Radio Script #1281

Little Talks on Common Things
September 20, 1981

Let us today consider some of the sightings and landings along the Maine coast before the Pilgrims started the first settlement in New England in 1620.

We know that about the year 1000, Norsemen from the Scandinavian peninsula settled in Greenland,and that their settlement lasted for several hundred years. But did those Norsemen ever see the coast of Maine? Of course they made expeditions to the mainland, certainly to Labrador, but the evidence that they got as far south even as Mount Desert, to say nothing of their reputed landings on Cape Cod, is still uncertain. Despite the stories about Norse settlements that have been for years in our history books, the nation’s leading maritime historian, Samuel Eliot Morison, insisted that they never came nearer to us than Newfoundland and Labrador.

Morison’s opinion is highly respected because of his meticulous following by sea and air of ocean routes. He gained fame as the author of “Admiral of the Ocean Sea,” his carefully researched account of Columbus’ voyages. Documents in the Vatican Library and other resources give rather firm evidence that Basque fishermen from the French coast west of the Pyrenees, dried their fish on Monhegan Island at least 100 years before Columbus’ first voyage. Their description of the island and the coast west of it fits exactly the contours of Monhegan and the Permaquid peninsula. We thus have some assurance that the Europeans saw the coast of Maine 175 years before any Pilgrim stepped on Plymouth Rock.

The first Englishmen to see the Maine coast, of whom we have any record, were the Cabots, John and Sebastian, about five years after Columbus I discovery. That was during the reign of Henry VII in England, and at a time when all European nations were eagerly seeking routes to the Spice Islands in the South Pacific. King Henry and his seamen were just as ignorant as was Columbus that North and South America lay in the way of reaching those islands by sailing west across the Atlantic. All the navigators persisted in their conviction that such a route would reach the desired destination. So King Henry employed the Cabots to make the exploration.

As the Cabots sailed along the New England coast, seeking a passage through what they thought must be a large island, they probably saw a part of Maine. Sebastian’s description of one island perfectly fits Mount Desert, and his account of the peninsula to the north east seems clearly to be Nova Scotia. After the Cabot voyages, further exploration of North America was neglected for 100 years. Then in the late 1500s Sir Humphrey Gilbert made a voyage that recorded sightings from the Isle of Shoals to the Bay of Fundy.

Meanwhile the French were not idle. The Sieur DeMont passed the winter of 1603-4 on an island at the mouth of the St. Croix river. Numerous voyages by the British out of such ports as Bristol and Plymouth had divested the Atlantic of such legendary terrors as sea monsters and the edge of a flat earth off which a ship could drop to oblivion. In 1603, shortly after the death of Queen Elizabeth I, a group of Bristol merchants outfitted two ships, Speedwell and Discoverer, and put them under command of Captain Martin Pring to explore the American coast beteeen the 42 and 44 parallel of latitude and trade with the natives. That shows us that, even before the dawn of the 17th century, Englishmen already had some knowledge of American Indians. At any rate itt reveals that interest in Indian furs began some time before the Pilgrims set up their trading post at Augusta in 1629.

Pring was followed by the even better recorded voyage of George Weymouth in 1605. He sailed along much of the Maine coast and a short distance up both the Kennebec and Penobscot rivers. On his return to England Weymouth took with him several Indians, three of whom he placed in charge of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who was to play a very prominent part in early Maine history. From what he learned from those natives, Gorges became convinced that Maine was an area especially favorable for colonial settlement because the Abnaki Indians were regarded as peaceful and friendly to to Weymouth’s men. That led to the King’s grant in 1639 that gave Gorges control of a large part of Maine.

Gorges was not deterred when one of his captains, sent to New England, disobeyed orders and headed for the West Indies and Spanish gold. The ship was captured by Spaniards. Georges said: “That is the chance we must always take. These adventures depend greatly on the honesty and integrity of our ship captains.”

Extensive plans for colonization now got underway. Sir John Popham, Lord Chief Justice of England, was a neighbor and friend of Ferdinando Gorges. Popham decided that the Maine coast was just the place for-a penal colony, where could be sent the criminals he sentenced in his court. He said: “We will put in New England those we cannot allow to stay in Old England.” Under the Chief Justice’s brother, George Popham, a company of men sailed from England on May I, 1607, in two ships, Gift of God and Mary & John, and anchored near Monhegan Island. Their orders were to start a settlement on the mainland and get it ready to receive the exiled criminals.

At the mouth of the Kennebec, near what today is known as Fort Popham, that settlement was established. The party was accompanied by two of the Indians whom Weymouth had previously taken to England. George Popham sent a ship up the Kennebec to the Indian Village where ruled Chief Basheba. We now know that to have been Swan Island, above Merrymeeting Bay, near the present village of Richmond. That journey provided Popham with a good description of the Kennebec between Swan Island and the sea.

When Popham’s two ships were ready to return to England in December, about thirty of the men agreed to remain at the settlement. But the ships were frozen in during the worst winter known for many years on both sides of the Atlantic. In England the river Thames was so thickly frozen over that goods had to be brought by teams over the ice to London. Of course those men of Popham’s colony knew nothing of the extreme cold in England, and they assumed the terrible winter was typical of Maine climate. When spring came they had had enough. Despite the arrival of another supply ship from home, they simply picked up and went back with the returning ships. Safely back in England, they spread the word that the islands and shores at the mouth of the Kennebec provided no decent place for civilized human beings.

Sir Ferdinando Gorges was a determined and optimistic man. In spite of the Popham reports he refused to be discouraged. As head of the Council for New England, the corporation to which the King had granted rights to all colonization in America, he was determined to continue the colonial enterprise. He later wrote: “When I could no longer be seconded by others, I became sole owner of a ship, and under the cover of fishing and trade I got a crew for her, and on her I sent Captain Vines and some of my own servants on a voyage of discovery.”

Every American schoolboy knows the story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, but not so well known is the part played by Smith in settlement of New England. In 1614, after Smith had returned to England from the colony at Jamestown, he set out on a memorable voyage of discovery along the New England coast. His voyage was financed by four London merchants. He spent eight weeks on Monhegan Island, then coasted leisurely from the Penobscot to Cape Cod, carefully mapping the coast and islands, and having some trade with the Indians.

In exchange for cheap trinkets, he got 12,000 valuable furs, mostly beaver. On his return to England. Smith made a glowing report to King Charles I. He urged the King to change some of New England’s savage, nearly unpronounceable place names to good English names. The King complied with such names as Plymouth, Bristol, Charles River and Cape Ann, but fortunately allowed to survive were the Indian names Massachusetts, Piscataqua, Saco, Casco, Kennebec and Penobscot.

Smith’s report put new life into the colonial enterprise. The result was Gorges’ promotion of a new company called the Council of Plymouth in the County of Devon “for the planning, ruling and governing of New England in America.” Its membership included such noblemen as the Duke of Lenox, the Marquis of Buckingham and the Earl of Arundel. Its charter covered the American latitudes from 40 to 48, everything north of the Virginia grant. That charter became the legal foundation for all grants later made in what are now the New England states.

The Council’s first successful venture was arranging financing for the voyage of the Mayflower that set up the first permanent settlement in New England. The next step was to send Sir Ferdinando’s relative, Robert Gorges, to take charge of 300 square miles conveyed to him by the Council. Robert soon returned to England and conveyed his rights to others. Among them were the promoters of the settlement made at Boston by Governor Winthrop in 1630.

The first grant by the Plymouth Council located in what is now Maine was made in 1622, when King Charles I granted to Ferdinando Gorges and George Mason vast lands between the Herrimack and Kennebec rivers. Mason “took the part that is now New Hampshire between the Merrimack and the Piscataqua. Gorges took the more extensive wilderness between the Piscataqua and the Kennebec.

In 1639 Gorges got a new charter that gave to his lands for the first time the name Province of Maine. The charter gave him so much authority over settlers that they were virtually his serfs. To govern his domain, Gorges sent his grandson, Thomas Gorges,who arrived in Gorges’ Laconia, at its proposed city Georgina now the town of York, in 1640. Although the Gorges dream of a great city did not materrialize, to him we owe the first permanent settlements in Maine.

Year: 1981