Waterfront4

On the Waterfront: Plymouth’s Maritime History continued

THE PLANTING, CULTIVATING AND FLOWERING OF TOURISM
Daniel Webster’s Century Oration included a stirring account of the Pilgrim’s landing and struggle to survive the first winter that helped to frame the Pilgrim’s story as the birth of the American story. Delivered in Plymouth at the invitation of the newly incorporated Pilgrim Society on Forefather’s Day, 1820, the 200^th anniversary of the Pilgrim’s landing, the oration was printed and reprinted many times and became widely known. Edward Everett provided the same service for the Mayflower in his oration for the Pilgrim Society’s 1824 Forefather’s Day celebration. Everett’s romantic description of the vessel laid the foundation for its iconic status in American lore.

Founded in 1820, the Pilgrim Society led the way in promoting the national importance of Plymouth’s founding. Opened in 1824, Pilgrim Hall is America’s oldest continually-operating museum.

In the years that followed, the Pilgrim Society erected the first stone canopy covering Plymouth Rock, the National Monument on Cole’s Hill, and, in 1920, for the 300^th anniversary celebration, planned the mammoth celebration “Pilgrim Spirit” featuring a cast of hundreds of “Pilgrims.” The Commonwealth pitched in and razed the “unattractive” work-a-day wharves and warehouses of the 18^th and 19^th century harbor and restored the shoreline to an imagined 1600s appearance.

As more Americans gained leisure time and transportation improved, summer resorts became popular. Plymouth had both location and a rich history. By 1846 William S. Russell had published a guide for visitors. Henry W. Longfellow’s The Courtship of Miles Standish, published in 1858, added another layer of romantic appeal to Plymouth as a "destination."

Steamboats built especially for passengers ran between Plymouth and Boston beginning in the 1820s though the service only flourished after 1880 when the Federal government dredged the channel. In 1881, 28,000 steamboat excursion passengers arrived at and departed from Plymouth.

Having followed Mr. Russell’s guidebook and trod in the paths of the Forefather’s, one naturally wanted to take a memento, a souvenir or two, back home. In 1832 Plymouth jeweler and silversmith Sylvanus Bramhall offered “breastpins” decorated with images of Forefather’s Rock in an advertisement in the local newspaper, the Old Colony Memorial. A. S. Burbank, C. T. Harris and a host of other entrepreneurs followed suit with shops and catalogs filled with Pilgrim memorabilia ranging from chocolate Plymouth Rocks to 11-inch bronze replicas of Dallin’s Massasoit.

Standing today on Plymouth’s fabled waterfront, the heroic-sized bronze Massasoit seems to bring the harbor’s story full circle—back to Patuxet, back to its life as a summer place.

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