BY PAULA TRACY, InDepthNH.org
NEW CASTLE – A peninsula in the north east corner of New Castle, at the mouth of the Piscataqua River into the Atlantic Ocean, which is home to the U.S. Coast Guard, the historic Revolutionary War ruins of Fort Constitution and the Portsmouth Lighthouse, has been heavily damaged by storms in January and will not be ready to receive visitors for the 250th anniversary of the historic Patriot raid there on Dec. 13.
Back-to-back southwesterly storms in January, which came at the very worst possible time for meteorological high tides heavily damaged the U.S. Coast Guard Station Portsmouth Harbor boat house and seawall and grounds at the mouth of the Piscataqua River making the boathouse inoperable.
The vessels, as large as 65 feet, cannot enter the boathouse structure.
The lighthouse decking and a brick house associated with the 1877 structure, which is also inaccessible to the public, and the light that guides ships into the treacherous harbor is run by a large extension cord.
U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, toured the facility and the damage it incurred Friday with top officials from the U.S. Coast Guard, and said Congress “needs to do more,” to protect the important asset and historic value and that resilient solutions need to come in the face of climate change.
The state owns Fort Constitution as a state park adjacent to the Coast Guard facility, but it is behind the gates and off limits to the public.
Nonetheless, the Friends of Fort Constitution plan a 250th Reenactment Dec. 13 and 14 from Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth though members of the public will not be able to enter the fort area due to coastal damage.
New Hampshire State Parks said it is “continuing to assess” the repair needs at the property, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.
It is here that about 400 Patriots raided the fort of its munitions, tore down its huge British flag four months before Paul Revere’s famous ride through Massachusetts to warn that the British were coming.
It is considered by many to be the first overt act of the Revolution.
Shaheen carefully toured the grounds, with its undermined pavement and heard from U.S. Coast Guard officials that they are seeking a federal engineering study in the range of about $4 million to assess what needs to be done and she spoke of the state and nation’s preparedness for another such storm and other possible threats.
THE PERFECT STORM
Derek Schroeter, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine, said the Portsmouth harbor area was battered by southeasterly storms Jan. 10 and Jan. 13, which ravaged the region’s coastline.
The Jan. 13 storm, he said Sunday, holds the all-time record for the tide gauge at Portland, Maine, and the back-to-back nature of the events on Jan. 10 and Jan. 13 together with the high tide timing were “extremely bad luck.”
Exacerbating the damage was the fact that on Dec. 18, 2023, just a few weeks before another storm which did not have as high a storm surge, damaged the coastline making some areas more vulnerable to the subsequent storms.
Schroeter said to think mathematically about the chances of such an occurrence is something meteorologists “really can’t wrap their heads around.”
He noted the Hampton tide gauge on Jan. 13 was 13.56 feet at high tide with a storm surge of 4.16 feet and on Jan. 10 it was worse, with 14.2 feet at high tide and a storm surge of 4.2 feet.
The Gray, Maine NWS station records coastal weather from the mouth of the Penobscot River in Maine to the mouth of the Merrimack in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
Since the early 1900s when records began to be taken, Portland has seen seven inches of sea level rise, said Schroeter.
Scientists believe global warming is contributing to the issues making these types of situations more common and destructive to the historic coastline.
STILL READY BUT MORE OF A CHALLENGE
Capt. Matt Baker, sector commander of Coast Guard Sector Northern New England, was among the leaders of the Coast Guard who toured Shaheen around the facility.
“Even with all of these challenges we still perform all our missions that the American people expect us to perform,” Baker said. “It is just a little bit harder on the crew here because they have to overcome some of the logistical challenges and perhaps they can’t keep their boats here all the time or the boats out in the weather when they are trying to do maintenance on it.
“We know it is going to be a year or two years before we can hopefully get a boat house that is secure,” Baker said. “It affects (the crew’s) long-term resilience.”
The New Hampshire Marine Patrol, which used to be able to keep a vessel on the property, has had to find a new location. They are relocated at the state pier in Portsmouth.
Designing a resilient solution will take time and incremental steps to restore capabilities.
There are contingency options to moor-up boats and the last fall back is the crew gets the boat underway and rides out the heavy weather at sea, and ideally when it is that way, they are training in those conditions.
During the storms, its neighbors on the point, the University of New Hampshire, allowed the Coast Guard to moor up one of its vessels at their pier and another remained underway in the river until the worst of the storm passed.
There was a little rain intrusion in the 1950s-era structure but there was inundation on the property which resulted in undermined pavement, destruction to a dock inside its boathouse making it unusable and damage to the boathouse structure.
“They are able to do what they are able to do but it makes it more challenging,” said Shaheen. “I’ll keep working on it,” she promised.
WHAT CAN BE DONE AND HOW
“The initial step will be a survey and design to determine how best to rebuild and how expansive,” she said.
“One of the things we tried to do was direct some spending in the appropriations bill which is considered an earmark so we can’t do that according to the appropriations rules,” she said.
There are other ways including increasing areas of their budgets, but she said it might require a way to “be creative.”
Many come and ask to see if they see the lighthouse, but the foundation is worn out.
The Bureau of Historic Sites regrets they don’t have the money to help out right now, U.S. Coast Guard officials told her.
“This is such an important part of our history,” Shaheen said.
