MAKING WAY FOR THE HERRING
BY DON DOUCETTE
Town Brook Grist Mill Plymouth
Personal family medical business found us in Plymouth, Massachusetts this past Monday – and if we recall, the weather had shifted to resemble a classic November day with low gray clouds, chilly temperatures along with brisk winds.
We usually attempt to visit Plymouth Center during these outings and so, made a customary lunch stop at the Lobster Hut at the Town Pier for bowls of fish chowder and a shared small order of onion rings.
We have driven across Town Brook many times which is close to the famous Plymouth Rock Memorial and during this day, personally decided to quick read the Pilgrim back-history of the Town Brook, a tiny watershed flowing directly to Plymouth Harbor.
Town Brook Plymouth
An original historic recon party sailing Cape Cod Bay reported a potential safe anchorage at Plymouth Harbor for the original Mayflower and along with a nearby supply of fresh flowing water – our present day Town Brook – thus our school years of historic accounts regarding the founding of the Plymouth Colony, remain both factual and mythical in content.
My quick read indicated that a young fourteen year old boy named Francis (Billinton) Billington was exploring the Town Brook during January, 1621, climbed a tree to reconnoiter and spotted a larger headwater and fancied in the young boy’s mind as a “great sea” and thus known today as Billington’s Sea, is actually a post-glacial fresh water pond so commonly found today on Cape Cod and within southeastern Massachusetts.
Our elementary school lessons also mentioned the cultural importance of herring to the local Indians and the Plymouth settlement.
Similar to our local Ten Mile River Watershed, attempts during the last several decades using a graduated process of obstacle removal and physical adaptations are to reestablish a herring population within Town Brook. And so, this historic natural cycle is expected to come full circle four hundred years following the initial founding of Plymouth Colony.
Don Doucette
“Ten Mile River Rambles”
Friends of the Ten Mile and Bucklin Brook
Citizens of the Narragansett Basin