Bill Clede, journalist and former police officer, takes us on a word tour of the Connecticut river in the way Adrian Block might have in 1614. As Clede tells us: "It's the only major river of the world without a major city at its mouth. It's rated one of the three most beautiful rivers in the world. Only the Rhine and Hudson are scored higher."
Clede's delightful article, first published in 1987, takes us with him as he motors up the Connecticut past Saybrook Light, past the Tara Mar (where scenes from "Parrish" were filmed), into Hamburger Cove, past Seldon Creek, Gillette Castle, Goodspeed Opera House and Middletown, into the Cove at Wethersfield, settled by John Oldham and others in 1634. In the Cove, a single warehouse remains as memorial to Wethersfield's 17th century shipbuilding and international trading history. (More ... )
Adrian Block, Dutch explorer, lost his ship intended to take him home to Holland from New Amsterdam (Manhattan) in 1614. He built the smaller (16 ton) shallow draft ship "Onrust" and set out exploring the area east of Manhattan, along the north shore of Long Island Sound. He entered the wide mouth of a river the natives called by a word now spelled as Connecticut, meaning "Long Tidal River". He explored and mapped up as far as Enfield Rapids, claiming the river and surrounding lands as Dutch property and establishing Fort Good Hope at the present site of Hartford.
English adventurers from Massachusetts Bay had other ideas, establishing competing forts on the river. Holland lost its claim as English settlements at Wethersfield and Windsor in 1634 spread out and farmed the land claimed by the Dutch. When Charles II came to the throne of England, he granted lands in the New World to his supporter, James, the Duke of York. In 1664, York's forces arrived to claim his royal grant, drove the Dutch from "New Amsterdam" and "New Holland" to the west of the Connecticut River Valley and renamed the territory and city New York. The Hudson River retains the name of Henry Hudson, the Dutch Explorer who was the first recorded European to explore it as far as Albany in the "Half-Moon" in 1609.
References: McMaster, A Brief History of the United States (Project Gutenberg)
DougSimpson.com/river