Ferry Landing Traditional Cache
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We owe a debt of gratitude to the Conservation Trust of Brooksville, Castine and Penobscot for allowing us to geocache here.
A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BAGADUCE FERRY
As the crow flies, it’s less than half a mile from Castine to West Brooksville…across the Bagaduce.
In the early 1800‘s, most people would simply row across the Bagaduce in any of the numerous skiffs left for that purpose along either shore.
But for a man on horseback , it would have been a pretty good hoof...about 25 miles to go around…if any trails even existed. And Maine wasn’t noted for its riding trails. Even the infamous horseback rider, Paul Revere, was forced to walk back to Massachusetts after the disastrous Penobscot Expedition of 1779.
So, Capt. Israel Blake decided to build him a ferry for that hapless fellow on horseback.
And when a wagon-load of hay was needed in Castine, Capt. Izzy would station his wife, Ophelia, on the downstream oar, man his up-stream oar and commence to shout the rowing cadence until they were hard aground on the other side. According to Izzy it was “Just about the easiest 3 cents I ever earned”.
Unfortunately for Izzy, Ophelia passed away one particularly difficult crossing when her oar caught-a-crab and tossed her overboard. By the time Izzy noticed, the barge was well downstream and he had to wait for the outgoing tide before he could float back to the scene of the accident.
Without a dependable second oar, Izzy determined to try rigging a rope ferry…an ingenious rig wherein a pulley in the bow is attached directly to a rope strung between shores and the stern, with a short snub line and pulley, is allowed to drift slightly down stream before it is snugged down. In this attitude, the current pushes the barge along the rope to the opposite shore. The rope ferry worked so effortlessly that it allowed Izzy to work well into his seventies when he decided to retire the old barge chiefly because some “useless, pigheaded, Northern Bay gilpokes” complained the rope was a “hindrance to navigation“.
From “The Brooksville Archives” according to B. Peasley.
Parking is somewhat dicey at:
N44 24.777
W068 45.909
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