Forgotten New England Islands
A Gazetteer of Nantucket‘s Noisome Neighbors
L’Isle de Chaut
Located eighteen leagues off the coast of Maine, deep in the angry embrace of the Atlantic, L’Isle de Chaut is home to a rare breed of cod fisherman and their families. Residents of this rocky respite are encased in a thick layer of blubber, which keeps them warm during the cold winter months and which can be burned for light and heat when whale oil is in short supply.
Kintickan
This idyllic island off the coast of Cape Cod is thickly forested with pine and spruce. Its secluded harbors once gave haven to smugglers and pirates seeking to evade the British fleet. In olden days, Kintickan was home to a small community of raving, incestuous maniacs who would row to shore each year at midnight on the summer solstice to kidnap a pretty young virgin. The band of lunatics would then take her back to their Sodom on the Sea, where they each would take turns ravishing her before skinning the poor girl alive to make a stew they believed would give them the virility of Apollo. In modern times, the island is home largely to seagull breeders and self-sovereignty enthusiasts. Fun fact: Kintickan is the only county in Massachusetts to have voted in the majority for the loser of every presidential election since 1900, except 2016.
Nipmunk
Residents of this isolated whaling station deep in treacherous Long Island Sound have very little contact with the outside world, and as a result speak an ancient English dialect nearly incomprehensible to outsiders. Nipmunkian is thought to be our last relict of English as spoken in Shakespearean times. When on Nipmunk, remember these helpful phrases:
Good morning, neighbor. — Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.
I am sorry, it was an accident. — Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war!
Could you direct me to the bathroom? — Now is the winter of our discontent.
Betsy’s Bush Farm
Betsy’s Bush Farm began as a small apple orchard on a picaresque island a few dozen miles east of Montauk, New York, and within a few short years became the prosperous base of one of the largest whaling fleets in the world. Beginning in the first week of April, when the whaling fleet returned with its catch, the streets filled knee-deep with whales’ blood pouring from the island’s many rendering plants. For two months thereafter, the stench of rotting whale intestines hung in the air, a putrescent fog spreading disease and nausea over the whole isle. It would take until June to finish carving the gravestones of the sailors killed on each year’s hunt, and during this time the only thing louder than the seagulls’ squawks were the wrenching cries of grief rising from the town’s new widows and orphans. The women would beg the Lord for the return of their husbands, who then often provided their sole means if support, and whose untimely demise meant a choice between prostitution and starvation. The children could do nothing but wonder why God sent their daddies to the bottom of the sea.
After the advent of coal and electrical power, Betsy’s Bush Farm became a popular summer retreat for the industrialists of Providence and Boston.
More recently, the island’s economy flourished around hosting Mrs. Betsy Goodwright’s Great Bush Farm Revival & Celebration, an annual five-week performance-art cooperative/communal-living festival/concert held at the island’s original apple orchard, owned by Mrs. Betsy Goodwright, the last whaling widow on the island. It was founded in 1969, when Mrs. Goodwright was 107, by a local group of hippies, Holocaust survivors, Quaker conscientious objectors, and pacifist Catholic priests (along with the drummers and bassists from Cream, Blind Faith, and Grand Funk Railroad) to promote global cooperation, peace, prosperity, and environmental stewardship.
After the death of Mrs. Goodwright in 2006, the festival changed hands several times. It is now known as The Mike’s Hard Apple Cider Lemonade Bush Farm Fest, a four-day “Personal-Brand Awareness Kickback” sponsored by ABInBev, Dr Pepper Snapple Group and CitiBank, and operated by Golden Egg Entertainment, LLC, a joint venture of Comcast and ICM Partners/CAA. Now staffed by outside temporary labor agencies, the festival has little effect on the local economy except for those selling Molly and the event’s one-week lease of the island’s landfill.
Other miscellaneous New England Coastal Islands include:
New New Shoreham: Home of refugees from Block Island and their seven-toed cats. Famous for their baleen sweaters.
Dashtaginstitt: Home to colony of shipwrecked boys living in brutal state of nature.
Seagull Island: Cacophonous guano pit and inescapable debtor’s prison.
Molasses Island: The nation’s primary source of pine syrup, frugal alternative to the good-tasting maple variety. Nothing to do with molasses.
Goneseghan: Isolated population still fighting Queen Anne’s War.
Hag’s Head: America’s largest molassessery.
