 |
| CHAPTER 9: THE WATERFRONT |
 Gloucester Harbor by Fitz Hugh Lane (1847). Courtesy of the Cape Ann Historical Association. The Fish Pier By walking clear to the end of the Fish Pier we reach the last dirt of Five Pound Island, where farther back than most of us can remember there were some fishing shacks and a wharf or two, and far previous to that probably five sheep pounds to half-match the ten on Ten Pound Island.Out there between the spindle and the freezer piers to out right, long before the channel was dredged and when there wasn't water to float a deep-draft vessel at low tide, Captain Lindsay and the British Falcon on August 8, 1775 chased a Salem-bound West Indian schooner hard aground on the flats. The First Parish Church bell changed forth the alarm. The patriots dropped everything and mustered around the shore. Lindsay sent thirty-seven men in boats to seize the prize. A smart skirmish followed, during which three Redcoats were killed. The infuriated captain of the Falcon shelled the town and dispatched a boat around to the Fort beach to set the fish flakes afire and burn this hotbed of rebels to the ground, but our people rushed to the spot and captured them all. In the meantime, out here before us, the Gloucestermen kept up their fire, and then they waded out, rescued the schooner, and took cutter, barges, and invaders. We lost two of our own, Peter Lurvey and Benjamin Rowe. Captain Lindsay sailed out the beautiful harbor which spread forth yonder and was never seen in these waters again.
|
   |
The Gloucester Guide, Copyright © 1990 by Protean Press and Joseph E. Garland. |