Shelburne 43:45.45N 65:19.15W
Millybrown
Mark Hillmann
Thu 25 Sep 2008 15:43
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Another Historic Old Town; when I went into a
museum, I was asked if I wanted entry to just this one, or to all of them.
As the other two I had seen also seemed to be about boatbuilding I stuck to the
one.
 The building on the left was this museum. The
town's moment of fame was during American Independence when loyalists fled north
to Canada making Shelburne briefly one of the largest cities in North
America. By 1786 the population, which had
peaked at 16,000, was declining.
By 1792 the Black Loyalists, freed by Britain,
where slavery was now illegal, who had been given poor land in Shelburne,
emigrated and founded Freetown in Sierra Leone. Was American
independence about tea taxation or
slavery?
 This is a stack of dories as they would have been
on the deck of the schooner taking them out to the Grand Banks. These ones
had a crew of two and would sail or row back to the schooner when full of
cod. The area is notoriously foggy, so if you lost the schooner and were
100 miles out in one of these...
 All round Shelburne they fly these
flags. They are not the Union Jack are they?
Shall we offer a
prize to the first person to correctly identify them? A trip back across
the Atlantic in Milly Brown?
 Of course you do get some wildlife:
The gannets were diving close by yesterday, but to get this is just
luck.
This morning there have been groups of
seals, out at sea. Normally we see them along the coast,
there must be lots of food out here.
 These are how you often see whales, a pair
together, but the splash of one diving before the camera is out. For me
they are humpback whales, with the small dorsal
fin, although they were not raising their tail when diving as humpbacks
do. Perhaps they were just dawdling in
the morning sun on the surface, rather than breathing several times and then
diving down, for food.
The water is well populated with what look like
many different types of young jellyfish, as well as weed.
I am crossing to the US today, not fast as
arriving at night would be too exciting. As we are doing under 2 knots
just now, perhaps we ought to be motoring, but drifting along in the sun on
a calm sea with occasional seals and whales seems very
pleasant.
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