The Battle Off Fairhaven

The first naval skirmish in the American Revolution went down off Fairhaven on May 14th, 1775.

A seagull and an offshore lighthouse photo-bomb my shot of the battlefield.

I'm using these two boats going at each other to illustrate the story, but these two actually honked and waved to each other rather than board and kill each other.

After the Battle of Lexington/Concord, the British seized two ships (a transport and a sloop) from their Patriot owners. They rigged the sloop up for battle, put 11 men on it, and sent it off to Dartmouth to capture the boat of a smuggler named Jesse Barlow. Barlow got his goods ashore, but the Brits seized his ship.

I'm a landlubber myself, but I know enough fishermen to say that the one unforgivable sin among them is "f*cking with their boat." Stealing one is even worse. The patriots quickly put together a 30 man crew, armed a ship (the Success, a Dartmouth whaling sloop) and set off in pursuit of the "royal pirates."

They caught up to the two boats off of Martha's Vineyard. They took the transport without much difficulty. The sloop took off on the run, but they were overtaken and boarded off of Fairhaven. The patriots forced the Brits below deck after a brief squabble, and- just like that- the Americans won the first naval skirmish of the war. They won it against the world's best Navy, too. The POWs were offloaded in Fairhaven and sent inland to Taunton.

Mother's Day Nor'easter Looking Likely

A nor'easter will approach Massachusetts from the south over the weekend, setting the stage for strong winds and heavy rains.

As you can see here, Massachusetts is looking like a contender for an inch or two of rain. Winds are presently forecast to be gusting in the 20s, but that does look like a strong storm. Coastal flooding is not expected to be bad, as the tides are astronomically low.

We'll be back if the forecast gets worse and I can use some headline like 

MOTHERS DAY MONSTAHHHHHH!!!

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Harboring: Marion

We continue our spring harbor tour with a visit to Marion.

Marion was more active than most harbors we've visited so far this year.

Remind me to not wear my magnet suit when I set to sea with this guy.

A boat-sinking rockpile.

My man getting ready to put in some work.

My last boat (the Lusitania Jr... it sunk) was small enough that if I laid down flat on it, my feet would be in the water. That's probably not a problem for the owner of this boat, unless his last name is Bunyan or Kong.

I've handed a credit card to an assertive woman or two for the ol' "Twenty Minute Tie Up," but Marion Harbor most likely has something different in mind,

Any good captain knows that a cabin only really needs two walls.

I dated a Laura Abbot once, but she tired of me in two hours. When I say "once," I mean "one single time," not "once upon a time over a long period."

They were leaking until he threw on the shingles, you see...

Tabor Academy has a fine sailing team, I'm guessing.

Ideally, you send the kid to Tabor and let them train on those little bots in the picture before... then, when she or he is proficient, you turn them loose on this one. "Proficient" means "after Dad dies" in many Massachusetts families.

I had bad light or something, this looked redder when I was shooting at it.

"You know the dot, I know the dot... I see it a lot."

If the Pilgrims landed in Marion instead of Plymouth, John Alden could have rock-hopped to shore. The concept of Plymouth Rock would be radically different, and "Marion Rock" sounds like a black comic's mother.

If you push someone off the dock in Marion, you have until they swim over and scale those ladders to run away. Fishermen go up them like cats, mind you...

You can drop my whole house into this boat.

Not a lot of junk boats in the water just yet...

You can make a pretty good guess on the historic flood levels by looking at how high the Harbormaster jacked his shack up.

Many of the first boats were powered by steamshovels.

Est. 1927, wrecked 1938, re-established 1939.

Rope anchor...

As a guy who parked his '77 Nova next to a few Porsches at Duxbury High School, I can sympathize with the owner of the blue boat.

Tabor Uber Alles

Driving Around: West Island/Sconticut Neck

We plowed through the West Island/Sconticut Neck part of Fairhaven recently, seeing what there was to see.

I immediately fell for this lookout tower. It wasn't made in Pisa, Our photographer (me) is twisted. It's a genetic defect, I've stopped trying to deal with it. Know that the picture of the Hoppy's Landing lighthouse later in the article took me 10 tries to get it just that straight.

The lookout tower was made in 1943. The Nazis were sinking a ship a week, and the Army put trained spotters up in these towers to search for wolf packs. They kept soldiers based here, and they'd work in shifts. The tower was manned constantly through the war. It was kept active after to deal with Soviet threats.

Now, it serves all mankind as a really cool structure that I may have to break into and film a hurricane from.

I took a few cracks at these boats, too. A great painter can create a work of art that looks like the real thing. A bad photographer can take something real and make it look like someone painted it.

There are some very nice houses in this part of Fairhaven, but I be lovin' this little stucco job.

As we noted in our earlier harbor-visit articles, the boats will be a bit sparse until the summer people come around.

They welcome all safe boaters, but the lighthouse-sign-painting-guy must be on a bad list somewhere in town.

I wonder if this guy is expecting some coastal flooding in the future? He's more than 100 yards inland, too. Duxbury makes all residents of the beach area rebuild on stilts, maybe this guy has the same directive.

Does that count as a two-story house?

It wasn't all the hoppin' at Hoppy's Landing, but that's never a bad thing when you have pictures to take. Hoppy does have a cool looking place, although his lighthouse makes me think 50% NASA and 50% dildo.

One story house, with an observation tower. I like this guy, and I've never met him. That tower is sweeeeeeeeeeet.

There was a persistent east wind, and we went down to West Island hoping for some stormy waves. The angriest sea we got was the turbulent water working this marina.

I wasn't joking about the twisted photographer. If I moved to Pisa, there would suddenly emerge a stream of very straight Pisa Tower pictures.

I drive around the Massachusetts coast a lot, and nautical towns tend to have nautical front yards. The only guy I saw in Fairhaven who could beat this guy was...

... a different part of the same yard!

I drove through some Lake Michigan sized puddles to get down Edgewater Lane, but the views were worth it.

I do more drive-by shooting than a Crip.

A better photographer than I should go to this same spot and wait for that same fishing boat... my skills don't do it justice.

I suppose that someone manufactures new fishing boats, but the old ones are way better in my book. I don't have to go out in them, keep in mind...

I love this house, which appears to be equal parts lighthouse, castle, treehouse, and cool. You expect to see a yuppie Hobbit emerge from it or something.

All of the best clamshell paths start small.

You can usually tell the historic flooding heights by how high the locals jack up the cottage.

God bless America, Fairhaven, West Island and Hoppy's Landing.