A view of downtown Boston from a cruise boat. Look for the small white church spire on the right.

The church was near the shore when it was built. Virtually everything else in the photo is built on ‘created’ land, in what was once the harbour. Almost every bit of land in the following photos of the harbour has been ‘created’ by building a wall and backfilling. This includes the land that Logan International Airport occupies. This is still on-going.

Boston Harbour is huge, a large indented bay with many islands at its mouth. It was chosen for a settlement because it was very easy to defend. The soil isn’t very good, so they had to make their living by urban means. The main agricultural area of the Massachusetts Bay Colony followed the valley of the Connecticut River.

There were originally many wharves stretching out into the sea. Long Wharf was nearly half a mile long, but is now only long enough for 4 ferries. Virtually all the wharves are now huge hotels, or very very expensive housing, though there is also an Aquarium (which will be covered in a subsequent post).

I am in Boston for a fortnight. My first week was very busy as I found a 7 day ‘Go Boston’ pass would let me visit a large number of attractions. I managed 13 in the 7 days and saved about 50% of their combined entrance fees. I might have managed a few more but I cracked a tooth and had to have it extracted, which set me back a bit.

The first use I made of it was a one hour harbour cruise. This had a knowledgeable guide and it enabled me to get my bearings and prioritise the rest of the first week.

We went about half way to the sea proper.

On the left in the distance is the airport. The ferry will have come from one of the inhabited islands much further out. The tallest island did not start off that high. It was used for many decades as a rubbish dump. One day someone had the ‘bright idea’ of setting it on fire to make more space. The fire burned for over 10 years, and they had to find another solution to the rubbish problem.

Everything looks really flat because it is. I was shocked when the plane approached Logan airport as I realised that the whole airport is barely above sea level. With global warming it is surely doomed in the not too distant future.

This old fort was as far as the boat went. It is only open at weekends and would have been very difficult to get to without a car anyway.

The JFK Presidential Library & Museum

Later I used the subway to get to this Museum. It was very interesting, with a number of film shows covering different aspects of his life. Obviously it only showed positive aspects, but he was certainly a convincing and intelligent speaker, even when in his early 20s. His inauguration speech was very impressive. What surprised me was that Lyndon B Johnson sitting beside him seemed very nervous, constantly twiddling his hands, though if you hadn’t been able to see his hands he would have appeared to be very calm indeed. The actual museum is underground. Most of the building contains the state papers archive from his time in office, which was not even 2 years.

I have included it here so you can see just how near sea level it has been built. The dark line on the breakwater is the high tide line, and is only a very few feet below the ground level.

Boston Harbor does get storms as the remains of hurricanes move up the east coast. I would not recommend anyone to buy any property on the New England coast south of Acadia National Park in Maine, as it is all very low lying. I am told it is the same all the way down from New England to Mexico.

There is a ‘harbour walk’ along the coast from Charlestown on the other side of the Charles River, then about 37 miles to Castle Island. The distance tells you just how indented the coastline is.

In the North End, the old Italian quarter, they have taken some action.

This is looking across the Charles River to Charlestown. The Park is about the length of Hoylake Promenade from Kings Gap to the new Lifeboat Station.

They have built 2 different parallel ‘walls’. The project was completed in 2020 and the blurb says they ‘hope’ it will protect the neighbourhood until about 2050. It must have cost a fortune as they have installed many different sports and play areas plus a large swimming pool between the two walls.

This is the seaward wall. It is not continuous and has no flood gates to close as far as I could tell.

This is a set of bocce pitches. From information boards bocce is an Italian game similar to boules.

A bit further along the harbour I found this temporary flood protection on a very new looking building. It implies that they have already had a storm that has caused problems, and they haven’t even got their first tenants in the building.

If the global warming experts are correct, Boston’s future looks very gloomy to me.

I never asked where the ‘backfill’ came from, but Boston has a large subway network, with tunnels and cuttings throughout the centre of the city, so I suppose they expanded as they built the subway. In the last decade or so they have moved the larger roads in the centre underground into tunnels, and definitely used that to create more land. Everyone agrees that it has made the centre of Boston much quieter and cleaner, but if the sea rises all those tunnels are going to flood.

Boston is, of course, well kent from the Boston Tea Party. They can’t show you where it took place as that part of the old harbour is now land with skyscrapers on top.

Incidentally I was able to get unlimited travel on the subway, all buses and two short distance ferries for about £20 for 7 days, which is very good value.

This is the State House, on somewhat higher ground just above Boston Common. It is huge as it extends a long way behind this front view. It was completed in 1798.

Much of it is corridors like this one.

There are several grand halls.

And much fine detail.

The Senate chamber was closed. I saw the Representatives chamber but photography is forbidden in both chambers. It was ‘in session’ but this consisted of about a dozen people going through formalities that I did not understand, until it was ‘all stand’ to pledge allegiance.

This was the only unusual object. It contains the original standard 50 ft for Massachusetts, as attested to on the plaque. The sloping bits are hinged so the whole can be opened.

Not far away I found the rest of the old Massachusetts standard weights and measures.

This is the USS Constitution, built in 1795 and still a commissioned ship of the US Navy. It is moored in the Charlestown Dockyard. It is free to visit, but the nearby museum has an entry fee. I went on a Friday, thinking it might be overrun with children on a Saturday. I had not realised that it was Nov 11th, which is Veteran’s Day, a school holiday, so it was very busy.

I arrived 10 minutes before a short remembrance ceremony. The ship’s commander is at the podium and to the right are 3 elderly gentlemen dressed in the uniforms of marines when it was a new ship. The crew act as guides and the lass in white is dressed as most of them were. There were two local bigwigs sitting alone in the row of seats.

A two minute silence at 11 o’clock, then a 21 gun salute with blanks made lots of smoke and noise, but was less loud than the guns at the Tower of London. Finally, a bugler played ‘Taps’.

The Constitution has 44 cannons and space for another 6 guns. To continue in service she has to make a voyage once a year. At least until 1996 she moved under her own sails about a mile up the harbour on the 4th July. Now the mast is deemed too fragile, so she is towed on the same journey every year by 4 modern tugs.

This is between decks.

Also on site is the USS Cassin Young, a WW2 destroyer.

The galley

The museum was quite interesting, but I have visited Chatham Dockyard in Kent (which is many times the size), so it had nothing extra to add to what I already knew. It was also overrun with children, so it was difficult to look at anything in detail anyway.

This is the pond on Boston Common. Boston was only settled in 1630 (after Plymouth), and the Common was declared a public park in 1634. It is crossed by a road, but is 50 acres of greenery in an otherwise very urban environment.

I went to the pond to see this modern sculpture, which commemorates a book used in all the local primary schools.

I was really in the park to go on a one hour guided walk around the older sites.

This was our excellent guide, dressed for the part. She was very pleased to only have about 14 in the group, she has had upwards of 80 before now. This photo was in the first churchyard where well known early Bostonians are buried including Paul Revere. He rode to Lexington to warn them that the British army was coming. He did ride there, but not alone, and he and his companion got lost and were rescued by a local doctor who knew them and who actually delivered the message. But Paul Revere got back to Boston first, so he is the one that is remembered.

This is his house, the oldest remaining in Boston. He was a silversmith amongst other occupations, and a member of Boston’s middle class. It is quite a large house, but probably had at least 12 people living in it.

Fortunately it is in the North End, which has not (yet) been demolished to make way for more skyscrapers.

This marks the site of the old ‘Latin School’ where Benjamin Franklin went to school. I was the only person in our group who could read any of the Latin.

Note the double brick line on the left hand side. This runs from Boston Common all the way to the Bunker Hill Monument at Charlestown, and Is known as the Freedom Trail. It is 2.5 miles long and passes all the important old sites in Boston. However tours called the Freedom Trail only do a small part of it very slowly.

This is the old South Meeting House, built in 1729 to replace earlier churches. It was used both for worship and Town Meetings. For a long time it was the largest building in Boston.

It was from here that Samuel Adams stormed out of a very crowded Town Meeting to start the Boston Tea Party by tipping a very large quantity of tea into the harbour from 2 ships, as they objected to paying tax on it.

It is very plain inside.

This is the Old State House, formerly used by the British Governors. It is now a museum.

Nothing of any great interest after all the museums I have already visited.

I think there will be another two posts on Boston before I join my cousin in Buffalo for Thanksgiving.