In search of the Shawmut Peninsula: Using modern cartographic analysis to discover the "original" Boston shoreline

Remaking Boston: An Environmental History of the City and Its Surroundings

Volumn , Issue , 2009, Pages 75-99

  Mague, Stephen T ^a  

^a Durand and Anastas Environmental Strategies Inc   (United States)

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EID: 84898550770     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: None     Document Type: Chapter

References (53)

1. Epigraphs: Herman Melville, Moby Dick, orTheWhale (London: Penguin Books, 1986), 150;
2. C. Beaglehole, ed. Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyage of Discovery with Addenda and Corrigenda to Volume I and Volume II (Cambridge: Published for the Hakluyt Society at the University Press, 1955-74), volume 2, 509fn5
3. quoted in Beaglehole, The Life of Captain James Cook (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1974), 70.
4. Conrad E. Heidenreich, Explorations and Mapping of Samuel de Champlain, 1603-1632 (Toronto: B. V. Gutsell, 1976), ix.
5. Florian Cajori, The Chequered Career of Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler: First Superintendent of the U. S. Coast Survey (1929; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1980).
6. Elizabeth H. Boak and Ian Turner, "Shoreline Definition and Detection: A Review", Journal of Coastal Research 21(2005):688-703;
7. and Robert A. Morton and F. Michael Speed, "Evaluation of Shorelines and Legal Boundaries Controlled by Water Levels on Sandy Beaches", Journal of Coastal Research 14(1998):1373-84.
8. Stephen T Mague, "Private Property, Public Rights, and Shifting Sands: The Public Trust Doctrine as a Source of Authority for Coastal Management Decisions" (part I of 2), Surveying and Land Information Systems: American Congress on Surveying and Mapping 59, no. 2(1999):53-68.
9. Donald K. Stauble, "The Use of Shoreline Change Mapping in Coastal Engineering Project Assessment", Journal of Coastal Research, special issue 38(2007):200:178-206;
10. and Nicholas C. Kraus and Julie Dean Rosati, "Interpretation of Shoreline-Position Data for Coastal Engineering Analysis", in Coastal Engineering Technical Note (CETNII-39) (Vicksburg, Miss.: U. S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station, Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, 1997).
11. Along these lines, Professor Anne Knowles of Middlebury College has used georeferenced historical maps to re-create accurate landscape maps of the battlefield of Gettysburg to help explore and describe the course of this famous 1863 battle of the American Civil War. Personal communication with the author, June 2006.
12. Nancy S. Seasholes, Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003). David WTrubey, deputy director, Massachusetts Bureau of Underwater Archeology (BUAR), personal communication with the author, November 2007.
13. Seasholes, Gaining Ground, 434.
14. Borax Consolidated, Ltd. v. Los Angeles, 296 U. S. 10, 26 (1935).
15. A. L. Shalowitz, Shore and Sea Boundaries (Washington, D. C.: U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1964), chapter 4.
16. Peter J. Guthorn, United States Coastal Charts: 1781-1861 (Exton, Pa.: Schimer Publishing Ltd. 1984), 17-24.
17. DesBarres to Lord Colville, May 1765, Adm. Sec. in Letters (Adm.1-482)
18. in G. N. D. Evans, "Hydrography: A Note on Eighteenth Century Methods", Mariner's Mirror 52(1966):247-50. Originals at the Public Record Office, London; microfilm copies at the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
19. Henry Mitchell, "Notes Concerning Alleged Changes in the Relative Elevations of Land and Sea", Report of the Superintendent of the U. S. Coast Survey Showing the Progress of the Work for the FiscalYear Ending with June, 1877 (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1880), appendix 8.
20. Tide and Current Glossary (Washington, D. C.: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2000).
21. "Report of the City Engineer", in City Document No. 60: Report of the Joint Standing Committee on Boston Harbor for the Year 1852 (Boston: J. H. Eastburn, City Printer, 1853), 46-47.
22. P. Ruggerio, G. M. Kaminsky, and G Gelfenbaum, "Linking Proxy-based and Datum-based Shorelines on a High-energy Coastline: Implications for Shoreline Change Analysis", Journal of Coastal Research, special issue 38(2003):57-82.
23. Shalowitz, Shore and Sea Boundaries, vol. 2, chapter 4
24. Alfred A. Porro and Lorraine S. Telesky, "Marshland Title Dilemma: A Tidal Phenomenon", Seton Hall Law Review 3(1971):323, 335-46.
25. E. Robert Thieler, James F O'Connell, and Courtney A. Schupp, The Massachusetts Shoreline Change Project: 1800s to 1994. Technical Report, USGS Administrative Report, generated in collaboration with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) Sea Grant Program and Cape Cod Cooperative Extension, to the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, September 4, 2001.
26. Seasholes, Gaining Ground;
27. Walter Muir Whitehill and Lawrence W Kennedy, Boston: A Topographical History, third edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000);
28. Esther Forbes, Paul Revere and the World He Lived In (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1942).
29. Forbes, Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, 45.
30. Robert A. Morton and Tara L. Miller, National Assessment of Shoreline Change: Part 2, Historical Shoreline Changes and Associated Coastal Land Loss Along the U. S. Southeast Atlantic Coast, Open-File Report 2005-1401 (Washington, D. C: U. S. Geological Survey, 2005).
31. Also available online at http:/pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1401/.
32. See also F. J. Anders and M. R. Byrnes, "Accuracy of Shoreline Change Rates as Determined from Maps and Aerial Photographs", Shore and Beach 59(1991):17-26;
33. and M. Crowell, S. P. Leatherman, and M. K. Buckley, "Historical Shoreline Change: Error Analysis and Mapping Accuracy", Journal of Coastal Research 17(1991):839-52;
34. R. C. Daniels and R. H. Huxford, "An Error Assessment of Vector Data Derived from Scanned National Ocean Service Topographic Sheets", Journal of Coastal Research 17(2001):611-19;
35. and E. R Thieler and W. W. Danforth, "Historical Shoreline Mapping (1). Improving Techniques and Reducing Positioning Errors", Journal of Coastal Research 10(1994):549-63.
36. Crowell, Leatherman, and Buckley, "Historical Shoreline Change", 25.
37. George Cole, Water Boundaries (NewYork: John Wiley and Sons, 1997), 90-91.
38. StephenT Mague, "Private Property, Public Rights, and Shifting Sands: The Public Trust Doctrine as a Source of Authority for Coastal Management Decisions", part I of 2), Surveying and Land Information Systems: American Congress on Surveying and Mapping 59, no. 2(1999):53-68.
39. Mague, "Private Property, Public Rights, and Shifting Sands", part 2, 95-106.
40. Austin v. Carter, 1 Mass. 231 (1804).
41. See also Adams v. Frothingham, 3 Mass. 353, 360 (1807)
42. and Storer v. Freeman, 6 Mass. 435, 438 (1810);
43. Commonwealth v. Alger, 7 Cush. 53, 65 (1861)
44. and Commonwealth v. Charlestown, I Pick. 180, 182 (1822).
45. Mague, "Private Property, Public Rights, and Shifting Sands", part 2.
46. Boston Waterfront Development Corp. v. Commonwealth, 378 Mass. 629, 644 (1979).
47. These ports in descending order of tidelands area include Boston, Salem, New Bedford, Lynn, Fall River, Plymouth, Nantucket, Newburyport, Gloucester, Beverly, Provincetown, Tisbury, and Barnstable. Stephen T Mague and Robert. W Foster, "Where's the Shoreline? Sources of Historical High Water Lines in the Context of Massachusetts Coastal Regulations", paper prepared for and presented at the Sixth FIG Regional Conference on "Coastal Areas and Land Administration-Building the Capacity", San Jose, Costa Rica, November 12-15, 2007.
48. Justin Winsor's map entitled "Boston Old and New", included as the frontispiece in volume 1 of his Memorial History of Boston (Boston: James R. Osgood and Co. 1881-1883), was also registered. Although not included in this chapter's comparative analysis, it was used as one source for the location of salt marsh surrounding the Shawmut Peninsula.
49. Report of the Joint Standing Committee on Boston Harbor, 47. for the U. S. Navy at the Gosport Navy Yard in Portsmouth, Virginia, and the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston, Massachusetts.
50. "Report of the City Engineer." See, in particular, "Chesbrough's Report", 46.
51. "Report of the City Engineer", 47.
52. Seasholes, Gaining Ground, 437.
53. E. RThieler, E. A. Himmelstross, J. L. Zichichi, and T. L. Miller, Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS), version 3. o.:AnArcgis Extension for Calculating Shoreline Change. U. S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2005-1304, U. S. Geological Survey, Woods Hole Science Center, available online at http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/project-pages/dsas/version3/index.html, accessed may 26, 2009.