A large crowd, including several descendants of William Furber, a 17th Century immigrant to Pemaquid, gathered Aug. 7, for the unveiling of a monument commemorating the Angel Gabriel.
Furber, a 21-year-old indentured servant, first set foot on the grounds of Colonial Pemaquid 375 years ago, on Aug. 14, 1635. Hours later, the Angel Gabriel, the ship that brought him to America, was lost in a hurricane, killing the crew members and settlers still aboard.
Lincoln Furber, President and Director of the Furber Family Association, represented the family in a brief ceremony before the unveiling. Furber read an official proclamation from Governor John Baldacci designating Aug. 14, 2010 as Angel Gabriel Day.
According to the proclamation, “the history of the State of Maine includes countless stories of human courage, tenacity, tragedy and triumph… one such little known story occurred on the Pemaquid Peninsula in St. John’s Bay when the English galleon Angel Gabriel was destroyed in a fierce hurricane one day after its arrival from England…”
The proclamation further details the events of Aug. 14, 1635 and the dissemination of Furber’s descendants throughout New England.
Will Harris, the Director of the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands, Tom Desjardin, Historian for the Maine Department of Conservation, Bob Howell, President of the Friends of Colonial Pemaquid, and Dr. Warren Riess, a marine archaeologist and professor at the University of Maine, joined Lincoln Furber at the podium.
Riess, the author of “Angel Gabriel: The Elusive English Galleon,” began to research the shipwreck in graduate school. Riess led an unsuccessful search of Pemaquid River and nearby waters to attempt to locate the ship’s final resting place.
Desjardin said the completion of the monument contributes to an “exciting period of time” for Colonial Pemaquid. McCaffery’s Creek History Resources is building a replica of a 17th century home at the site, and last summer, archaeologists found the remnants of a colonial-era dwelling, the twentieth foundation unearthed at Colonial Pemaquid. Volunteers, meanwhile, are at work on a massive project to create a digital record of the thousands of artifacts from the site.
The ceremony was scheduled a week before Angel Gabriel Day because the anniversary fell during Olde Bristol Days. Next weekend, Desjardin joked, they might need a buffer around the monument, which consists of a bronze plaque on a granite boulder, so kids on the “slippy-slide” don’t run into it and injure themselves.
Harris unveiled the monument, which was draped with a piece of the bowsprit sail from the Mayflower II, a replica of the pilgrims’ famous ship.
In an interview after the ceremony, Lincoln Furber, a resident of Southport, said, “it was a lot of work” to prepare the monument. “The final creation, because it came out so well, is a huge satisfaction,” he said.
Most of the members of the Furber family present at the ceremony believe William Furber was the first Furber in America, Lincoln Furber said, although he admitted that records from the time “aren’t that clear or accurate.”
Desjardin said the wreck “points out the tenuousness of settlers’ lives.”
The Angel Gabriel was “probably anchored right here in the river,” Desjardin said, gesturing to the mouth of the Pemaquid. During the hurricane, the ship likely broke its mooring.
It’s difficult to predict where the ship finally went down, Desjardin said. Silt buildup on the wreck further complicates the search effort.
William Furber and the other Angel Gabriel passengers that came ashore before the wreck brought only enough supplies to spend the night, Desjardin said, leaving most of their belongings on the ship and worsening the already difficult transition to the New world.
Despite the hardship, William Furber survived, moving with the Cogswell family, to whom he was indentured, to Ipswich, Mass. “Within a couple years,” Lincoln Furber said, William Furber gained his freedom and settled in Dover, N.H.
According to Lincoln Furber, William Furber “ran a ferry for many years” in Newington, N.H.
Mark Hanley of Bristol’s Hanley Construction donated the boulder and the labor to install it. Don Stearns and Diane Furber Stearns of Springvale, Maine, coordinated the construction of the plaque. The image of the Angel Gabriel bucking the waves at the top of the plaque is based on a clay sculpture by Don Stearns.
