Seated by the Sea: The Maritime History of Portland, Maine, and Its Irish Longshoremen

2. Black Fades to Green on the Waterfront: Nineteenth-Century Social, Racial, and Ethnic Change

2 Black Fades to Green on the Waterfront Nineteenth-Century Social, Racial, and Ethnic Change New England lies at the periphery of the major concentration of population in North America, and within New England over various time periods certain population groups have themselves been seen as peripheral.1 This chapter will attempt to explore the relationship in the mid-nineteenth century in Portland between two such marginalized groups, African Americans and Irish, within this major New England maritime port city. A chronological approach will be used while identifying central themes to explore: the growth of the port of Portland; the arrival of a small but notable black population with a maritime-related occupational niche and demographic comparisons with Boston; labor and racial comparisons with other American ports, including New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Portland, Oregon; racial theories of “whiteness” and their impact; the arrival of the Irish and their dockside hegemony by the mid-nineteenth century; and finally the founding of the predominantly Irish Portland Longshoremen’s Benevolent Society (PLSBS) in 1880. Local demographic conditions in Portland, especially in terms of race, will be reviewed in comparison with its larger and major New England rival port of Boston. Literature on whiteness and its impact on the American working class will be analyzed in the context of the replacement of one small peripheral group in Portland, African Americans, by another, albeit much larger group, the Irish. Portland’s maritime location on a deep-water, ice-free harbor together with its plentiful supply of labor made this waterfront a natural place in which to do business. Occupations directly connected to maritime endeavors included ship store and chandlers, repair and supply, as well as the necessary marine insurance that blossomed in Portland during this period. 37 Nineteenth-Century Social, Racial, and Ethnic Change Examples of the latter included the Portland Mutual Fire Insurance Company (1828), the Ocean Insurance Company (1832), and the Dirigo Insurance Company (1856). Of course, banking and financial services also grew in tandem with maritime and railroad expansion. Many other businesses, such as the Portland Glass Company and the Portland Shovel Manufacturing Company, may have had a less direct connection to the waterfront but still relied on affordable transport.2 It is clear that these businesses, together with businesses that were not marine related, were equally dependent on capital accumulated by transport and maritime commerce. They all profited by having a readily available means of distributing their manufactured goods to potentially distant markets. To handle the increasing demand for water-borne merchandise and transportation, several local maritime companies expanded their facilities . The Portland Steam Packet Company had been formed in 1843 to provide safe, dependable propeller service between Portland and Boston. In the first twenty years of business, its boats made nearly 11,200 trips and carried nearly 1.5 million passengers and 2.5 million tons of freight without the loss of a single life.3 The International Steamship Company was incorporated in 1860 to transport freight and passengers between Portland and major southern and eastern ports, especially Saint John, New Brunswick, and Halifax, Nova Scotia. The New England Screwship Company provided twice-weekly round-trip service between Portland and New York City. Labor was crucial for this impressive growth during the “Golden Years,” 1832–66. Workers and their union supporters did not always see things eye to eye with their employers, of course. When a strike for the ten-hour day occurred by the journeymen mechanics at the Portland Company in 1849, the Portland Pleasure Boat, “an ardent defender of the working classes,” rhetorically and forcefully attacked the owners: If the Portland Company can grind an hour’s labor per day out of each man, it will aid them materially in paying for their shares; it will also help to keep the workers in ignorance and poverty. . . . I would not say a word to stir up unnecessary strife between the two classes, but I would be glad if all farmers, mechanics and laborers, were aware that they are the only class of people that the world cannot spare— that the other portions of society are chiefly drones and suckers, living on the heart’s blood and vitals of honest industry.4 Seated by the Sea 38 Portland, Maine’s “Golden Years” ended with the Great Portland Fire of July 4, 1866, probably the nation’s worst non-war-related inferno up to that date. From...