Isles of Shoals

“ Of all the Isles of Shoals, White Island is the most difficult of access. It is not easy to land there in good summer weather, and during winter communication with the outer world is as rare as cold days in July. ”

“ These are the Isles of Shoals, looking so small that they seem to be only rocks jutting a few feet above the sea, upon which it would be impossible to land.
As we approach Appledore, the islands still seem to be only a cluster of barren rocks, with a few scattered buildings. The charm which they undoubtedly 223 exert upon those who come year after year does not immediately manifest itself to the stranger. ”

“ The sun set, and we [78] could find no harbour for that night, since the coast was flat and sandy. Keeping off, and heading south, in order to find an anchorage, after proceeding about two leagues, we observed a cape on the main land south a quarter south-east of us, some six leagues distant. Cape AnneTwo leagues to the east we saw three or four rather high islands, Isles of Shoals and on the west a large bay. The shore of this bay, reaching as far as the cape, extends inland from where we were perhaps four leagues. ”

“ From this place we proceeded to a bay called La Baye de Toutes Isles, [268] of some fourteen or fifteen leagues in extent, a dangerous place on account of the presence of banks, shoals, and reefs. The country presents a very unfavorable appearance, being filled with the same kind of trees which I have mentioned before. Here we encountered bad weather.
Hence we passed on near a river, six leagues distant, called Rivière de l'Isle Verte, [269] there being a green island at its entrance. ”

“ On the south side of the entrance, which is the deepest, there is ten feet at low water; and within side, the depth is from 2 to 4 fathoms in a channel near the south shore: the rest of the bay is mostly occupied by shoals, over which boats can scarcely pass when the tide is out. High water appeared to take place about seven hours after the moon's passage; at which time, a ship drawing not more than fourteen feet might venture in, if severely pressed. Shoal Bay is difficult to be found, except by its latitude, which is 29° 261⁄2′ ”

“ At times during the fishing season there was hardly a man left upon the islands, a circumstance well known to the Indians.
A memoir extracted from the French archives gives a picture of the Isles in 1702, when an attack appears to have been meditated. "The Isles de Chooles are about three leagues from Peskatoué to the south-south-east from the embouchure of the river, where a great quantity of fish are taken. These are three isles in the form of a tripod, and at about a musket-shot one from the other." ”

“ Middleton Shoal, on the coast of New South Wales, being the only place of danger he had hitherto discovered. Should any objection be made to passing through a strait, where a more open sea can be obtained, he would recommend the much wider channel between Egmont Island and Simboo, and not by any means the whole circuit to the east of the New Hebrides. To the whole of this land, consisting of the two principal islands on each side of the straits, and the Treasury Isles between them, Lieutenant Shortland gave the name of New Georgia. ”

“ We passd during the day many low sandy Islands every one of which stood upon a large shoal; we have constantly found the best passage to lie near the main, and the farther from that you go near the reef the more numerous are the shoals. ”

“ With this view, after making a trip to the south, to weather the shoals under our lee, we stood to the north, in hopes of finding anchorage under some of the islets on which these trees grow. We were stopped by eight o'clock by the shoals which lie extended between the Isle of Pines and Queen Charlotte's Foreland; and found soundings off them in fifty-five, forty, and thirty-six fathoms, a fine sandy bottom. The nearer we came to these shoals, the more we saw of them, and we were not able to say if there was any passage between the two lands. ”

“ True to his promise, when they had finished dinner, he got a row-boat and took them over to Smutty Nose, where the old Captain proved very talkative. He explained that the name of the islands did not come from their structure, but from the quantities of fish found in the waters near the "schooling" or "shoaling" of fish. He told them that the Shoals had probably been visited by Captain John Smith, and Christopher Leavitt in 1623 had written something about them. ”

“ The passage between the shoal and this island is clear and good, with from ten to thirteen fathom and a sandy bottom; but the soundings are to be kept on the side of the island in twelve fathom, and never under ten: It is, however, very difficult and dangerous for ships to fall in with the land this way without a pilot on board, for there are many shoals and rocks under water. I ran in by a chart in the English East India Pilot, which upon the whole I round a good one, though the names of the islands, points, and bays, differ very much from those by which they are now known. ”

“ We went over it along the coast to 71⁄2° S. latitude, and the end of it is in 5°. We could not go farther on for the many shoals and great currents, so we were obliged to sail out S.W. in that depth to 11° S. latitude. There is all over it an archipelago of islands without number, by which we passed, and at the end of the eleventh degree the bank became shoaler. Here were very large islands, and there appeared more to the southward: they were inhabited by black people, very corpulent, and naked: their arms were lances, arrows, and clubs of stone ill-fashioned. ”

“ On no part of the Cornish coast is the Pilchard fishery carried on with greater activity or success; and at the time of large draughts, it is usual for all the inhabitants to contribute their assistance; shops and dwelling-houses are frequently deserted on such occasions, and even the church has been abandoned, when large shoals have made their appearance on the Sabbath! By a certain signal given by a person stationed on the heights, the approach of a shoal is generally announced to the town ”

“ The last objects on the horizon line were white-crested breakers combing above the "gulf or ship-swallower" lying in wait beneath them. It is a dangerous sea, and Nantucket Shoals have obtained a terrible celebrity—unequaled, perhaps, even by the Goodwin Sands, that mariners shudder at the mention of. If a ship grounds on the Shoal she is speedily wrenched in pieces by the power of the surf. They will tell you of a brig (the Poinsett) that came ashore on the south side with her masts in her, apparently uninjured. Two days' pounding strewed the beach with her timbers. ”

“ At four o'clock, the westernmost of the islands to the northward bore N four leagues; Wednesday island E by N five leagues; and Shoal Cape S E by E two leagues. A small island was now seen bearing W, at which I arrived before dark, and found that it was only a rock, where boobies resort, for which reason I called it Booby Island. A small key also lies close to the W part of the coast, which I have called Shoal Cape. Here terminated the rocks and shoals of the N part of New Holland, for, except Booby Island, we could see no land to the westward of S, after three o'clock this afternoon. ”

“ The chart of the shoals was very skilfully constructed, and neatly put upon paper, being very different, indeed, from the rude scrawls which seamen commonly trace, of coasts and islands. No indication, however, was to be observed of any harbour, or secure cove, [Pg 161] the existence of which might make the reefs a place of refuge. I noticed, however, on the north-west corner of the shoals, a cross slightly traced with a pencil. Putting the chart in my pocket, I searched the hut thoroughly, raking up the sand which formed the floor ”

“ Mr Mitchell himself mentions a fact that alone is sufficient to rebut such an assertion, namely, that shortly after the union between England and Scotland, an immense shoal of herrings ran ashore near Cromarty, and covered the beach to the depth of several feet; and he adds, “Strange to say, however, the shoal left the Frith in a single night, and no shoals made their appearance again for more than half a century.”
Now, if they could make but half a mile a-day, how could they have returned several miles in a single night? ”

“ And when it is considered that many shoals approach the coasts, not only of our own islands, but of Scandinavia and the Baltic, and of Eastern North America, every spring and autumn, the sum total of the herrings which people our seas surpasses imagination. ”

“ Forsyth and myself started to explore the opening. We soon discovered that it was nothing more than a shallow creek at low-water. The tide here rising twenty feet, gave it the important appearance it had yesterday evening. A tall clump of naked trees was conspicuous at the east entrance point, towering above the insipid mangrove shore. We gave it the name of Hope Inlet, to commemorate the feelings it excited on its first discovery. From the south point of Clarence Strait it is distant eleven miles, and the bay in which it lies, from the shallow-water at the head of it, was called Shoal Bay. ”

“ Besides these, there were many smaller isles scattered in the entrance of Shoal-water Bay; and the southernmost of them, named Aken's Island after the master of the ship, lies in a bight of the western shore. Out at sea there were more of the Northumberland Islands, further westward than those before seen, the largest being not less distant than fifteen leagues; Pier Head, on the west side of Thirsty Sound, was also visible; and in the opposite direction was the highest of the two peaks behind Cape Manifold, the bearing of which connected this station with Port Curtis and Keppel Bay. ”

“ Their adventures are now on a lonely little island, one of the Shoals, where they camp out and have a glorious time not unmarked by certain perilous episodes which heighten the interest of the story. It is really the best of a series of which all are delightful reading for young people. ”

“ The group lies between the south end of New Ireland and the north end of the great Bougainville Island in the Solomon Archipelago, and consists of six low, well-wooded and fertile islands, enclosed within a barrier reef, forming a noble atoll, almost circular in shape. All the islands are thickly populated at the present day by natives, who are peaceable enough, and engage in bêche-de-mer and pearl-shell fishing. ”

“ We kept on still to the eastward, with an easy sail looking out sharp: for by the many signs we had I did expect that we were near the land. At 12 o'clock in the night I sounded and had 45 fathom, coarse sand and small white shells. I presently clapped on a wind and stood to the south, with the wind at west, because I thought we were to the south of a shoal called the Abrolhos (an appellative name for shoals as it seems to me) which in a chart I had of that coast is laid down in 27 degrees 28 minutes latitude stretching about 7 leagues into the sea. ”

“ We did not go to them, because we had not reached the extremity of the island which we should have to round, [243] and also because the coast is beset with many reefs and shoals which we could scarcely pass through in the brigantine, it being impossible to sail through them in ships. These islands would be 6 leagues from Santa Isabel; they are in latitude 91⁄3° S., as they lie east and west with the island of Veru 10 leagues. These islands, which we passed, bear east and west one with the other. The land runs much further to the west-by-north. ”

“ And, in turn, shadow has come out of the sea upon Wales and fallen upon the upland watercourses from the norland fells, while in the Gaelic isles purple and gold cloths are still piled deep upon the fiery threshold of the sunset: and when the last isles themselves are like velvet-dark barques afloat in a universe of opal and pale yellow and faint crimson, a radiant sun still blooms like a flower of fire among the white pinnacles of wandering berg and the everlasting walls of ice. ”

“ The day after leaving the Clyde, we were coasting along the not very attractive-looking island of Islay, inhabited by the Macdonalds. It was often the scene of forays, which one clan was wont to make on another, in the good old days, as people delight to call them, when the ancestors of the present race were scarcely more civilised than the South Sea islanders. Though rock-girt, Islay is fertile, and a large portion has been brought under a state of cultivation. ”

“ What my friend treated as so wild a supposition, has actually happened in the Western islands of Scotland, if we may believe Martin, who tells it of the islands of Col and Tyr-yi, and says that it is proved by the parish registers. BOSWELL. 'The Isle of Coll produces more boys than girls, and the Isle of Tire-iy more girls than boys; as if nature intended both these isles for mutual alliances, without being at the trouble of going to the adjacent isles or continent to be matched. ”

“ But besides what is visible to the eye, there is much more invisible, treacherous, beneath the sea, extending all around it. Sable Island is, in fact, the crest of a vast sand-bank or shoal, which rises out of the ocean depths, about a hundred miles southeast of the coast of Nova Scotia, in the very track of the vast commerce between England and America. Though the island itself is not more than twenty miles long, the shoal extends much farther ”

“ On turning round the lower part of the island, we observed that the natives occupied the whole extent of the shoal, and speckled it over like skirmishers. Many of them had their spears, and their attention was evidently directed to us.—As we neared the shoal, the most forward of them pressed close to the edge of the deep water, so much so that our oars struck their legs. Still this did not induce them to retire. I kept my eye on an elderly man who stood one of the most forward, and who motioned to us several times to stop, and at length threw the weapon he carried at the boat. ”