Historical Significance
Historically, the river's banks were home to many mills, especially on the New Bedford side of the river. The river's mouth, which forms a small but well-sheltered harbor, has long served as the home port of New Bedford's commercial fishing fleet. It is also the birthplace of New Bedford's whaling industry; the Dartmouth, the first ship whose keel was laid in New Bedford, first set sail on this river. (The ship would go on to fame as one of those involved in the Boston Tea Party.) On the eastern (Fairhaven) shore, the mouth of the river is guarded by Fort Phoenix, a fortification that was involved, in 1775, in the first naval engagement of the American Revolutionary War.
Read more about this topic: Acushnet River
Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or significance:
“This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time by the English standard, nor did the English by the Roman, nor the Roman by the Greek.... From this September afternoon, and from between these now cultivated shores, those times seemed more remote than the dark ages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is necessary not to be Christian to appreciate the beauty and significance of the life of Christ.”
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