I had only technically been in Boston before this trip. I’ve connected through the airport and changed trains at the station. That was it. I don’t know much about Boston past Revolutionary War History with three exceptions, the green monster, the great molasses flood of 1919 and Swan Boats.
The green monster, of course, is in Fenway Park, the home of the (I come from the New York area so you can guess the adjective I use) Red Sox. I learned about the molasses flood as a kid reding “Junior Scholastic.” I know about swan boats from E.B. White’s “Trumpet of the Swan.” A kids’ book popular when my kids were small.
That explains part of the title of this post. The duck boats, the second part of the title, are amphibious vehicles, the DUKW (duck) is from the World War II era. Duck tours ply Boston’s streets and take the plunge into the Charles River. Duck Boats take you past both the Swan Boats and the site of the great molasses flood.
(The flood happened in January, 1919. On a subfreezing day a large tank was filled with molasses for the Purity Distilling Company. The temperature quickly rose to 40 degrees and the tank burst. A 13,000 ton wall of molasses rushed through the streets at 36 miles an hour killing 21 and injuring more than 150 people. According to Bostonians on a hot summer day molasses still oozes from between building stones and you can catch the faint sweet smell. It was a vivid description designed to engage young readers. It engaged me! It’s still available online, behind a paywall, from Scholastic Publications.)
We took the Duck Tour because when I was a kid surplus ducks repurposed as tour boats plied the Jersey Shore allowing kids to make amphibious landings on the beaches of Wildwood and Keansburg. I kind of wanted to relive that. The tour took us past both the Swan Boats and the site of the Purity Distilling Tank. I enjoyed the colorful narration by the ConDUCKtor, but while we were eating lunch outdoors at an Irish Pub between Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall I checked my camera and found that somehow my SD card had reformatted itself. I have no idea how and I had no pictures. I spent hours trying to recover them. I haven’t given up yet but…
I popped in a different card. So, while I do not have pics of either the molasses site or the swan boats I decided to keep swan boat in the title. We walked over some of the route of the Duck and got some pics of some of the things we saw and of the very Duck boat, Miss. Emma, (There are 28 in the fleet) that we rode on.
What struck me about Boston was the sense of whimsey. The carousel on the Rose Kennedy Greenway does not have horses but creatures drawn by local school kids from things they had seen or imagined. Sculptor Jeffery and painter William Rogers created the animals.
Then there is the statue of the “Lord of Misrule,” Thomas Morton. Morton found the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony tiresome. He moved to the southwest and established “The Dionysian free-trade zone of Merrymount” now Quincy Mass. He was a shrewd trader and established good relations with the indigenous community and declared the doctrine of “Sovereignty without subjugation, prosperity without exploitation and freedom without coercion.” The trading was done around an 80 foot tall Maypole decorated with flowers and antlers and there was a dance floor. This was too much for the Plymouth Pilgrims, who joined forces with the Boston Puritans. They objected to Morton’s fraternization and with his “shameless economic, sexual and social freedoms.” They besieged the place, arrested Morton, sent him packing back to England and burned the place to the ground.
In 1637 he published “New English Caanan” which denounced the Puritans policies of subjugation and dominance over indigenous people. It was literally the first book “Banned in Boston.” Now Boston has a statue honoring him. NPR did a documentary on him. The link is here.
Beyond that we enjoyed the small area between the Long Warf and Faneuil Hall with its street art and musicians. There is a Starbucks located in an old tea merchant’s shop. It still has a golden teapot. We also did a drive by of the Boston Tea Party site on the way back to the ship. Here is a photo gallery.
