Sam Smith – Every day or so I drive to town through a place known as Mast Landing. Even the name is a little misleading as the masts that provided its name didn’t land there; they were taken away.
The name’s history is also a bit vague as it has its roots in the 1600s. But my historian wife came up with some notes my father wrote about Mast Landing in 1959 and here are some excerpts:
· Ships could only exist if there were masts and timber. Pepya, of the British Admiralty paid tribute to this basic commodity in December 1966, writing “The very good news comes of four New England ships come home safe to Falmouth with Masts for the King, which is a blessing rightfully unexpected, and without which, if for nothing else we must have failed the next year…
· As Albion in Forests and Sea Power writes: “Probably not more than one man in a thousand who looked at ships of the line reflected that her main-mast had been cut out of the forests of Maine.”….
· Thus Nelson’s flagship at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805 had Maine grown masts. While the revolution in 1776 cut off Maine as a source for the English, the Victory had got its masts from Maine some 40 years earlier, or around 1765
· Masts ranged from 25 to 36 inches in diameter.
· A history written in late in the 1700s says “The late contracts has been from Piscataqua Harbor in New Hampshire and Casco Bay in the Province of Main. The mast ships… are generally navigated. . . with about 25 men and carry 45 to 50 good masts per voyage. By Act of Parliament there are penlties for cutting of Mast Trees without licnse, cognizable by the court of Vice Admiralty.”
· During the 30 years before 1776, English soldiers were stationed for mast protection in the village on the hill.
· Mast Landing, of course, lost its mast trade with England with the American Revolution, but not its interest in ships. …Deeds confirm the memory and folk-tales of old inhabitants that ships were being built … as late as 1870.