Following the Raid of 1814

Recently, I read a book about the British raid on Essex (then known as Pettipaug) in 1814.  During the War of 1812, the Brits had the best of the American ships blockaded up the coast at New London on the Thames River.  Essex is on the Connecticut River, which has a shallow entry.  Even so, Essex had several shipyards that were building, among other vessels, medium sized ships for privateers.  A privateer is, in simple terms, a government licensed pirate.  American privateers were authorized to capture British vessels, with a focus on unarmed or lightly armed merchant ships.  The British made a pre-dawn raid with 136 marines and sailors in ships boats that could clear the shallow mouth of the river.  They made a deal with the town leaders that they wouldn't burn the town if the towns people stayed out of the way.  Then, they burned 27 ships and a large quantity of materials.  Although the British were late reaching Essex due to a freshet, they still lost only two men due to American delays in responding to the attack.  

View from inside Falls Cove

I put in on North Cove.  The old part of Essex has coves on either side (cleverly named, North Cove and South Cove).  Both of the coves had shipyards, which is a bit hard to imagine when one looks at the shallow conditions.  While I've launched here several times, I had never bothered to explore the entire cove until now.  My first point of call was Falls Cove.  The entrance is dark and narrow and doesn't look like it would go far, but it opens up into a fairly wide bay with marshy spots of cattails and wild rice, some forest and some housing.  Of note for an old town, the housing was clearly 20th century.  Close to where the British burned the Osage, which was the largest ship burned during the raid, I found a small park with a couple of excellent descriptive signs.  The 20th century housing now made sense as the shoreline of the entire cove had been a busy shipyard into the mid 19th century.  At the far end of the cove is Falls River, which was impassable without a portage.  The river was used by the shipyards and several dams and sluice works had been built on it at different times.

I continued up and around the cove exploring several of the dead end side channels, all of which were good length and width, until they weren't.   There were a good number og Great Egrets and Great Blue Herons in attendance...and the shit-white foliage of the nearby trees attest to this being normal.  Unfortunately, the bright overcast sky was less than ideal for photography.