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• going ashore

Scituate is a town with a somewhat elusive personality. Driving its tranquil back roads in winter, it seems there's a boat in every second driveway. It's a sailor's town, a fishing town, whose harbor is its most prominent feature.

But unlike the compact old ports of the North Shore, Scituate's relationship to the sea is spread more thinly over both time and geography. Its maritime heritage may not be obvious as you step from the launch into the waterfront parking lot.

Shipbuilding thrived for nearly two centuries, but on the nearby North River rather than on the harbor itself. Fishing in Scituate historically meant mackerel, though both the fish and the market for it largely disappeared in the mid-1800s {SHS}. As the offshore cod fisheries of Boston and Gloucester were adapting to the industrial era, and leaving their mark, in large scale, on those waterfronts, Scituate fishermen "developed a small, clinker-built boat, and made the town famous for day fishing." {Alongshore, p.325}

The harbor was never deep enough for ocean-going trade; the railroads came to Scituate only in the 1870s (compare 1839 for Salem, 1847 for Gloucester); the essential breakwater dates to 1890.

So the Scituate we see today is shaped primarily by its 19th century quietude, and by the major influences of the 20th century: the automobile, the intense appreciation (in both senses) of shoreside property, and effective local efforts at historic preservation.

photo by Anne Grimes

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