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COVID-19 update: When planning your trip, check with museums and other attractions or diversions about their current pandemic-related policies, as well as Maine's COVID-19 website. Maine lifted its quarantine and COVID-19 requirements for out-of-state visitors on May 1 but may reinstate them for arrivals from particular states if their caseloads spike.
The minute you round the corner into Castine, you know you've arrived somewhere special. This coastal Maine town seduces visitors with its handsome Federal and Georgian homes, elm-lined streets, colorful gardens, college campus and serene views of windjammers and working boats cruising Penobscot Bay — but it's more than a pretty face. Long visited by Native Americans and occupied continuously since the early 1600s, Castine played a significant role in America's early history. Here, prowl through forts, poke around museums and read interpretive signage commemorating historic battles, burial grounds, trading posts and other historical sites and events.
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Most first-time visitors to this bordering-on-precious village (population: less than 1,000) wonder why such a fine collection of historical sites dating from pre-Revolutionary America through the Civil War exists in this off-the-beaten-track spot. “It's amazing how many small fortifications, batteries and redoubts are scattered around town,” says Lisa Simpson Lutts, director of the Castine Historical Society.
The reason? “Location, location, location!"
Located about 137 miles northeast of Portland, Castine juts into the northern end of Penobscot Bay, tipping a peninsula framed by the Bagaduce and Penobscot rivers. Early explorers knew controlling the coast and rivers meant controlling the interior lands, the source of animal furs and timber that could be sent to Europe and traded for supplies.
"Back then, people got around by waterways. There were no roads. You needed to have a deep harbor, and this town has an incredibly deep and protected harbor,” Lutts says. It also has height, she adds, referring to the gentle rise from waterfront to an elevation approaching 200 feet. That's why the French, British, Dutch and Americans fought for governance from the early 17th century, when it was part of Massachusetts, until the early 19th century, with control ping-ponging among them.
These days, Castine is not only a living memorial to past turmoil but also a snapshot in time. By the mid-1800s, the town was a major commercial port, deriving most of its wealth from sea-related businesses. Shipyards and wharves filled the waterfront, chandleries and sail lofts lined Water Street, and skilled craftsmen were abundant. That coupled with controlling trading routes made it one of America's wealthiest towns. Since then, Castine's remoteness and lack of major fires have preserved what were the homes of wealthy merchants, shipbuilders and sea captains. Thanks to the summer visitors who began buying and preserving these homes in the 1970s, Castine is a time capsule. “That's why it looks like a quintessential New England village on steroids,” Lutts says.
The Penobscot Expedition
Castine may be only a footnote in America's timeline, but it deserves more attention, not only for its forts, but especially for the Penobscot Expedition, America's worst naval defeat prior to Pearl Harbor.
In mid-June 1779, British forces arrived in what's now Castine and began building palisaded Fort George out of dirt, manning it with 700 soldiers to defend their lands in Canada and cut off timber supplies to the American rebels. “They intended to establish the province of New Ireland and hold the coast for Britain,” British novelist Bernard Cornwell said in an NPR interview. His novel The Fort tells the story of the fight for the strategic outpost.
Upon learning about the British occupation of its lands, the Massachusetts legislature sent the largest fleet assembled during the Revolution. The Penobscot Expedition comprised 18 armed ships and 21 transports with 900 militiamen and 300 Continental Marines.
It should have been a rout, given that American forces vastly outnumbered the British troops, which were protected only by three sloops in the harbor. Under heavy British fire, 600 American militiamen landed and climbed the cliffs around Dyce Head, claimed the high ground and came within a half-mile of the unfinished fort. Then the expedition fell apart: The general in charge of it wouldn't attack the fort until the sea forces destroyed the British ships in the harbor, but the commodore in charge of those forces wouldn't attack the ships until the general's troops secured the fort. “It's this horrible situation of watching a great ambition being destroyed by sheer incompetence,” Cornwell said.
