Verbatim: Opinion Declaration

Fireworks at Jetties Beach.

Welcome to Verbatim, a re-telling of anything and everything on Nantucket through your own words. We accept photos, writing, and pretty much anything else that is an expression and celebration of the community we live in and the beauty around us. In this week's submission Robert Barsanti describes the history and celebration of Independence Day on Nantucket..

Submissions may be sent to ackweb@plumtv.com, or dropped off at our office location in digital format at 4 North Water Street, Nantucket, MA 02554.

We have a great Fourth of July celebration out here on Nantucket. The island hosts its largest crush of people all year, closes the Main Street, and throws a party designed to show us off in our best Yankee Small Town light. We have fireworks, we have a sack race, we have a dunking booth, we have pie eating and we have hundreds of American flags waving proudly in the fog and humidity.

Americans have no more political holiday on the calendar than this one. Over the last two hundred and thirty years, Presidents have spoken on this day and invoked the founding fathers. The country has mourned war dead, welcomed new citizens, unveiled monuments, admitted new states, rung church bells, watched parades of tall ships, landed space ships, and protested.

To its credit, Nantucket resists the political spectacle that the Fourth could become. We don’t have a parade and we don’t have speeches. We have more than enough politicians, but even they sheath their talons out here. Bill Frist doesn’t flip Harris Wofford or John Kerry the finger. George Soros and Richard Mellon Scaife don’t have a cash fight on Main Street. This year, the most political event on this most political of days will be a bake sale for Obama. Perhaps the McCain supporters could have lemonade stand across the street. We could poll the population in sweets. (I volunteer for the recount).

On the morning of the Fourth, a contingent of patriots will clear their throats and will read the U.S. Constitution at the South Church on Orange Street. Students of history will find this a curious choice. While the Constitution is the foundation of our laws and rights, it didn’t get signed in July, 1776. The Fourth of July celebrates that other seminal American document; the Declaration of Independence.

Strangely enough, this makes sense on Nantucket. Colonial Nantucket was no fan of the Declaration of Independence. No community had more to lose in the Revolutionary War than Nantucket: It can be argued that no community lost more. Before the war, the island’s best customer was England. William Roche and the rest of the Sheikhs of Spermaceti provided London lamps with as much whale oil as they could buy. Nantucketers were sending schooners to Europe and major American cities. The island had established itself as the world leader in whaling. 150 Nantucket whale ships worked the Atlantic, from Greenland to the Falklands. 2200 men worked on those ships, harvesting 26,000 barrels of whale oil a year. When New England got whacked with the Restraining Bill, Nantucketers appealed to the customers and partners in England for relief. They got it.

When war arrived, Nantucketers found themselves stuck on the sandbar in a rising tide. No matter how much we sang out about our Quaker pacificism, our shipping kept getting boarded and stolen. The rebellious colonies didn’t trust us and refused to trade with the enemy. One of their first acts was to come over and commandeer 50 whaleboats. On the other hand, the British saw the island as a part of Massachusetts and captured whale ships, cargo, and crew, as prizes of war. Worst of all, loyalist “refugees” patrolled the sound, capturing ships and shipping on their way out to the island. Our Quaker beliefs made us an easy mark for their lootings.

When the Declaration of Independence made its way to Nantucket on July 16, 1776, Kezia Coffin probably spoke for many islanders when she wished the founding fathers were “strung 50 feet in the air before they had suffered so far to bring about their wretched and ruinous plans.”

The next nine years were indeed ruinous for Nantucket (though not for loyalist and smuggler Kezia). The island was faced with shortages of food, wood, and clothing. By the end of the war, Obed Macy estimates that the island “lost” 1600 men, although most of these men had moved away. The war had created 202 widows and 342 orphans on island. The island had lost close to $1,000,000 in goods and ships. Before the war, 14,867 tons of shipping were based on Nantucket. By the end of the war, the island was down to 2400 tons left and had lost its most supportive customers. Nantucketers loved independence so much that they petitioned to be independent of the U.S. in 1785 so that they could avoid English import duties.

We still love our independence. Nantucketers have an instinctive mistrust of anything that binds us closer to the mainland or “America.” It’s not that we want to secede, we just like to think that it’s a possibility. Our unwritten rule about the mainland is “out of sight, out of mind.” In the past, we have wanted certain unalienable rights: to pull out of the SSA, to open the ponds to the sea, to keep those pesky Model A’s off island, and to catch perch without a permit. These days, we would probably like to loosen up those sewer rules.

Most of the time, we enjoy being Americans. Very few communities have sent a larger percentage of their young men off to war. We vote, we wave the flag, and our kids say the Pledge of Allegiance.

However, the Nation of Nantucket hasn’t completely disappeared into the past; it lives in our hearts and minds. When we get grouchy or feel slighted, we take it out, dust it off, think about independence.

We could still have pie-eating contests.

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