by Tim Richards

When my wife Meg Clarke and I bought a house on Mill Pond Road in Truro Massachusetts four years ago, we had no idea that a tide mill once operated on the pond. Eventually we asked ourselves “Why is the pond called Mill Pond?”

We knew little about tide mills. We did, however, appreciate the power of the tides. I grew up sailing on the Pamet River in Truro, where every outing requires respect for tidal currents and where sailing schedules are dictated by the 8-12 foot tides. I also had a professional interest in tidal power because renewable energy policy, including tidal energy, was an important part of my work for the General Electric Company.

In November 2018, my father and I visited the Truro Historical Society’s Cobb Archive to research the history of Mill Pond. With help from the Archive volunteers, we found that Mill Pond was aptly named: an 1890 history of Barnstable County includes a sentence describing the Truro mill. The Cobb Archive also included Truro maps dated between 1795 and 1858, which showed a mill on the pond (see detail from the 1858 map below). Lesson one from our research was “pay attention to the obvious!” If a pond is called “Mill Pond” or a hill “Mill Hill” it is a good bet that there was once a mill in that location.

Continue reading “Discovering a Tide Mill in Truro” →

by Patrick Malone, Professor Emeritus, Brown University

Walter Edward Minchinton (1921-1996) was a British industrial archaeologist and economic historian.  In 1964, after teaching for 16 years at University College Swansea, he became head of the new Economic History Department and Professor of Economic History at the University of Exeter.  His academic publication record includes numerous studies that he authored, co-authored, or edited. Following his retirement as an Emeritus Professor in 1986, he continued to do research and write about industrial topics, with a primary focus on tide mills.

The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University provided Professor Minchinton with a fellowship in 1993 that allowed him to study early American tide mills.  While in Rhode Island, he investigated the tide mills of that state and collaborated with local scholars such as Dr. Richard Greenwood, one of the early members of the Tide Mill Institute.  The Rhode Island Historical Society assisted Minchinton’s investigation and provided images for the article that he submitted to its journal, Rhode Island History.

Continue reading “Walter Minchinton’s “Tidemills of Rhode Island”” →

A fair amount has been written about Brouwer’s (or Freeke’s) tide mill, built sometime before 1661 on Gowanus Creek in what is now Brooklyn, N.Y. In Gowanus: Brooklyn’s Curious Canal, Joseph Alexiou calls it the earliest tide mill in New Netherland, which consisted of today’s New Jersey, southeastern New York and part of Connecticut. Its early date is reason enough for the attention the mill has received from historians. But it is also closely associated with the 1776 Battle of Brooklyn, when Washington’s Continental Army set it on fire to keep it out of British hands.

Anyone wanting to learn more about the mill’s history would do well to start with a report, “Brouwer’s or Freeke’s Mill,” just produced by Earl Taylor of the Tide Mill Institute. His report is brief but provides some history and several references to helpful books, articles, illustrations and maps. Most of these references are easily accessible on line via the links provided in the report.

Read “Brouwer’s or Freeke’s Mill.“

Even if you haven’t visited southern Maine, you’re still sure to enjoy The Tide Mills of Kittery, a new 34-minute video about tide mill technology and history, exploring several abandoned tide mill sites between Kennebunkport, Maine, and Hampton, N.H. By themselves, the superb aerial video segments by Jim White are enough to make viewing well worth your time.

This video premiered at the annual conference of the Tide Mill Institute, held on line in mid-November, and all are now invited to watch it by clicking the link at the end of this announcement. The drone’s eye views of tide mill sites gives us a new way to examine these somewhat hidden landscapes.  After decades of tide mill enthusiasts dealing with muddy boots or looking down from satellites with Google Earth, we now have a fantastic tool to see this history in our own backyards and in great detail.

The tour starts with a welcome by Bud Warren, a Tide Mill Institute founder and former president. Bud explains the role of tide mills in American Colonial history and describes how ingenious millers trapped seawater from the incoming tide and then released it through a channel to power water wheels or turbines. This mechanical power was then harnessed to grind grain, saw timber and perform other tasks formerly requiring human or animal muscle power.

Continue reading “New Tide Mill Video – Not Just for Locals” →

by Robert Gordon

A recent article on a rehabilitated tide-power installation describes it as a “newly revived link to lunar energy.” It isn’t. Tide power comes from the earth, not the moon. Think of a toy gyroscope. Spin the wheel and it gradually slows because of friction in its bearings and the air drag on its disc. The friction of tidal currents flowing over the sea floor is doing this for the earth. How do we know it is happening? Because the speed of the earth’s rotation about its axis is slowing. That means our day is getting longer, and the number of days in a month is decreasing. Not by much, but enough to be seen in the time kept by modern precise atomic clocks. But we already knew this before those precise clocks were invented, from the sex life of clams. Here’s how.

Some species of bivalves add to their shells day-by-day. Section a shell and you can see growth rings, like those on the end of a log or tree stump. Clams have to reproduce themselves, fairly frequently since they don’t have long lives. For some species the sex act is triggered by the full moon. Reproduction takes a lot of energy. This leaves less for growing a shell. Every month the spacing of the growth rings in the clam’s shell gets smaller for a few days. Count the number of large rings in the shell between the bands of narrow ones and you have the number of days in the month, about 30 in a modern shell.

Continue reading “Where Does Tide Power Come From?” →