If not a barrier, the sea provided a buffer zone for these few early settlers. Larger islands with arable land could be farmed and the waterline was a fence for cattle. Islands were assaulted by Indians who would rush an island from shore paddling canoes at speeds which startled settlers. Even with the edge they had firing from land, settlers were sometimes overwhelmed.

Christopher Levett, considered the first permanent white settler, built a stone house on an island in 1623, three years after the Mayflower landed at Plymouth. Levett, a crown forester had been granted 6000 acres. While hoping to establish a colony like many others, unlike them he made an effort to befriend many Indians. Levett returned to England in 1624 to recruit new settlers, but never returned. His Casco Bay holdings, including Cushing Island, were sold. But islands were where things were happening in the early years of settlement on the Maine coast. Travel was by water, a readily available food source was in the water, and the water provided a natural barrier to what was wanted in or kept out.

Cushing would change hands many times, eventually in the 1660s James Andrews built a fort there. When Indians attacked the islands, as they frequently did in the 1670s, settlers from nearby islands would go to Andrews’ fort. (There was a war with the Indians throughout much of New England at this time.) The fort must have been substantial since hundreds of soldiers were stationed there 100 years later. Parts of the fort remained at the time of the Civil War. Some of the most physical evidence of life in the early settlements on Casco Bay islands are the fortifications built to defend Portland from potential offshore threats. One of these fortifications, though not the largest, most famous or most used, is Fort Gorges.

Interior passageways open on to parade ground. The massive scale and attention to detail are apparent. Overhead view of parade grounds with openings to passageways along the wall. In 1864, there were 26 smooth-bore muzzleloading Rodman guns installed at the recently built Fort Georges in Casco Bay. Naval technology outpaced the fort’s and the guns were removed in 1898. The guns fired a 125 pound projectile three miles.

The fort was named after Sir Ferdinando Gorges (1566-1646) an Englishman, colonial proprietor of Maine and early booster for settlement in Maine. Born in the west country of England, he found himself in his 20s in a position to warn Queen Elizabeth of a threatened overthrow of her regime. For doing so he was made a navy commander, the connection between the two roles is not clear. However, it worked out for him, for in this post he was knighted for bravery in the battle against the Spanish Armada. The Crown in gratitude made him governor of Plymouth, England in 1604, the jumping off port for voyages to the New World.

His interest in the New World was initiated by an Indian birch bark canoe, which had been brought to England by another man from a voyage to the Fox Islands, Vinalhaven and North Haven. In 1605, Captain George Weymouth returned to Plymouth, England from a voyage to Monhegan and the islands of Muscongus Bay. Weymouth brought five Indians kidnapped from the Maine coast. These Indians were presented to the governor of Plymouth, Sir Ferdinando Gorges. He brought the Indians into his home as honored guests, learned their language and anything they could teach him about the New World. He would send three of them back, one of them went to the islands of Muscongus Bay and taught the English he had learned to the Wawenock chief, Samoset. Samoset would later help the settlers of the Plymouth Colony survive their difficult winter of 1621.

Gorges’ interest in the New World remained strong. Between the age of 30 and 70 he sent many expeditions which included his sons and nephews, with the hope of colonizing Maine. He backed the Sagahadoc Colony of 1607-08. While merchant ships came to Maine to establish fishing communities with varying degrees of success, behind the scene in England there was squabbling and infighting over charters, land grants and commercial rights among those in leading positions.

In a new charter of 1620, for the first time the area was referred to as New England. Gorges, through various grants and arrangements, held in 1629, all land east of the Piscataqua River, which became the province of Maine. His grant passed to his heirs. His grandson Ferdinand Gorges would later sell to Massachusetts, all rights to Maine for 1,250 pounds, which was less per acre than the Indians got when they sold Manhattan Island.

It was after the War of 1812 that the Army Corps of Engineers proposed a new fort on Hog Island ledge. The two story, six-sided fort has a parade ground in the center. One of the unusual military features of the fort is that it was built at water level so that cannon balls fired from it would skip across the water and hit enemy ships. It was to support Fort Preble and Fort Scammel to the south and protect the northeast approaches to the harbor. Basically a massive gun emplacement, construction began in 1858. When the Civil War started in 1861, there was pressure to finish the fort. There were 26 guns mounted in 1864 before the fort was completed in 1865. These 26 smooth-bore muzzle-loading 10 inch Rodman guns were mounted on the first level of the fort. The Rodman guns fired a 125-pound projectile three miles.

The fort would be in almost continuous change and upgrading. Rapid advances in naval power made it virtually obsolete by the 1860s. It was built of granite and brick in three levels above the ledges and surrounded by water at high water. The first level contained the casements for the 10-inch Rodman guns. Iron shutters protected the guns and flues vented powder smoke. Powder was stored in the northeast and northwest corners. Officers’ apartments, store rooms, and bakery were located at the north end. Officers’ apartments were finished with wood lath and plaster, wood floors, doors and windows. The floors and ceilings of the powder magazine were finished with wood and concealed nails to avoid fatal sparks.

The second level also had 28 embrasures for 10-inch Rodman guns with powder magazines also in the northeast and northwest corners. The third level was built for twenty-nine 10-inch guns, but was rebuilt by 1876 to mount eleven 15-inch Rodman guns.

The gun casements of the first and second levels would have had doors, windows and stove to serve as quarters for the 500 enlisted men required to man all of the guns. Unlike today, then congress geared funding more to an immediate specific need and might cut funds unexpectedly. Arming was never completed and the fort was never permanently garrisoned.

In 1896 a 300-pound rifled Parrot gun was brought to the third level where it remains unmounted. The other guns were scrapped after 1898. More recently, in the 1930s the Coast Guard installed an aid-to-navigation beacon in the fort which shown out through one of the gun embrasures. In the 1940s steel cable for submarine mines and submarine moorings were stored at the fort. The General Services Administration declared the fort surplus in 1946. The City of Portland acquired Fort Gorges in 1960 as an historic site. It can be reached today by private boat. Rotted or missing floors make some areas inaccessible or hazardous, but parts of the fort can be visited.