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The Shipyard That Got Away - Part 2

© Christina Coruth

During his fifteen years of research, Victor Bourre unearthed compelling evidence in his quest to prove that the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard belonged to New Hampshire.

He discovered an official document that put the boundary for Kittery as being the land from the Piscataqua River, not the river itself. This document, which is dated 1652, appears to be the oldest document in existence relating to the boundary issue. The King George II Decree of 1740 put Maine's border as the middle of the Piscataqua River. At the time, Maine was part of Massachusetts.

However, the King George III Decree of 1770 that laid out the counties of New Hampshire declared that the boundary of Rockingham County (the seacoast county) extended across the Piscataqua River. New Hampshire maintained that description of this border when it became independent of the Crown, through the time it became a state until this very day. In researching the land titles in Maine, which did not become a state until 1820, Bourre discovered that the titles regarding York County, in which Kittery is located, describe the boundary as only all the land from the Piscataqua River northward. With the Rockingham County border established as including the Piscataqua River at the time New Hampshire became a state, Bourre reasoned that Maine could not claim the Piscataqua River without violating Article 4, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution which states that "no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state."

Bourre also discovered old maps of Maine that clearly show the Piscataqua River and the harbor as part of New Hampshire. His research showed that according to the manner in which Maine determined which harbors belonged to which counties, Portsmouth Harbor would be placed in New Hampshire.

Maine asserted that the King George II Decree of 1740 and the 1977 consent decree in which the boundary for lobster harvesting was set as the middle of the harbor, established its right to the shipyard. Bourre and the State of New Hampshire asserted that the lobster agreement had nothing to do with the inside of the harbor or the Piscataqua River. It established a boundary from the middle of the beginning of the harbor outward to the Isle of Shoals. In other words, two separate geographic locations.

When the State of New Hampshire agreed to bring the border dispute to the U.S. Supreme Court, based in large part on Bourre's findings, he felt the years he had devoted to research would finally be validated. He would finally capture the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and bring it home to New Hampshire. It wasn't to be - his dream would slip away.

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