Sea Stories

In Beyond Beauport, my adventurous mid-life protagonist Shannon Clarke takes to the sea on her uncle Patrick’s brigantine ship Second Wind to seek her pirate ancestry and hunt for authentic pirate gold. She aspires to captain the vessel and writes a tribute poem with a 4-3-4-4 beat. Readers appreciated this as Second Wind became an important character in the story.

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A Second Wind
Gusts anew
At water lined,
Sea skies of blue. Trial, by error,
Forebears bent
Hardwood and steel
Designs well meant. A shipwright’s vow
Never fail
Embark upon
The Age of Sail. Dark hulled, white stripe
Brigantine-
Seafaring type
So libertine. Bolder than most;
No limit.
Sailors do boast
Cozy in it. Art and Science
Navigate
Seas of freedom
Bounded by fate. A ship to live
And to love
Aboard to work
The pleasure of. Full temperament
Male, female
With mast and curve
Sweet heart of sail. The Second Wind
Brigantine
Spread great sea wings
So libertine. Pirate, Patriot,
Captain’s Stand
Old Salts Return
With Second Wind Thank You, My Mates
Precious Few
Again, Again
We Sail Anew.
END

Event Date: August 11; Time: 9 AM to 1 PM; Location: Pavilion Beach, Gloucester; Where to view it from: Above Pavilion Beach, Beauport Hotel, or from Stacey Boulevard

Update on the Battle of Gloucester Re-enactment
By James Masciarelli and Terry Weber Mangos
Joe Garland’s book, Guns off Gloucester, published in 1975 told of an important early skirmish of the American Revolution on August 8, 1775 in Gloucester Harbor. This event will be re-enacted on August 11. My friend Terry Weber Mangos, and I were intrigued and wanted to know more. We met with David Nunes, the organizer of the event at the park on Fort Square in Gloucester.  He was there to share with the neighborhood the details of what will surely be a grand spectacle and important re-enactment event in the harbor.

David Nunes impressed us with his love of Gloucester and its history. He was sixteen in 1976 when Massachusetts towns were conducting all manner of events celebrating the American Bicentennial.  That year, David took part in the original re-enactment of the Battle of Gloucester.

“My friend’s father owned one of the participating vessels in the 1976 re-enactment, the Black Jack,” said David.  “I got invited to onboard and ended up trying to help as crew although, I was less than helpful. It was my first time on a sailing vessel. I must have liked it because here I am 42 years later, volunteer crewing on schooner Adventure when I can. And, here I am, coordinating the 2018 re-enactment.”

What will happen at the re-enactment?
This is our understanding of what will take place, subject to change, as plans are still in progress. Two Colonial schooners enter the harbor; one captured by the HMS Falcon and at anchor off Ten Pound Island. The other schooner will be “grounded” on Pavilion Beach. (In 1775, this would have occurred at Five Pound Island). The crew will alert the militia. British troops arrive by smaller boats and attempt to seize the grounded schooner.  The Gloucester Colonial militia gather and ambush the British troops. Captain Linzee of HMS Falcon attempts gain control by fighting back with cannon fire. He wants to create a diversion with fire so that his troops can escape the ambush and return to the Falcon. He sends additional troops in with torches to set Gloucester on fire. But, his tactics fail as he faces a stubborn and brave Gloucester militia, fishermen and farmers.  British troops onshore will be captured by the Gloucester rebels. The captured Gloucester men on the other schooner revolt, exchange fire with the HMS Falcon, but eventually escape. The British are forced to retreat.
The participating schooners are the Lewis H. Story from the Essex Shipbuilding Museum, the pinky schooner Ardelle of Gloucester, and the Fame from Salem. These vessels were designed and built by Harold Burnham.

Representing the Gloucester militia will be members of the 4th Middlesex Regiment, the Sudbury Companies of Minute and Militia, the Acton Minutemen and Glovers Marblehead Regiment. On the British side will be members of the His Majesty’s 4th Regiment of Foot, the King’s Own Rangers and possibly members of His Majesty’s 10th Regiment of Foot.
“The Bicentennial of our country was a big influence on my love of history and is my favorite period of American history,” said David. “I recently learned of my family links to Isaac Stockbridge, a Private in Capt. Joseph Roby’s Company of Gloucester. I think knowing our own history is important, and it helps to shape what we want Gloucester to be as we move into the future.”

The timing for this event is perfect as Gloucester prepares to celebrate its glorious maritime history in anticipation of its 400^th Memorial in 2023, five years from now.  This event may serve as a pilot for the coming celebration. We would love for this re-enactment to be part of it.

An interesting historical bit about the ire of our patriots from the booklet Commemorative Guide—Massachusetts Bicentennial 1976, asserts that–when property rights were established along the shore of Cape Ann, settlers were warned of a built-in restriction:
Above the tide, man owns,
Below low tide, God owns,
Between high tide and low tide,
The King of England owns!
 
Related Links
Good Morning Gloucester breaks the story about the re-enactment
https://goodmorninggloucester.org/2018/07/19/save-the-date-all-you-history-buffs/
The Commemorative Guide – Massachusetts Bicentennial 1976
https://archive.org/stream/commemorativegui00revo/commemorativegui00revo_djvu.txt
 

Sometimes a parent exposes a child to art, literature, and music with no idea what impact it will have. As a young boy, my mom whisked me to the documentary movie, Windjammer, in 1958. It was a high adventure tale about the full-rigged Oslo training ship, the S.S. Christian Radich. The scenery and action was spellbinding as officers and boys voyaged over seventeen thousand miles from Oslo, Norway via the island of Madeira, across the Atlantic to the Caribbean, to New York City, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and home to Bergen, in Norway. The human story of teamwork, training, discipline, and pure fun inspired me with the glory of the sea. The film was shot in a new CineMiracle process with a seven track stereo soundtrack, and shown on large curved screens in movie houses with special equipment.

The music in the film was uplifting and even as a child, I could appreciate its beauty. During the movie one of the sea cadets is a piano student that prepares to play Edvard Grieg’s piano concerto. When the Christian Radich stops in Boston, the movie provides a scene with a boy cadet playing the concerto with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. My mom took me to the Pops once a year; it was a big deal to leave our little farm town to go into Boston, all dressed up.

It is ironic that many years later, Arthur Fiedler made his last appearance at my graduation from Babson College with my mom in attendance. Fast forward to today, I wrote Beyond Beauport, a novel featuring a tall square-rigged brigantine ship. Coincidence or a fond connection to my past?

Click here for the restored trailer for 1958’s Windjammer.

I have a vivid memory of how my journey to Gloucester began in 1952 when I was just four. I was a scrawny kid, packed into a Plymouth with my parents, two older brothers and an older cousin. I’m hoping not to get picked on or beat up.  Despite my brothers being pranksters, I knew I was loved. I’m glad nobody handled me with kid gloves. Bullying can be underrated; just the right doses can teach you to deal with life.

Our family didn’t have much but we had everything that mattered. A Saturday at the beach was our big extravagance. Excitement built as we crested the enormous new bridge to Gloucester for the first time.  New highways and the A. Piatt Andrew Bridge made a day trip possible.  We came from a small rural farm town in central Massachusetts. Previously we headed north to Hampton Beach, York Beach or south to Cape Cod. Now Gloucester was accessible and our family loved it.

I remember breathing in the salt air as we passed over the Annisquam River. My dad, Rocco, drove around a little, giving us a glimpse of the fishing boats and Gloucester Harbor. We found our way to Good Harbor Beach. Soon I was at work with a bucket and a shovel.  I looked around and with my shovel I traced over what I saw–the twin island lighthouses, the rocky shores, and the houses up on the ridge behind the beach. I remember the vow I made: “Someday I will live here and have one of those houses.”  I was quite certain about it, yet, it wasn’t certain at all. Even at four, as I sat in the sun observing my family and my surroundings, I felt a change in me. Perhaps a longing, or a sense of returning to a place I had never been. The ocean and waves were magic, and the sand warm and clean. Everybody was happy.
What I did not know that day at Good Harbor was my story really started in the ancient port city of Genoa, Italy, where my grandfather Francesco and his brother Caesar were living as young men on rocky bluffs overlooking the sea. My grandfathers on the Masciarelli and Rossi side came to America in the late 1890s to find work and new opportunities. Soon their aunts in Italy got to work as matchmakers and found them Italian brides who also came to the USA.  The arranged marriages lasted into their nineties, and I had many uncles, aunts and cousins.

My mom Adelina’s father, Francesco Rossi, came to America to join his brother Caesar Rossi, who came first. Caesar was a fisherman and a stonemason. He found work at the Henry Cabot Lodge estate in Beverly.  They let him renovate a chicken coop on the edge of the property and he lived there by the sea as a caretaker.  I remember when I was about nine, admiring the stonework he did on the estate.  I remember fishing for flounder with Caesar on a rowboat in Beverly Cove. I was fascinated by the eyes of a flounder, both being on the same side of its head! Caesar and his wife showed me how to cook flounder—delicious!
My mom’s dad, Francesco, got a job in construction at the Clinton Dam and later the Boston and Albany Railroad. They moved to Westboro, Massachusetts. My father’s dad, Francesco Nickolas (another Francesco!) came to the USA from the Abruzzo region. He was a winemaker and shoemaker. He made wine and prosciutto for the Marlboro Sons of Italy and found work at the Frye boot factory, also in Marlboro. Both my grandfathers had huge vegetable gardens just as my Dad did.

My mother, Adelina or “Addie,” loved the sea, and took long swims with my father as us three boys played handball on the beach and body surfed the waves. I frequented Cape Ann and Gloucester as a day-tripper and sometimes got a hotel room on weekends to fish, hike, swim, and bike.

Gloucester became my homeport when I bought a wreck of a house on a hilltop in East Gloucester in 1981.  I had big bills and wasn’t happy with my employer at the time. With a car, motorcycle, waterbed, and electric guitar, I moved into the house that had to be renovated. I did not know a single person in Gloucester when I arrived, but soon made buddies at the local gym—now the Fitness Zone.

When I moved into my new home I was a single dad. My college sweetheart Sandy and I had divorced. Co-parenting our ten-year-old son, Jason, was important to us. I look back fondly at how my son embraced Gloucester; he enjoyed the beaches, exploring the rocky coves, and hiking the trails with me.

I started a new career and remarried.  My wife Judi and I have been Cape Ann lovers for 35 years. We got one of the little paved stones by the Fisherman’s Wives statue before it was dedicated. It says “Jim and Judi Masciarelli—Cape Anne Lovers”. How could I have known that Judi had visited Gloucester as a young girl?

We were inspired to do so many things in Gloucester and we each created new businesses. I founded an executive search company. Judi did graphic design for North Shore businesses. We both liked the theater, reading, the arts and hanging out with entrepreneurs and creative people. Gloucester was perfect, and became a respite from the heavy airline travel that came with my consulting work. Finally, I was able to shift gears in the mid-90s, took a sabbatical, and wrote my first business-focused book. I could now live and work from the island. We hosted hundreds of friends and clients who came to visit us in Gloucester. It is remarkable when I travel just about anywhere with a Gloucester hat on, people come up to me and comment on how much they like the place or heard about it, and want to know more.
It wasn’t long before I was reading all about Gloucester history and meeting other writers. I had always been interested in writing at an early age, and it helped me move ideas in the business world, but it wasn’t until Gloucester that I finally began to write for the fun of it.
So much of Cape Ann and Gloucester inspires and influences my current writing. I have fished, hiked, kayaked, rowed, sailed, boated, motorcycled, rock hounded, swam, and researched and read all about this beautiful corner of the world. Gloucester still has a Main Street with unique shops and restaurants, mostly owned by locals. The population size hasn’t changed much in a hundred years.Mostly I love the physical beauty, culture and the people. I believe the maritime culture persists in the spirit of the men and women here. Adventurous, tough, good humored, independent, family oriented, resilient, resourceful, competitive, connected to nature, worldly wise and insanely local.

I am thankful for the A. Piatt Andrew Bridge and my family’s preoccupation with the sea. The great poet Charles Olsen railed against the bridge and said that it would ruin Gloucester’s small town sense of community.  I believe his dire prediction was overstated, so far.  Gloucester has a hearty maritime culture that endures. It was destiny.
I don’t like going over the bridge much, but it’s there if I need to go up the line.