If I read my notation correctly, the item about global warming caught my attention on November 12, 2001. It read: Sea level has risen 12-20 inches along Maine’s coast…during the past 250 years, a researcher said. It’s the biggest rise in the past millennium and global warming is to blame, Roland Gehrels of the University of Plymouth in England said. This little ditty was published in the Across the USA column in the USA Today. Although I normally try to evaluate the different arguments surrounding the issue of “global warming,” that wasn’t what caught my attention as I read this item. I’m writing a historic romance novel set on Frenchman Bay, Maine. Through my readings on global warming I was aware of, but had no concrete data on, increasing sea levels. Even so, I’d wondered what effect the increase would have on my novel, which has numerous scenes on Lamoine Beach. I wondered what the beach was like back then? There’s a pretty good description of it being covered with shells and being filled with fish. Its a rocky harbor required big ships to travel through and anchor in a deep channel. However, was the beach larger back then? And were the Ovens (a small beach closed in by a 60 foot high cliff on the Frenchman Bay side of Mount Desert Island) also bigger? The article in USA Today assured me my ponderings weren’t unreasonable. I typed the name Ronald Gehrel into my search engine and immediately came up with the article New evidence for sea-level rise along the coasts of Maine and Nova Scotia. It was released on November 5, 2001, by the Geological Society of America (click on http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-11/gsoa-nef110501.php to read the entire article).
Gehrel reported that the “sea level rise in Nova Scotia (60 cm since 1750) and eastern Maine (50 cm since 1750) has been faster than in southwestern Maine (30 cm since 1750) because of gradual sinking of the coastline. This subsidence is caused by the lingering effects of the melting of the ice sheet that covered North America during the last ice age.” The unprecedented increase raises the question of cause: natural events, human interference or a combination of both. “There seems to be a two-stepped rise. First, sea level rose at the end of he 18th century as a result of natural climatic warming. In the 19th century, sea level didn’t rise much at all. But at the beginning of the 20th century, sea level took off again, in tandem with global and hemispheric temperature rise,” Gehrels explained. Again, the issue of this discussion isn’t the cause of the global warming, but the speculated effect it has on my novel-in-progress.
A 12-20 inch rise in the sea level could change the beach coastline quite dramatically between the 1790s and today. What adaptations should I make in my writing?
There is a particular rock on the far end of the beach I’d chosen to be a focal point of sociability. This is where Louis des Isles and Charles de Laittre would mourn when Madame Rosalie de la Val left the community for the last time. This is where Mary Googins des Isles would read the letter she received telling her her husband Louis was alive---after years of believing he’d died at sea. What was she to do, she’d ponder, while sitting on the rock with waves lapping at her feet. IT was quite a dilemma---she’d remarried and given birth to her eighth child. The rock is where people celebrated the joys of life and mourned the tragedies of life.
The attraction of this rock is that it’s fully exposed at low tide but waves lap against it during high tide. That’s how it is today. However, in the late 1700s the beach would be much larger, and the tides would never reach this rock. I decided I have to choose another rock, one exposed only at low tide.
I also need to select photographs to illustrate a power point presentation I’m preparing about the novel. I won’t be able to use any high-tide photographs.
There is another change, too, though not so dramatic. I have several references to a dock that Madame de la Val planned on building from the mainland to a certain ledge about a third of the way into the bay, now known as Googin’s Ledge. It’s difficult to spot during high tide, and only a little easier during low tide. Before the sea level rise it was probably much more pronounced. I’d heard rumors of persons walking out into the bay almost to the ledge, which cannot be done today. That too could be an effect of the sea level rise.
This is just one example of how, when writing historical material, one must be aware of the many differences in geography (as well as dress, diet, customs, place names etc.) and incorporate them into the work so that it maintains historical integrity.
Meanwhile, I plan on contacting Gehrels to see if my revised view of Lamoine Beach and the Ovens are on target.
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