Part 3: Falmouth Grows as a Mast Port 

Discussed in this post:

• Colonel Thomas Westbrook 

• Captain George Tate

“The Admiralty’s avenues for purchasing ship timber had always been rank with politics, graft, and the costs of private monopoly gained by contractors.  The King’s Masts, from North America, were no exception.” The Royal Navy acquired masts from licensed London contractors. Those contractors hired agents in New England.  Thus, the New England Mast agents were not government employees, but independent businessmen. Many became wealthy and prominent, for example, Thomas Westbrook at Falmouth, and his successor, George Tate.

At this point, we intended to relate some details of Captain Tate’s life and career, but thought, “what about Thomas Westbrook?”  

We spent a brief amount of time looking up Col. Westbrook.  He is a treasure trove of little-known facts: Yes, the town of Westbrook was named for him in 1814, but he died in 1744, heavily in debt to former business partner Samuel Waldo.  Waldo was an exemplar of the corrupt, powerful, unscrupulous, and short sighted absentee owner. Westbrook’s family hid his body, burying it in an unmarked grave on his sister and brother-in-law’s farm out of fear that Waldo would hold the body for ransom of the unpaid debt.  

The farm is Smiling Hill Farm, still operated by the Knight family, descendents of Westbrook’s sister and of his right-hand man, and the gravesite was not revealed until the 1976 bicentennial.  It was members of the Knight family who got the town of Westbrook to be named for the Colonel.

During the time of his partnership with Waldo, they built on the Stroudwater one of the first paper mills in Maine.  So naming the town after him was totally appropriate.

Portland tour guides and history docents all know that Portland (then Falmouth) was once the biggest mast port in the British Empire, and of course, we have the Tate House Museum, and the story of Captain Tate as Mast Agent.  But all of what was Maine in the early 1600’s was granted to Sir Ferdinando Gorges. By 1677, the Puritans of Massachusetts owned it. In the early years of the mast trade Portsmouth was the big port. Westbrook, named Mast Agent in 1727, moved much of the King’s mast business to Falmouth.  Were it not for Westbrook, the biggest mast port might have remained in Portsmouth, or moved up on the Kennebec somewhere.  

“When Captain George Tate, Sr. arrived to take over the mast trade, he inherited a well-run operation, the gift of his hard-working predecessor.” (Barry)  He also inherited the redoubtable Knight.

Tate was born in 1700, and served as a seaman on board the first frigate ever built in Russia, according to his obituary.  His naval career grew in the time when Britain tried to maintain a balance of power in the Baltic, for the sake of access to mast trees and other naval supplies.  A detailed exploration of British policy and actions in the Baltic is beyond our scope here, but a dog-wagging extended comparison based on the idea that masts were the oil of their day is broadly accurate.  This alludes to Britain’s role at the roots of, and the West’s continuing involvement in, modern Middle East turmoil.

Tate entered the mast trade in the Baltic, “and his title of ‘Captain’ derived from his years as the master of mast ships” there.  He lived with his wife Mary and their children in Rotherhithe, England, a maritime community only a mile and a half from London Bridge.  Considering that he left those comforts, with a fortune already made, to come to Maine, Stephen speculates that the company offered to build his house at Stroudwater.

In the wake of Westbrook’s death, it seems to have become clear to the mast agents in London that his erstwhile partner was more ambitious on his own behalf than he was energetic on theirs.  Tate appears to have been recruited to set things in order at Falmouth. Tate arrived in 1751, age 51. His wife Mary was 40. The eldest son Samuel was 13, soon to begin his own career as a mariner in the mast trade.  William was 11, George II five, and Robert newborn.

From 1751 until Mary’s death in 1770 all went well for the Tates and their Stroudwater community.  The threat of native attack faded, the mast business continued to grow, the mansion was built, the Tate’s status in the community was high. 

Falmouth boomed as a mast port after 1762 when fire destroyed some of the finest woodland tracts accessible to Portsmouth.  Residents whose homes were destroyed moved down east and penetrated farther and farther upstream and into the woods.

Mary’s death in 1770 was tragic and bizarre.  In September the family discovered that someone had been stealing from their storehouse.  Mary asked William to do something about it, and he rigged a handgun booby trap, which the whole family supposedly knew about.  However, on September 30, Mary opened the door and was shot.  

William was eventually arrested, tried, convicted, and then pardoned.  

Nevertheless, the Tates were under a social cloud.  The boys, grown to young manhood, married, some moved away, and all began their own careers.