Harbor of Refuge

Halibut Point crowns Cape Ann which "extends like a fist into the sea" in the dramatic geography of Paul St. Germain, author of the newly published Sandy Bay National Harbor of Refuge and the Navy.

Map of Cape Ann in 1776
Library of Congress

Jutting out into the coastal shipping lanes while curling around the deep waters of Sandy Bay, Cape Ann became the locus for a great notion of improvement to maritime safety in nineteenth-century America, a Harbor of Refuge where sailing ships might ride out North Atlantic storms. Interest sharpened in the 1880s as the number of vessels passing Sandy Bay annually exceeded 70,000. The preceding fifty years had seen almost 700 shipwrecks or partial wrecks between the ports of Boston and Portsmouth.

 

Paul St. Germain at the breakwater remnant
Bill  Whiting photo

In his new book St. Germain brings to light the effort to create off our shore the second-largest (after Cherbourg, France) man-made harbor in the world. A remnant of the breakwater today piques the curiosity of anyone looking outward from Rockport's North Village coastline.
 

The breakwater in Sandy Bay, 1915

Construction began in 1885 on a V-shaped granite wall that would enclose 1,664 acres affording anchorage to 5,000 ships, with entry at either end. It proceeded in fits and starts over the next thirty years as Congressional budgetary authorizations permitted.

 

A cross-section of the breakwater

The project was breathtaking: amassing, a mile offshore, enough stone to withstand nor'easters in waters averaging 60 feet deep, over a span of almost two miles. That it "got off the ground" was due to the proximity of a granite industry along the coast. The foundation of the breakwater absorbed an immense amount of the waste stone that ordinarily clogged quarry operations. Superlatives of engineering ingenuity and tenacity are detailed in the book.

Enlarging the wharf at Folly Cove for Halibut Point granite exports
Postcard view courtesy of Bob Ambrogi, Vintagerockport.com

As soon as Edwin Canney's development of the Babson Farm Quarry in 1894 showed productive potential the Rockport Granite Company acquired its Halibut Point acreage for integration into the vast enterprise.

 

Babson Farm Quarry, 1909Charles Cleaves photo
Barbara Erkkila Collection, Cape Ann Museum

From deep below the surface Halibut Point provided large smooth-grained blocks to cap the Sandy Bay Breakwater. They were shuttled by rail down to the Folly Cove Pier and loaded onto barges.
 

Placing 20-ton capstones on the breakwater
Sandy Bay Historical Society photo

But the massive stones by themselves would not be enough to resist the power of ocean storms. They were pinned to each other with two-inch iron dowels and iron straps.

 

Battleships of The Great White Fleet seen from Pigeon Hill, 1906

The westward expansion of the United States during the nineteenth century burst into the Pacific with the annexation of Hawaii and the Philippines in 1898. Exuberant passions of Manifest Destiny helped sustain funding for construction of the Sandy Bay Harbor of Refuge. When he became President former Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt commissioned a formidable new fleet that toured the globe to serve notice of American potency. Many of the battleships built in East Coast shipyards performed their sea trials off Cape Ann before an enthralled citizenry.
 

 

The son of Charlestown (Boston) Shipyard's chief naval architect, Paul St. Germain provides a richly illustrated tribute to the ascendancy of the naval force that bolstered American commercial and cultural enterprise around the world.
 

Implicit in the transformation of shipping from wind to steam power was a diminished need for a harbor of refuge. Engine-driven vessels could better ride out storms or run for port. The final Congressional appropriation for Sandy Bay came in 1915. Only 900 of the intended 9,000 feet of breakwater was completed, leaving the unsecured ends vulnerable in ensuing decades to de-construction by the sea.
 

Two million tons of granite extracted from the core of Cape Ann were deposited for the quixotic breakwater that might have converted Sandy Bay into a primary port facility. In that case the un-utilized lowest Exit designations for Rte 128 might have come into play for an extension of the highway to the center of Rockport.
 

Instead we have a Town of Refuge.