastwise or ocean traffic, and it was a different kind of craft, the longboat, that prevailed on the upper river. That it was no easy task to get any kind of boat up the stream from Augusta to Waterville is shown by the fact that the drop from Ticonic Falls to the head of tide at Augusta is altogether 36 feet. Though the only steep falls is at Waterville, there are several stretches of rips and rapids that account for the drop.

A Waterville pioneer and large landowner was Obadiah Williams, who had come here in 1794. His son John Williams became a prosperous trader and operator of river boats. In 1824, he offered for sale two vessels. One was the hull of a new brig of 140 tons. The other was a schooner of 100 tons. His ad said, “These vessels are built at Waterville of the best materials by experienced workmen. They are low-decked and designed to carry large cargoes. They are fastened with a larger proportion of iron than is usual. Both will be ready to receive their rigging in ten days.”

One of Waterville’s most prominent early merchants was Nathaniel Gilman. He was much more than a local trader. In fact, except for his first ten years in Waterville, early in the 19th century, he spent very little time here. He developed such an important importing and exporting business that all the latter part of his life he operated out of New York. However, he maintained his legal residence in Waterville, and members of his family continued to live here for more than 150 years. He became Waterville’s wealthiest resident, though he had a close competitor in the local lawyer and big land owner, Timothy Boutelle.

Before he was 21 years old, Gilman had conducted a voyage of trading goods up the Kennebec. That was not for delivery of ordered goods, but one of those common ventures at the turn of the century, whereby a man bought in Boston or New York a variety of imported goods, and took them up New England rivers on a chance he could sell to merchants in settlements along the way.

Gilman was so impressed with Kennebec possibilities, as a result of that profitable voyage, that he decided to settle in Waterville and open a store, from which he developed trade in China, Albion and Clinton. He opened his Waterville business in 1802, at first trading largely in West India goods. But within a few years he established trade with the Azores and the west coast of Africa, laying the foundations that made him a millionaire when he died in 1859. At one time he was the owner of four different ocean-going ships, and several of the vessels built in Waterville were financed by him.

An early partner of Gilman was Simeon Mathews, the man who planted the beautiful elms that have graced both sides of Silver Street. Mathews and Gilman built numerous longboats for the river service.

During the first half of the 19th century Waterville was the business center for the Upper Kennebec. Goods for Waterville merchants were brought in sea-going vessels to Gardiner or Hallowell, where local products shipped down river for those merchants were loaded for the return voyage to Boston.

Before we complete this broadcast, we must tell you what the craft that carried goods between Hallowell and Waterville looked like. As we have already said, those craft were longboats. The longboat was a long, low vessel, square at both ends like a ferry boat. It had one tall mast with three or four square sails and was steered by a long oar at the stern. Drawing very little water, it could approach close to the banks, and at numerous landings could unload its imported food products, dry goods and rum. Returning, it loaded lumber, bark, shingles, lathes, corn and potatoes. Compared with the little sail and rowboats and the canoes so beautiful on the river, the longboats were big craft, 60 to 90 feet long, and 15 to 20 feet wide. They could easily carry as much as 100 tons.

The series of rapids between Waterville and Augusta were serious obstruction to the longboats. Oxen were usually employed to haul the boat upriver through the rapids. Sometimes the crew would go ashore and themselves man the tow line. The tow path was on the Sidney side of the river – of course, the current aided navigation in the other direction, downstream.

Wrecks were frequent. In 1810 Simeon Mathews had a longboat completely smashed on a dangerous rock near Augusta known as Old Coon.

Before 1850, steam had come to upper Kennebec. The first steamer built in Waterville was by David Moor in 1842. He called her the Water Witch. Other steamers soon followed, and by 1850 five were regularly leaving the Waterville landing for Augusta, Hallowell and Gardiner. Building a lock around the rapids at Augusta enabled them to get through. So good was the reputation of Waterville builders for light-draft steamers that, after the discovery of gold in California in 1849, they were favored for the dangerous voyage around Cape Horn. The middle of the 19th century spelled the end of steamers to Waterville, when Central Maine got its first railroad, the Androscoggin and Kennebec. It became easier and more profitable to ship goods by rail.

In our own time we have seen the railroad downed by the automobile, and perhaps after the year 2000 there will be something else. But we should remember that the commercial prosperity of our Central Maine town began with traffic on the Kennebec itself.

On November 2, this coming Tuesday, we exercise a privilege held by the people of few other nations in the world – the privilege of free elections. The way to lose that privilege is not to use it. So by all means, vote on Tuesday. Vote for whom you please, but vote.

Year: 1976