Fisher and I couldn’t face the prospect of a Saturday stuck indoors so we lit out for Fairhaven, ate large at Elizabeth’s, strolled around Fort Phoenix and watched a pair of lonely draggers return to New Bedford from a grey winter sea. Nice. This is as low as it goes in southern New England — the nadir of winter blah.
We continued on to Rhode Island, seeking Pokanoket, the ancestral seat of the Wampanoag nation, home to Metacomet — King Phillip — but alas there seemed to be a subdivision where there were once natives. So into Bristol we went looking for the Herreshoff Marine Museum — found it — but it was closed for the winter. There was a humungous America’s Cup winner parked on the lawn — the Defiant — Bill Koch’s winner from the 1990s. That was cool to get up close and personal with.
As we crossed the Mount Hope Bridge into Portsmouth, then across to Tiverton, I tried to find the Pease Field where Benjamin Church (founder of the Army’s Rangers) battled the Wampanoag’s at the beginning of the King Philip War, eventually retreating across to Aquidneck Island when the fighting grew too fierce. No historical markers, the rain was pounding, so down to Little Compton and Sakonnet Point for a glimpse of Block Island Sound before returning to Cotuit for some fireplace time and a little YouTube uploading from the Flip Cam.
