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September 1 - 7, 2005 Edition
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At Large: Revolutionary places September 1, 2005 By Doug Cabral Holed up in a deepish cove in the northeast corner of Somes Sound, one can imagine Jack Bunker, who lived in these parts 230 years ago, gathering his neighbors together and asking for volunteers. Their families were starving, the British were taking what they needed where they found it to provision King George’s ships that boldly prowled the New England coast. Nantucket and the Vineyard, despite their substantial populations of cautious Loyalists, were not spared. Jack Bunker had heard of a Britisher in the Sheepscot River, 60 or so miles to the west of this deep and lovely fijord that nearly bisects Mt. Desert Island. He proposed to attack that British ship and bring her home with all the stores the enemy had gathered. He was no different than the Falmouth men who, just months before, had silently slipped westward along Nonamesset Island in their fishing sloops and rowing boats to sneak up on a British warship at anchor in Tarpaulin Cove, taking the guard by surprise – most of the crew were ashore – and slipping away with the prize. Jack Bunker, like the Falmouth men and many others, preyed upon the British in the name of independence, but also in the name of survival. Bunker found the ship at anchor in Wiscasset on the river with no one aboard. He and his mates cut her anchor cable and headed east for Somes Sound where they distributed the life saving goods to their neighbors. Then, chased by another British ship crowded with a double dose of angry Redcoats, he ran east another 50 miles or so to the lonely Roque Island archipelago, just a few miles from Campobello Island, just across what is today the Canadian border. It may have had little bearing on Bunker’s choice of a hideout, but Roque Island and its associated, unoccupied islets compose a wildly beautiful place whose shore is mostly granite, except for a long, arching sandy beach that runs southwest to northeast guarding the northern boundary of an extensive lagoon that is protected on the south by Great Spruce Island and on the east by Halifax, Anguilla, and Double Shot islands. If your dreams conjure solitude in remote landscapes that the hand of man has merely caressed and never molested, and if you don’t mind 250 days a year of fog and no steel band on the beach, this is the place for you. At anchor in Bunker Cove, as snug a refuge as ever you might find, we had followed Jack Bunker’s route. Just a few feet ahead of us, he and his shipmates laid low in their stolen warship. They cut her masts down to make her invisible to the British who lay offshore uncertain how to proceed, given the navigational problem the fogbound weir of islands presented. In addition to razing his prize’s masts, Bunker hid her beneath a camouflage of tree branches. Probably he used kelp as well, because the 13 foot tide fall reveals acres of it all around the cove. Among the many and varied pleasures of cruising in a small sailboat, imagining the adventures of one’s predecessors in such a place as this is one of the most gratifying. Jack and the boys had no charts, no hand bearing compass, no GPS. Neither did their British enemies. There were no buoys. The prize cannot have gotten into Bunker Hole except at high tide, and at high tide the rocks and ledges do not reveal themselves. At low tide, everything is plain to see, but you’re not going anywhere. At the Mudhole, another empty, lovely anchorage just a few miles west of here on Great Wass Island, we ran out two anchors to keep us in the only spot where we would remain afloat when the tide had ebbed completely at about 2:30 am one morning. In the moonlight we could see mudflats and ledges 360 degrees around the 16-foot deep pool where we lay. It was not till nearly noon next day that we got our anchors and slipped around the hazards to reach navigable water. Bunker and the British, and Gosnold and the others before them had no tide tables to predict the rise and fall and the height and depth of the tides. Never mind the currents. It is thrilling, even heart stopping, at times, to be a follower, a beneficiary, a mere tracer of pathways mapped long ago by intrepid others. One can only imagine the terrors, the courage, the curiosity, and the determination of those who were the discoverers.

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