Smuttynose Island has
had its share of fascinating history.
The house depicted on our Shoals Pale Ale label was built by Samuel Haley shortly before the Revolutionary war. Haley was an energetic man who started many enterprises on the islands, although his house is the only structure that remains standing on Smuttynose Island. That house, plus some stone foundations and a small, overgrown cemetery are the only vestiges of a small community that at its peak had numerous homes, a hotel - Thomas Laighton's Mid-Ocean House - even a brewery.
Stories of pirate treasure hidden on the island are at least partly true. When Samuel Haley was building a breakwater to connect Smuttynose with Malaga Island, he uncovered four large bars of silver, which he used to pay for the construction of the rest of the breakwater, which survives to this day.
We like to think that today Smuttynose is best known for its fine, namesake ales, but prior to our arrival on the scene in 1994, the island was best known for the grisly murders that took place there in 1873. Recently, these murders have gotten a lot of press locally, due to the reappearance of the murder weapon (an axe) after its being missing for nearly a century. Nationally, the murders have been revisited in Anita Shreve's fine novel The Weight of Water. We had intended to include a detailed account of those murders here, but a local journalist , Dennis Robinson, has saved us a lot of work by posting a very thorough account. Here, then, is a link to the Smuttynose Murders. While you are there, you might want to bookmark Dennis's seacoastNH site. It is an excellent local resource.
Smuttynose Island is uninhabited now - only the Haley House remains standing there today, giving the place a wonderful, desolate almost eerie feeling. It is a favorite nesting ground for black-backed gulls and a rookery for harbor seals, which is, incidentally, why we chose a harbor seal as our mascot. (After all, what sort of company has a seagull as its mascot?)
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