HEMP IN NEW ENGLAND
By John E. Dvorak

As a Hempologist living in the Boston area, I've had an excellent opportunity to learn about the role that hemp played in America's past. Cities and towns up and down the northern seacoast can boast that boats built and maintained with hemp were one of the primary factors influencing America's independence from Britain's tyranny. By sharing this information with you, we may be able to once again determine how humanity can become independent of the current tyrants of petroleum, pollution, and poverty. This article is the culmination of several visits to the Newburyport, Massachusetts (MA) library coupled with numerous hemp fact finding excursions. I would like to thank my wife, Pam, for loaning me her library card, humoring me on our roadtrips, and editing me grammar and typeing. Although we couldn't locate the alleged site of a rope walk on Winter Island in Salem, MA, we will try again in the future.

THE HISTORY OF HEMP IN THE GREATER NEWBURYPORT AREA

For over 200 years, the people of Newburyport, and several surrounding towns, which lie approximately 40 miles north of Boston, grew and processed hemp to supply many of the needs of the sailing ships which were vital to the early transportation, shipping, and defense industries. Before steam power and electricity, hemp was needed to provide people with the raw materials to survive and, to eventually prosper. Early settlers found the going tough as the following quote from Joshua Coffin's book, A Sketch of the History of Newbury, Newburyport and West Newbury, attests [emphasis on the word HEMP added by the author]: "All foreign commodities at this time [1641] grew scarce. Corn would buy nothing - and no man could pay his debts, and so forth. These straits set our people on work to provide fish, clapboards, plank, and to sow HEMP and flax (which prospered very well) and to look out to the West Indies for a trade for cotton. The town of Rowley made laudable efforts to raise HEMP and to some extent succeeded." Two years later in 1643, Coffin relates that supplies from England continued to decrease thereby increasing the pioneers' emphasis on self reliance. Hemp was now being processed locally and "Rowley, to their great commendation, exceeded all other towns." In 1676, hemp and butter both sold for sixpence a pound. How much does that equal in 1997 dollars? (Every person that sends me the correct answer wins a free piece of oakum!) Does hemp and butter cost the same amount per pound today?

Currier's book, History of Newburyport, mentions that in 1764 "Cordage factories, employing from twenty-five to fifty hands, produced from two to three hundred tons of white lines and tarred cordage annually." This cordage was made almost exclusively from domestically grown hemp. The rope walk portion of the cordage factories were also used as temporary barracks by revolutionary troops. Economic times were tough after America gained her independence and hemp played a key role in "keeping America free". Coffin summarizes this sentiment with the following statement about life in 1779: "In the preceding year, the general court had passed, from the best of motives, an act to prevent monopoly and oppression, and the towns of Newbury and Newburyport, had, in pursuance of this act, adopted and published a scale of prices, affixed to all the articles they had for sale, and also all kinds of labor. These prices were never to be exceeded. No imported goods, except HEMP and warlike stores, should be sold at more than two hundred and fifty pounds sterling, on one hundred pounds prime cost." This quote verifies that hemp played an integral role in Colonial America's defense and economy. Records indicate that in 1781, there were three rope walks in the greater Newburyport area. By 1840, the number of rope walks in the area had increased to seven. In addition to providing employment for farmers, manufacturers, and businessmen, hemp kept local fire departments busy fighting fires that were only too common in the tar laden rope walks. One significantly catastrophic hemp related event, which occurred on October 19, 1843, was described by Coffin thusly; "This morning, about half past six o'clock, an hour after the workmen had commenced operations, the boiler of a six horse power engine in the patent cordage manufactory of Michael Wormsted & Son, on South and Marlborough streets, exploded. Mr. John Green, the engineer, who was probably standing in front of the furnace, was instantly killed, . . . This was the first steam engine erected in Newbury, and had been in use five or six years." The fact that the town's first steam engine was used to process hemp exemplifies the value that people placed on hemp. Hopefully, in the not too distant future, society's cutting edge technology can once again be applied to hemp. The Internet could be hemp's next "steam engine" as it processes and carries hempformation to all corners of the globe.

HEMP TOUR, YANKEE STYLE

Well, if sitting in a library on weekends searching the index of books for the words: hemp, rope, cordage, oakum, line, rigging, sails, and etc., doesn't tickle your fancy, you could always take your own New England hemp tour. Below, I'll touch on a few of the hempstoric places to go in MA and Connecticut.

As most devotees of Jack Herer's landmark book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes, know, thousands of pounds of hemp line was used as rigging on the U.S.S. Constitution. Visitors to Boston can still clamber aboard the world's oldest commissioned warship to get an idea of what sea going life was like in the 1800's. A nearby museum contains some of "Old Ironsides'" original hempen artifacts. While there, be sure to ask why hemp is not being used during the restoration of this historic ship in preparation for the celebration of her 200th birthday. Where's the hemp!?!

Traveling north from Boston on scenic Route 1A will bring you to the town of Essex and the Essex Shipbuilding Museum. Here, one can learn how the great sailing ships of yore were constructed. In addition to pictures of rope walks, the Essex Shipbuilding Museum has a hands-on oakum exhibit. Oakum, which is defined as "loosely twisted hemp or jute fiber impregnated with tar or a tar derivative and used in caulking seams (as of wooden ships)", is hammered in between the planks that make up the hulls and deck of some wooden ships. The museum's curator related the following anecdote about oakum to me. Apparently, during long ocean-going journeys, if a crew member did something that deserved punishment, he would be sent to the brig to "pick oakum". This involved the laborious task of taking worn out, tarry line (rope) and pulling the fibers apart so that they could be used as oakum. The euphemism "pickin' oakum" was therefore associated with someone who was in trouble. i.e., Where's JD? Ahhhh, he's pickin' oakum again. Oh, he should have learned better by now.

A few miles north of Essex is Newburyport, where the former site of one of the area's first rope walks has been turned into a park. Bartlett Mall, which is now the site of summer festivals and concerts, contains a plaque commemorating the rope walk's legacy. A rope walk's length represents the maximum length that a piece of cordage made there could be. The advent of steam power brought advances that eliminated the need for these peninsular appendages. Keep this in mind as you stroll through this part of America's history.

During the 1995 Eco Expo in Boston, MA, I had the pleasure of meeting the venerable Don Wirtshafter and his family. During one of our conversations about hemp, he mentioned that a portion of an actual rope walk had been moved to the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut. This tip resulted in a roadtrip to a place where we found numerous examples of how hemp was used by early Americans. Oakum is used to caulk the museum's restored sailing ships. The shipyard's Office Manager, Ted Kay, is Mystic's resident hempologist. Ted's knowledge of hemp's role in the sailing industry is impressive. The Mystic Seaport Museum's most notable exhibit associated with hemp, however, is the aforementioned rope walk which was moved from the Plymouth Cordage Company in MA. Here, visitors can walk through the long, narrow building and see how tiny strands of hemp fiber were fashioned into heavy duty cordage.

Plymouth, MA, where the Mayflower made her historic landing, is approximately 40 miles south of Boston. After visiting "The Rock", drop by the original site of The Plymouth Cordage Company. Cordage Mall, as it is now called, contains many shops and restaurants as well as several displays detailing the history of the company that made rope out of cannabis hemp for over 100 of its 150 years of existence. On a final research related topic, the book, "The Ropemakers of Plymouth. A History of the Plymouth Cordage Company", written by Samuel Eliot Morison in 1950, is a must read for any Hempologist. It covers the history of the North American sailing industry, the price of hemp fiber and cordage throughout the 1800's, the type of hemp rigging used on the sailing ships of that era, and an explanation of why hemp fell out of favor in the early 1900's. So, even if you can't visit the above mentioned places, you can still sail through time on hemp's historic wind.

Hemp History, Hemp Future

I hope that this article has increased your understanding and awareness of the role that hemp played in this country's history. From the earliest settlers scratching out a meager existence to the great sailing ships which dominated the seas, the integral nature of cannabis hemp overshadows all other resources. After a 100 year reprise, hemp is poised to regain its place as this planet's most utilitarian plant. It is everyone's responsibility to do as much as they can to help hemp complete its comeback.