Seacoast History Blog #118 
June 22, 2011

We’re back from our annual week on Smuttynose Island, our 12^th year in a row, if memory serves. It’s forever the same and always different. This year we had absolutely no visitors. (We usually get 50-100 tourists early in the season). The Oceanic Hotel had not yet opened and the marine forecast announced scary weather, so people stayed away in droves. Only Prof. Nate Hamilton’s archaeology team braved the journey and, despite a stormy opening, the week was gorgeous at the Isles of Shoals. (Continued below)

I’m still running on island time and, after a week without electricity, have almost forgotten how this keyboard thing works. I did take about 600 digital photos since I have two Shoals books rattling around in my head. And I picked up a Flip camera and captured two hours of shaky HD video, in addition to an hour of audio recordings of birds, fog horns, wind, and clanking sea bells. I cleared the trail, as usual with a gas-powered weed whacker, mowed the lawn, and hauled stuff from Point A to Point B. We saw a lot of cool stuff coming out of the ground as the archeologists gathered data for the fourth year in a row. I’m still too lazy to write much about it, but here are a few photos with highlights of a nice week in a land far far from civilization – or, at least, it seems far away -- when you have to bring in all your water in buckets, and the outhouse is a good hike from the cottage, and your only neighbors are a thousand angry nesting gulls.

Captions to the photos below in order:

1. We arrived amid the second annual Gosport Regatta, but the rain and lack of wind kept the winners circle small
2. Haley Brown visited us at the Haley Cottage where sudden winds then kept her trapped and she missed a day of school
3. Nobody around at the Oceanic except the frantic behind-the-scenes planning and preparation for the first conferees
4. Beautiful Haley’s Cove with the unsinkable tender
5. Archaeologists head back to Appledore after a cold and windy day of exploration at Smuttynose
6. A full moon midnight visitor naps on the rocks in the Cove
7. Discovery of a tin thimble from the 1700s with Star Island in the background
8. Whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on with archeology Prof. Nathan Hamilton
9. Archeologists at work on the site of an early tavern/store or “ordinary” below the Haley House
10. A treacherous hike out to the natural feature known as “Maren’s Rock” at the far end of the island
11. Sunset among angry nesting gulls at the far side of Smuttynose Island
12. The stone cairn on Smuttynose
13. In search of water at Star Island after rowing across Gosport Harbor with Smuttynose in the background
14. Mowing the murder site with the Haley Cottage in the background at sunset
15. A quick trip to Appledore for dinner at the Shoals Marine Lab
16. Celia Thaxter’s restored garden on Appledore Island in June 2011
17. The gull that came to dinner at Shoals Marine Lab
18. Most recent Smuttynose artifacts laid out for view at SML classroom
19. Students sorting through artifacts back in the lab on Appledore
20. Sun setting over Appledore means time to get back to Smuttynose Islnad
21. Rare smoking pipe from 1620s
22. Archeologists from Cornell and Shoals Marine Lab take a lunch break in Aunt Rozzie’s “Gull Cottage”
23. Rowing to Star to pick up the Uncle Oscar to head home “to America”
24. Back to the lovely mainland in Rye

Photos by J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved © SeacoastNH.com

CONTINUE SMUTTYNOSE PHOTOS 2011