A Shoal Lot of History: Salty Stories from the Isles of Shoals [Podcast]

Further Reading & Tour Info

Appledore Island Walking Tour 

Isles of Shoals Steamship Company Tours

Learn more about Shoals Marine Laboratory 

Isles of Shoals Historical and Research Association 

Brian Yurasits: [00:00:00] Before we get started, a quick note. This episode includes discussion of the Smuttynose Island murders, a historical case involving real life violence and traumatic events. Some of the details may be disturbing, especially for listeners sensitive to topics like violence or murder. Please take care while listening. 

Ann Beattie: That, that's the magic of the shoals for me, mm-hmm, is imagining those communities. Yeah. And how they lived and what they did. Yeah. And the cod fishing at the Isles of Shoals actually fueled the early economy of the new world because Plymouth couldn't farm for their lives. Uhhuh. Yeah. Um, they were, they were kept from starvation by cod. 

Erik Chapman: The other thing we would do is look across at Smuttynose and think about some of the high drama that unfolded there. 

Ann Beattie: I stay there for a week every summer in a house that's right next to the foundation where the murders took place. Mm. [00:01:00] Oh wow. And I sleep quite well. 

Erik Chapman: Oh, good. Yeah. Well, you're at peace with history. 

Ann Beattie: Yes. 

Brian Yurasits: There's a stretch of rocky Islands off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire. Nine in total called the Isles of Shoals. If you've ever taken a boat past them, you might have wondered who lived there? What happened on those shores? And why do these islands still capture our imaginations?  

Today we're traveling back in time to explore the history of the Isles of Shoals, shipwrecks, poets, pirates and all. And we'll focus on one island in particular, Appledore. Anne Beattie, a historian and longtime storyteller of these islands will be our guide. She spent years collecting the best stories from the Shoals. The kind of tales that make you see a place differently. Ann began her journey by leading tours for the UNH Marine Docents through Sea Grant on Appledore Island, which expanded [00:02:00] into giving tours of Star Island and becoming a steward of Smuttynose and Malaga Islands. She also has experience running history conferences on both the Shoals and New England history, taking every opportunity possible to investigate the shoals and share that knowledge with others. If by the end of this episode you're itching to experience Appledore for yourself, well you can. New Hampshire Sea Grant offers guided boat tours to the island where you can walk its rugged trails and see history up close. 

More on that later. I'm your host, Brian Yurasits, joined by my co-host, Erik Chapman, and this is Time and Tide. 

This could be a fun way to start this is it sounds like each of us have our own relationship with the Shoals, maybe to tell, tell like a story or, or how each of us really connect out there. If you have an interesting story [00:03:00] or like why it's special to you. So, and maybe Ann if you want to start there, 

Ann Beattie: I set foot on the Shoals more than a quarter century ago, and I was just riveted. It's like some magic from the soil seeped up through the soles of my feet, and I just looked around and started imagining how people lived out there. I knew there were communities of people and I knew they had a purpose, but that's all I knew. So I started reading and researching and talking to people, and it was just some sort of magic eclipsed my life. 

I was absolutely passionate and still am about why people went out there.  

Erik Chapman: I mean, I've got a few stories, but my, I think the one I'll share here is just my first experience out at Shoals was following, um, an extended period where I was going to the Antarctic and doing research on penguins, studying penguins, and learning about penguins. 

Um, but I would, you know, in doing that I was on boats or at research stations and so I mean, growing up in New Hampshire, I never went out to Shoals Marine [00:04:00] Lab. I grew up in Hanover, New Hampshire, the Upper Valley. After, you know, my so formative years growing up in the mountains and hills of New Hampshire, and then, you know, having my sort of mind blown by spending time in the Antarctic, going to Shoals I was just struck by holy smokes, i'm like just a few miles off shore, but I feel like I could be in another world, in an ocean world, an island world. But now I'm looking, you know, on this side of the island, I'm looking out at the open ocean, and on this side of the island, I'm looking at Portsmouth and Hampton and there's a Gloucester. 

Ann Beattie: It's unworldly. I mean, I grew up in Michigan and the closest I ever got to fish was Mrs. Paul's fish sticks on Friday night. Mm. So when I moved to the East coast and set foot on the shoals, it was like more than a foreign country. Yeah. It was like another planet. 

Erik Chapman: Did you ever eat sea perch? Ocean perch? 

When you were in the Midwest?  

Ann Beattie: No, we got, we had white fish.  

Erik Chapman: Okay. So there, there's a Acadian Redfish is a fish from the Gulf of Maine that for a period of time was marketed as far part of this like fish [00:05:00] fry culture in the Midwest. And it was sold as a ocean perch, but it's Acadian red fish. So you may have been connected to the Gulf, even from Michigan. 

Brian Yurasits: I will mention as well, uh, my, the first time I ever went out to the Shoals, uh, was when I worked at the Seacoast Science Center and I started taking trips out there, uh, you know, guided tours that we were guiding. And the just fascination by everyone on the boat, uh, as you're steaming out of the harbor, you start seeing some lobster pot, you know, lobster buoys, and as you slowly get further away from shore, everyone starts looking back and realizing that they haven't had this perspective before. You know, they've mm-hmm they've stood on Jenness Beach, they've stood on our, our sandy beaches and, and seen that backdrop of the Isles of Shoals, maybe seen White Island Lighthouse. 

But they've never been out on those Isles. And just looking back to the mainland, you really have this moment of epiphany where you're like, it, this is a, a world of its own out here with its own history, and you're very [00:06:00] rapidly confronted with that as soon as you step off the boat. Uh, that and, and all of the seagulls and terns, which I definitely want to get into more. 

So I kind of wanna start with just the history of the Shoals. For anyone out there listening who's never been or seen this special place this, this cluster of islands that sit just a few miles off the coast of New Hampshire and Maine. What did the Isles of Shoals look like before Europeans came to the East coast of the United States? 

Who, who was out there before? You know, before that?  

Ann Beattie: It's really interesting because for a long time historians of the Isles of Shoals thought that it was extremely unlikely that indigenous people occupied the shoals. Um, there's very little vegetation. There are very few mammals, certainly none that you would want to hunt for your supper. 

Um, what would be the point of hanging out on these nine craggy rocks? 10 miles off the coast of New Hampshire and Maine? So we thought no indigenous people were, [00:07:00] were probably not on the aisles of shoals, but recent. Archeological projects conducted by Dr. Nathan Hamilton, formerly of the University of Southern Maine, and Dr. Robin, um, Hadlock Seeley of the University of New Hampshire, and their students, produce some really exciting results. They have found Stone Flakes, which are remnants of sort of the manufacture grinding of tools, um, by indigenous people. And those flakes state back as far back as 6,000 years ago. Um, they also found arrowheads, some made of stone, um, from Canada. 

So perhaps indigenous people used the shoals as a trading route, but they were certainly out there probably fishing and they weren't out there for a picnic. You don't manufacture stone tools in an afternoon. So they were occupying the Isles of Shoals and that's really exciting to [00:08:00] those of us who have always wondered. 

Brian Yurasits: I'm curious where, where does the story really begin with settlements, uh, happening out there and, and the shoals being used for a hub for fishing and, and yeah. What did, what did their early use by Europeans who were, who were colonizing look like out there?  

Ann Beattie: Yeah. In the very early 1600s, there were a lot of, uh, by a lot, a lot for the time. 

There were maybe six exploratory voyages over to what they regarded as the new world along our coastline. None of them really mentioned the Isles of Shoals until Captain John Smith, the same John Smith of Pocahontas fame came over and he was sent to look for precious commodities, stuff like gold or timber or furs. 

He found the timber and furs, no gold. But he did note that there was an amazing [00:09:00] fishing ground and the Isles of Shoals were located right there. Um, now we call it the Gulf of Maine. Smith himself didn't really like to fish, so on his 1614 voyage, he got in a small boat with about six of his crewmen. He went up and down the coastline of New England and drew this map that's remarkably accurate. Current thinking is that that map deviates only a couple kilometers from what we know now as our coastline. So Smith talked about the wonders, the riches of cod in the Gulf of Maine, and he noted the Isles of Shoals. In fact, he was the very first person to put the Isles of Shoals on a map. The map he drew of the coastline of New England. And a couple years later he goes back to England and he writes this, basically it's a promotional pamphlet for what he's named New England. And in it he talks about the amazing cod fishing and he [00:10:00] renames the Isles of Shoals, Smith Isles on his map. 

Sadly for him, no one else ever referred to them that way. But this pamphlet, once it was published in England, all these young men in Britain with very few prospects, because usually wealth was inherited by the oldest son. These younger sons were thinking, wow, this is an opportunity. And they flocked over to the coastline of New England. 

Many of them settling on the Isles of Shoals. Young men from Wales and Devon and Cornwall, and there were six fishing stations along the coastline of New Hampshire and Maine. The Isles of Shoals were unique because they weren't owned and the fishing there wasn't funded by any given entity. So these were independent people settling on the Isles of Shoals. 

Cod was an really important commodity back then. Mostly because back in the, the 16th and 17th centuries, if you were a [00:11:00] Catholic, which most people in Northern Europe were. You could not eat meat on a holy day, and holy days comprise more than half the year. The sentence for violating that under King Henry VIII was death by hanging. And under his daughter, queen Elizabeth, you could only be fined and your lands could be confiscated. So cod was really important to these people and they were fished out over there. Explorers kept coming over here in search of riches, and ironically, it was cod that sustained them. Because you could take dry cod on a voyage and you had a sustainable source of protein. 

So cod fueled those voyages, and when they got here, it became an incredibly important economic trading deal for people in the new world because we needed manufactured goods, we needed textiles, we needed saws to cut down timber, we needed [00:12:00] traps to catch animals for furs. We didn't have anything to trade for that stuff except cod.

The cod, um, caught at the Isles of Shoals, they were catching in the early 1600s up to a hundred cod fish per day, per man, and they were hand lining this cod just,

Erik Chapman: And those were probably not small cod I bet.

Ann Beattie: Those were not small cod. The cod on average weighed a hundred pounds, and that's been verified by the archeological digs on Smuttynose where they were able to find cod vertebrae, carbon date it, and extrapolate the size of the cod between 120 and 150 pounds.

Brian Yurasits: Wow. That's an incredible history. Also an incredible way to get people to eat, fish, uh, eat, co, or die. 

Ann Beattie: License plates.

Brian Yurasits: I sense a, a new state motto there. Yeah. Um, Erik, I don't know if you want to chime in there, just your, your history teaching a fish, you mentioned you taught a fisheries course,

Erik Chapman: Sustainable fisheries class at the Shoals Marine Lab.

Brian Yurasits: I don't, I don't know if you're familiar with [00:13:00] this history or is, is this new?

Erik Chapman: You know, my, my knowledge is a sort of high level, and I really focused on, you know, the biology, the ecology and the fishery of today. But we touched on the history, you know, sort of, and, and thought about, you know, and connected to the history as, as we could.

And one thing that I, that myself and the students we wondered about together was just sort of trying to picture kind of what, what this might've looked like, what it might've smelled like, what it would've sounded like. You know, this bustling excitement and activity on the islands, it sounds like there were people from all over what is now the United Kingdom intermingling, but working together and you know, you know, can you describe a little bit more sort of in the, in the heyday of this kind of period? Yes. What did it look like? 

Ann Beattie: They would go out in small boats called shallops. They could be rode, and often they had a mast or two so you could sail them as well. And they would catch these, these massive cod, very dangerous, [00:14:00] particularly in, inclement weather.

And they would bring them back to shore in the early 1600s. That shore would be Appledore Island, and they would go into what's known today as Babb's Cove, where the boats arrive when you disembark to Appledore. And there would be a stage set out, sort of a pier, a wooden pier built on the land, but out over the water, and they would spear the fish from these small boats, bobbing away in, in Babb's cove up to the, um, fish house. And it was kind of the first manufacturing or, or industrial system in the new world because you had a long trestle table set up in this fish house on these stages. And there would be men on either side of the table and each man had a specific job.

So it was like an assembly line. Uh, one would be head and gut, the fish. The most highly paid was called the splitter, and a good splitter with one or two strokes of a knife could [00:15:00] completely take the backbone and skeleton out of the cod. And then they would take the filets of cod, lightly salt them, and put them on wooden racks or directly on rocks.

The wooden racks were called flakes and that the sunlight and the salt would help dry the cod. They called it dunfish, and it sold for two to three times the amount of cod dried anywhere else in the world, and that includes places like Iceland in Newfoundland. Isles of Shoals dried cod was the foodies cod for the world. And so it was a remarkable operation. One of my favorite stories takes place At that time, historians estimate there were up to 600 men fishing at the Isles of Shoals by the mid 1600s. There was a law for all the early fishing stations. Women were prohibited, because evidently we were just too distracting to the fishermen when they were trying to accomplish their work. 

Livestock was prohibited [00:16:00] because it would try and eat the dry cod laid out on the flakes of the stones to dry. So one man took his neighbor to court. This is on Appledore Island, which was called Hog Island back then, and this is on the records in York County. He took his neighbor to court and claimed that his neighbor had goats, a pig, and a wife on the island, and the judge ruled that the livestock was indeed a nuisance and had to go.

The wife could remain if there were no further complaint against her. So this changed life dramatically for those fishermen on hog island and the rest of the shoals, because once you have a wife, you start having children. You start building a community and you have a school and you plant a garden and it becomes, life became a lot easier. 

Sadly, this heyday of cod fishing in the Isles of Shoals only lasted about 30 years. Everyone who made their fortune moved to the [00:17:00] mainland where life was a lot easier. Um, William Pepperrell of Kittery, Maine, the Cutts Brothers, they were heavily involved in New Hampshire, the province of New Hampshire politics.

So the people left at the Isles of Shoals by the 1700s were fairly poor and they were fishing under the employ of someone else or for their family. 

Brian Yurasits: I think this is a really interesting transition 'cause I've heard that there are, were eras out at the Isles of Shoals and I also have heard that the folks who ended up settling out there were very independent from the mainland and really kind of were the first Live Free or Die-ers in a way.

Like they didn't care for the taxation. These are stories that I've heard in my time out on the Shoals. 

Ann Beattie: That's absolutely accurate. 

Brian Yurasits: Okay. 

Ann Beattie: Um, the folks who lived out there referred to the mainland as America as though they belonged in a completely different country. They did not see any purpose in paying taxes.

You know, nobody stopped by to pick [00:18:00] up their garbage or pave their roads. They also declined to send representatives to political government on the mainland. Um, they were extremely independent, hardworking, clever and rumor had it hard drinking. But that was true of all the fishing stations because there was so much money to be made fishing on the Isles of Shoals. Anytime there's an industry that's financially successful like that, you get corporations, and that's what happened to that fishing era at the Isles of Shoals. Men gathered in Boston and Gloucester and places like that and formed fishing corporations. They built bigger and faster ships and they would go out to the grand banks for a couple weeks and come back with their holds full of codfish and the little mom and pop fishing operations on the Isles of Shoals and along our coastline could not compete with that. 

Erik Chapman: When I started with Sea Grant, I was a Fisheries extension specialist, so I worked closely with the fishermen here in New Hampshire. And you [00:19:00] could be describing, you know, most of the fishers that I worked with was this day boat, family run, the boats named perhaps after their wife, maybe their son works as a deckhand, and they struggled with perceived and real competition with some of the larger boats and larger fishing fleets. So that history connects to our fishers of today, and that was something that we did talk about in the class. I'm, I'm curious, so it sounds like you kind of wrapped around a, an era at Shoals. How long was that era, which is like a couple hundred years, or 

Ann Beattie: An explorer named Christopher Leavitt came by the shoals in 1623 and he noticed six ships staged at Londoner's Island, what's now lunging, and those boats may have had a hundred, couple hundred people fishing from Europe. So we know Europeans were fishing there in 1623. And by 1700 the Shoals were no longer a thriving fishing station.

Erik Chapman: [00:20:00] So the 600 men fishing, some families come in and then there's, this is all you know, kind of wrapping up in less than a hundred years, it sounds like. 

Ann Beattie: It was like a flash. 

Erik Chapman: Yeah.

Ann Beattie: In history. It really was. And as technology improved, as you mentioned Erik, boating and fishing technology got better and better. Um, in the 1800s, steamers came in and then trawler came in, and so fishermen from over the last 400 years have experienced the same thing, overfishing, advancing technology, how do I make a living in the tradition my family has done for generations?  

Brian Yurasits: That is really interesting. As a through line, just connecting to today. What came next, after that period of time? How were the shoals then used, uh, if fishing wasn't the primary focus of, uh, staging out on those islands and, you know, processing the fish. What happened to those folks out there and the settlements that they had?

Ann Beattie: The Isles of [00:21:00] Shoals have this kind of sirens call where people cannot leave them alone. Throughout the 1700s, men were, and families were still fishing out there. But as I said, it was just to support their own families, or they were employees of some corporation. The Revolutionary War came about, and the Shoals were evacuated by the province of New Hampshire militia. Both for the sch Shoaler's own protection, but also because the militia wasn't so sure that the independent Shoalers wouldn't side with the Torreys in any conflict. 

And then by 1800, some scientists think that cod had been overfished as early as that. In terms of sustaining the population, so in the mid 1800s, someone came along with a new idea. For people to gather at the Isles of Shoals. His name was Thomas Leighton. He was an upper middle class guy from Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

He was quite an entrepreneur. He co-owned the New Hampshire Gazette, [00:22:00] which is still in publication today. Co-owned the Portsmouth Whaling Company. He was active in politics, founded the Working Men's Reading Club. And he was the assistant postmaster for Portsmouth and in line to become the postmaster. But politics shifted and the job went to someone else.

So he took a job as the lighthouse keeper out at the lighthouse on White Island at the Isles of Shoals, the Southernmost island. And he moved out there with his wife Eliza, his little girl who was four years old, and his infant son. He fell in love with the Isles of Shoals, ended up purchasing many of them, including Hog Island, now Appledore, and he decided to build a grand hotel. Being as a wise marketer, he renamed it Appledore after Appledore, England, and he built the Grand Appledore house, which eventually expanded to house 400 guests. His little girl who [00:23:00] was four years old when the family moved to the Shoals, um, was Celia Leighton. Eventually her under her married name, she published and became a famous poet and essayist Celia Thaxter. 

Brian Yurasits: Yeah, and I feel like you just hit on the two probably most familiar names to anyone who's come across the Isles of Shoals. Before bringing you on here, I, I wrote down one of the quotes from one of Celia's poems. It, it reads, a rest cure in these Isles is a thing of joy. And I think that's in reference to her spending time in her garden.

That, as well is another feature that people are really familiar with is Clia Thaxter and her Garden. I'm, I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about how her writing and this garden, I guess, communicated the natural beauty of this place.

Ann Beattie: At that time in history, most people could not afford to travel. 

I mean, Celia Thaxter's father built this grand hotel. A wealthy merchant from Boston built [00:24:00] another grand hotel across the harbor on Star Island and papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post were publishing the names of socialites who were going out there for trips. Summer long trips sometimes. Most people couldn't afford to do that. So reading about foreign countries was an incredibly popular pastime, and when Celia's essays describing the natural life on Appledore Island and the other Isles of Shoals appeared in magazines like The Atlantic Monthly or Harper's Bazaar, they read as foreign travel logs.

She described the natural world with such sincerity and such passion that it appealed to people as sort of an exotic locale, and she herself as sort of a naturalist. And that was reflected in her art, her writing, her [00:25:00] painting of china that was sold to hotel guests. And I often think when I'm on Appledore, particularly when I visit the Leighton family graveyard where Celia Thaxter is buried, that if Celia were looking down from heaven and saw the students at work in the, um, tidal pools in the lab on, on Appledore, she would be smiling her head off and quite pleased at the legacy that she left for those students.

Brian Yurasits: So you have this great hotel era industrious folks bringing individuals out to experience the Isles of shoals and changing it from this small fishing village into more of a kind of tourist destination in a way, it sounds like. 

Ann Beattie: The Isles of Shoals were a tourist destination. There were several boarding houses along with, um, the Oceanic Hotel on Star and Appledore House on Appledore. But they also [00:26:00] were a lure and Celia herself was a lure for many famous artistic people at the time, writers like John Greenleaf Whittier, the famous abolitionist poet, or Sarah Jewett, who wrote about life and the people of Maine.

They would gather in Celia's Parlor along with artists like Child Hassam the Impressionist, or J Appleton Brown from Newburyport. And then there were musicians, um, John Mason, a famous pianist who toured Europe. And John Knowles Paine, who was the first professor of music at Harvard and a composer. All these people would gather in Celia's Parlor in the afternoons or evenings.

And you can just imagine like the poets talking about a couple stanzas as they wrote that day, and the musicians fiddling around on the piano they had imported to Celia, to Appledore to play while they were visiting Celia. The artists were saying, oh, look what I sketched out on the rocks today. And this [00:27:00] had to have been amazing for a girl who basically grew up from the age of four on a rock. 

Brian Yurasits: So it's, it was kind of this cultural hub, uh, where artists were able to gather and speak about their connection to this special place and to the culture of, of the region kind of as a whole, it sounds like. 

Ann Beattie: Yes. And they would collaborate on works.

Um, the painters would paint something and the writers would write a poem about it, and it really publicized the Isles of Shoals to America. 

Brian Yurasits: And before getting into what the Isles of Shoals look like today, who's out there, who's occupying them, what kind of research is happening? I'm also curious if you have any other favorite tall tales from the Isles of Shoals.

I know there's stories. One of the first things that I learned about was Blackbeard the pirate, how he had his treasure out there, and plenty of ghost stories as well. Do you put any, uh, backing to any of those stories?

Ann Beattie: Uh, um, well, [00:28:00] Brian, you referred to probably the most infamous legend of the Isles of Shoals, and that's blackbeard's Treasure. The legend goes that Blackbeard, who was Edward Teach a famous pirate of the 1800s. He was a very intimidating fellow. He would put lit canon fuses behind his ears and walk around that way. He evidently had 13 wives, sequentially we hope. He legend has it, that he brought his 13th wife out to the Isles of Shoals for their honeymoon.

And while they were out there, Blackbeard knew that the King of England was after him, and as he and his wife would walk along the shore holding hands, he would remind her that at some point he may have to flee. He told her that he had buried his treasure on one of the islands, and he asked her to promise him that if he had to leave, she would guard the treasure and in exchange he [00:29:00] promised her that he would come back for her.

One day, Blackbeard and his lovely young bride were looking out to sea, and they spotted the mast of a King's naval ship. And Blackbeard knew they had come for him, so he reminded his bride of their exchange of promises and he took off on a ship. He was subsequently captured and hanged. And every day for the rest of her life, Blackbeard's bride would go down to the shore, look out to sea, and say he will come back. 

So on misty moonlit nights, you can sometimes at the Isles of Shoals, see a glimpse of white and the murmur of Blackbeard's Bride. That's all extremely unlikely.

Blackbeard or Edward Teach, his pirating activity took place in the Carolinas or the Caribbean. And in the 19th [00:30:00] century, that same story was told about a completely different pirate. What is known to be true is that there was a pirate who operated out of Marblehead, known as John Quelch. Some of his men were apprehended on Star Island with three pounds of gold dust.

The gold dust was confiscated and they were jailed. Were, would the shoulders have been friendly with pirates if they had offered the Shoalers a good deal, sure, they were very pragmatic people. But as far as finding gold doubloons, if any have been found, it's much more likely they came from Spanish or Portuguese ships that were coming over here to get the infamous shoals dunfish.

Erik Chapman: What I didn't hear you say is that it absolutely is not true. 

Ann Beattie: You're right. Discovery channels, sent a team out to Lunging Island, the Western most of the Isles of Shoals, and they had an actor dressed up as Black Beard and an actress as his ghostly bride in white. [00:31:00] They also had a team with sophisticated metal detection equipment, and the reason no one has seen that documentary is because they found nothing. Which means either there is no treasure buried at the eyes of shoals, or no one's found it yet. 

Brian Yurasits: Interesting. And I feel like this is a good bridge into today because if you go out to the Isles of Shoals, uh, I've been out to Star Island where, uh, as soon as you arrive, you're greeted by the Pelicans, the, the staff that live and work on Star Island. And when you leave the island, they will all gather down by the dock and they, they have a, a chant of some kind that usually involves, you will come back, you will come back, you will come back.

Ann Beattie: Yes, that chant has been called from the dock of Star Island as people leave since at least 1900, and it comes directly from the story of Blackbeard's wife. You will come back. [00:32:00] 

Brian Yurasits: Oh wow. So that threads the needle into today.

Erik Chapman: And before we go to today, I feel like we should touch on the murder story. Can we hear that one? Do take requests? Yeah. Do take story requests.

Ann Beattie: Um, this is, this is a factual story. In 1873, there were. Very few people on the Isles of Shoals. Um, population was maybe 50 spread among all the islands. There were some people on White Island manning the lighthouse. There were workers on star building, the original Oceanic Hotel, and on Appledore, Celia Thaxter and some of the hotel workers were getting ready to open up for the summer season.

It was March. It was cold and snowy. On Smuttynose Island, there was an extended family of Norwegians immigrants who had come over to try and become successful fishing. Um, the [00:33:00] family included, so it centered around a couple, John and Maren Hontvet, and it included Maren's sister Karen, who had worked over at Appledore House, but had been fired by Celia Thaxter's mother a couple weeks prior to the murders.

Um, there was also Celia's, half-brother and his wife from Norway, and I'm sorry, not Celia, Maren and Maren's husband, John's younger brother, Matthew. So the three men decided to go out to catch bait in order to fish. They were saving money to buy a new fishing boat, and the money was kept in the house.

They were unsuccessful and needed to go into Portsmouth to purchase bait. Unfortunately, the bait train had been delayed coming in from Boston, so the men were gonna have to spend overnight. This would be the first night that the three women, Maren, Karen, and Anethe had spent alone on the island. [00:34:00] As it got later and later, the women realized the men were unlikely to come back that night, back in Portsmouth when the men had sailed in the Hontvet and Christiansen men, they had been met by a former boarder they had taken in on Smuttynose Island. His name was Louis Wagner. He was a Prussian immigrant, and Wagner met them at the docks where he was scrounging around looking for work and kept asking them if they were going back and they said, we're not. You know, we're gonna stay, get bait from the train coming in from Boston, and then bait our long lines.

We'll employ you, you wanna, you wanna help us bait those lines? Wagner said yes, but he never showed up. Back on Smuttynose, sometime during the night someone landed on the island went in the front door of the cottage where the Hontvet's and Christiansens were staying. The lock had been broken. And murdered two of [00:35:00] the three women. Leaving only Maren Hontvet to escape as the sole survivor and relator of what had happened that night. Both Karen, Maren's sister and Anethe, her sister-in-law's, bodies were discovered. They, the women had been strangled and attacked with an ax. The ax was one laying outside the front door.

The women had been using it to chop ice from the top of the well that morning. Maren said later that she did not see who the attacker was, but she thought it was Louis Wagner. He was apprehended in Boston, brought back to Portsmouth where a mob of a couple thousand people were waiting with stones and sticks.

They had to call in personnel from the naval shipyard to help guard Wagner's passage from the train to the Portsmouth jail. All of the evidence was circumstantial, but [00:36:00] Wagner was convicted in the state of Maine of the murders and was one of the last people to be hung in Maine. It was a, it is a tragic, tragic event and it spread across the United States. 

I mean, it was, it was a sensationalized murder. People still debate today because all the evidence was circumstantial and there was no CSI back then. Uh, they debate about who the murderer might be. There have been plays written. The University of New Hampshire did a ballet about the murders. There are comic books. The murders continue to fascinate people today.

Brian Yurasits: Yeah. Thanks for scratching our murder mystery itch.

Erik Chapman: Yeah. Thank you for taking their request.

Ann Beattie: True crime.

Brian Yurasits: This, this is interestingly transitions into my next kind of question of, of today, right? The, the Isles of Shoals today. I'd love to paint a picture of what that looks like and what lessons we can learn from the history of [00:37:00] the Isles of Shoals.

Ann Beattie: I think the Isles of Shoals are eternal. Um, the, their face may change as storms batter the rocks and erosion takes place. The shoals themselves are eternal and I think their call for people to gather out there is eternal. In, in the fishing era, you had hundreds of people out there fishing for cod to make the world famous shoals dunfish or dried salted cod. And in the resort era, you had hundreds of people, again, flocking out there to experience the natural world and to engage in artistry of portraying that natural world. And today, hundreds of people still flock out there. And I don't know what to call today's era. It's, it's educational, it's enlightening, it's inspiring.

On Appledore, you have the Shoals Marine Lab. Where, which is unique, I think in many ways, most labs are set up for faculty or graduate [00:38:00] student research. And the Shoals Marine Lab is primarily for undergraduate research and marine science and sustainability and engineering. And it's an amazing place for um, people who are just beginning their adult lives to explore their passion in the marine world. If you talk to any of these students, the ones I've spoken to say that it's the most intense and wonderful experience that they think they will ever have. It's just a remarkable thing. And as I say, I think the, the Leightons and the Thaxters from the 19th century would be very proud of what's happening on Appledore Island today.

Um, over on Star Island, you've got people going to conferences, some spiritual in nature, but on topics ranging from art to history to yoga. You have both on Smuttynose and duck islands, they are protected by conservation easements, so they will be preserved in eternity in their natural [00:39:00] state. On White Island is owned by New Hampshire Parks, where the lighthouse is, and that is open for the public to visit. Although landing is extremely difficult. But the Isles of Shoals, people have taken steps to protect them, to make sure that we don't see high-rise condos developed out there so that people can enjoy them in their natural state.

Brian Yurasits: For Erik I have a question about the research that's happening out there. I mean, the Isles of Shoals are, are smack dab in the middle of one of the fastest changing bodies of water on our planet. What are some of the research projects that, and, and ways that, uh, our natural ecosystems are changing out there? I know there's a lot of research on, on seabirds that occurs on those islands.

Erik Chapman: There's a, a deep and broad body of research that's always been happening out there. I guess the example maybe that dovetails onto your mention of what's going on at White Island and, and White and Seavey Islands are, are homes to, um, breeding common and [00:40:00] roseate terns. Common terns in New Hampshire is a state threatened species, and roseate terns are uh, federally endangered species and sea grant has funded research at the Isles of Shoals and white and Seavey looking at how we can understand better the prey base for, uh, common and roseate terns. How the, how these species are accessing younger age classes of important commercial and recreational species, including cod.

Um, and there are. Fishery scientists who are looking at the research that we're doing to help understand better age classes that are not well represented in population studies for commercially and and recreationally valued species. So we're funding research to look at the prey base of common and roseate terns.

But the research is actually trying to understand better in part what's happening with important economically valuable fish stocks. You know, one of the important questions are what's happening with these fish stocks, not just as a result of, um, fishing pressure, but the, the baseline [00:41:00] change in these ecosystems.

So how's the Gulf of Maine changing and, and is it changing away from a system that is connected to our cultural and historical identity through cod, to a new Gulf of Maine. Sea Grant is very much kind of a, a, you know, a woven into the, to, to all aspects of this because Sea Grant is focused on research and science, but we're also focused on human history and the interactions of people with their natural environment.

Um, so we are invested in supporting, you know, people and scientists as their opportunity to, to get out to Shoals as an access point to explore our understanding of what we know and what we don't know about the natural world and our relationship to it. 

Ann Beattie: Erik, you mentioned one of my favorite things to point out to visitors at the Isles of Shoals, and that's the tern restoration project on Seavey and White Island. 

That project, when it was initiated in the late 1900s, there were six pairs of common nesting turns on Seavey Island, and over the last several [00:42:00] years, there are routinely more than 2000 pairs of nesting terns. Terns almost went extinct in the 1950s, and I, I love to point that out because it shows that with concerted effort and scientific research, we can limit some of the fallibility of our natural world.

Brian Yurasits: Ann thank you so much for sharing like your, your insight and your knowledge of, of our local history here. I mean, it's, it's incredible and I, I have a feeling we're gonna have to have you back on here to share some more stories. 

Ann Beattie: Absolutely. It's magical. Thanks for having me.

Brian Yurasits: So this was incredible to listen to storyteller extraordinaire Ann Beattie.

What I wanna wrap this episode up with Erik is, uh, we do at Sea Grant have the an opportunity for anyone who's listened to these stories of the Isles of Shoals of Appledore Island especially. We offer opportunities to [00:43:00] get out to the Isles of Shoals on guided tours of Appledore Island of Shoals Marine Lab through our Marine docents program.

If you're listening out there and have never been to the Isles of Shoals before, or even if you have and want to get back out there as quickly as possible, after listening to this episode, you can sign up for one of these Appledore Island cruises on New Hampshire Sea Grant's website. And as you are signing up for one of these cruises, uh, Erik and I can share some insight and some advice on what to bring out there to the Isles of Shoals. 

So, Erik, if you, if you were, uh, speaking to a first timer to the Isles of Shoals, what would you recommend that they pack or that they bring? Or do you have any tips? 

Erik Chapman: I think the most important thing to bring is just, you know, bring your imagination. I mean, be ready to kind of, to learn. And I think it helps to do a little bit of research before you get there or you come with sort of an idea of like, okay, what you, you have some questions in your, in your mind when you go out there, and I think that's a great starting point, I think for an experience at the Isles of [00:44:00] Shoals is just, you know, you're gonna be building your knowledge of a place that you haven't been before, but it's also gonna give you perspective on a place that you spend all of your, your time on, on the mainland. Be prepared to identify poison ivy. So plants ID. Yeah. Brush up on your ID of, uh, what poison ivy looks like. Um, be prepared to, um, meet some birds maybe, depending on the the season. Mm-hmm. Um, the nesting season, you might be getting a potentially an aggressive, uh, welcome to the island from, from some gulls.

Brian Yurasits: And I'll give a little bit of practical advice too. 

I'd say to bring, uh, a wildlife ID guide if you can get your hands on one. You have the opportunity to see some me mammals out there, sea birds. I'd also highly recommend bringing even a map of the coastline so you can, as you're looking back at the mainland, you can kind of point out things like Mount Agamenticus.

I've heard on a very clear day you can see Mount Washington. 

Erik Chapman: Yeah. Binoculars. 

Brian Yurasits: Binoculars, yes. Ooh, that's a good one.

Erik Chapman: The most important thing is to go. 

Brian Yurasits: Well, thank you [00:45:00] so much for listening to this episode, learning a little bit from our, our guest speaker Ann, and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Time and Tide.

New Hampshire Sea Grant works to enhance our relationship with the coastal environment to sustain healthy and resilient ecosystems, economies, and communities through integrated research, extension, education, and communications efforts. Based at the University of New Hampshire, New Hampshire Sea Grant is one of 34 programs in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant College Program, a state-federal partnership serving America’s coasts. 

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