The Piscataqua Adventure

The Urch marine bicycle almost sank to the murky bottom of Portsmouth history. Luckily it attracted the attention of local historian Charles A. Hazlett (1847-1920). Hazlett’s Portsmouth family roots dated before the Revolution and his fingerprints are all over the city, as historian of the North Church, founder of the Aldrich Memorial, Odd Fellow, Freemason, and library trustee. Eventually he became president of Piscataqua Savings Bank and in 1915 wrote a detailed history of RockingHam County.

An avid cyclist, Hazlett reportedly purchased the first bicycle in Portsmouth in 1878 and, while demonstrating it, he writes, experienced the region’s first face-plant. In 1880, aged 35, he helped found The League of American Wheelmen (LAW) and in 1882 he braved the swirling Piscataqua in one of Urch’s marine bicycles. Hazlett, also a freelance writer, published is adventures in a series of stories called "Peddling on the Piscataqua" in the club magazine in 1883.

"Cheered by the assembled crowd of friends," Hazlett wrote, "we lowered our propellers and started on the pioneering three days’ trip of fifty miles."

Starting from Urch’s toll bridge, Hazlett and a friend peddled madly against the head tide and around the dilapidated wharves, beyond the old ferry landing and toward Great Bay. Bystanders stared in "wonderment", Hazlett wrote, and one shouted, "Here comes the devil on two sticks." Others swore they had seen men walking on water.

On the way back to Portsmouth in the dark, Hazlett’s propeller clogged with eelgrass. Caught in the deadly Piscataqua currents and unable to pedal, his craft when spinning into a bridge piling and crashed. Had it not been for the separate watertight compartments that kept the bicycle afloat, he reported, the trip might have been his last.

With a repaired aquacycle the next morning, Hazlett and his companion toured "rotten row" at the Navy Yard where the rusted hulks of abandoned war ships awaited destruction. David Urch joined the pair with his sister riding on an attached seat as they left "The Narrows" and toured New Castle. Then the pair peddled to Kittery to see Fort Foster and Fort McClary. They chatted with sailors aboard the USS Kearsage and with the lighthouse keeper at Whaleback. Then with the wind picking up and the whitecaps rolling, the two men without lifejackets, hoisted their ancillary sails and biked six "exhilarating" miles to the Isles of Shoals. A schooner, thinking the men were clinging to the hull of capsized boats, tried to rescue them.

After a refreshing night’s rest at the Appledore Hotel, Hazlett and his companion biked to White Island, climbed the lighthouse stairs and viewed the $30,000 Fresnel lens. They oiled the marine bike machinery and, despite a brisk breeze and threatening weather, set out for the mainland. With the wind astern and their sails up, the pair were soon "bounding along in coasting attitude." In little more than an hour they covered eight miles of open ocean, arriving on schedule to join a group of Wheelmen for chowder at Wallis Sands in Rye. By evening, they were back in Portsmouth.

CONTINUE WITH WHEELEMEN