Beneath its surface, the now rather approachable Lovells Island conceals a slew of gruesome, wreckage-related stories, the chief of which is the tale of the 74-gun French warship Magnifique. Pilot David Darling gained unwanted notoriety and became the subject of much ridicule when the Magnifique, which he was manning, wrecked along the Narrows in 1782; the US subsequently provided the French navy with its own brand-new 74-gun vessel out of fear that its Revolution-era ally would sour without proper reimbursement.

A few years later, a ship hailing from Maine met a similar fate near Lovells Island’s shores: the boat crashed into an obstruction, and despite the fact that the thirteen passengers were able to swim ashore, they all died on account of the freezing temperatures. Bostonians who later assessed the scene claimed that two of the wayfarers, supposedly an engaged couple, huddled together behind a rock in a fruitless attempt to survive. This stone was thereby named Lovers’ Rock.

Although Lovells Island is nearly synonymous with shipwrecking, the various incidents that occurred near the island spawned a movement to render the course safer for those who attempted to traverse it. In 1787, the Massachusetts Humane Society constructed a hut on Lovells Island that contained dry clothes, blankets, and flint and tinder to create fire, amongst other crucial items. When the hut proved effective, other such shelters cropped up on several other islands near dangerous stretches. Ultimately, Lovells Island served as an inspiration for the US Coast Guard in its current form, among other rescue and relief efforts.

The island’s history has also become intertwined with other meanings. For a spell, Lovells Island served as a military base in light of its strategic location between the harbor’s two main openings. Nowadays, the ruins of the island’s military structures make for excellent hiking trails and campgrounds. In recent years, party boats have even been moseying around the island’s waters, almost entirely sans danger of shipwreck in light of the advent of modern technology.

For more on the stories behind the city’s sanctuaries, pick up a copy of Discovering the Boston Harbor Islands by Christopher Klein, or check out last week’s blog. To help you explore the islands on the go, download our free smartphone app. Anchors away!

Join us!

Date: June 27, 2013

Time: 6 PM to 8 PM

Place: South End Historical Society, 532 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston

The Dirty Old Boston project is gaining steam, and now we want to see photographs of YOUR dirty old Boston. We’re looking for shots of the city from 1945-1987, preferably taken/owned by you. (Please do not bring copies of images from books or that you found online.) The bigger, the better. Photographs will be scanned, digitized, and submitted to the Dirty Old Boston book project. We will aim to provide you with digital copies of your images.

Dirty Old Boston creator Jim Botticelli will be on hand to discuss the project and to share his own stories. Publisher Union Park Press will be there to answer any questions about the process.

Email admin@southendhistoricalsociety.org or call (617) 536-4445 to sign up for the scanning party. Contact dirtyoldbostonproject@gmail.com with any other questions.

Visit www.dirtyoldbostonproject.com to learn more or to submit photographs.

Check out Dirty Old Boston on Facebook! See how it all began...

In a way, Georges Island is representative of the thirty-four small sanctuaries that lie in the Boston Harbor: it’s home to historic intrigue and, quite literally, the stuff of legends—along with a few things in between. Easily the most popular and accessible of the chain, Georges Island boasts a famous Boston Harbor structure, Fort Warren, which most notably served as a friendly prison for Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. (The Yankees permitted their Johnny Reb captives to receive such luxury items as letters and alcohol, and Union troops never killed any Confederates on the island.)

If the fort’s military history doesn’t spark your interest, then its straight-out-of-a-horror-movie story about “The Lady in Black” undoubtedly will. According to Boston lore, at the time that Fort Warren was doubling as a prison, a Confederate’s wife snuck onto Georges Island in an attempt to free her husband. Disguised as a man and bearing arms, the woman got as far as her husband’s cell before her discovery. In the midst of the ensuing confrontation between the couple and Union troops, the woman’s gun exploded and killed her husband. Legend tells us that before the Yankee soldiers hanged the woman for her crime, they allowed her to change into women’s robes that were, of course, black. “The Lady in Black” reportedly still haunts the island today.

Many native Bostonians who are familiar with Georges Island will tell you that its mysteriousness is only surpassed by its romance and beauty. Reachable by ferry, the island truly features something for everyone. Rangers provide guided tours of Fort Warren; public programs offer Civil War reenactments; and a food stand serves up the delicious fried seafood that is so emblematic of the Boston Harbor.

Thursday, June 13: Head to the South End Historical Society Annual Meeting at 532 Massachusetts Avenue, and you’ll find Stephanie giving her audience the lowdown on revolutionary taverns, Prohibition-era speakeasies, and the neon nightclub age in the great city of Boston. Sign-up for this event, which begins at 6 p.m., is required: call 617-536-4445 or email admin@southendhistoricalsociety.org to register.

Saturday, June 15: The Winslow House’s author events series will host Stephanie at 7:00 p.m. You’ll need to reserve a spot for this one.

Tuesday, June 25: Stephanie also will speak at a Historic New England and Boston Preservation Alliance Young Members event at the Otis House from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. Take note: this Drinking Boston gathering is exclusive to members of these groups, which you can learn more about or join by clicking here or here.

Thursday, June 27: The Falmouth Historical Society will host Stephanie (and you!) from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. Check back here for more information.

Stephanie is the author or co-author of several other books about Boston’s history, including The Cocoanut Grove Fire, The Crime of the Century: How the Brinks Robbers Stole Millions and the Hearts of Boston, and The Boston Mob Guide (with Beverly Ford). A seasoned reporter, Stephanie has worked for the Boston Herald, the Associated Press, and newspapers in Connecticut, Idaho, Utah, and Missouri.

Don’t forget to bring your copies of Drinking Boston to these events: Stephanie will be happy to sign them! Don’t have one yet? No worries; the book will be on sale at each lecture. Cheers!

It’s no surprise, then, that we chose this stunning image from Under Cape Cod Waters by award-winning photojournalist Ethan Daniels as the feature image for our June digital desktop calendar! If you want to enjoy breathtaking pictures of the Cape all year round, we recommend picking up a copy (or two!) of this beautiful coffee table book. It makes a great gift, but we’re sure you’ll want to keep one for yourself too!

How to set this image as your Desktop Background

Download this for your desktop screen in resolutions of 1280 x 800 (small), 1440 x 900 (medium), or 1920 x 1200 (large), based on the size of your screen.

Right-click (or ctrl-click for some Mac users) on the image, and chose the option that says,“Set as Desktop Background”, “Use as Desktop Picture”, — the exact wording will depend on the browser you use.

If the image does not fit your desktop background neatly, you may have to go to your preference screen (on a Mac: System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver > Desktop; on Windows: Control Panel > Display > Desktop) and choose “Fit to screen” as the display mode of your background image.

Voila! You have a beautiful, seasonal desktop calendar to keep you on track all month long!

About the Union Park Press Calendar Series

When you publish books about arts, history, and culture of Boston and New England, you are bound to see some spectacular photography. It’s our goal to share some of those gorgeous scenes with fellow New England-lovers through our books, our blog, Pinterest and now through our monthly Union Park Press digital desktop calendar series! We hope you enjoy and return each month for a new beautiful calendar.

To learn more about the Cape, order Under Cape Cod Waters through our website; online through Amazon or Barnes & Noble; or pick up a copy at your local bookstore. If your favorite shop doesn’t have it in stock, just ask—they’ll be happy to order it for you!

Globe reporter Christopher Muther perfectly captures the spirit of the book and Facebook page in his article, writing that they are “…home for pictures from the 1930s through the mid-1980s…The photos are grainy, the street scenes are gritty, and some of the pictures…are the sort of sweet but cringe-worthy moments that would never survive the delete key today.”

BostonInno reporter Lisa DeCanio writes that “the project will combine hundreds of crowdsourced photos and pull them together in a compelling coffee table book, which [Dirty Old Boston Facebook page administrator] Botticelli describes as ‘a tribute to the average Joe.’”

Over the past few months, we have been working with Jim to make this book a reality. Learn more about the project and how to share your own photos here. And check back often for updates on how we’re progressing!

A few months ago, a quirky facebook page called “Dirty Old Boston” caught our attention. Each day, the page became home to more and more images of Boston “back in the day” – focusing on the gritty, pre-gentrification days of our beloved city. The administrator, who has a wicked sense of humor and loves a good turn of phrase, made us laugh out loud with his photo captions and running commentary on the photographs he was posting.

As chroniclers of Boston and New England arts, history and culture (see our titles here) – we quickly fell in love with the concept. Over the past few months, we have been working with Dirty Old Boston creator and administrator Jim Botticelli on translating his much-loved Facebook page into a book. It is a complicated task (hence the name the Dirty Old Boston PROJECT), but we are thrilled to be involved. Learn more about the project and how to share your own photos here.

Crowd-sourcing history is a fascinating topic that we are all just starting to understand. While sharing old photographs on Facebook is a relatively simple endeavor, translating that to a book project poses some challenges:

• Getting images that are large enough (and in good enough quality) to print in a book. The pictures that people post on facebook are often sized down so that the site isn’t weighed down with enormous images. For a book project, though, the bigger, the better. We’re asking people to send in the biggest, best-quality, highest resolution images possible.
• Working though the murky world of copyrights and ownership. We want to share images that are taken by and/or owned by the people sending them to us. There are a lot of great images out there, many taken by fantastic photographers – we just want to ensure that those photographers are getting credit for their work and that we have permission to put the photos in the book. The best photographs for this book are going to be the ones taken by everyday people of everyday things from the past. We want the photographs found in dusty shoeboxes hiding in attics across the region.
• Finding a wide representation of Bostonians. Any look back to the past requires us to ask: “whose history is it?”  With this project, we want to ensure that we are getting the word out to a large enough audience to get a rich, varied look at what Boston was like in the decades after World War II.

Despite these obstacles, we are excited to take the leap and see what we discover. We want to thank the loads of people who’ve already submitted their photos and the accompanying stories–with a bit of good luck and some hard work, we’ll conquer all these challenges and produce a book that all of us can truly be proud of!

The Dirty Old Boston project is where modern technology and social media meets history and nostalgia.

Image courtesy of nelights.blogspot.com

For Boston Harbor Island buffs, it may very well be a dream come true: The Graves Lighthouse, located on The Graves—the harbor’s outermost island—is up for auction!

Graves Light is taller and more powerful than its better-known counterpart, Boston Light, which perhaps makes it more imposing thanks to the eerie fog that often surrounds it. The vast number of shipwrecks that have occurred in the island’s rocky edges throughout the centuries only adds to the menacing feel. Should you buy Graves Light, be prepared to scale the 40-foot ladder that leads from the base of the lighthouse to its entrance. The belly of the lighthouse contains storage space, a kitchen, bedroom, and library.

For more on The Graves and the other Boston Harbor Islands, be sure to download our new smartphone app based on UPP author Christopher Klein’s book Discovering the Boston Harbor Islands. The new app is meant to be a mobile guide to the Boston Harbor Islands, whether you are a ferry-riding day-tripper, a kayaking overnight camper, or a pleasure boat cruiser. The app offers fun facts, history, and logistics for getting to the islands, and will soon be home to fresh information about events, ideas for exploring, and fascinating stories about the islands.

Download the app on your smartphone now! For instructions, click here.

Boston history writer and journalist Stephanie Schorow explored this dark era in her recent book, Drinking Boston—and on Tuesday, May 14^th, she will trace the effects of Prohibition and the long-standing consequences of the “Noble Experiment” at the Boston Public Library’s Kirstein Business Library at 6 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

In Drinking Boston, Schorow serves up a remarkable cocktail representative of Boston’s intoxicating story: its spirit of invention, its hardscrabble politics, its mythology, and the city’s never-ending battle between personal freedom and civic reform—all told through the lens of the bottom of a cocktail glass.

Drinking Boston introduces readers to the cast of characters who championed or vilified drinking and the places where they imbibed—legally and otherwise. Bringing us to present day, this literary pub-crawl visits some of Boston’s most beloved and enduring neighborhood barrooms, ending with an examination of Boston’s very own recipe for the current cocktail renaissance sweeping the nation. Join Schorow at the Kirstein Library to learn more.

Schorow is the author of six books on Boston history, including Boston on Fire: A History of Fires and Firefighting in Boston, The Cocoanut Grove Fire, The Crime of the Century: How the Brinks Robbers Stole Millions and the Hearts of Boston, among others. A seasoned reporter, she has worked for the Boston Herald and the Associated Press.