Seacoast History Blog logoSeacoast Blog #35
March 1, 2009

I’m not the first to point out that there is an upside to a sluggish economy. It forces us to pause and assess. That is especially true for nonprofit history organizations that always run on fumes. So it was no surprise to learn that the Gundalow Company is wisely holding back on plans to build a second wooden vessel. Instead, director Molly Bolster invited a sizeable group of gundalow lovers to a brainstorming session last week at Stoodley’s Tavern. (Continued below)

 

The brains in the room were top notch. It’s always been that way since a hardy group of volunteers built and launched the Capt. Edward H. Adams into the Piscataqua in 1982. A gundalow is a lumbering thing, pretty much a barge with a huge sail. I was among the 4,000 spectators who watched the 70-foot vessel pulled across Puddle Dock by a team of oxen and have followed its 27-year career. I’ve always seen the gundalow, a craft unique to this region, as a living history museum. But it has become much more than that.

Molly and her husband history professor Jeff Bolster have turned the gundalow into a symbol of the Piscataqua River. They didn’t do it alone, of course, but they have been steering the project for the last decade.. Dozens of board members, craftsmen, and over 65 volunteers have kept the boat and its message afloat. But it was the Bolsters who spearheaded the best maritime guide to the seacoast ever written back in 2002. "Cross Grained and Wiley Waters" (it’s a great book, but a difficult title) is an owner’s manual for the Piscataqua Region. It includes 75 essays that, when collected, demonstrates how the success of this region depends entirely on the health of our fragile tidal estuary. It is both our past and our future. Screw up the ecosystem and no one will want to live or visit here. Our quality of life, not to mention our real estate values and economic survival, depend on an unpolluted waterway.

"Wily Water" married the idea of maritime history to the modern Piscataqua ecosystem. The Gundalow Company branded that dual concept onto the clunky, leaky, lovingly-reconstructed Capt.. Edward Adams. What I thought was largely a living museum of history has become a floating platform for teaching students and adults about this fragile region. Fly over the Piscataqua in a plane and you’ll see that this area is half water. And lately, according to recent studies, the water is dying.

Four scientists at the Jackson Lab in Durham have warned us that the Great Bay Estuary Is in worse shape than Boston Harbor. Water quality is fading rapidly. The eelgrass population, critical to the survival of the ecosystem, deteriorated by nearly 50% in the last decade. Invasive plants are taking over. Nitrogen levels are higher than the polluted Chesapeake Bay. We, the people who live here, are doing this – but no one seems to be paying any attention.

The Gundalow Company is spreading the word to towns in the Piscataqua river region. But the Capt. Adams was built for comfort, not for speed. It has to be towed to each town. Because it does not comply with Coast Guard regulations, it cannot cruise under its own power or take on passengers. The new gundalow, on hold for the moment, will solve those problems by creating a Coast Guard approved floating laboratory for testing water quality and educating the public. That project is on hold, for the moment, but the deteriorating condition of our ecosystem is moving ahead full steam.

So why not marry two problems into one solution? That was the gist of last week’s meeting in which boat builders, educators, engineers, historians, marketing experts, artists, business leaders and just plain folks tossed out ideas. Why not let the gundalow, like a seagoing Paul Revere, warn people about our coming ecological crisis? Its tall sail and flat-bottomed silhouette make an ideal symbol.

Gundalows have been working these rivers since 1690, carrying the supplies that built the Piscataqua region. They sustained our ancestors. Now, perhaps, they can carry the message of a sustainable environment.

So how to make that happen? How can the Gundalow Company brand itself as the environmental messenger of our endangered tidal system? How can they convince major local companies to sign on and support this work? How can they gather the data even now being collected by a great variety of environmental agencies? How can they reach the public with the facts? How can they find the funds to build the next generation of working gundalows?

Those were the questions generated by last week’s brainstorming session. The answers, my friends, are blowing in the wind. And while Mr. Obama tinkers with our sinking ship of state, the Gundalow Company has lots to think about.

FOR MORE INFO: Visit the Gundalow Company web site

© 2009 by J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved.

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