By Roger Chartier

New Bedford
Settlement - Whaleship Betsey - 1767

The expenses of the whaleship Betsey, a sloop, were carefully accounted for.

At the end of a trip the men were paid and accounts balanced.

Capt. William Claghorn was probably the master.

The whaleship owners usually made a lot of money and seamen made little.

As you can see by the prices for supplies the costs were quite deifferent from today's.

How many times have you tried to cross the New Bedford - Fairhaven Bridge and found that it was opened for boat traffic?

That really gets a lot of folks discouraged and they are often late for an appointment or their job.

Well here is the best info that I can give you to be able to plan for travel across the Acushnet river when you do not want to wait.

A schedule! Aha well here it is.

Each day from 6 in the morning until 10 in the morning it is closed to cars and open to boats on the hour.

That means

• 6AM
• 7AM
• 8AM
• 9AM
• 10AM

Then it is getting later in the day so for some foolish reason they schange the schedule to a quarter past the hour . So that means

• 11:15AM
• 12:15PM
• 1:15PM
• 2:15PM
• 3:15PM
• 4:15PM
• 5:15PM
• 6:15PM

But Wait! There is more!

So, this is co-ordinated at those times and the bridge remains open for somewhere between about 10 minutes to 15 minutes usually depending on the amount of boats that have to go through and how long they take to do it.

But then there are boats that want to cross the line of misery for the autos and truck drivers - the bridge after that time.

They can cross when they want to by calling the bridge keepers marine channel 13.

There are other reasons that the bridge could be affected by weather and other issues  but the law is on the side of the boats and they have priority over wheeled vehicles on the road.