Fort Pentagouet
Fort Pentagouet was a French fort in what was then the colony of Akadien near what is now Castine in Maine . It was built around 1613 and was located on a peninsula in Penobscot Bay , which was first visited in 1604 by the French explorer Samuel de Champlain . Champlain named the peninsula Pentagoët . With the Penobscot , a tribe of the Eastern Abenaki , the place was called Majabigwaduce and was the residence of the Upper Sagamore .
The builder of the fort, which served as a fortified trading post and fishing station, was Claude de Saint-Étienne de la Tour . The place is considered the first permanent settlement in New England and arose seven years before Plymouth , Massachusetts . Located at the mouth of the Penobscot River , Pentaguet was an ideal place for the fur trade , the starting point for trips inland and of particular interest to the European powers. It changed hands several times in the 17th and 18th centuries and was temporarily in French, British, Dutch and, most recently, American hands.
After the British captured the fort in 1628, it became an outpost of the Plymouth Colony. William Bradford traveled there personally to make the UK claim. The governor of Acadia, Isaac de Razilly, sent Charles de Menou d'Aulnay to Pentagouet in 1635 to reclaim the fort and the region for France. Apparently afterwards the fortifications were further expanded and equipped with cannons. Some events from this period are well documented. On September 2, 1654, British troops under Robert Sedgwick reached the fort, drove out the residents and took control again. In the Treaty of Breda in 1667, Acadia returned to France, but the affected area and settlements were not clearly identified.
Governor Grandfontaine of Acadia and the French baron Jean-Vincent de Saint-Castin settled in Pentagouet around this time, which at that time was roughly in the middle of France's young colony. The real owners of this controversial area were the Penobscot. The 18-year-old Saint-Castin was therefore given various missions to study the country and its people. He developed good relations with the indigenous people, later married a daughter of the Upper Sagamore Madockawando and became chief of the tribe himself.
During the Franco-Dutch war , Fort Pentagouet and Fort Jemseg in New Brunswick were conquered by the Dutch captain Jurriaen Aernoutsz in 1674, who then declared Acadia a new Dutch colony. After Aernoutsz left Acadia to recruit Dutch settlers, Acadia immediately returned to the sovereignty of France. In 1676 Pentagouet was completely destroyed by the Dutch. The Dutch declared their ownership claims on paper and appointed Cornelius Steenwyk as governor in 1676, but renounced acadia in the Treaty of Nijmwegen in 1778. In fact, Arcadia and Pentagouet remained under French control and the fort was rebuilt in 1679. In King William's War (1689-1697) the British captured the fort, which they finally destroyed, while the place was plundered and then only sparsely populated.
Today, on the site of the fort, there is the town of Castine, which was named after the French baron.
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Coordinates: 44 ° 23 '5 " N , 68 ° 48' 13" W.