CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -- SENATE

July 12, 1967

Page 18468

RESTORATION OF FORT GORGES, CASCO BAY, MAINE

Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I invite the attention of Senators to an article published in the Portland, Maine, Evening Express of June 29, 1967.

I believe it appropriate at this time, when there is growing criticism of the anti-poverty program, that Senators be made aware of the constructive work being performed by the Portland Neighborhood Youth Corps. Under a planned program for the restoration of historic Fort Gorges in Casco Bay, a 15-boy crew is learning the value of work experience while contributing to the rehabilitation of one of Maine's few Civil War garrisons. I congratulate the leaders of this program for their vigor and initiative in conducting a project designed to benefit both disadvantaged youths and the community.

I ask unanimous consent that the article be printed in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

FORT GORGES FACELIFTING IS RESUMED

(By Harrison Brown)

Fort Gorges lies dreaming under the gentle summer sun.

In fact it has lain that way for more than a century of summers, because the picturesque prominence in the middle of Portland's harbor has never fired a shot in anger, seldom shot at all and indeed has never been fully garrisoned.

But things are picking up. For the second summer. a 15-boy crew of the Neighborhood Youth Corps is tidying up the place with the eventual aim of making the city-owned former bastion a park which should be a tourist attraction of the first magnitude.

Construction of Fort Gorges was started in 1857 when Jefferson Davis, who was to become the first and only president of the Confederated States of America, was the U.S. Secretary of War.

Halfway through the massive job the Civil War broke out and during the years when Yankee boys were bleeding and dying at Antietam and Gettysburg a big crew of stay-at-homes labored on the fort at war-inflated wages.

Eighteen sixty-five, the year of victory, came, and the fort was finally finished at the then-astronomical cost of $890,000 to begin its career of more than a century of disuse.

In rehabilitating. the fort to make it safe and accessible to visitors, the Neighborhood Youth Corps had to have water transportation from and to the mainland.

Now the corps has it and more is on the way. In May of last year three husky Liberty boats. on loan from the Navy, arrived in South Portland from Boston on the broad deck of the Coast Guard buoy tender Cowslip.

The three boats needed plenty of fixing. Under the direction of Capt. Donald A. Crandall of Peaks Island, the boys went to work.

They have already put one boat, the Opportunity, into mint condition and she is now the steady ferry. The boys have wooded down a second boat ready for recaulking and when she is finished they'll start on the third.

The boats are 36 feet long, 10 feet in beam and weigh 11,500 pounds apiece. Although

badly dried out from 11 years of storage under cover, they are stoutly built with yellow pine planking, oak frames and decks and all bronze-fastened.

The worst problem in rehabilitation was removal of old paint which had built up to an eighth of an inch in thickness. With economical diesel power they will do nine knots and carry 40 persons apiece.

Thomas L. Curtis, retired Marine Corps captain, coordinator in charge of the fort rehabilitation, said that the first step after the cleanup work is the construction of a dock. At present a motorboat can land at the fort only when the tide is about two-thirds full. At other times visitors must go ashore from larger craft in rowboats.

Curtis pointed out the vast potentialities of the fort as a picnic and scenic spot. He also pointed out the vast amount of work needed to make the place safe and attractive. The fort last had a caretaker in 1912 and, in the 55 years since, vandals have done their worst. Interior woodwork of the garrison portion has been ripped out and destroyed and obscenities adorn the walls in large lettering.

But vandals have not been able to do much to the masonry. The exterior walls facing seaward are solid granite four feet thick and the garrison portion has walls of 30-inch granite faced inside with brick and plaster. In fact not even professional wreckers have been able to make much headway. Many years ago an outfit moved in to salvage some of the granite but the project was given up as a hopeless job after a few tons were removed.

Nature threatens to do a job at which vandals and salvagers have failed. Although the roof above the double tier of gun ports is covered with 12 feet of gravel, the rains and snows of more than a century has seeped through and leached the lime from the masonry to form "stalactites in the groined brick ceilings. And the process has continued for so long that stalagmites are beginning to grow upward from the stone floors, as in a natural eons-old cave.

The boys on the job are paid $1.40 an hour for a four-day week. On Fridays, the fifth day, they must attend counselling sessions to remain in good standing as Neighborhood Youth Corps members. Ages run from 16 to 21 and many of the youngsters are still in school. Several have shown aptitude at skilled tasks, such as repairing and operating boats. Gary Soule, who graduated this year from Portland High School and is headed for Northeastern Business College in September, is crew supervisor.

Boys will be boys and will often goof off. Curtis admits, but disciplinary problems are few and the youngsters like their work.