<\/p>\n
Not long ago I was asked if I knew anything about a steamboat named the Ticonic that used to ply between Waterville and Gardiner more than a hundred years ago. I discovered that Dr. Whittemore’s Centennial History of Waterville has this to say: “On June 1, 1832 the Ticonic, the first steamboat to visit Waterville, arrived. It was a stern-wheeler built at Gardiner. It was received with the firing of cannon, the ringing of bells, and every expression of jubilant welcome. It was the beginning of steamboat traffic which increased and prospered until the coming of the railroads.”<\/p>\n
Recently I have learned more about that first steamboat to come to Waterville. It seems that in 1831 several leading citizens of Gardiner, including the most prominent of all Kennebec land owners, Robert Hallowell Gardiner, decided there ought to be a steamboat making the regular run from Gardiner to Waterville by passing through the lock around the dam at Augusta.<\/p>\n
They formed a company to promote the venture, and in the fall of 1831 contracted with an early builder of steamers, Albert Blanchard of Springfield, Mass., to build a steamboat capable of navigating the Kennebec to Waterville. Mr. Blanchard came to Gardiner and there built the steamer, which was named the Ticonic.<\/p>\n
On June 1, 1832, as Dr. Whittemore recorded, it made its maiden voyage up the river to Waterville. An old contemporary account says: “Many of the inhabitants along the river above Augusta had never seen a steamboat and they turned out by the hundreds to observe the novel sight. Wiseacres expressed the fear that such a boat could never make it up the twelve mile falls in Vassalboro, but in less than ten minutes after entering that foaming current, the Ticonic rode in triumph into the smooth water above, and salutes from the shore gave hearty welcome.<\/p>\n
An hour later discharges of artillery announced to the citizens of Waterville that the boat was in sight. A multitude assembled on the shore and as the gallant little steamer touched the bank, cheer after cheer rent the summer air. A splendid dinner was gratuitously provided by the landlord of the Waterville hotel for passengers and citizens. After tarrying a few hours, the steamer returned to Gardiner.”<\/p>\n
Another account tells us that it took four hours and fifty minutes for the boat to make the trip up the river against the current. But, helped by the current, she made the return trip in two hours and twenty minutes. The Ticonic was a stern-wheeler with two engines, and she was built for a total cost, engines and all, of \u00a78,000, less than one has to pay today for a-first class inboard motor boat.<\/p>\n
Now, leaving the river, let’s go to the old college campus. For many years until about the time of the First World War, it was the custom at Colby College for the sophomore class to publish each spring a more or less scurrilous sheet lampooning freshmen and faculty alike. In early years it had been called the “War Cry”, and was distributed with such riotous conduct at the annual Freshman Reading that it sometimes broke up that event entirely. So bad was the conduct in 1903 that, at President Charles L. White’s insistence, the faculty suspended the entire men’s section of the sophomore class, a disciplinary action that led to the notorious student strike of 1903 a very ugly situation which was peaceably settled only by the friendly arbitration of Professors Arthur Roberts and William Bayley.<\/p>\n
By the time I entered college in 1909, the annual lampoon had already been revived, but it was no longer circulated at the Freshman Reading, and it no longer carried the name War Cry. In fact each issue usually had a different title. In the spring of 1913, just before I graduated, it was the sophomores of the Class of 1915 who put out a paper called the “Juggernaut”. Compared with some of the radical stuff my own class had published two years earlier, the Juggernaut was pretty tame. Its leading editorial said: “We have endeavored to show the new men how they look to us. It may be that we have misunderstood the men we have criticized, but that is for you to determine. We have spared neither the seniors nor the faculty, but we really wish neither of those groups any harm.”<\/p>\n
The paper poked fun at the seniors’ gowns in these words: “Why have you adopted that hideous, shirtless, union suit combination? Of course you cannot be blamed for wanting to wear some sort of garb to distinguish your knowledge-crammed heads from those of the Freshmen. But all you accomplish is to show how little you have in your heads.”<\/p>\n
One set of verses pilloried two faculty members: J. William Black and French E. Wolfe. It was titled, “The Black Wolf Combination”.<\/p>\n
Prof. Black presided over history and government; Prof. Wolfe over economics and sociology. They had the reputation of being stiff markers, and since they then constituted the entire staff of the broad field we now call the social sciences, students regarded them as a formidable combination. Part of the jingle refers to two other Colby professors of the time, Clarence White and Henry Brown.<\/p>\n
“When the sharks of Colby College meet with wild beasts White and Brown,
\nThey seek to bluff the monsters and may often run them down;
\nBut the Black Wolf, thus accosted, meets the student with a cuff,
\nFor the Black Wolf Combination’s not susceptible to bluff.<\/p>\n
So it is for us, the students, e’er we be completely maimed,
\nTo see this combination quite subjected, calmed and tamed;
\nFor we fear if it continues to pursue its savage way,
\nThere’ll be no Colby College on the call of Judgment Day.”<\/p>\n
One of the freshmen whom the paper lampooned was Malcolm O’Brien, who later became a well known teacher at the Choate School in Connecticut. Here’s what the Juggernaut said about O’ Brien: “Proposals for erecting the O’Brien memorial on the high school grounds have been received by the City Improvement Commission. The heroic statue of Coach Malcolm O’Brien, gift of his Hebron friends, is to be supported appropriately on a brass base. Plans for the statue may be obtained from Mr. O’Brien.”<\/p>\n
I confess that I was one of the seniors not spared the barbs of the editors of the Juggernaut. A classified ad said: “For sale, my entire stock of horses, including cribs, will be offered at public auction on June 26. Reason for selling, change of business. E. C. Marriner.”<\/p>\n
Another ad was attributed to President Arthur J. Roberts, who advertised: “Wanted at once. Summer pasturage for herd of swine, outside the city limits. My hoggeries will be closed during the summer months by order of the Board of Health, and I am desirous of keeping over until fall part of my select stock.”<\/p>\n
A number of the faculty were ticked off under the heading “Marine News”<\/p>\n
“The lights of Rhetoric Point went out last night, and upon investigation it was found that the keeper, Divinely Inspired Brown (that referred to English teacher Henry W. Brown) drank all the oil and got so well lit himself that he forgot all about the light.”<\/p>\n
“The Schooner Philosophy, Capt. Roberts (that was President Roberts himself) docked here this evening after an all winter’s fishing trip. She made a fair catch of suckers.<\/p>\n
“It is nice to know that the cutter Math, Capt. Tige Carter, will spend the summer in port, undergoing repairs sustained while spearing sharks off Freshmen Coast.<\/p>\n
“Liz Maxfield, first mate of the tug Rhetoric, will appear before the National Board of Censorship next week to answer to the charge of carrying concealed weapons. The customs officers found a pop gun in his vanity box.”<\/p>\n
A final notice in another column said; “We absolve the English Department from any connection whatever with this periodical. We have solicited for its columns none but the best literary genius, and we didn’t hope to find that in the department.”<\/p>\n
Very pointed and ungentlemanly stuff, wasn’t it? Now don’t tell me that students are worse behaved and less respectful today than they were fifty years ago. They may get into more scrapes, study less, live a more frantic existence, but on one thing I insist: the modern college boy isn’t nearly so crude as were we of half a century ago. You have heard me speak of the Cumberland and Oxford Canal. Of the numerous, ambitious canal projects planned in various parts of Maine early in the 19th century, that canal was the only one of any length that was ever built. It connected Sebago Lake with the Atlantic Ocean at Portland Harbor. I knew that my native town of Bridgton, as well as neighboring Harrison and Naples — all three towns bordering on Long Lake that empties into big Sebago Lake by way of the Songo River — I knew that those towns were very much interested in the Canal, but I did not know that the town of Waterford was also interested in it. But, in skimming through Warren’s “History of Waterford”, I ran across the following account:<\/p>\n
“The project of a canal between Sebago Pond and Sa .. ccarappa was considered as early as 1791. Charter for the Cumberland and Oxford Canal was issued in 1821. The Canal Bank was incorporated on condition that one fourth of its capital should be invested in the canal. Work was begun in 1828 and the project was finished in 1830. It followed the course of the Presumpscot River and, where the level permitted, used the river bed itself. But the fall was so gradual and so accumulative that numerous locks were necessary, raising the cost to $206,000, a considerable figure for a Maine corporation in 1830. The canal did a large business until the building of the Atlantic and St. Lawrence R.R., <\/em>now the Grand Trunk, and soon afterward the Portland and Ogdensburg R.R.,<\/em> connecting Portland with St. Johnsbury, Vt. by way of the White Mountains, put an end to the canal. On the first part of its route between Cumberland Mills and Fryeburg, the Portland and Ogdensburg skirted the west side of Sebago Lake.<\/p>\n “When the canal was booming, heavy goods 0 f all kinds were brought to Bridgton, North Bridgton and Harrison in the summer, stored in those villages, and distributed through the back country, even as far as Upper Vermont, in the winter. A large part of the merchandise that reached Waterford from the outside world was toted up from Harrison after being landed there by the canal boats. At one time the canal company operated more than a hundred of those boats.”<\/p>\n Speaking of Waterford, in 1820 when Maine became a state, it was one of the few towns in Oxford County having more than 1000 people. It had a considerably larger population than Rumford. In 1820 Oxford County’s largest town was the county seat, Paris, with 1,894 inhabitants. But I think it will surprise you to know that the second largest town was then Hebron, larger than Norway or Buckfield or Bethel.<\/p>\n Year:1962<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read the script for “Little Talks” program #552, Broadcast on November 18, 1962<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1182,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8218"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}