Discovering the Boston Harbor Islands is an indispensable guide to help you plan your island adventures.Explore military installations that protected Boston during wartimeincluding Civil War era Fort Warren. Visit Boston Light on Little Brewster, site of the nations oldest lighthouse. Kayak into the coves where pirates and bootleggers hid. Wander the woodlands and meadows that were the seasonal camps of Native Americans and the sites of Revolutionary skirmishes. Sail to the outer islands, find the best year-round fishing spots, and discover why the islands are a birders paradise. Take in a jazz concert, an antique baseball game, or simply hop from one island to the next to experience the stunning natural beauty of this most storied national park area.
A reissue of Edward Rowe Snow's first book, covering the legends and history of nearly every rock and island in Boston Harbor, including Boston Light and Graves Light. The first (1935) edition resulted from research Snow did at Harvard under the tutelage of the great maritime historian Samuel Eliot Morison. When the 1971 edition of the book was published, a critic for the Boston Post wrote, "Mr. Snow has the gift of making his subject vivid and personal in its anecdotal touches . . . It is a volume of chatty yet dignified essays, with many a light touch brought in." This centennial edition contains the complete 1971 text, with annotations by Jeremy D'Entremont to bring the information up to date.
The harrowing story of five men who were sent into a dark, airless, miles-long tunnel, hundreds of feet below the ocean, to do a nearly impossible job—with deadly results A quarter-century ago, Boston had the dirtiest harbor in America. The city had been dumping sewage into it for generations, coating the seafloor with a layer of “black mayonnaise.” Fisheries collapsed, wildlife fled, and locals referred to floating tampon applicators as “beach whistles.” In the 1990s, work began on a state-of-the-art treatment plant and a 10-mile-long tunnel—its endpoint stretching farther from civilization than the earth’s deepest ocean trench—to carry waste out of the harbor. With this impressive feat of engineering, Boston was poised to show the country how to rebound from environmental ruin. But when bad decisions and clashing corporations endangered the project, a team of commercial divers was sent on a perilous mission to rescue the stymied cleanup effort. Five divers went in; not all of them came out alive. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and thousands of documents collected over five years of reporting, award-winning writer Neil Swidey takes us deep into the lives of the divers, engineers, politicians, lawyers, and investigators involved in the tragedy and its aftermath, creating a taut, action-packed narrative. The climax comes just after the hard-partying DJ Gillis and his friend Billy Juse trade assignments as they head into the tunnel, sentencing one of them to death. An intimate portrait of the wreckage left in the wake of lives lost, the book—which Dennis Lehane calls "extraordinary" and compares with The Perfect Storm—is also a morality tale. What is the true cost of these large-scale construction projects, as designers and builders, emboldened by new technology and pressured to address a growing population’s rapacious needs, push the limits of the possible? This is a story about human risk—how it is calculated, discounted, and transferred—and the institutional failures that can lead to catastrophe. Suspenseful yet humane, Trapped Under the Sea reminds us that behind every bridge, tower, and tunnel—behind the infrastructure that makes modern life possible—lies unsung bravery and extraordinary sacrifice.
This book documents the life of August Reekast from Prussia, Christina (McKinnon) Reekast from Nova Scotia, and three generations of lives living on Calf, Outer, Middle and Great Brewster Islands in the Boston Harbor from 1891 to the 1940's. August Reekast was a very well know lobster fisherman who lived and worked his trade off Outer Brewster Island; also was a boat Captain for Julia Arthur. Ms. Arthur (an actress in the late 1800's to early 1900's) and her husband Benjamin P. Cheney were the owner's of Calf Island and a beautiful Mansion which overlooked the Harbor. In 1908 the Reekast family lost everything in the Chelsea Massachusetts Fire, having no other option, moved their eight children to the Islands where they rebuilt their lives. In the mid 1900's their son Gus Reekast became caretaker of Calf Island where he and his wife raised their daughter Augusta (Periwinkle). In the early 1920's the Reekast family relocated to N. Weymouth Mass., their home was located on Hunts Hill. During the depression, Ida (Reekast) Knoll and Edmund Knoll brought their two children Christine (knoll) Walsh and Rosemary (Knoll) Thibodeau to live on Great Brewster. The Reekast and Knoll family left a legacy of knowledge, pictures and documents which fill the pages of this book.
On September 14, 1716, Boston Light became the first lighthouse established in Colonial America. With many ships floundering in the treacherous waters of the Massachusetts harbor, there was a great need for navigational aid. At night and during storms, it was difficult to discern the entrance to the main shipping channel of Nantasket Roads, situated between the Brewster islands and the town of Hull. The ledges had become a graveyard for ships, resulting in great loss to human life and cargo--a deterrent to European colonization efforts. Ship captains and merchants petitioned the colonial government for a lighthouse to be erected on Little Brewster Island as a way of safe passage to the inner harbor. Three hundred years later, Boston Light continues to serve its purpose. Today, the lighthouse is protected by an ever-present Coast Guard civilian keeper and a cadre of specially trained Coast Guard Auxiliary volunteer assistant keepers.
A Map Of The Harbor Islands is the long-awaited novel from J. G. Hayes, the critically acclaimed bestselling author of This Thing Called Courage and Now Batting for Boston. This book charts the turbulent life courses of two South Boston friends, Danny O'Connor and Petey Harding, from their childhoods through their adult lives. `Golden Boy' Petey has it all going for him - brains, charisma and his close friendship with Danny. Then an accident on the baseball field changes everything. Petey wakes from a coma a different person, completely different from the boy Danny knew and loved. Gone are the old habits, the old joy of baseball, the old way of thinking. Petey is left with a stutter and a new appreciation for life that Danny sometimes just cannot understand. Petey begins to tell stories and make maps - dragging a grudging Danny along. Over the years Danny begins to understand Petey, and slowly, he also begins to learn more about himself. Then Petey confesses that he is gay, which sends Danny on an odyssey he never dreamed could happen. Petey's map is one of hope for Danny and him, to escape the urban ghetto of South Boston. They are two wayfaring friends who swear a love for one another until the very end. A Map Of The Harbor Islands carries the reader on a journey into the beauty of the world, physically and emotionally, along a current of love, friendship, self-growth and redemption.
How much does the current landscape of Boston, Massachusetts, resemble the place that Captain John Smith referred to in 1614 as "the Paradise of all these parts"? John Hanson Mitchell explores a variety of habitats as he ranges outward from the core of the peninsula where the Puritans first settled to the ancient rim of the Boston Basin, within which the modern city now lies. Endlessly readable and full of personality, The Paradise of All These Parts offers Boston visitors and residents alike a whole new perspective on one of America's oldest cities.
Why and how Boston was transformed by landmaking. Fully one-sixth of Boston is built on made land. Although other waterfront cities also have substantial areas that are built on fill, Boston probably has more than any city in North America. In Gaining Ground historian Nancy Seasholes has given us the first complete account of when, why, and how this land was created.The story of landmaking in Boston is presented geographically; each chapter traces landmaking in a different part of the city from its first permanent settlement to the present. Seasholes introduces findings from recent archaeological investigations in Boston, and relates landmaking to the major historical developments that shaped it. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, landmaking in Boston was spurred by the rapid growth that resulted from the burgeoning China trade. The influx of Irish immigrants in the mid-nineteenth century prompted several large projects to create residential land—not for the Irish, but to keep the taxpaying Yankees from fleeing to the suburbs. Many landmaking projects were undertaken to cover tidal flats that had been polluted by raw sewage discharged directly onto them, removing the "pestilential exhalations" thought to cause illness. Land was also added for port developments, public parks, and transportation facilities, including the largest landmaking project of all, the airport. A separate chapter discusses the technology of landmaking in Boston, explaining the basic method used to make land and the changes in its various components over time. The book is copiously illustrated with maps that show the original shoreline in relation to today's streets, details from historical maps that trace the progress of landmaking, and historical drawings and photographs.
"A guidebook for Boston's 50 oldest buildings. Written in a conversational manner that does not bog the reader down in technical jargon, but allows them to see the history of Boston through the lens of its oldest structures while appreciating decades of efforts to preserve its built environment"--
