Sam Smith - Casco Bay is the westernmost of the great bays of Maine, eighteen miles from headland to headland. The product of glaciers, Casco Bay is speared by a series of points extending in a generally southerly direction. Beyond the points are the islands, many laying on the same axis after being chopped off the peninsulas by the dull but indefatigable knife of the sea. Maine has thousands of islands -- a survey in the 1980s found 2,000 of uncertain ownership alone -- and if its coastline were stretched taut it would reach the Panama Canal. But nowhere is it more jagged and idiosyncratic, nor its waters more jammed with the potsherds of glaciations, than in Casco Bay. The Maine Times claimed once that there were 768 islands and ledges visible above the 9-10 foot high tides. Old tourist material referred to "The Calendar Isles," a reflection of the alleged island count. This count goes back at least to 1700 when an English document cautiously reported that
Sd bay is covered from storms that come from the sea by a multitude of islands, great and small, there being (if report be true) as many islands as there are Days in a Yr.
The US Coast Pilot doesn't tally the rocks and so says there are only 136 islands and ledges. The Portland City Guide says 222 islands -- based on a state study that listed only those outcroppings "big enough for a man to get out and stand on. " And a 1992 computer-aided study found 763 islands and ledges appearing at mean high water.
In any, case there are a lot of islands, rocks and ledges. It is why, perhaps, that the lobsterman, upon it being proposed that he undoubtedly knew the location of all the rocks, replied, "Nope. But I know where they ain't."
The bay is also home to an unusual variety of wildlife. The Casco Bay Estuary Project reported in 1995 that 850 species had been identified in local waters. The density of organisms in the bay is more than ten times that of Delaware Bay. Included are over 30,000 water birds of 150 different species, over 2,000 harbor seals, and over fifty pair of nesting osprey and even a few eagles.
Many of the islands are uninhabited. The country's oldest mail boat service plies among the largest of the others, bringing letters, tourists, food and palettes of construction materials. In the lower corner of the bay is Portland, one of the east coast's great natural harbors, with a channel deeper than that of Boston, Philadelphia or New York. During and after World War II, the Navy formed transatlantic convoys and moored as many as 60 vessels off Portland. The islands provided a natural barrier to storms and enemy subs, with anti-submarine netting strung between them completing the task.
The coastal Atlantic was far more dangerous than Americans realized. Years after the war it would be revealed that in the first months 46 merchant ships were sunk off the east coast. Another 126 would be sunk before the war was over. And Portland was among the first targets for U-boats after war was declared. At least three U-boats were sunk near Casco Bay - one five miles southeast of the Portland sea buoy, one off Small Point and the other seven miles off Halfway Rock after being spotted by shore gunners on Bailey's Island.
On April 23, 1945 - as Stephen Puleo describes in Due to Enemy Action - the 200 foot USS Eagle was sunk less than five miles southeast of Cape Elizabeth by U-853. Only 13 of the crew survived only to be informed by Navy officials that their ship's boiler had exploded and thus they were not entitled to the Purple Heart. It was not surprising the Navy wanted to cover up the cause; after all the war was almost over and no naval vessel had yet been lost off the New England coast.
On May 5, the captains of U-boats received word from Berlin that they were to surrender. The commander of one wrote later, "Henceforth we would be able to live without fear that we had to die tomorrow. An unknown tranquility took possession of me as I realized that I had survived. My death in an iron coffin, a verdict of long standing, was finally suspended."
The commander of U-853, however, either did not get the word or chose to ignore it. That afternoon he sank a freighter off Point Judith, RI commencing a chase that ended with the sub on the ocean floor with all crew members dead.
A day later, the war was formally over.
It would take over a half century of dogged effort, however, for the survivors of the USS Eagle sinking to finally receive their Purple Hearts for an incident the Navy hadn't wanted to admit had occurred.
Among the Navy ships using Casco Bay was the battleship Missouri which moored right off Clapboard Island. Years after she had departed, the mammoth buoy of the vessel on whose deck the Japanese surrendered remained as a memento as it lazily filled with water and finally sank.