Nantucket's Whalers.

After an overnight stop in a cheap roadside motel we parked up by the picturesque harbour in Hyannis and boarded the first ferry of the day across the sound to the semi-mythical island of Nantucket.

It took the best part of two hours to make the choppy crossing, but soon enough we made out the Brant Point lighthouse and were guided gently into port. There's a party atmosphere ashore. Nantucket town is filled with wealthy Cape Cod teenagers, their shiny, happy parents and immaculately groomed pedigree dogs, all looking forward a couple of weeks fishing in the harbour, lounging on the beaches or cycling out for a posh picnic by the cranberry bogs. Each boat that comes in brings new friends, greeted with squeals of excitement and anticipation from those already arrived.

Nantucket preserves its affluence by banning camping. To be here means you either live in one of the impressive houses, built by the sea captains, or have managed to club together enough money to stay in one of the boutique hotels. It's expensive, but there are plenty of takers.

We set out for a stroll, the Nantucketers call it laning, around the cobbled Main Street, browsing in the exclusive shops and soaking up the late morning, before heading of to the town's main attraction, the Whaling Museum, which now occupies the site of a former spermaceti candle factory.

For over a two hundred years this tiny island, just fourteen miles long and barely five metres wide, was the centre of the lucrative whaling industry, providing the fuel for all the lamplights of the Western World. The museum brilliantly captures the treacherous voyages, the cruel carnage and the sudden rewards for those who set sail from here. Captain Ahab, the vengeful Captain of the Pequod in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, was a Nantucketer.  A ruthless, rough talking man who, over the course of his forty years of whaling had spent less than three on land. His Quaker determination to rid the world of, in his eyes, the monstrous creature, was typical of the moral as well as commercial drive of the Islanders.

Melville based his story on the true account of the Nantucket whaleship Essex, commanded by Captain George Pollard, which had been sunk by a sperm whale of the coast of Japan in 1820. Cast adrift in tiny whaleboats the surviving crew were forced to resort to cannibalism, drawing lots to determine who should be shot and eaten first. Many days later, still gnawing on the bones of their dead comrades, a handful of the men were rescued and returned to their astonished families back in Nantucket. Most were back at sea within a year.

Melville describes the unique outlook of the Nantucket whalers in one particularly poignant sentence. It's painted bold over the entrance to the museum.

Two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer's. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires.

We went in and were immediately confronted by a 46 foot skeleton of a Sperm whale suspended from the roof. Dwarfed next to it a rigged whale boat from where the hand held harpoons would be thrust, matador like, as close to the whale's heart as possible. On the adjoining wall a selection of mangled weapons, displayed as testament to the physical battle between whale and man, whilst upstairs is an impressive collection of scrimshaw. The engraved folk art that sailor's practiced by pricking dots with a needle into the enamel of discarded whale teeth. It was a way to retain sanity on the interminable voyages to the South Seas.

We had hoped to walk out of town for a look round the wilder sides of the Island, but a huge squall, came charging in from the ocean sending us scuttling back to the safety of our hotel room. And so we sat looking out on Centre Street towards the Coffin House where Melville, on his first visit to the Island in the 1850s, met the now mad Captain Pollard, who by this time had, to his eternal disgrace, lost a second ship, The Two Brothers. In later life Pollard, despite his traumatic adventures, become a ridiculed figure in the town, reduced from a swaggering sea captain to a shuffling, nightmare haunted, night watchman. Melville recalled the meeting with a sad diary entry.

To the islanders he was a nobody. To me, the most impressive man, tho' wholly unassuming, even humble — that I ever encountered.

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Plimouth Plantation. A Lesson in Drama and Heritage.

We picked up our car from the airport, put the top down and headed, with a sense of adventure, south through the Boston suburbs, onto the Interstate and down to the Plymouth.

The arrival here of the Mayflower in 1620 is the founding myth of America as a nation and just a couple of miles away from the famous rock where the pilgrims first disembarked is the remarkable Plimouth Plantation, a living history museum taking the visitor back in time to the first puritan settlement.

The Site has two villages in one. The Wampanoag Homesite which recreates the home of Hobbamock and his extended family. The Wampanoag tribe were native to Massachusetts and had, prior to the arrival of the Europeans, had the run of the land for over 12,000 years. Hobbamock initially made friends with the settlers, teaching them many of the survival techniques that helped the colony survive the first harsh winters.

The twentieth century interpreters are all members of native nations, although today they speak to visitors in modern English, and the village abounds with demonstrations of traditional craft skills. In one corner a father and son were burning out the centre of a felled pine trunk to make a dug out Mishoon canoe whilst across the way a young man told stories of his ancestors under the shaded shelter of the domed shaped Wetuash house that he and his brothers had built earlier in the Spring. Elsewhere hides were being tanned, stews prepared and jewellery forged.

We continued on to the English village, slightly further up the hill. It's an amazing set up as you step through the gates straight back into 1627.

The key to the museum is its covert theatricality. At any one time 40 or so role players populate the fenced village. They are organised according to experience as Apprentice-Interpreters, who are given juvenile introductory roles, Journeyman-Interpreters, who develop more complex narratives and Master-Interpreters who take on leadership roles.

Each has had an extensive training and rehearsal and remains absolutely fixed in first person character for the entire day.

Unlike other costumed interpretations, however, the actors don't look to engage the visitors directly, but go about their business, preparing food, cultivating livestock, repairing buildings, in relative private. Occasionally interaction is induced by with a nod of welcome, but it's up to us to decide how deeply we wish to delve into the dynamics of the community.

And it's worth delving into. The colony's early governor, William Bradford, left a wonderful diary account of the Plantation's early years and from this the role players choose and develop daily scenarios, usually choosing the same calender date to ensure seasonal authenticity. The politics of these events can be teased out by talking to the players. The coherence of this private world is perfect.

Today a dispute was threatening to divide the village. Pilgrims John Oldham and the Rev John Lyford opposing the separatist practice of the Colony had begun to agitate for a return to a more Anglicised form of worship. Governor Bradford had intercepted disparaging letters en route back to England and challenged their sedition. Oldham, upset, had by way of protest, refused to stand guard as a watchman and in the subsequent dispute with Miles Standish, the colony's military adviser, had pulled a knife.

Yesterday had seen the trial of both men and for 'plotting and disturbing the peace, both in respects of their civil and church state' they had been banished.

We bumped into Oldham as he was making his way back to his house. He greeted us as members of the old country and told us, in a perfect Derbyshire accent, the story of the trial and how he feared for the ungodly practices of the people. We asked him where he and his family would go and he thought he'd try his luck trading with the natives up the coast in Nantasket, where a new settlement had recently been established.

We wished him well and went to seek a village elder able to give us a counter view and soon came across William Brewster, one of the original Mayflower pilgrims, eating lobster in his house. As religious adviser to the colony Brewster, a Nottinghamshire man by birth, was grieved by Lyford and Oldham's actions, all the more so as his son John had only recently married Oldham's sister Lucretia. He felt though that for the good of the colony, both men needed to leave. This public dispute acted out immersively in a site-specific environment was brilliantly done.

We could have spent all day scratching for gossip and news, but had to push on. I left with a sense of awe at the pedagogic effectiveness of these rigorous interactive sequences. There are huge lessons here for those who would 'perform' heritage.

We nipped into Plymouth itself, walked the cramped decks of the replica Mayflower and looked at the rather sad rock, stamped unceremoniously with a 1620 date mark  and ostentatiously protected under a neo-Grecian temple.  Already, though, the sun was setting, the sailors were bringing their yachts to shore and we were keen to get down to our overnight stop in Hyannis.

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A Sleepy Sunday in a Field of Dreams.

Today was our last full day in Boston. We feel we've only scratched the surface. We started the day by walking down to Griffin's Walk, site of the infamous Tea Party, where a replica of the good ship Eleanor sits. The first tours of  had begun and a huddle of excited children were standing on deck, holding tea chests above their heads.

'Let it begin here!' shouted the costumed interpreter and with a roar the children dumped their crates over the side with a loud splash.

We spent most of the morning taking a gentle boat cruise around the islands in the harbour. Boston is an evolving city. Landfill and waste is constantly being used to change and redefine its shape. The neck, which all but cut the city off in siege times, has been expanded to create the Back Bay and South Boston. Logan airport was created by connecting an expanded Noddle's Island to the mainland and several of the Islands in the bay are themselves man made.

Bostonians short on the time or money to head for the Cape ferry out here on hot summer days and picnic or paddle on the beaches. The really enthusiastic take camping gear and spend the night watching the twinkling lights of the city skyline from a distance.

It was a relaxed hour and a half. Incoming planes flew overhead, almost close enough to touch. The weekend sailors waved happily as we passed and all seemed well in the world.

The boat detoured a little down the Charles River to point out the Golden Stairs on the Charlestown side. The stairs led out of the Immigration Processing centre that operated during the early years of the twentieth century. Between 1920 - 1954 thousands of new arrivals stayed here in locust infected dormitories whilst they had their documents and suitability for work checked. For those accepted the stairs represented a climb to the relative freedom of a new life 3000 miles away from the purges in the Old World.

Back on dry land we caught the T across town to Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox. It's been a shame that the team have been out of town all week and we haven't been able to catch a game. Nevertheless, I find touring venerable old stadiums, like Fenway, strangely moving.

They act as receptacles for drama, excitement and anticipation, moments when you, along with the thousands of other sports fans present, realise that things will never be the same again. Even in their latent moments, when the only noises come from the wooden bleachers creaking gently in the drying sun and the whizz of the sprinklers, they seem to echo with the sound of the crowd.

It's crazy really, there are hundreds of pitches, hundreds of strikes over hundreds of games over many, many seasons and yet each ground carries just a handful of phenomenal moments. Moments true fans long to say they witnessed.

The Red Sox cash in on this and all over the ground are small monuments and plaques commemorating the great, good and eccentric. The town is baseball crazy and the team have, over the last hundred years done all they can to create proud and quirky local traditions, that offer substance to the notion of being a fan.

In Section 42 of the right field a single red seat stands out amongst the fen green of the rest of the stand, marking the distance that Ted Williams, the great Red Sox hero, hit the longest home run ever recorded at the park.

Whilst others lingered staring back across the ball park, trying to remember their own moments of magic or perhaps projecting a successful outcome for Monday night's game, we slipped away and wandered slowly down Boylston Street, through the common, back to Rowe's wharf and home.

We hit the road tomorrow.
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Harvard Yard and Meeting Kismet.

It was a lovely morning and so we hired bikes from a little shop opposite Columbus Park, rode around the knuckle of the North End, crossed the Charles River Dam and followed the north bank of the river round to Cambridge and Harvard Square. Boston's modest skyscrapers sparkled across the water as we zig zagged past other cyclists, joggers and the occasional group of sightseers admiring the view.

We locked up the bikes and headed into the yard for a look round. We're in the summer recess so apart from the occasional research student scurrying head down towards a library or lab the campus was mostly populated by tourists, wandering around, trying to work out what gives the University it's magic. Is it in the bricks? Does it seep up from the ground? Or drop from the sky? Is it simply a case of rubbing the shoe on John Harvard's statue? My guess is those, like me, who have to look for it, whatever it is, have no chance of success here. Harvard, like Oxbridge remains, for most of us honest and hard working as we may be, a spectator sport.

The yard is pretty enough, but reminded me more of Birmingham, with it's criss cross of paths, sturdy halls and occasional self-conscious nods to neo-classicism rather than seemingly evolved monastic reverence engendered by the secretive colleges back in Oxford or Cambridge. Beyond this inner sanctum lie the more lively shops and cafes of Harvard Yard, including the marvellous Harvard Bookstore which we spent an hour or so browsing in.

By midday the temperature had become uncomfortably muggy and so after the briefest look round Cambridge Common we headed over to the Museum of Natural History to look round the  astonishing Ware collection of glass flowers. Over 3000 models of plant species blown with exacting, delicate precision by Czech emigre Leopold Blaschka and his son Rudolph. The handmade craftsmanship is quite staggering.

Back on the bikes we headed through Cambridge to the Massachusetts Institution of Technology Museum to have a look at some of the fascinating machines. MIT has always combined scientific rationalism with artistic bravado in its efforts to expand the possibilities of artificial intelligence and the Museum is a fine mix of the eccentric and the brilliant. Star of the show is Kismet, who in the late nineties became one of the first robots capable of registering and responding to human emotions.

She's a rather sad shell now, but video footage of the early experiments show clearly how nuanced humanoid interaction with her had become.

We were kicked out at closing time just as the skies opened. We sheltered in a coffee shop for a little while, but in soon became apparent that the storm was just gathering and so off we went again, drenched on Harvard Bridge and through the Back Bay as we struggled to return our bikes to the shop by closing time. Cold and soaked we made our way back to the home comforts of Winthrop on the T-train.
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The March to Concord.

Off on an excursion, following in the hoof prints of Paul Revere's horse, west from the city centre to Lexington and Concord, towns with twin claims to being birthplaces of the revolutionary war.

It's hard to know exactly when the fires of liberty were lit. Was it when the unpopular Stamp Act was imposed from remote London in 1765? Was the turning point the death of the snowball throwing citizens at the Boston Massacre five years later in 1770? Was it the overrunning of the three East India Company tea-ships and the destruction of 342 chests of their taxable cargo at Griffin's Wharf in 1773?  Or the subsequent decision to turn Boston into a garrison town by filling it with redcoats during the Summer and Autumn of 1774?

What is certain is that by the Spring of 1775 the countryside surrounding Boston was filled with local militia groups, all rallying to the Patriot cause, whilst the Loyalist army, under the command of the treaty seeking General Gage, retained the city itself, looking for an excuse and opportunity to capture Hancock, Adams and the other patriot leaders.

On the night of 18th April 1775 the troops began to leave the city, crossing the Charles River and heading for Lexington, where it was known Adams and Hancock were staying. Dr Warren, the senior member of the patriot's shadow government remaining in Boston, commissioned William Dawes, by land, and Paul Revere, across the river, to use the cover of night, overtake the Loyalist columns and give warning of the march.

By dawn the Redcoats had arrived in Lexington and were met on the green by the local minute men, who'd been up all night in the Buckman Tavern, awaiting their arrival. What happened next is the cause of much debate. Major Pitcairn leading the soldiers demanded that the rebels lay down their arms and disperse. Captain Parker, head of the militia, recognising how heavily outnumbered his company were, concurred. However, in the tiredness and tension shots were fired and minutes later eight villagers lay dead on the grass. With a loud 'Huzzah!' the troops marched on towards Concord, where they had intelligence that a huge stockpile of ammunition had been built up. The first shots had been fired.

Today Lexington is an unassuming place. Dog walkers wander across the historic green barely noticing the minuteman statue and the Parker Boulder. We crossed to the Buckman Tavern and had a fascinating guided tour with a costumed interpreter, who wanted to stress the mercantile interests of the patriots. She was a little nervous coming off script, and apologised that, as a history major, she felt a need to provide a subtler context than the recognised narratives afford. Most colonists, she suggested, saw themselves as British citizens, unable to afford goods shipped from Europe and

 indifferent to the escalating dispute. For them shelter and security mattered more than freedom. The future governance of New England was a matter for debate, but fewer than reported had a desire to risk their citizenship by standing up to the most sophisticated army in the world. Most hoped things would blow over and peace be made between London and the New World.

 

Given the risks it must have been a terrifyingly tense few hours, then, for the seventy seven men in Captain Parker's company waiting in these small wood panelled rooms for the regular troops to arrive.

We moved onto the Hancock-Clarke House, Revere and Dawes' destination on that fateful evening, where Hancock and Adams were lodging, before boarding the Liberty Ride Trolley bus that links Lexington with Concord.

We'd assumed that we'd be able to hop on and off and explore the various landmarks on Battle Road, but unfortunately the bus only runs three times a day and so we had to be more selective over what we chose to see.

A lot of trouble is going into acquiring property and land between the two towns in an attempt to accurately recreate the two hundred year old landscape through the creation of the Minute Man National Park. We got out at the visitors centre and walked for a couple of miles along a wooded trail to the Hartwell Tavern. It's an evocative walk past several tributes to fallen soldiers, as well as the homes of patriots William Smith and Elizabeth Hartwell, both of who watched in awe and dread as the soldiers boldly marched towards Concord.

We would have continued there ourselves, but without our own transport, were forced to board the final trolley bus of the day to the North Bridge, where facing each other across the Concord river the first order to open fire on loyalist troops was given by Major Buttrick.

The twenty mile redcoat retreat back to Boston was a bloody and ragged affair. Local militia swarmed the woods, hiding behind trees and stone walls, filling in behind the exhausted troops. Atrocities were carried out on both sides as the angry and petrified soldiers tried desperately to get themselves back to barracks. Relief troops were sent to Lexington, but the enraged patriots maintained their pursuit back into Charlestown. Boston was effectively under siege.

Four months earlier George III, sitting pretty in Buckingham House, had predicted events in a letter to his Prime Minister Lord North

'The New England governments are in a state of rebellion, blows must decide whether they are to be subject to this country or independent... The people are in a state of mischief and we must either master them or totally leave them to themselves and treat them as aliens.'

The time for diplomacy had passed.
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The Modern Romance of JFK.

Jump forward another 150 years and a new generation of leaders were making waves in Boston. John 'Honey Fitz' Fitzgerald, the smooth talking son of Irish immigrants became, just a generation after his parents fled the potato famine, the first Catholic mayor of Boston. To solidify his position he encouraged his eldest daughter Rose to marry Joe, the son of Patrick Kennedy, one of his democratic rivals. Their second son John Fitzgerald Kennedy would, with the able assistance of his glamorous wife Jackie and two younger brothers, Bobby and Teddy, go on to reinvent politics for the charismatic media age.

We spent the morning investigating the appeal at the JFK Presidential Library, a beautiful concrete and glass building overlooking Dorchester bay, south of the city centre.

The Kennedy's throw a long shadow over Eastern Massachusetts. They educated themselves at Harvard, cut their political teeth in Boston, and regenerated at their compound at Hyannisport fifty miles South of here on Cape Cod.

The museum itself is fascinating, particularly in documenting the JFK's early life as the son of an ambassador. Initially he saw himself as an academic and teacher, developing a private intellectual life in the slip stream of elder brother Joseph Jnr's political ambition. It was Joe's death in an air crash towards the end of the war that catapulted John into the limelight, firstly as a serving an East Boston district in the House of Representatives, then as Senator for Massachusetts, before finally receiving the Democratic nomination to run for President in 1960.

Kennedy's fluent rhetoric was remarkable, from his clipped, polite diplomacy as a young congressman, to his towering inaugural speech, which more than any other moment captured the excitement of a new generation standing on the brink of progressive change. The black and white images of formal austerity and serious patricians, flushed out in favour of technicolour footage of swimming parties and families. It's this persuasive image of the leader as home maker that still pervades.

For all the style Kennedy remained deeply affected by the history of New England. His speeches drew heavily on the brave, uncertain sea journeys of both the Pilgrim fathers and his Irish ancestors, finding parallels between their voyages across the Atlantic to an strange land with his own dreams of space exploration. His was a life created on the edge. America was always at his back but, like so many of those who grow up by the ocean, he couldn't help but look the other way and wonder what awaited on the far shore. Freedom embodied as an escape towards the unknown.

We headed back into town and took a less treacherous boat trip, an early afternoon glide on the famous swan boats in the public gardens - a Boston institution - before heading back to the North End to take a more detailed look at some of the monuments in the Old North Church and Copp's Hill.

 The day ended down the hill in the chaotic glory of the Pizzeria Regina where huge plates of gorgeously stacked pizza and ice cold local beer are passed over head into the same wooden booths that have housed customers since the 1940s. Some things pull you home.

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There She Blows!

We caught the first boat out from the harbour this morning and headed for out across the ocean towards the plankton rich Stellwagen Bank, home of migrating Humpback Whales. It took about an hour to reach the sanctuary, skimming along above the waves, leaving the skyscrapers of Boston as dots in the distance. Eventually we cut engines and made our way out on deck to look for water spouts, a tell tale indication that a whale is about to surface.

There were several boats out of Gloucester and Provincetown in the area already, all circling round looking for a sign and for twenty minutes or so you could have cut the tension with a knife and then ... suddenly... from nowhere, a cry. About 100 metres away, as clear as anything, a thin jet of spray rising high into the air. The engines flicked on again and off we sped.

I was amazed how close we could get. We arrived on the scene just as the majestic black back flowed in front of the boat. A perfect arc, cutting through the surface of the sea, running itself smoothly through the bright light of a sunny morning and ending with the flicked Y-shaped fluke of the tail as the great beast dived. It's hard to describe the feeling of being so close to such a magnificent creature. Several on the boat burst into tears. It was truly awesome.

The flukes of the whales are as individual as fingerprints and it didn't take our marine biologist guide long to flick through her data base of 2,500 whales to identify twenty two year old Rapier, who returns to these feeding grounds every year. She had a calf, as yet unnamed, with her. Rapier seemed totally unconcerned by our presence.The calf, more curious, came close to our bows.

For about an hour they came for air, dived, teasing us with her undetected movements underwater before spouting again. The boat twisted and turned, accelerated and reversed, trying to anticipate the next move. It was all over too quickly and long before we'd had enough we were heading back to shore.

Back in Boston, and buoyed by the morning's wonder, we decided to head back to the Common and trace the red bricked Freedom Trail, which takes visitors on a three mile walking tour past many of the key sites linked to the War of Independence.

We passed the impressive gold domed Massachusetts State House and followed Park Street into the Old Granary Burying Ground, home of departed patriots, brewer Sam Adams, bank rolling merchant John Hancock and silversmith Paul Revere, whose midnight ride to alert the coming of the Loyalist Redcoats was made famous by Longfellow's poem.

It's fascinating to realise that for the first 150 years of it's history America was essentially an outpost of England and that these men, the Sons of Liberty, were to all intents and purposes, English. The narrative of the journey to Independence is deeply ingrained in the American conscience, but it quickly becomes apparent that this was no Hollywood epic where the forces of good overcame the forces of evil, but rather a slow process of disillusionment with the Mother Country, and a growing belief that self-determination was the more profitable direction to go.

As if to reinforce the ambiguity the trail led us next to the King's Chapel and burial ground, the principal Anglican church in Puritan Boston. Over half the congregation fled at the outbreak of revolution. Winthrop is buried here and it's wine glass shaped pulpit, chandeliers and large vaulted windows, it's impossible to escape the sad whiff of repressed baroque. This was the Tories church and I began to see the parallels between the War of Independence and the English Civil War, a hundred and twenty years earlier. The patriots wanted to create a New England.

On we went to the South Street church, the meeting place, where Sam Adams encouraged the mob to march on Griffin's wharf and tip the tea into the harbour, and the Old State House, site of the Boston Massacre, where, in 1770, five colonists where killed by British troops, irritated by having snowballs thrown at them. Six years later the Declaration of Independence was read out to the citizens from a balcony overlooking the spot.

The historic sites were, by this time, beginning to close, so we decided we'd simply follow the route past Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market into the North End with its Italian restaurants, bursting into al fresco life. We found Paul Revere's house and the Old North Church, where the patriot sexton on the night of Revere's ride, secretly signalled to his colleagues across the water in Charlestown of the Westward departure of the Redcoats, by hanging two lanterns in the belfry.

With evening fast descending and the attractions thinning out we crossed the river ourselves to look from a distance at USS Constitution in the navel yard and climb Bunker Hill, where the first full scale battle of the revolution occurred. It's here that the Commander William Prescott, aware of the limited ammunition available to the militias in comparison with the well equipped redcoat forces instructed his men to avoid firing until they could see 'the whites of their eyes.'

Here we sat under the huge Obelisk, Prescott facing away from us looking out over peaceful Charlestown and began to realise just how fascinating and opportunistic the birth of America, as a nation, was.
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