There was not an accurate survey of the dreaded Bahama Bank, which lay athwart the sailing route from Portland to Havana, until 1820. The following year, at long last, once the precise location of Nantucket Island’s South Shoal was established, vessels headed homeward from Europe at last dared run further south, enabling them to take advantage of the Gulf Stream and cut at least a day off the voyage. Small wonder, then, that in Article IX of the Portland Marine Society’s ByLaws, in language echoed in those of other societies, "It is enjoined on every maritime member of this Society, on his arrival from sea, to communicate to the President his observations, respecting the variations of the needle, the soundings, courses and distances and all other things remarkable about this coast...." These observations were to be recorded in the Society’s books, and it is a great pity that these volumes fell victim to the great Portland fire of 1866 as they must have made for fascinating and informative reading.
One can gain some perspective on how sketchy even the knowledge of Portland Harbor itself was in that early period. In 1822, two years after Maine achieved statehood, Edmund Blunt published the tenth edition of his indispensable American Coast Pilot. Blunt’s chart of Portland Harbor is not exactly studded with soundings. His instructions for entering port include these directions for clearing Spring Point Ledge: "When you pass House Island, bring it to bear S.E. by E. and steer N.W. by W. or W.N.W. with the tide of flood. In steering the above course, you will see a round bushy tree to the north of town, and a house with a red roof, and one chimney; bring the tree to the west of the house, which course will carry you up the channel way, in 6 or 7 fathoms of water....
One of the Society’s members can recall just how critical passing along detailed local knowledge can be. In the early nineteen fifties he was helmsman on a schooner charting the waters of the Labrador coast, which had recently become part of Canada. Not for nothing are passages on the Labrador between an island and the mainland called "tickles." Relying on the only available set of sailing directions for that part of the coast—written by an American yachtsman in the nineteen thirties—several times over several years the research vessel had set a course through the tickle, taking a bearing on a cairn of unknown age.
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