Pouch Cove – A little history

Pouch Cove Sign

Pouch Cove Town Hall

Pouch Cove is a outport (the Newfoundland name for ports built often illegally at the edge of the sea, when the British Government banned such settlements in law) It is one of the oldest of the Newfoundland outports.
It is claimed that it is the first town in North America to see the sun - which there are other locations further east than Pouch Cove (e.g. Cape Spear) they are not a town community.
Though the early stories of Pouch Cove (note it is pronounced pooch like the alternative name for dog, not pouch as in somewhere a kangaroo keeps its babies) are oral history with little written down, the tradition is that Pouch Cove’s name came from a Frenchman called Pouche who travelled in these parts, and over time has lost the final e.
The town was settled in 1611 which is less than 30 years after Sir Humphrey Gilbert took possession of the island for the British Crown in 1583. This was before the naming of this part of Newfoundland as Avalon by George Calvert (the First Lord of Baltimore), though Calvert didn’t stay for long but moved south to set up the colony of Maryland, the location of the city named for him. The oral history indicates that Pouch Cove was selected because it had a difficult harbour to use. Thus the unregistered sailors could use it without interference from the British navy or others patrolling the waters.
The town saw the arrival of both English and Irish settlers and thrived on fishing and farming. One of the towns inhabitants was one of the people who signed the terms of union with Canada in 1949.

The harbour remains challenging today.

More on the history can be found here