Noon island cruise a deal for those stealing away

The paved walkway that rims the harbor behind the University of Massachusetts at Boston provides a peaceful counterpoint to the weekday din of construction and traffic on Morrissey Boulevard.

Midday Monday is the exception from June through September. Just before noon, students, faculty, and staff from the university descend on the Fox Point Dock, flash their campus ID card at the ticket kiosk, and board the Columbia Point for a free hour-and-a-half tour of Boston Harbor.

Locals and savvy tourists pay a mere $5 for the narrated tour of the harbor and its islands. Despite minimal publicity, the weekly public cruise, which runs on alternating Thursdays as well, usually fills its 110 spots.

Sachin Gupta, who has worked the ticket booth for the past three summers, no longer marvels at the popularity of the high-noon escape. "There are students and faculty who just want to get away from campus," said Gupta, 27, before doling out the 76th spot on the boat to a young woman sporting a book-crammed bag and dangling earbud. "It's nice to get away for a while."

From the upper deck of the boat, Captain Chris Sweeney watched his sole crew member help passengers step from dock to deck on a recent Monday. He pointed out the photocopied map available to all and explained the two routes between which he alternates from week to week. "Route A takes us through the Harbor Islands, and Route B goes downtown into the inner harbor and turns around at the [USS] Constitution." Asked how he chooses his route, Sweeney licked his index finger and held it in the breeze for a beat. He grinned, adjusted his sun-bleached cap, and said, "but seriously, it really depends on the tides."

Sweeney, 43, the university's director of marine operations, relished the role of raconteur as much as captain. As the Columbia Point glided by the recreational vehicles Scuttlebutt, Fish Tales, and Chuck Ts anchored in Savin Hill Cove, he announced Route A as the chosen course, detailed his boat's eco-friendly features, identified the three main estuaries feeding the harbor, and presented the harbor islands as a historical instance of NIMBY writ large.

"What you'll discover about the harbor islands in addition to their natural beauty is that they were places where we'd put things we didn't want ashore," said Sweeney, from the pilot's cabin, where he worked the ship's wheel with his right hand and intercom with his left. "For many years they were a place for dumps, firing ranges, hospitals for the mentally ill, leper colonies, brothels, homeless shelters, and gambling casinos."

Most of the passengers tuned in; some students tuned out, choosing MP3s, sun, and breeze over Sweeney's colorful history of the islands.

"An entrepreneurial fellow around the turn of the [20th] century opened up a horse-rendering factory on Spectacle Island," said Sweeney. He spoke of the ascent of the automobile in Boston and the "expendability" of horses.

"The horses were brought out here and boiled down into glue and other construction products, including some of that horsehair you might find in your old walls mixed with the plaster, or in mattresses."

Thus began the use of the island as a dump site for the city's refuse, said Sweeney. He then mentioned the trash that burned for years on end in the 1950s, its smoldering visible from the mainland. Sweeney fast-forwarded to the present and said today's seemingly pristine island park was built by the city in collaboration with companies that used the island as a dump site for the dirt and rock excavated during the Big Dig.

A passenger leaned into Sweeney's cabin and asked about the island's name. Sweeney announced his answer to all, saying that from the air the island and its two hills looked like a pair of spectacles.

Before the island receded, Sweeney lauded its collection of beach glass and the artificial reef recently sunk just off its shore.

"Not sure it will ever be up there with the coral reefs of the Caribbean," he deadpanned, "but someday we could have scuba diving expeditions off the coast of Spectacle Island."

The apocalyptic Moon Island rose on the horizon. The burnt-out concrete building on its shore serves as a practice site for novice firefighters, and a firing range on the other side of the island is used by the city's Police Department.

"Needless to say," said Sweeney, "Moon Island is not open to the general public."

More island and more tales followed, some eye-opening, some credulity-straining.

Missile silos on Long Island, rendered defunct by the end of the Cold War, said Sweeney, now are used to store countless outdated textbooks from the Boston public schools. And, he added, the FBI once used the island as a witness protection site for mobsters testifying against their own in Boston courts.

Gallops Island, too toxic for visitors today, sheltered 3,000 Union soldiers during the Civil War and operated radio and cooking schools during World War II. Its most enduring and prolific inhabitants, though, have been rabbits, who Sweeney suggested first arrived as a gift from Brits visiting tony Bostonians who summered on the island in the 19th century.

Before the familiar white-black austerity of the JFK Library came into view, there would be more island tales of quarantined TB patients, Native American internment camps, prisons, hospitals, homeless shelters, waste treatment milestones, buried treasure, and one hanged pirate.

After the tour, Sweeney admitted to a bit of embellishment but voiced a reluctance to stray too far from the islands' documented history.

"A lot of this stuff plays well with folks from Oklahoma," he said. "But you have to be aware that there might be a little old lady from Dorchester on the boat who knows way more about these islands than you."

Barbara Mesh, a Floridian visiting Boston for the first time, heard about the cruise from her son-in-law, a grad student at UMass. "It's entertaining, it's informative, it's fresh air and views, and it's a bargain," said Mesh, 59. "You're so lucky to have all of this in your own backyard."

Tomorrow's cruise leaves Fox Point at noon and features a guest lecture on sunken treasure by UMass professor Allen Gontz.