MAINE HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTIONS. THE ANCIENT DEFENSES OF PORT LAND. BY LIEUT. PETER LEARY JR., U. S. A. Read before the Maine Historical Society, April 26, 1889. THE first defensive work erected in Portland Harbor was the fortified house of Captain Christopher Levett, an English gentleman of Somersetshire. He was one of those adventurous mariners who in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries carried the standard of England wherever ships could sail. He received his patent of six thousand acres from the Council of Plymouth on the fifth of May, 1623. He was himself a member of the council, which, in 1620, when the charter was conferred by James I., consisted of the Duke of Lenox, the Marquis of Rockingham, the Marquis of Hamilton, the Earl of Arundel, the Earl of Warwick, Sir Ferdinand Gorges and a number of other gentlemen. After sailing along the New England coast in the summer of 1623, on a voyage of search for a good location, he fixed his habitation on one of the islands of Casco Bay, one of four he speaks of, "which make one good harbor." His relation of the voyage to the council runs : And thus, after many dangers much labor and great charge, I have obtained a place of habitation in New England where I have built a house and fortified it in a reasonable good fashion, strong enough against such enemies as are these savage people. That Levett was a humorist as well as an explorer is evident from his succeeding observation to the council: "I will not do," he writes, "therein as some have done to my knowledge, speak more than is true: I will not tell you that you may smell the cornfields before you see the land; neither must men think that corn doth grow naturally (or on trees); nor will the deer come when they are called and stand still and look on a man until he shoot him, not knowing a man from a beast; nor the fish leap into the kettle nor on the dry land; neither are they so plentiful that you may dip them up in baskets," etc. The identity of his island is an open question among the historians of Maine. Mr. James Phinney Baxter in the valuable "Trelawny Papers" makes it House Island on which Fort Scammel now stands. Mr. William Goold in "Portland in the Past" makes it Hog Island, now euphemistically known as Great Diamond Island, and Mr. William M. Sargent in "An Historical Sketch, Guidebook and Prospectus of Cushing's Island," fixes it upon that beautiful place. The latter is probably the more exact surmise. That Levett had no confidence in any permanently peaceful relations with the Indians is evident from his prompt action in putting the new house in defensive condition. He writes of them : They are very bloody-minded and full of treachery among themselves therefore I would wish no man to trust them, whatever they may say or do, but always to keep a strict hand over them and yet to use them kindly and deal uprightly with them. At the time of his settlement, plantations had already been established at Portsmouth and Dover, New Hampshire, and further eastward on Monhegan Island. It is not likely that he would build his fortified house on an interior island, and so, in the event of hostilities which he manifestly looked for, cut himself off either from giving aid by sea to, or receiving it from either flank of the line of settlements. As all three were holdings under the Gorges and Mason patent, it is reasonable to assume that they were under instructions to help one another in the event of war. From the standpoint of strategy, the principles of which endure from age to age almost unchanging, either House Island or Great Diamond Island would have placed him at a disadvantage with the enemy on Cushing's Island; but holding the latter he would have had a certain strategic advantage which is obvious. This island has been known at different times as Portland Island, Andrews' Island and Bangs' Island. As Andrews' Island it was the refuge of the settlers in King Philip's war in 1676, who fled from Munjoy's garrison on the "Neck," and constructed some sort of a defense on the inner slope of the picturesque rock of White Head. It is prob able that not only was this island chosen as an asylum for facility of relief by sea from other settlements to the westward, but because some part, if not the whole, of Levett's fortified house still stood where his trained hand had built it and gave them safe refuge; and |