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Listen, sonny, lemme tell ya: In the old days, it got so cold, people could walk on the harbor
By adamg on Sat, 02/21/2015 - 10:23am
This print, from the BPL archives, shows a British steamer leaving Boston Harbor through ice, thanks to local merchants:
This print, representing the B & N. A Royal Mail steam ship Britannia, John Hewitt, commander, leaving her dock at East Boston on the 3d of February 1844 on her voyage to Liverpool, is respectfully dedicated by the publishers to the merchants of Boston who projected and paid for a canal cut in the ice 7 miles long and 100 feet wide. Much credit is due to the committee and to the contractors Messrs. Gage, Hettenger & Co. and John Hill for their perseverance in accomplishing so arduous an undertaking.
A decade later, tough Bostonians tramped across the ice to pull a ferry boat through ice, while other Bostonians stood atop the water to watch the spectacle:
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Comments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age#Europe...
Frozen inner harbor
Interesting. I've been wondering why more of the harbor hasn't frozen over, particularly the Mystic River / inner harbor where the water has a bit more fresh-water concentration (compared to that Fort Point photo posting showing a completely frozen surface). I guess it needs to get REALLY cold for that to happen, and I won't be walking to work in Charlestown from Chelsea over the frozen Mystic anytime soon.
John Hewitt Here
Get ye angleworms out of yer ears. You heard me proper, I be comin' from 1844, when superior ice-breakin' time machines can hail me to yeh. And bein' hackneyed in ice breakin', and havin' habituated with yer hagborn, daggling, damnable MBTA, and all you clackin, lachrymal claimants 'an lampooners over its club-headed ladle-ful 'o misappropriated fundin', halt yer glabbers! We had a sackful 'o lanky laborers packin' ice sabres, right 'ol steamahs, and an impenetrable tankard full 'o molasses. Sure, every one 'o my tardy-gaited tusslers all died tacklin' that tar-water, but they were none the more tardy than yer soft serve sorties!
English -- do you speak it?
.
Have a lager.
And just imagine Conan O'Brien saying it.
Nah
Him, I can understand.
Take things seriously much?
You must be a blast to hang out with.
Can't take a joke, much?
Do you really talk like that first comment when you're hanging out?
I didn't think so.
pretty sure harbor froze in 1997 or 98
as reported at the time by the Globe. Not that long ago....
Makes a nice Soviet Russia joke...
In Soviet Russia, the boat doesn't move you, you move the boat.
Boston ain't Russia, but right now it's close enough.
This was a very big deal in 1844
Cunard Line (yes, that Cunard) was the first regularly-scheduled steamship line to cross the Atlantic, and when they began service in 1840, they chose Boston as their only U.S. terminus. Even then, the rivalry between Boston and New York was great enough that people were worried about losing the Cunard contract to the rival port (which, being further south, experienced ice much less frequently). Business leaders and the city raised $1,500, a huge amount at that time, to pay contractors to clear a channel so that the Britannia could depart on time. It's reported that thousands of people came to watch from the shoreline, and even to walk out on the ice, five miles into the harbor. Britannia sailed on time, and Boston was able to retain the Cunard contract; although in 1848 Cunard added more boats and began sending alternate sailings to New York instead of to Boston.