Congregational Church Bell Tower Post - Rockport, Massachusetts
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N 42° 39.549 W 070° 36.989
19T E 367515 N 4724231
A preserved church bell tower timber which survived a canon attack by the British frigate Nymph on 9 September 1814, is incorporated as a structural support for a building at Bearskin Neck in Rockport, Massachusetts
Waymark Code: WM16JBN
Location: Massachusetts, United States
Date Posted: 08/12/2022
Views: 0
A preserved church bell tower timber which survived a canon attack by the British frigate Nymph on 9 September 1814, is incorporated as a structural support for a building at Bearskin Neck in Rockport, Massachusetts. The narrow, three-story building is on the southeast side of the street approximately 175 feet (53m) northeast from Dock Square and Mount Pleasant Street.
The dark brown post is approximately 12 inches (30cm) wide, 10 inches (25cm) thick, eight feet (2.4m) tall, and secured by a metal collar wrap to a granite step. It serves as a center pole to support a shallow porch roof. A high gloss shellac protects the wood. Mounted on the street-side northwest face, six feet above the second-from-top step, is a 0.25-inch-thick (5mm), engraved aluminum plaque which reads:
This timber was one of
the original posts
supporting the bell
tower of the church of
Rockport. Installed in
1804, these posts
resisted the British
attack in 1814 and
despite a direct hit by a
cannonball remained
standing. Today, that
cannonball can be seen
at the Congregational
church and its point
of impact recreated.
The preserved post is about 700 feet northeast from the Congregational church which still stands on Main Street and the captured carronade on its front lawn along School Street, complete with another historical plaque about "the Repulse at Sandy Bay".
On her website, educator and author Dr. Anita L. Sanchez offers a Teacher’s Guide to Invasion of Sandy Bay in which "a sleepy fishing village becomes the site of one of strangest invasions in American history - the battle is brief, fierce and, due to the poor marksmanship of both forces, bloodless."
On the 8th of September of that year [1814] the British frigate Nymph took one of the fishing boats belonging to Sandy Bay. Coming to anchor at night near the town, thick fog prevailing at the time, two barge loads with muffled oars, with the skipper of the captured boat for a pilot, rowed silently ashore. One barge landed at Long Cove, surprised and captured the sentinel, made prisoners of the small garrison, spiked and dismantled the guns.
The second barge’s crew proceeded to land on the western side of the Neck when they were observed by a sentinel about daybreak. He immediately gave the alarm by ringing the church bell. The members of the local company, the Sea Fencibles gathered quickly at the spot and directed a fire of musketry at the barge, the latter returning a fusillade of grapeshot. No injury was effected on either side.
In order to silence the alarm bell the barge crew fired a soldier shot at the belfry of the church. The ball took effect in one of the timbers of the steeple. The recoil of the gun, however, started the timbers of the boat to such a degree that it began to fill rapidly with water. There was no alternative. The men were obliged to land, their boat sinking just as they reached the shore.
– James Pringle; An excerpt from the book History of the Town and City of Gloucester, Cape Ann, Massachusetts; copyright 1892