Looks at the role of the schooner in Maine's maritime history, and describes a journey in Maine's coastal wate
199 60
English Pages 209 [225] Year 1991
TIME
PETER H. SPECTRE PHOTOGRAPHS BY BENJAMIN MENDLOWITZ
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Our Schooner Along the Coast of Maine
Cruise of
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A Passage
in
Time
A Passage
in
Time
Along the Coast of Maine by Schooner
Peter H. Spectre
Photographs by Benjamin Mendlowitz
NORTON & COMPANY NEW YORK. LONDON
W. W.
Portions of this book, in significantly different form, have appeared
WoodenBoat Down
in
Le Chasse Maree, and Yankee magazines.
East.
,
Text copyright © 1991 by Peter H. Spectre Photographs co\ pright © 1991 by Benjamin Mendlowitz All rights reserved.
The
book
text of this
with the display
composed
is
Bauer Bodoni
in
Bodoni bold.
set in
Book design by Sherry Streeter Printed
in
Kongn
long o
I
First Edition
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Spectre, Peter
A passage II.
Spectre
:
p.
1
1.
time along the coast of Maine by schooner photographs by Benjamin Mendlowitz. cm. in
:
ISBN 0-393-02997-2 Maine
1.
Historv
—
Views.
1.
3.
Peter
§45.00 and travel Anecdotes. 2. Schooners Maine Description and travel 1931 :
description
— Anecdotes.
/
—
Mendlowitz, Benjamin.
—
II.
—
— Maine—
Title.
1991 F19.6.S64 387.2'24'09741 dc20
—
91
-
ISBN 0-393-02997-2 \\
Vt
.
V
\\
.
1
2
be
Company,
6e
Company
Norton Norton
3
4
5
6
7
8
Inc.,
500
Fifth Avenue,
Ltd., 10 Coptic Street,
9
0
New
York, N.Y.
London
WC1A
IPl
1
0459 CIP
4
Contents
Acknowledgments
I
II
vi
About the Photographer
vii
One Vast Neighborhood
2
A Smoky
Sou’wester
1
by the Mile and Sawed Off
32
Lengths
HI
""Built
IV
Many Cargoes
48
Hie Turn
66
V VI VII VIII
IX
X XI XII
in
of the Tide
84
Fog Mulls and Black Pigs
A Town by the Edge “Oh,
How
of the Sea
She Scoons!”
Souvenirs of Another Age Sailors
and Islands
Another Link
A Passage
in
Bibliography
in the
Time
102 118 136 1
Chain
54
1^2
190
208
To Deborah and Eileen
;
A cknowledgments
The author and photographer would like to thank
the following for their assistance:
Captain James Sharp of the schooner Adventure., Captains Douglas and Linda Lee of
Ken and
the schooner Heritage ; Captains
Ellen Barnes of the schooner Stephen Taber.
Captain John Foss of the schooner American Eagle and Captain Stephen Cobb of the ;
schooner Mar}'
Day Meg Maiden and
members
Maine Windjammer Association.
of the
;
Roberta Greany of Designwrights: and
all
the
Jonathan Wilson of WoodenBoat magazine; Joseph Gribbins of Nautical Quarterly Patience Wales of Sail magazine; Dale Kuhnert and Davis azine;
Thomas
of
Down
East mag-
John Pierce of Yankee magazine; and Bernard and Michele Cadoret of Le Chasse
Maree magazine. Our special thanks go Howland III of Howland
to those 6c
Co.;
who helped
in the
production of
this
book: Llewellyn
James Mairs and Cecil Lyon of W.W. Norton; Kathleen
Brandes of Wordsworth Editorial Services; Sherry Streeter of Streeter Design; and Claire
Cramer of Mendlowitz Photography. Our extra-special thanks go to those who encouraged us while we worked on this Deborah Brewster, Will and Eachan Holloway, and Samuel and lannah project: Mendlowitz; and Eileen, Maureen, Nathan, and Emily Spectre. 1
Benjamin Mendlowitz Brooklin, Maine Peter
1 1.
Spectre
Camden, Maine
About the Photographer
I
first
met Benjamin Mendlowitz in
magazine
an
to illustrate
article
I
(lie late
1970s,
had written about antique marine
recent previous experience with a photographer
magazine. That fellow,
hundred exposures to
to
produce about It
1
was as
if
I
five
pulled together a handful to
pile,
five
most
another
article for
respected in the trade, took several
publishable prints.
had written
My
engines.
had been on another
who was well known and w ell
me. and told him so.
through the
when he was assigned by IVoodenlioat
It
seemed
terribly wasteful
hundred sentences and then searched
make
a short paragraph,
and
threw*
away
the rest.
The photographer assured me raphv business. it
was
was
It
that his routine
was
typical in the professional photog-
easier to grind film through the
to wait for a long, long
time for the right
camera and hope
moment
for the best than
The law
to trip the shutter.
averages virtually guaranteed that out of five hundred shots, one percent of them
of
had to
be good.
So
it
was therefore a refreshing change of pace to work with Benjamin Mendlow itz, who
approached the antique-engine assignment w ith a far
beyond what
1
had come
to expect.
level of care
Yet he did
this
and appreciation that went
without losing the enthusiasm
necessary to produce first-rate results. Mendlowitz was, above
each situation carefully, looking for the right
light,
all.
I
le
studied
the right angle, the right feeling that
would evoke the essence of the machinery being photographed machinery, old engines with brass carburetors and polished
enameled cylinder heads. He
unhurried.
—for that
steel
may not have exposed much film that
is
w hat
it
was,
connecting rods and day, but the shots he
took revealed those engines in splendid fashion: not only w hat they w ere, but also what they were about. In the late
In
photography, you can't ask for
1970s, Benjamin Mendlowitz was just getting started
He had grown up
phy.
much more than
in
New York
in
that.
marine photogra-
City, then attended Brandeis University in Boston,
w here he studied physics primarily and film secondarilv. He traveled while,
and afterward came back
company
produced
that
to
film strips
in
Europe
for a
Massachusetts, where he obtained a job with a small
and training
films for doctors
and
hospitals. Several
years later, he went out on his own. taking assignments where he could get them. In his travels he
few years
W
met Jonathan Wilson, who had founded WoodenBoat magazine
in
Maine a
earlier.
ilson recognized in
Mendlow itz a photographer who may have been in
of developing his talent but
built boats.
to reveal the singular
beauty of
Mendlow itz spent many summers on the New Jersey shore, w here hang around the boatyards and came to appreciate classically designed and
wooden boats. he loved to
w ho was nevertheless able
the early stages
\> a bov.
As a freelance photographer, he had taken photographs of some of the
International One-Design sailing class,
photography he could do
Which
at the time, his
if
he actually studied the
Maynard Bray photographing
endangered
much
specializing in marine
field!
With
to do.
encouragement of Wilson and
the
seemed
classic boats, the traditional watercraft that at the time
many
not an employee.
his associate
WoodenBoat magazine, Mendlowitz spent more and more time
of
work was featured extensively
species. His
so that
was not
lie
work rivaled that of photographers who were. Think of what
what he went on
is
and even though
in
to he
an
the pages of WoodenBoat —
so
readers thought he was the staff photographer, even though he was
As time passed, Mendlowitz saw
his
photographs published
in other
Sad and Nautical Quarterly. The latter w as noted for the excellence of its reproduction, which made good photographs look great and great ones, like Mendlow itz s, look extraordinary. And then, in l c)83. he published the ('(deonautical magazines as well, such as
dar of Wooden that
is
Boats., the first of
an annual edition of his best photographs
now' as classic as the boats
it
—a publication
features.
Marine photography has a long tradition, as long as the history of photography
Each era has produced
Cowes and
stars
—among them the successive generations of Bekens of
the Gibsons of the Scilly Isles;
of New' York;
been
its
W.B. Jackson of Massachusetts; Edw in Levick
and the Rosenfelds, father and son.
different,
boats. Not just
but
also of New' York. Their styles
these photographers shared a
all
by being able
itself.
to tell
common
The) understood
trait:
one boat type from another
may have
—a sloop from a cutter
or a schooner from a ketch. Bather, they understood the lines of boats, the shapes of boats, the
way boats moved
from study,
in a
seaway. Whether
do not know. But
I
I
this
understanding was intuitive or acquired
do know that such an appreciation allowed them
elevate their work from taking pictures of boats to creating images of boats as fine All of those
photographers
in
a general sense confined their
work
to
w hat
to
art. tliev
considered to be beautiful boats, and Benjamin Mendlowitz carries on in that tradition.
Not only the
is
Mendlowitz
—he
mood
also
is
selective in the shots
selective
to be the old classics or
Benjamin Mendlowitz
craft influenced
more than
and
all
of
tin*
lighting,
t
rest of
It
is
focus, the angle,
lie I
lis
subjects tend
by traditional design. A photograph b\
the result of a click of the camera.
pretty picture, attractively presented. color fidelity
— the
about the boats he chooses to photograph.
modern
is
he takes
more than depth
of field
It
is
more than
and sharp focus and
photography’s mechanics and techniques.
stated, the result of the photographer’s ability to
convey
to the
a
It
is.
simplv
viewer that he not onlv has
seen the boat through the lens of his camera, but also has understood what he has seen.
— Peter
1
1.
Spectre
/
A Passage
in
Time
,
One
I
Vast
Neighborhood
The era of [commercial] sail has gone, giving place to science and the quickened pulse of the present hut to many who saw and knew them ,
and
the passing of these old vessels
them
the resourceful
men who
sailed
tinged with sadness. In another decade or so, there will he no
is
memory
to
bring hack the cough of the donkey engine, the rattle of -
anchor chain, and the thundering of wind-filled canvas; none
remember
the leaning spars
and
to
the bellying topsails against the
blue sky or the looming of ghostly hulls through the fog. -
—John
Fog bisected
Coasters,
1970
in a
At the other, facing the bay, the air was thick with moisture.
cloudless, deep-blue sky.
of water ran
Wake of the
At one end, facing the mainland, the sun shone brightly
the island.
Standing by one tree
F. Leavitt,
dense spruce
in the
forest,
1
could barely see the next. Fine droplets
down the spruce needles, coalesced, and fell
to the
ground. Scarcely a breeze
stirred the branches. I
had rowed across the harbor, stepping ashore on the sunny
pulling
side of the
my skiff high up the shingled shore for protection against the rising tide.
painter to an ancient iron stake that years ago
had been driven
island,
little I
tied the
into the rock
by an
unknown soulmate, climbed the bank, and crossed the island on a wide path that had been cut through the woods by the crew of coastguardsmen who once manned the lighthouse out on the point.
This path and the lighthouse
monuments. A white
in the sun, filled with
The
were their
— Persons Are Warned Not Injure epitaph. One second was Coast Guard— was
sign with dark blue lettering
or Disturb any Property of the LJ.S.
invisible in the fog,
itself,
to
All
their
hope; the next
I
was
keeper’s house was empty, the
in
1
the gloom of the fog.
windows boarded up with
sheets of cardboard
painted gray. The steps that led to the kitchen door, rotting unevenly, had pulled awa\
from the building and were slowly moldering into the ground. Fvery minute or so the big foghorn, mounted on a granite plinth, groaned through the fog. It was an automaton:
nobody was
at
the switch.
and fog-sensing
I
was alone on
flies, '
and
transistors
devices.
“The sounds came
Compared to the bustle of the town at
Penobscot Bay
which
is
lies
midway along (he coast of Maine. Though people to the westward
to sav, residents of
Boston and the
coast as the mythical land of
and therefore “down
east.
New England
—regard
all
of the
All those
All places east of the
west of
bay are “to the
are “to the west ard.
it
— “one vast neighborhood, the center of things, the heart of the coast of Maine
is
Leavitt wrote in a
memory
accessible
as
is
Cape Cod Bay.
it
but a few
Wake of
significant in size as
—Casco, Muscongus, Blue
— look puny by comparison.
sail in
from Fort Point
to
John
Maine.
Hill,
Twenty
and Narragansett and makes
and even Passamaquoddy,
miles wide at the mouth,
Whitehead, and twenty-eight miles long (twenty-four miles longer stretch
” as
New England bays go. Though not nearly as large
nevertheless larger than Buzzards
is
The bay
the Coasters , the most entertainingly
of the last years of cargo -carrying commercial
Penobscot Bay
Maine competitors
of nostalgia in
fit
Maine
Mainers define the western edge of that
East,
edge of Penobscot Bay.
territory as the eastern east aid
“Down
rest of
if
Isle
to
its
name
au Haut
to
you include the
Bangor, the navigable part of the Penobscot River, which
drains into the northern neck of the bay),
it is
magnificent by anyone’s standards.
—the low land—from Route
the land, however
1,
From
which runs along most of the bay’s
western shore, and from the back roads of the eastern
side,
it
doesn’t look that large.
Too
many headlands and islands obstruct the view. To appreciate the size and sweep of Penobscot Bay from the land, you have to climb one of the many mountains along its edges, just as the young poet Edna St. Vincent Millay did years ago on the western shore:
where
All I could see from
Was I
three long mountains
and a wood
turned and looked the other way.
And saw So with
Of the
three islands in a bay.
my eyes
Back s
traced the line
/
horizon thin ,
Straight around
It
I stood
to
till
and fine. I was come
where I'd started from
best to study the layout of Penobscot
breeze
is
Bay on one of those
the Atlantic.
I
here w
smoke, but not so
ill
be no distortions
oozing
late as to
he dominant colors
green of the islands,
and oranges of
Mount 6
light
in the
warm-weather moisture out
into
atmosphere, no haziness on the horizon
up the edges of the islands or obscure the peak of Cadillac on Mount Desert, no fog
sitting like a glob of
I
days when a
blowing diagonally across the bay from the northwest, down out of Canada and
across the western mountains, pushing the last drop of
to fuzz
late fall
tin*
over the Fox Islands.
It
will
be too early for winter sea
bring cold that might keep you from lingering over the view.
be the ice blue of the sky, the deep purple of the bay, the dark
grays and tans of the rocky shore, and the flaming reds and yellows
hardwood forests climbing the sides of tin' hills and mountains. Mount Megunticook. or Bald Rock on the western shore. Waldo, halfway
the
Battie.
will
muck
A PASSAGE IX TIME
up the
down
toward Bangor. Caterpillar, on the eastern
river to
tlie*
southeast, a wild
Maine s mid-coast: Islesboro.
principal Castine.
au
side. or l-le
laut
1
ligh 1-land
I
and beautiful place around which -pread- the panorama of
Monhegan and Matinicus, \ inalhav en and North la\ en, Deer, and Metinic, and. farther down east. Mount Desert and Swan-: the towns of Rockland and Camden, Rockport. Belfa-t. Sear-port. Buck-port. the islands of
1
and Stonington: the Ea-t Bay and the
\\ e-t
from the northeast point of the compass around
Bav. and. along an arc that extend-
to the southwest, the wild vet
beckoning
Gulf of Maine and the Atlantic Ocean. But. as
of a
any
w
sailor
tell
ill
you. the best
way to get
mountain but from the deck of a boat or a
from the Atlantic, making your
a feel for the hay
ship.
landfall the lighthouse
first
i-
not from the peak
Meet the ba\ front seaward. Sail
southwestward from the Bav of Fundv. turning the corner
at
on Matinicus Rock.
Monhegan and Matinicus, through
Channel, into
vou come in on a cruising boat, you
stretch of the coast this side of the
commercial sensitivity,
vessel
vou
— a tanker, a
wind and the weather,
freighter, a fishing boat
If
the maritime heyday of
Maine
—the
Penobscot Bav
a
many
at
called Penobscot
Bav
their
in
in
am
Sear-port
Down Easter-, and
home.
craft,
rivers
and creeks that fed
into
it
sailing
naval vessel-, deepwater
one time that the waters w ere w hite with
huge highw ay of sail, with the
a
decade-
—once was crow ded with
passenger packets, fishing
on
historical
entire coast of Maine, for that matter
vessels. Coastal cargo carriers,
traders, so
infinite.
in the la-t
hundred
alone, when thev weren’t roaming the ocean- of the world in clippers.
and lumber schooners,
wo Bush
yon come
—and you have some
of the last centurv. hundreds of shipmasters, including almost a
bis coal
I
think you have discovered the last unspoiled
Canadian maritime provinces.
know why. during
will
will
downwind
to port, the -pruce-covered island- to
starboard, the choices for a snug anchorage out of the If
-ail
more open
the Muscle Ridge or the
Penobscot Bay. the mainland
\\ est
Sail
Roaring Bull Ledge off Lie
au Haut. Cruise down from Boston on an end-of-summer southwesterly: inside
in
sail-.
I
he hay w as
the secondary roads.
like
One
tow n w as connected to the next, one area of the ba\ to another, by a watery thoroughfare that
was
as familiar to the sailors
today’s travelers.
To grasp
who manned
the vessel- a- the Maine Turnpike
it
on the bay and
to
map of today’s over-
the complexity of the system, imagine a
land roads around Penobscot Bay and overlay
i-
it-
tributaries.
at the Penobscot was everywhere. To gra-p the quantity, consider that never mind sail, there w ere River port of Bangor which today rarely set's motor vesselin
Sail
—
—
more than 3.000 months.
incoming
On
lBbO
much longer than -i\ sailing ves-els made the port on an
arrivals during a navigation season that lasted not
the fourteenth of July in that year, sixty
tide in the
space of tw o hours. Every one of those ve-sels passed through Pen-
obscot Bay.
Consider the keeper of the lighthouse at
end of the approaches
to
Ow ls
I
lead, a high
headland that mark- the
West Penobscot Bay and the lower corner of the out-ide channel OV.
I
1-7
HOHI UX)I)
\ VJ( ,7 1
8
t
PASSAGE IX TIME
Ow
l*.
I
lead, (he
southern eorner of
Rockland Harbor on the western shore of
Penobscot Bay. The
Camden
Hills are
on
the horizon to the north. the
The keeper of
Ow Is
I
lead
I
.ight
counted 16.000 schooners passing
thi-
point in the year INTO,
w
liich
would average
out to almost
t\%
o
schooners an hour, day and night.
Pumpkin of
Island,
hundreds of
one
to
Rockland Harbor. In 1876, the keeper counted more than 16,000 schooners from
little
lookout,
.lust
other rigs
— sloops,
islands in the Penobscot
Bay region. Once
maintained by the
significant
Coast Cuard as an aid to navigation, the lighthouse, situated just inside l.ggemog-
gin Reach,
is
now
a private residence.
I
That figure does not include steamers or
brigs, brigantines, barques, etc.
is
sailing vessels with
— which no doubt also represented a
amount.
he keeper
unrealistic
schooners.
It
s
1876 count
from today
s
an hour, night and day.
is
an oft-quoted
perspective. After fair
weather and
all,
foul,
statistic,
though
may seem
it
a trifle
16,000 amounts to almost two schooners
summer and
winter.
Throw
in
the other
types of ships and boats and vou must be talking about a vessel passing the light about
every ten or fifteen minutes, which
10
A PASSAGE l\ TIME
is
possible but not likely.
What
is
more
likely
is
that
the lighthouse keeper stepped outside once an hour
and counted
same
—becalmed,
from the previous hour were
vessels
would be counted again But that
as
if it
still
were a different
not the point. There were so
s
latter part of the nineteenth
century that
be safe, halve the lightkeeper
4.000 schooners
in
s
there
it
the vessels in view.
If
the
— then each
example
for
vessel.
many was
sailing vessels
difficult to get
number. What the
hell,
—almost a dozen every day,
one year
halve all
on Penobscot Bay
in the
an accurate count. So to it
again.
That would be
year round! Never
mind
the
sailing vessels of other rigs.
By comparison, the Penobscot Bay of our time
is
Head Light
to inflate the figure
if
you wish
of commercial sailing vessels
sailing vessels
— and the number
day a century ago. But, contrary
money
you could climb the steps to Owls
or walk to the end of the Rockland breakwater or stand on the shore of the
Fox Islands Thorofare and count the
real
Even during
a very quiet place indeed.
the height of summer in the most ideal sailing conditions,
to the
—coasters that pay
— not a
lot,
their
but enough
to
will look
views of
on the coast of Maine, you
sail
—include the modern pleasure
way and
puny in comparison to the same
many who
will find in
craft
claim to have seen the death
your number several commercial
that of their owners
and crews by earning
keep alive a tradition that otherwise would be found
only in the pages of books and the halls of museums.
In the north
end of Rockland, the
largest
town on Penobscot Bay and
a major fishing port, there’s a grocery store called Jordan’s Market.
It's
until recent years
an unpretentious
establishment occupying the Crockett Block, a onetime fine old building that
rehabbed
what
I
in the early
mean.
to a style
thought to be tacky
a schizophrenic store, a cross
It’s
7-Eleven with a
1980s
fish
1950s
in the
—
if
was
you know
between a Depression-era catchall and a
market grafted onto the back. They carry the Portland and Boston
papers, beer by the bottle, a mixed bag of canned goods, slack-salted cod, haddock and the occasional halibut, and. in season,
smoked
bloaters.
There’s nothing remarkable
about the place except for a bronze plaque screwed to the outside wall next to the side door.
The
inscription reads: "
Fast Clipper Ship "Red Jacket Still
Holds
For Sailing
It
in
Sandy Hook In January,
orld
Speed Record
Voyage from
to
Liverpool
1854 13 Days, One Hour ,
Launched at George Thomas's Ship Rear of Crockett Block November 2, 1853 at 11 A.M. Yard
in
Asa Eldridge, Master
O.XE
I
I
ST Xt'JGUBOtUtOOD
1
1
;
.
It s
difficult to imagine.
Right here on this spot, right here where you can buy a 24-
inch Slim Jim, a six-pack of Budweiser. and (he latest edition of the National Enquirer
.
right next to a
shop where they
Canadian border any highway
lawn mowers; right on the curb of Route
fix
to the tip of Florida,
in the country,
shipwrights built the clipper
more used-car
perhaps the world
Red Jacket
lots
and fast-food restaurants than
—George
for a time the
—the
1
Thomas and
most famous ship
his
erew of
in the
Western
r
world, 251 feet long, 44 feet beam, 2,306 tons.
November 2, 1853. It was quite a morning. Thousands were on hand for the launching, more people than present-day Rockland sees for its annual Lobster Festival. There were celebrants from as far away as New York and Philadelphia this in a time when
—
would have taken an event of incredible importance
down
the
Maine coast so
select
for people to brave traveling
halfway
band playing and
There were speeches and
late in the year.
ceremonies and tours of the ship.
it
The after cabin was a stunning affair finished out with
rosewood, mahogany, zebrawood, black walnut, and satinwood and decorated
with gilded accents. The figurehead, surrounded with
—
himself
Sagoyewatha, chief of the Senecas, wearing
scrollwork,
gilt
his
trademark
was “Red Jacket
scarlet tunic given
by the British as a gesture of friendship.
The Red Jacket was by no means w as not
the only ship built in Rockland,
the only master builder to ply his trade there.
hundreds of ships and thousands of boats w ere that at various times
From
and George Thomas
the town’s founding in 1767,
built in scores of shipyards
—especially during the mid-
and boatshops
to late nineteenth century
waterfront from just above Jordan’s Market in the north end to
Head
—
lined the
Bay
of the
in the
south.
But that was then and
Rockland
is
this is
now. The
a restaurant- and-bar by that
the vessel in the Farnsworth
Museum
name down by
just off
passenger schooners berthed at the North
Main
used hubcaps
when compared
to the
in the
the
Street.
End Shipyard
between Jordan’s Market and the shop next door largest dealer in
Red Jacket Sears store and
closest thing to the
Oh,
wharf,
yes,
down
— the one that claims
Mate of Maine. These schooners
Red Jacket and
tiny in
comparison
and
to
in
a
a
the
today
s
model of
bunch little
of
road
be the second-
may be a
tad rustic
to the big four-, five-,
and
six-masted coal and lumber schooners of the turn of the century, but they nevertheless are a link in an
unbroken chain
coast of Maine.
12
1
PASSAGE
/A
TIME
that stretches
back
to the earliest sailing vessels
on the
"Oh. yes. and a hunch of
passenger schooners berthed at
the North l.nd Shipyard
wharf,
down
the
little
road
between .Iordan's Market
and the shop next door."
,
A Smoky
II
He was jovial,
kind hearted and a
is,
mister.
of a philosopher, hi one phrase he When l asked him if he liked the life afloat
,
summarized the he replied
Sou’wester
call of the sea.
“/Vo, I
hate
Yon give
Bat
it.
me
bit
/ can't keep
the choice of
away from
my wife
/ tell
it.
or the vessel,
—Frederick Sturgis Laurence on Captain of
tlxe
\X
it
take the vessel. illiam R. Kreger
four-masted schooner Sarah C. Ropes
We cast off about eleven o’clock Monday morning, the End Shipyard
I
yon what
last
passenger schooner to clear
The skipper had spent half the morning at the bank, arguing with the officers about a loan to carry him through the coming winter, when he planned to join another schoonerman in rebuilding an old vessel. “They re all jugheads, he muttered to himself as he dragged his charts out of their cases and spread them flat on the North
wharf.
the roof of the after cabinhouse, just forward of the wheel.
with
little
He weighted down the corners
leather pouches filled with lead shot, like beanbags.
The passengers, most
of
whom
had arrived the previous afternoon and evening,
amused themselves during the seemingly interminable wait by helping the mate and odd pieces of frayed rope used to pad the rigging so it galley hand make baggywrinkle won't wear holes in the pestering the cook. as they got
We
were
1
sails
— —or hanging around
drinking coffee and
in the galley,
spent the time exploring the schooner and studying
tin 4
other vessels
underway.
group of working schooners alongside any single
in the center of the largest
wharf on the coast of Maine, nestled together and rising and falling like a flock of ducks in the gentle swell of Rockland Harbor. The,/. & E. Biggin, a former oyster dredger built in
1927; the Isacw H. Evans, another oyster boat. 1886: the Lewis
schooner and freight
B.
French, a fishing
1871; the American Eagle, a fishing schooner. 1930; and the
carrier.
Heritage, a coasting schooner launched
Stephen Taber, a brick schooner, 1871
in
.
1
983. Over by the state ferry terminal was the
There
and the three-masted schooner Domino
may not have been as many working sailing vessels
had been when the lime industry was hauling
in
cordwooc
1
to lire
t
Ik*
kilns
in full
and
\nlhnniel Itowdilch,
a former yacht and fishing dragger. sets out
Three other passenger schooners were across the
harbor by the town landing: the Nathaniel Boir ditch, a former yacht and fishing dragger built in 1922, the Summertime, a double-ended pinky schooner launched especially for the passenger trade in 1986.
The
swing,
in
coast
week along
lie
to
(lie
— “the destination
nowhere I
Effect.
Rockland larbor as there
in particular.
goal an opportunity
escape whatever must
1
when wood-boats b\
a vast fleet ol schooners
for a
was I
the hundreds w ere
carry
mg aw ay casks
SMOK) SOI WESTER
•“>
1
he escaped and
live a
nineteenth-century
life in
the twentieth century."
of lime for Boston
and New York, but today, when a salty craft
of polyester resin
and
A
setting sail at once are nothing to sneeze at.
was taking place up the bay
similar scene
thought to be a boat built
glass strands shoveled into a mold, nine vessels authentically fitted
and
out in the old style
is
in
Camden, where four wooden schooners
(Mary Day, 1962; Roseway, 1925; Mercantile, 1916; Grace Bailey 1882; Mistress, 1960) and a steel ketch Angelique 1980) were getting underway, and in Rockport, where the ,
,
(
schooner Timberwind 1931, had slipped her
pilot
,
Our schooner wasn’t
the largest of the fleet (the
but she was one of the prettiest. feet
lines
She was 72
wide, and could carry 3,500 square
and was beating out of the harbor.
Domino
Effect held that distinction),
feet long, not including the bowsprit,
feet of
canvas on her two-masted
rig.
and 21
She had
white topsides accented with a dark-gray sheerstrake (the topmost plank on the hull),
white cabinhouse sides, buff on oiled decks
and
spars, a black iron steering wheel,
on the
a bronze star
and bottom, on
the horizontal surfaces such as the roofs of the houses,
all
the
flat
and a white bowsprit enlivened with
of the end. Other decorations included
two water casks on either
side of the
maroon
stars incised, top
mainmast, a carved nameboard
on the stern featuring an encircling rope, gilded, and trailboards that followed the sweep
bow up to the stem and were embellished with relief carvings of ivy,
of the
a pair of red roses.
Underway, she carried a
also gilded,
long, forest-green streamer at the
and
head of the
maintopmast.
A II.
coastal packet built near the
end of the
carried general cargo along the
of loads
now hauled
war she was
laid up, and, like so
fleet,
week-long tion
many
in particular, the goal
once been the hold
"staterooms. people.
an opportunity
live a
f
lip
after cabin
and
out of Rockland on
September, the destina-
paying passengers to escape
life in
put this delicately?
I
sails
the twentieth century.
—a
little tight.
the forecastle,
What had
between the two
partitioned into what the advertising brochure euphemistically termed
There were
six of these
Very friendly people.
a coin to determine
If
who
doubles and quadruples, with bunks for eighteen
you should ever find yourself with an enemy on a (a)
you
will sleep
will, of necessity,
up on deck
were two “staterooms” off the after cabin; the to the crew's
now
to late
for her
nineteenth-century
—how can — the area between the
windjammer, you can be sure that will
At the beginning of the
Rather, like most of the schooners in the Maine wind-
The accommodations were
—was
coal, salt, case goods, the type
of the coasting schooners that joined her, never
Monday through Saturday, mid-June
whatever must be escaped and
masts
—lumber,
she was converted to passenger-carrying and
cruises,
nowhere
Maine coast
War
century, our schooner, until World
over highways by tractor-trailer trucks.
returned to her original trade.
jammer
last
rest of the
become
friends, or (b)
in the lee of the longboat.
you
There
below-decks space was given over
accommodations (even more spartan than those of the passengers,
that
if
could be possible) and the galley. The bunks were narrow and the headroom was nonexistent
if
you were more than
six feet tall; the
turning-around space was
just
about
right
fora contortionist. Each passenger got two sheets and a pillowcase, two woolen blankets,
and
1
6
a bath towel.
A
PASSAGE IX TIME
Narrow bunks, adventurous headroom, the coziness of a cabin on a sailing vessel.
Schooner accommodations vary from spartan, with
wash basins issued each person,
to
to relatively
comfortable, with running
water
—perhaps hot.
perhaps
not.
—
There was running fresh water
in the galley for the
convenience of the dishwasher
who plied her trade in a corner between the wood-burning stove and boxes of provisions Each passenger was issued
but nowhere else on the vessel.
W
ater
and
a tin cup
a tin washbasin.
was obtained from the casks on deck, with long-handled dippers. Brushing one’s
was an adventure:
teeth before bed
totallv unavailable,
likewise, shaving in the
but getting a jar
full
of
gallev stove with the cook, the dishwasher, first priority.
The toilets
— “heads’
it
sense; instead, they were operated with a
meant competing
and the
in nautical
morning.
for space
coffee addicts,
parlance
water was not
lot
I
of
all
— didn’t flush
on top of the
whom
claimed
in the conventional
hand pump.
There were no television, no radio other than the skipper’s (which he guarded as closely as his navigational tools),
The Hoseu'ny
On
larger than 15 watts.
and a
collection of sheet
no wall-to-wall carpeting, no telephone, and no
the other hand, for entertainment there
music
in the after
— and
with ornate brass kerosene lanterns the skij >per. Dutton
cabin
—which,
was a
tiny
like the galley,
a small shelf with several
light
bulbs
pump
organ
was illuminated
books belonging
Navigation and Piloting., the American Practical Navigator
's
,
to
Sail-
ing Dens on the Penobscot Islands of the Mid-Maine Coast The History of American ,
,
Sailing Ships, that type of thing. For additional entertainment, there was on deck, built into a corner of the forward deckhouse, a
refrigerator
box w
minuscule shower
stall
about the
size of a
a single valve that released a spray of cold salt water with less
ith
pressure than a drinking-water fountain. In short,
our schooner was much the same as any other sailing vessel of fifty to a hundred
years ago. and the experience provided the passengers was ditto.
Well, almost but not
quite.
days of commercial
In the*
"The crew's
politely.
Sarah
C.
schooner accommodations were a tad
sail,
quarters,’
ripe, to
put
it
w rote Frederick Sturgis Laurence about the four-master
Ropes “...was a black greasy looking apartment with wooden bunks and a ,
stench that would knock you Hat.
I
wondered how' many human beings could be content
There were no show ers, no running water of any
to sleep there....
sort
on most coasting
member of the crew' w as responsible for his own bedding. He had to own blankets, towels, and sheets, but also his own mattress. The latter, ticking and straw', w as known as a “donkey’s breakfast. Each man hand-made
schooners, and each
bring not only his
made of his own or bought one
for a few Cents
from a
ship’s chandler.
When
the
bedbugs became
was thrown overboard and replaced with a new one. Nor were there any heads. On the small coasters there was, instead, a wooden bucket
too overwhelming, the mattress
The user drew water from over the side, set the bucket down in a quiet read bis mail or studied the Sears catalog, and then emptied the bucket
with a rope lanyard.
corner of the deck,
7
over the side. I
he arrangement w as more luxurious aboard the large schooners. According to Francis
("Bill
)
Bowker
in lllue
Water Coaster, a memoir of the author’s service before the mast
during the dying days of
18
A PASSAGE
l\
TIME
sail
on the east coast:
There was a seat attached to the bow on
planking for drainage. also an oil
was used
drum with
A
of old
[tile
the head
beam on
up the pipe. Under such conditions equipment. The
down with
lead pipe ran
a stick.
first
it
hand and the bucket of water
the
out. This
was kept
full
the port side.
It
was not
of salt water, all
so
right
w
ith
and
can
a paint
whid on
the
good when the
tin*
was
vessel
wind and water tended to blow right back amount of skill was necessary for safe operation wad up a ball of paper, stuff it into the pipe, and push sea. for the
a certain
was
act
When
down through
newspapers and magazines served for paper. There was
knocked
hard on the port tack and driving into a
it
A
port side.
lie
out water for flushing. This arrangement was
to dip
starboard side or aft of the
of this
t
to
came time
do the flushing, one would take the
to
Then, waiting
in (be other.
stick in
one
bow
into
until the vessel drove her
a sea, the stick w as jabbed down, the flushing w ater was thrown in at the same instant, and
way as the bows rose and a blast of wand blew back whatever
the operator dove back out of the
had not found
its
w av
into the sea.
The day was sunny and cool, gradually warming as the morning progressed. There w ere thin clouds in the west and haze building out in the hay, and the weatherman was talking about a front on Wednesday afternoon or night that might or might not be the leading edge of a tropical storm that conic! very well he
“We damn
well better be holed
up
upgraded
in a tight
to a hurricane.
harbor come Wednesday night,
the
skipper said, slapping the rim of the steering wheel.
Our schooner, like most other windjammers, didn’t have an auxiliary engine. There was, in fact, no pow er on the vessel other than a bank of batteries and an emergency generator for the lights and the radio, and a small, old-fashioned, one-lung “make-andbreak
engine for hoisting the anchor.
yawlboat, a heavily built craft
Pronounced “yawl-b’ot
fitted
On
the
with a big truck engine modified for marine use.
by the down-easters,
type were ship's boats, ship’s yaw
som when
So we w ere towed aw ay from the wharf by the
ls,
utility
it
was
so
named because
boats that were hung
in
the
first
davits over the tran-
Maine
coast, the
first
internal-combustion engines for auxiliary power were
yawlboats rather than the schooners themselves, because the owners, always
thinking of returnon investment, resented taking up valuable cargo space with "a
ities
its
not in use.
fitted in the
hunk
of
of iron.”
Over
years, the
tin*
of the coasting schooner.
It
powered yaw became one of the identifying peculiarl
remains
and partly out of a sense of tradition,
Once we were
in
use to this day. partly because
a condition
well out into the harbor, the
and brought her around against the schooner’s
it
does save space
w hose power cannot be underestimated.
mate
in
to tin* stern of the schooner,
flat stern.
the yawlboat dropped the towline
nosing the padded stem of the boat
Lines were rigged from the
bow
of the yawlboat up
around the after quarters of the schooner. With the yawl thus held and pushing at speed, the mate
left
goddam
a steath
her unattended and climbed up to the schooner to help raise the
The yawlboats engine became the schooner’s auxiliary [tower:
sails.
the skipper controlled both
vessels with the steering wheel.
I
SMOKY
SOI 'WESTER
1
()
.
Like their cargo-carrying predecessors proverbial "man, boy, and a dog to
help with the heavy work
on the passengers
to help
— many of which went
and a make-and-break
hoisting, or “donkey,’ engine
— the windjammers are undermanned
handle the
Our schooner was no
sails.
with only the
to sea
for their size, reiving
No one was
exception.
coerced into hauling on the halyards and the sheets, but one look at the huge size of the
and the diminutive
sails
size of the
crew
—skipper, mate, cook, and galley hand—and
everybody on board, lubber or not, knew there would be no sailing without a
now and
little
sweat
The mainsail alone was 1,500 square feet and weighed 500 pounds! So with shouted encouragement from the mate “Hey, yah, heave!..., Hey, yah, heave! ...Now... drop it! and bellows of laughter at our clumsiness from the skipper, and a few cases of rope burn, we raised the sails, working from aft, forward. First the main, again.
—
—
then the fore, then the forestaysail, then the Just off the tip of the
and pulling
in a
off the engine. air in
jib.
Rockland breakwater, by the lighthouse, w
southwesterly breeze, the mate jumped
The
down
We w alked around
silence w-as shocking.
yawlboat and shut smelling the
in a daze,
blowing through the pine tar of the rigging and watching a pair of harbor
a field of Lobster-trap buoys to the east of the breakwater.
boat up into the stern davits with tackles, fo Iks,
we
re
bound
“Wherever,
for
.
stern,
seals at play
The crew hauled
and the mate
Perhaps Stonington, he figured.
the skipper added.
The point w as
r
salt
the yawl-
yelled, “That’s
it,
.
Haven, or Vinalhaven, care.
bow and
trimmed
ith all sails
into the
Isle
Or maybe North
au Haut, Monhegan. He didn’t know and nobody seemed
to take a cruise in the
w ake of the
coasters,
w here the wind took
to
us,
not according to schedule.
Swans Island?
“Maybe,’ the skipper
“All I’m thinking about right
said.
now
is
Wednesday night and a tight little hole protected from a gale in any direction. “And good holding bottom for the anchor, the mate said. “For two anchors if we have to,’ the skipper added. The mate w as a caricature of a sailor. He w as in his late tw enties or early thirties and wore his long, curly, blond hair in a ponytail. Sometimes when he was painting or working down in the lazarette a small compartment where he stowed his maintenance gear he w rapped his head in a red bandanna. le had wire-rim glasses held together in places with tape, forearms like Popeye s, multi-patched dungarees, big calluses on his hands, and a
—
—
1
rigger’s knife
w ith
a blade so sharp
had worked on schooners
it
could
slice
since he graduated
a tomato to one-sixteenth of an inch.
1
le
from high school, and he w as as competent
with a carpenter’s saw and a caulking mallet as he was with a marlinspike. 7
He and
the
skipper had been together so long they finished each other’s sentences. 1
he skipper, a native Mainer, w as one of those
been thirty-five or of
medium height,
men of indeterminate age.
forty-five: for that matter, he
could have been forty or
stocky, with black hair, a salt-and-pepper beard,
wore the same clothes
all
I
and a
le
could have
fifty.
He was
lively face.
I
le
the time: dungarees, dark-blue suspenders with white stripes,
red long johns peeking out from under a flannel shirt, sneakers, and, w hen the air turned
20
A PASSAGE
l\
TIME
—
maroon zip-up sweatshirt with black lettering on the back that said "Head le smoked cigars and pronounced schooner as "skunuah and slept in Schoonerman. his clothes, to the wonder of the. passengers. He kept up a constant stream of chatter: he woke up in the morning talking and went to bed at night talking and ohv iond\ relished cool, a
Sweating up the yaw lboat on the schooner
1
his role.
He was
storyteller,
part sailor, part actor, part coastal character, part boatbuilder. part
and part
of the flame.
1
le
embodiment
living
of the archetypal coasterman of the past, keeper
knew or had heard of everyone in
ship designers, builders, sailors, hangers-on
tin'
/..
/ 1 if!" in .
The
starboard-side gang
has
(lie
bow up and
i>
working on the
stern.
die
schooner with boundless
protects the stern of the
schooner when she
Gilkev
I
larbor
last
week,
he said, "and
(be
crowd on the port side
stem of the yaw Ihoat his
passion.
"We were out in
it-
The padding on
business, wherever they might be
— and he loved
./.
in
the e\ ening
i
I
rowed ashore
sMOki soi
ii/:sri:it
2
1
being pushed.
is
to see a friend of mine.
Camden
I
looked back at the schooner silhouetted in the sunset behind the
I
and couldn’t
fills
believe
how
beautiful she looked.
1
couldn
t
believe she
was
mine.
We were struck with the full force of the rising southwesterly breeze when we passed Owls Head
The wind was
Light.
fighting the ebbing tide,
and the
resulting steep
capped with white foam. Rather than turn down the bay and pound coastermen used
lump
to call “a
of a head-beat sea,
into
waves were
what the old
the skipper steered the vessel
diagonally across the bay to skirt the White Islands and Hurricane Island, off Vinalhaven’s
southwestern shore. The rigging on the windward
on the
sails,
side, taut
from the pressure of the wind
The schooner pitched now and
started to thrum.
again, throwing spray from
We picked up speed and charged like a thoroughbred for the first sea mark, the
her bow.
Some of the passengers, those with a natural affinity for sailing, skylarked around the deck. Others, made nervous by what to them was the strange motion buoy at Old
lorse Ledge.
windjammer
of a
the
I
in
her element, appeared uneasy; a handful were slightly green around
gills.
“This
sailing weather!
is
A smoky
the horizon?
the skipper yelled to
nobody
in particular.
“See the haze on
sou wester.
The southwesterly wind
prevails on the
Maine coast during the summer months,
blowing out of Massachusetts Bay toward the Bay of Fundy. The usual diurnal pattern is
light air in the
morning, a strong breeze
strongest southwesterly
is
deviation from southwest in a
The
in the evening.
almost always accompanied by a hazy atmosphere, hence the
Summer w ill
reference to smoke.
and calm
in the afternoon,
is
see an occasional westerly, but the
more normal
an easterly or southeasterly wind, usually wet but every once
while strong, steady, and dry.
Come winter, of Canada.
The
the northwest
wind
prevails
strongest northwesterly,
of an intense storm,
is
consequently become choked with
Vinalhaven
to
In the
winters of
is
ice,
dry blast out of the depths
bitter,
which usually
wake thereof. A
carries subzero cold in the
nicknamed the “Montreal Express,
winter dominated by northwesterlies
become icebound.
—a wild,
or
some variation
extremely cold, and most of the coastal waters
though only, rarely
floes
Penobscot Bay
1779-80 and 1875-76, however,
Bangor; daredevils could walk from
Camden
to
itself
the bay froze from
North Haven. Belfast
to
Castine.
The winter storms,
the legendary
northeast
and bring snow,
schooner
fleet lies
was
freezing rain,
ice,
gales,
it.
out of the east
and
tin'
Obviously, the passenger-
the days of cargo-carrying,
many
a dangerous business, winter coasting, especially in the later years,
when
at
it
in
year round.
economics virtually ensured that the vessels would be
and therefore 22
come
you name
low during the winter months, but
of the coasters kept It
sleet,
New England
least
able to handle the strain.
A PASSAGE IX TIME
Though
it
in
poor repair and undermanned,
would seem
that a schooner sailing
—
along the coast would he secure, in close proximity to harbors of refuge, such was not the case.
During any of the
thick
o'
common
Maine coast
vapor (sea smoke brought on by extremely cold
the land, unseen
fog, thick o'
air lying over
snow,
warmer water)
many rocks, half-tide ledges, and unpredictable currents.
wonder, then, that skippers of winter coasters had the reputation for being
Little
cautious
—thick o
by the schoonerman, became more dangerous than the towering seas of
the open ocean. There were too
ing
"thicks' of the
—perhaps overly cautious from the point of view of an owner who would be
money when
schooner hid behind a headland
his
los-
northwester or a
to wait out a
They knew all about the limitations of navigating with only a compass, a barometer, and the seats of their pants, even though most of the best skippers were famous for their “nose for the coast. (Some were northeast gale. But can anyone blame the coastermen?
even noted for their ability to predict changes feet, sore
elbows and knees, and ticks
knew about the consequences
in the
weather by reference
The
in the corners of their eyes.)
of being overconfident.
to corns
best of
The periodic North
storms provided plenty of evidence, the most famous being the
on their
them
also
Atlantic winter
“ Portland
Gale
of
November 26—27, 1898, when 456 lives were lost and l4l vessels were wrecked, including the steamer Portland which gave its name to the storm. ,
smoky southwester bears no Express. We were sailing hard and But a
in response to the
unintimidating
and the timbers
fast,
of the schooner
were groaning
heaving of the sea and the pressure of the wind, but
summer sailing,
The wind was
relationship to the Portland Gale or the Montreal
lighthouses, headlands,
agony of a hang-on-to-your-hats winter struggle.
not the
steady, not squally,
was
this
and
and prominent
the skipper
islands
—were
s
navigational marks
visible a long
way
—buoys,
off.
The galley hand came staggering on deck with an armload of dishes and covered bowls and eating utensils, followed by the cook carrying a steaming caldron of fish chowder. It was lunchtime. In celebration of the occasion and to summon passengers from down below, the skipper gave a pull on the ship’s bronze
“Fish chowder,’ he announced,
bell.
“the best on the coast of Maine.
There have been many claims
who makes
the best.
Mystery has risen
made
chowder over the
for fish
Kenneth Roberts, the
like a fog
around Maine
novelist,
fish
and
it's
anyone’s guess
once wrote:
chowder. Some cooks argue that
ii
can
properly without soiling eight or ten stew-pans, dishes and cauldrons.
pontifically
announce that
salt
pork should never be used; hut
only should he used, but should be tried out separately, the pork scraps
added
to the stew.
There
is
tin*
chowder.
I’m not sure
many contend
liquid fat
juice
hi'
that pork not .
which
insists that
from them used as
a basis
.
how many pans, dishes, and caldrons our cook used, or
was involved, but
t
A few
thrown aw a\ and onl\
also a large school of thought
the head and backbone must be boiled separately, and the for the
years,
it
was a
fantastically
—
good chowder
thick, fishy,
I
il
and how
and
hot.
salt
W
pork
e ate in
SMOk) SOI HESTkH
23
W eather permitting, lunch
served ul
is
fresco, with the top of
the cabinhouse ser>ing
as a buffet table.
The
skipper has stepped
away from the wheel moment to grab
for a
a quick mouthful
take a look at the
at the
same I
chart
time.
yaw boat
is
and
The
rigged
astern to help push the
schooner
in the
light airs.
2 -+
1
PASS \GE
l\
TIME
the lee of the cabinhouse, wit li a clear view of Vinalhaven and
1
lurricarie islands, a
couple
of miles away.
\
inalhaven, the largest of the Fox Islands, once was one of the country’s leading producers
of building stone.
Like several of the islands of lower Penobscot Bav
Deer, Crotch, and others
—
it
—Dix.
1
lurricane.
had an almost unlimited supply of granite that was
suited to large-scale construction.
It
also
had the proper deepwater harbors
ideally
for shipping
the stone.
The
first
quarry on Vinalhaven, a small one, was established
the 1820s: by the
in
middle of the century, there were about a dozen small operations, working sometimes, closed often. But the building
boom
along the eastern seaboard following the Civil
War
dramatically changed what essentially had been a cottage industry. In 1871. Joseph R.
Bodwell, a onetime governor of Maine, amalgamated several of the quarries into the
Bodwell Granite Company, and Vinalhaven became a serious producer of stone until the
company went out of business in 1919. Vinalhaven stone was used in hundreds of buildings, among them the Brooklyn Bridge; the Pilgrims Monument in Plymouth. Massachusetts; and Grant City.
that
The main quarry, was considered
be
to
So, too, the granite
s
Tomb and the
just outside
among
Cathedral of
Museum
John the Divine
New
in
ork
\
the finest stone found anywhere in the United States.
from nearby Hurricane
country, including the
St.
Carvers Harbor, yielded a grade of blue-gray granite
Island,
which can now be found
of Fine Arts in Boston, the
the Treasury Department in Washington,
over the
in
New York,
in
Annapolis.
Customs House
and the U.S. Naval Academy
all
When the island was bought for a mere fifty dollars by General Davis Tillson of Rockland, who
established the Hurricane quarries in the early 1870s, there were only a handful of
had a regular town of perhaps 2,000 people, with boardinghouses, a school, a dance ball, and a church. It was a company
residents, but in short order the island
several stores,
town, run with an iron
fist
by General Tillson
—known by
Swedish, and Yankee laborers as the “Lord of the
Isles,’
tin 1
Finnish, Scottish, Irish,
and by the
skilled Italian stone-
cutters as “ Bombasto Furioso.
The
quarries on Vinalhaven and
islands,
were hotbeds
their manipulations
organizers, try for
its
1
lurricane, as well as
of radical politics;
and
exploitations,
and Penobscot Bay, of all
on most of the other quarrying
the behavior of the owners,
saw
places,
to that.
It
was
fertile territory for
when
for
union
w as therefore w ell known around the coun-
periodic labor wars, the most famous of which took place
of the Lockout, ”
who w ere noted
in
the Granite Manufacturers Association fought
1892. “The Year
dim
to
break the
principal stonecutters union.
But
it
wasn’t the labor movement that torpedoed the island quarry industn
It
was
simple economics: Other building materials from other places came into favor, and b\
World War were
I
the quarries
in serious decline.
on Vinalhaven and
Today,
all
I
lurricane
and everywhere
else
on the ba\
the island quarries are silent. w ith the exception of a
I
SMOK) SOI HEs llJt
now Outward
small operation on Crotch Island, next to the Deer Island Thorofare. Vinalhaven
primarih an island of fishermen; Hurricane
bound School, a camp
the base of operations for the
is
for wilderness survival training.
he development of the quarries and their success at the height of their operations
I
depended on
coasting vessels
tin*
—
at first
easier to rig the derricks for loading
small sloops, which were favored because
and unloading the stone, and.
accommodate
il
was
in the later vears. larger
schooners. (Most so-called stone schooners carried their mainmasts farther to
is
aft
than usual
of
them were
the derricks.)
Schooners were built specifically for hauling stone, but
many
just as
converted from other uses, such as carrying lumber and cordwood. The Deer Isle quarries
—among them the Accumulator, the the extremes of the and the Black Warrior— too used up
were noted for their converted fishing schooners
Cordova the Valparaiso ,
fishing
for
,
banks but with enough
couldn't be too used up. After
life left
all.
nothing sinks faster than a
deckbeams with paving blocks and building
A
stone.
known on the bay as a “stone drogher, was a strange sight: looked much like a sinking ship. “I have seen th e Annie & Reuben
loaded stone schooner,
to the untutored eye
wit li
A stone schooner, however, wooden vessel packed to the
for the stone trade.
it
something over 200 tons of stone aboard, wrote John Leavitt, “lying at Crotch Island
wharf with the water flowing through the scuppers
main hatch coaming over
the deck.
schooners resembled half-tide ledges
battened
The
down and
pumps going
when
built in the state
at sea,
Loaded
calm.
flat
and
it
in
such fashion, the
sure the hatches were well
is
—indeed, one of the
—was the Anna Sophia, launched
the last coaster to haul stone
an inch or more on the
steadily the entire trip.
stone drogher built in Maine
last
any tvpe
the
This in a
to the height of
was the Annie
A*
cargo vessels of
last sailing
in Dennysville in
1923. But
Reuben, which carried on into World
Owned by the John
War
II.
alternating stone with scrap iron for the war effort.
in
Stonington and built in Bath in 1891, she was wide, stout, and massively put together
to stand
up
to the heaviest loads,
was from Penobscot Bay down England ports. She was
well
most stowed
to Boston,
in the hold,
some on deck.
I
hough
If
lie
schooners
usual run
New
&
Reuben
to
be a
she was in port, they* knew a storm was on the way.
a few schooners like the
quarries declined.
steam and
ler
known in Portland, as she used that citv as a harbor of refuge.
well into the twentieth centurv, t
1
though on occasion she called on other
Residents with a view of the Portland roadstead considered the Annie
barometer:
Goss quarries
L.
Anna Sophia and
the Annie
Reuben carried stone
most of the stone droghers went out of business long before
They were forced out by a more
diesel tugboats
&
towing barges with
reliable
much more
means
of transportation:
capacity than the largest
in the trade.
Midafternoon found u^ barreling n along n with the wind almost dead astern and the seas building behind ib with broad, foaming crests.
26
I
/’I" I GE
l\
TIMl
The
stern of he schooner t
would
sink into
the trough, seemingly sucked
down by
would race forward, gaining height skipper
s
head. Just
when
seemed
until the crest
appeared that
it
and then the face of the next wave
a giant straw,
tin*
be above the
to
wave would break over the
level of the
afterdeck, the
would
lift and the wave would pass under the hull, providing a momentary boost to the vessel s already considerable speed. The sensation was rather like
stern of the schooner
mating with an
that of a roller coaster
were sailing
e
eastward off the south end of
to the
by some Maine natives and
Holt
elevator.
explorer Samuel de Champlain,
"Isle a
Ho bv
Isle
the rest).
who was impressed bv
an
the island
.
a population of as the island visitors
The
is
many
as 800. but
naming
number
that
Isle
live
it
"Sorico.
skipper, at the wheel,
to this
was riding
after
an Haut once had
Much
there now.
part of the Acadia National Park svstem. though few of the park
each year find their way out
o
height (543 feet at the
s
and boatbuilders.
nowhere near
"Isle
The name came from French
peak), though in 1014 Captain John Smith was less impressed, the Indians. Historically an island of fishermen
(pronounced
lain
1
s
of
4 million
wild and lonely place.
high.
He
steered while he talked, talked while
he checked his position on the chart, threw his shoulders back, pushed out his stomach,
and bellowed
at the
mate
to lash
down
seaway. His eves were constantly
in
the boarding ladder before
motion
—checking the
sails,
it
came
adrift in this
the compass, the next
who striker. He
buov, the security of the vawlboat. and the passengers up forward by the bowsprit,
were leaning over the told
watch rainbows
rail to
spray under the dolphin
in the
one story after another, whether anyone was listening or not. almost an unconscious,
He would
habitual act.
tell
stories within stories,
and more
stories within
those,
interrupting himself from time to time with orders or merely thoughts involving the
operation of the schooner.
stool
by the wheel. (The passengers could already be divided
hung around
the wheel listening to the skipper,
Harbor, and if you land a boat deep in tarn, a
mountain
Then over
lake.
who w as
he said to one of the passengers
"See that cove over there?
and those who
and climb up
it
there
is
—
1
into
ley!
into the
\\ ill
two
seated on a low
ty
pes: those
you
hills,
II
find a beautiful
someone ask the cook
—
Head
"That’s
didn't.)
w ho
to
send up
and one of those toll-house cookies? Eastern lead and then just off it i> a little island. That’s called Eastern Ear. and then there’s Eastern Ear Ledge, where you can see the buoy. There isn t a buov on the ledge at the mouth of lead larbor and dun e
a cup of coffee
1
I
1
ought to be it.
now
—Slack
cleat
it,
coil
off it
on that sheet for a second. ..a
nicelv
— because
Dillinger look like a choirboy.
Burnt Coat.
Aw.
though Cape Ann it
got that
hell.
I
itself is
name from a
ll
it's
a vicious
I'm wondering
worn about
if
lick its ass.
We
could jibe
Dammit, in this
...It’s
Cape Aimer,
tell
—
I
more. ..a
to put into
called
more. ..that
laid in
>
makes
Erenchboro or
Cape Ann Ledge, even
on that sheet a hair
a Gloucester fishing hit
bit
spot with a record that
we ought
that later.
passage along the coast during the w inter that got
can
little
hundreds of miles from here
schooner, a
little bit
—but
schooner making
a
by a snow squall faster than a cat
that passenger not to stand
up on
seaway and the boom would knock him
t
lie
cabinhouse
right to
i
just
now
kingdom come.
sunk) sot
n is
mt
07
28
\
PASSAGE I\ TIME
Captain Jim Sharp of the idrenture studies the
schooner Mary Day. The
owners of some of the
Maine schooners choose scheme and slick
a color to
it.
Others prefer change
for the
sake of change.
The Mary Day has been various!) white, black,
and
buff.
—
Anyway, quite a few
saw her near the ledge before the
squall hit, then there
and they couldn’t see a thing, then she cleared up and,
total whiteout
The
islanders
squall lasted ten minutes on the outside.
Did she
Jesus!
was
no schooner.
Nobody knows.
strike the ledge?
know her name, but they were knew a Cape Anner when they saw one, so from that point on they called the place Cape Ann Ledge Hey! Ask the mate to bring me my binoculars.” The mate came aft and draped himself over the mainsheet, taut from the power of the
They
didn’t find a trace of that schooner, they didn’t even
fishermen and
—
wind against the deep-bellied mainsail, and bantered with the skipper over possible anchorages for the evening. The choices were unlimited. From our position, there were easily twenty-five
two-hour
sail.
and
was
that
whispered
in
good
possibilities within
an hour’s easy
But the skipper quickly zeroed
(“He hopes there
that.
in
in past Seal
and twice
many
that
be other schooners in Burnt Coat,
II
in a
on Burnt Coat Harbor on Swans Island,
an aside, “and even though he won’t admit
So we sailed
sail
it
mate
the
show off.
out loud, he wants to
)
Ledge and Heron Island and took the passage between
Brimstone and Green islands. The afternoon was getting on and the southwest wind, true to form,
was decreasing
entrance to Burnt Coat,
in strength.
we caught an
But just as we reached the errant blast of
wind
bell
buoy marking the
that heeled the schooner over
and just as suddenly let up. There was the sound of crashing pots and pans below, followed by profanity from the cook. (“Such a lobsterman
in
a green dory
little
—probably the
the skipper said in
lady,
last of his
looked up from his labor and waved to the skipper, “I
breed to haul traps
mock
in a
A
shock.)
rowing craft
who laughed and yelled back
him,
at
think our supper just turned into stew.
The haziness
started to clear
and the wind dropped, and by the time we had turned the
corner by the harbor light and glided into the anchorage, the air was like crystal and the
water
s
surface
was
off the village.
like glass.
We
The schooner Mary Day out of Camden was anchored
sailed right past, the skipper looking
anywhere but
at
her and
pretending she wasn’t even there, rounded up into the barest breath of wind that was
and dropped the anchor. While we furled the skipper said, “That was too easy.
sails
and
set the
In the height of the
schooner
them
in,
you get
all sorts
of opportunities to
summer, there would be
show
off.
straight for the shore, scare the bejesus out of the
passengers, wheel the bugger around, drop the anchor on the
Thev
11
remember who you
left,
awning for the evening, the
yachts and schooners scattered through here, not to mention fishing boats. last
just
If
several
you
re
the
You weave right in through other guys and your own fly,
and bring her up
short.
are.
Supper, after an exhilarating day
at sea,
was magnificent, a
far cry
from the Monday-
evening meal on the schooner Albert F. Paul recorded by Janies Smith McCullough
in
1933: “Sardines, cold corned beef (very bad), fried potatoes, bread and butter, dried apricots, cookies,
and
tea.
Ours was a heroic feast, with homemade vegetable soup,
chicken, peas, carrots, freshly baked
30
A PASSAGE l\ TIME
rolls still
steaming from
tin*
roast
oven, garden salad,
-
walnut cake, coffee,
works. The cook tipped
tea, the
and the galley hand had put together tin halks of \\
split
maple and oak and the occasional alder
oodstove cooking.
lor several years
for fast heat.
on the passenger-schooner Adventure.
box on the top
shelf.
\\
hat to a standing ovation: she
who w as cook
according to Dee Carstarphen,
a challenge,
“It is
cake in the oven, dust your hands and that (ire
Iter
entire feast with only a cast-iron stove fueled w ith
1
that
s
"If
— w rong!
hen that cake browns,
it
von think vou can
The
hottest spot
is
slide
vour
next to the
must be turned, then moved awa\
from the hot spot and finished up on the lower shelf to brown the bottom. No heat indicator or timer can help you here.
They
call the result
these days,
and
in
You
the temperature
feel
"schooner food,
essence
it is
virtually a generic
good old down-home chow
arrangements, no reliance on exotic
fruits
in \\
— the type of food you
yoming, Pop
s
get in
Diner down in
term along
fish,
tin*
spices
the kerosene lamps glowing,
his rigging knife,
that
bread, coffee, pudding,
summer
lumber camps in the Maine woods, chuck wagons out
Warw ick, Rhode
Island.
Food w ith
gusto.
hen vou
\\
and
lit*
t
mate
you know you’ve had a meal
slicing off
the
another slab of carrot cake with
—neither the
salt
meat or
salt fish
in
some of the tony restaurants ashore. What you need afterward
is
a
little
So took the skippers personal Whitehall pulling boat, a delicate little thing w I
bladed oars and bronze oarlocks, out for a row around the harbor, the reflected in the dark
mate and the
lifeboat
rowed
burgoo
falls for
before,
tall
exercise.
ith
spoon
spruce trees
w ater and a brace of deer grazing in a fisherman’s yard. Meanw hile,
galley
hand lowered
the seine boat over the side of the schooner with the
any of the passengers who wished
and the boat clattered
From across the harbor on I
in
was standard on the old coasting schooners nor the teeny-weeny nourellc cuisine
snacks
the
little
from specialty shops,
stand up after supper in the galley of a schooner with the smell of percolating coffee air.
it.
Maine
coast of
—no fancy sauces, no cute
and vegetables and
no fad-foods-of-the-month here. Meat, potatoes,
squash
and develop a gut sense about
off to the
the Minturn side
1
to
go ashore. Few of them had ever
darkening village
could see them
st
like a
rolling
wounded
up the single
insect. st
reel.
could see the skipper, the mate, the cook, and the galley hand sharing a jug of wine on
the
main cabin house of the schooner,
the purple skv over
I
larbor Island,
I
could see the huge orange
and could hear I
moon
rising through
the tide rising over the mussels bed>.
I
SMOKY
SOI HESTER
3
1
and
“Built by the Mile
Ill
Sawed Off in Lengths” The large Eastern coasting schooner was
was on
the one
—
When of
I
\\
irreversibly
still
,
committed
to
a future of cast
tied to traditions of ages past.
illiam H. Bunting. Steamers. Schooners. Cutters
was a boy, growing up on Cape Cod
my spare time
symbolic of
,
hand
changes while on the other
many ways
War and World War One when American
the period between the Civil society
in
in the 19-+0s
hanging around the waterfront.
between the pursuit of a higher
calling,
I
and 1950s.
tV-
Sloops
spent a good part
I
was a schizophrenic adolescent, torn
such as social service or the
arts,
and nautical
monomania. Would be a doctor or a clam digger, a concert violinist or a merchant mariner? It was a difficult time, made all the more difficult by the sights and sounds and Provincetown, Chatham. Harwich. Woods Hole. \ ineyard smells of certain harbors Haven, New Bedford and the vision of sails on the horizon off Peaked Iill. the Chatham I
—
—
bars, I
Monomov. and
1
the Elizabeth Islands.
was an incurable romantic who spent
the shore of
W
ellfleet
tumbledown wharves cation tables.
I
Harbor and the
much
time studying the wooden hulks up on
fishing draggers unloading their catches
of Provincetown as
by the
did reading Caesar and memorizing multipli-
I
could conjugate verbs and play "The Flight of the Bumblebee" on the
violin: cull littleneeks. cherrystones,
the difference between eastern-
Every once
as
in a
while in
and chowder quahogs with
and western-rigged draggers
my longshore travels
I
my
eyes closed: and
tell
at five miles.
would come across
a coasting
schooner
backwater or falling apart next to a wharf or waiting to be junked, sold foreign, or converted to a fried-clam takeout or some such thing. It was a crushing sight for a nautical monomaniac, proof positive that was born too late for the Great Age of Sail. laid
up in
a
Sail, that
rather pathetic collection of aging
dark period between the world war* when a
and economically marginal
vessels tried, with
little
success, to compete with the efficiencies and conveniences of the engine-powered vessel
same
time.
I
found those tired old vessels inspiring. Many of them had lived
I
Reach. A rare sight these days, such a
gathering of coasters would have
in the early
decades
of this century.
through the years of America’s maritime ascendancv:
if
they could speak. the\ could talk
would never experience, events could only read about in history book-'. remember, for example, coming across the almost-sunken Alice S. II entworth in W ood-
about things
in a
been commonplace
and the trucking industry. Yet at the
rendezvous
cove off Eggenioggin
I
I
had even missed the Lesser Age of
A windjammer
I
I
-lit
ILT BY THE MILE AM) SAWED OEE
l\
LEKCTHS'
33
That's the Grace
Hailey in the fore-
ground.
I
lole.
Launched a hundred years
had helped build New York
earlier, in
1863, right in the heart of the Civil War, she
City, carrying bricks on the
Hudson from
the brickyards
downriver. Later she went east to Maine, where she joined
upriver to the construction
sites
the general cargo trade.
Her homeports were variously Wells, Kennebunk, Portland,
Vineyard Haven, and
New
Bedford, and under the stewardship of Captains Arthur
Stevens of Maine and Zebulon N. Tilton of Martha’s Vineyard, she was an institution
New England
along the
Skippered by Captains Frederick Guild and Havilah
coast.
Hawkins, she had carried passengers around Penobscot Bay
in the early years of the
Maine windjammer trade. She had seen the passage of generations
my grandfather’s father was a young man — and there she
— she was young when
lay before
my very own eyes in
Woods Hole, as broken down as a farm horse just this side of the glue factory. The scum may have been rising in her bilges and the moss may have been growing in the seams of her deck planking, but she was
still
the physical evidence of a vital part of America’s
maritime past.
—
The northeast coasting trade of old the hauling of cargo from one port to another in wooden sailing vessels never had the romance of carrying tea from China or wool from Australia or ivory from Africa, but it did have a peculiar hold on the psyches of some sailors, perhaps because it could be so exciting on the one hand and so mundane on the other. The yin and yang of the sailor s world. There would be periods of fast, pulse-
—
pounding
sailing in a
near gale juxtaposed with quiet interludes in out-of-the-way ports,
tricky navigation in the fog followed sailing
may have
by wild weekends in Boston or New York. Deepwater
provided greater rewards in strange lands and exotic ports, but
it
involved days, weeks, months of boredom and sometimes terror on the empty ocean to get there.
usually was only a
—
—
moments and, occasionally, its terror but the few days away, and any seaman could live through that.
Coasting had
its
dull
next port
To the coastermen, the land was as important as the sea:, home could be both the ship and the shore. Many were the sailors who split their time between a farm with cows, chickens, horses, and goats, and a ^chooner making short hops up and down the coast. (There were several sailors, for that matter, who took the farm with them. John Leavitt remembered a skipper who sailed with both his family and his livestock: “The former forecastle of his old packet, vacated when the deck hoisting engine replaced the larger crews, was a combination pigpen to as the floating barnyard.
The
first
produce
It
and henhouse, and the schooner was generally
was claimed she was recognizable
coastermen were seagoing farmers,
in small craft (such as longboats
villages to the developing seaports
the regular business of coasting
would
call
on
necessities of
34
t
lit-
life
A PASSAGE l\
in a fog
by
referred
the- smell.
)
New England colonials who carried their
and shallops) from saltwater farms and outlying
engaged
in foreign
commerce. As early as the 1670s,
had been established, involving specialized
vessels that
various settlements to load cargoes for foreign trade in exchange for the
and
HUE
to carry passengers along the coast in a time
when overland
travel,
while not totally impossible, was at best extremely difficult. By the Revolutionary
was a
there
smacks,
vast fleet of coasting vessels
etc.
— working not
Maine. Massachusetts, and
and many
rivers
of the
to the Caribbean,
just
what
New
\ ork.
medium and
—packets, general
is
now Maine,
The coasting
with eastern coasters dominating trade
it
among
series of
in the latter
region even after
development of the new
nited States,
l
w ell as w ith foreign
states as
sailing ships carried cargo across the oceans: coasting vessels carried
the states. So important
was the
latter
and
so lucrative
was the business that
In IT’S?, a
tonnage tax was passed that discriminated against
foreign vessels in domestic commerce. Later, the
Embargo Act of 808 and
American
the
1
Navigation Act of 181^ forbade foreign-flag vessels from trading between ports l
A
nited States.
British ship, for example, could deliver a cargo
but could not load another cargo
from
The peacetime,
in
Boston and earn
came during
this exclusionarv policy
\\
in relation to foreign
ar
it
to
New
from London
\ ork.
to
in
the
Boston
(The only deviation
the world w ars as an emergency measure.)
post- Revolutionary years
again after the Civil
—
especially those after the
\\
ar of 1812
and
—witnessed an explosion of domestic waterborne commerce
commerce. (Some claimed protectionism was the cause: Since
more heavib
in
As the years passed, the proportion of the American merchant marine devoted
to
Americans had a monopoly on domestic commerce, they tended that.)
a
laws w as passed by the new nation to reserve the coasting trade for American
and American crews.
vessels
of the large
technicallv foreign.
trade, in fact, w as essential to the
Deepwater
all
This network extended from Canada
small ones.
w hose economy depended on trade among the individual nations.
carrier-', fish
or Maine and Massachusetts, or
but the entire east coast, including
when such commerce w as
the Revolution,
lumber
traders,
ar.
\\
to invest
the coasting trade increased, w hile that involved in foreign trade decreased. In
1
888. the
total
tonnage of coasting vessels exceeded that of American foreign-trading vessels for the
first
time, the gap increasing as the decades passed: by the turn of the century, coasting
tonnage was
five
times the foreign tonnage.
But for sailors there was a problem.
\\
it
bin the coastal fleet
itself,
bellwether developed during the nineteenth century: Sail was giving in the twentieth century, to diesel.
slightly
ahead of
sail: in
1907.
later,
when
fleet of ovster
It
was
—
a
is
to
steam and.
of the century, mechanical
power was
the greatest
amount
of coastal sail tonnage in the
sail still
w ith the exception of a handful of passenger foreign
way
statistical
amounted to less than -+0 percent of the total. Four the percentage of sail was so small as to be hardly worth calculating. Today,
United States was recorded, decades
By the turn
another
vessels
around the coasts and a dwindling
dredgers on Chesapeake Bay. commercial
sail
in
America
—
coastal or
dead.
grand old time while
it
of the United States, primarily
lasted.
on the
The major, minor, and even inconsequential
east coast but elsewhere as
ports
w ell, including the ( h eat
Lakes, were awash with sailing vessels during the nineteenth centurv and earlv decades
-Bl
U.T H) THE MILE
I
M) SMIEI) OEF
l\
EE\GTIIS'
35
wr'
Nobody has compiled an accurate count of the numbers and probabb but anyone who has read contemporary descriptions written by the few
of the twentieth.
nobody
will,
people w ho paid attention to such things as 1
w as so commonplace) or
it
905, w
understand.
ill
Port land
I
public notice w as given the coasting
seen photographs of eastern harbors
lias
say,
in.
fleet,
1882 or
have on hand, for example, a photograph of a small corner of
larbor on a windless
1
(little
summer day at
coasting schooners are awaiting a breeze.
the turn of the century: Sixteen two-masted
In William Bunting’s Portrait of a Port
magnificent photograph of Boston Harbor on a typical day
more than eighty coasting
vessels
—from
is
a
in the early 1870s show ing
sloops through multimasted schooners
—
at
anchor. Charlie York, a fisherman from Ilarpswell. Maine,
remembered
similar scenes along
the coast in the early decades of this century:
Outside
I
or pavin
lalf-\\
av Rock vou might see coasters with barrels
of lime
from Thomaston. granite
stone from Vinalhaven, ice from the Kennebec, lumber
and
laths or
Aroostook
potatoes from Bangor, Stark and Baldwin apples from saltwater farms, cordwood from villages along the shore. lavin’
up
in
some
square mile, white
Though Boston larbor on a I
typical
day
It
was
safe harbor. sails
vessels of
a pretty sight after a storm, I’ve
after
when
them
the schooners
vessels within
had been
an area of
a
spread to the wind, standin out across Casco Bay.
all rigs
served as coasters
brigantines, barks, barkentines,
in the
seen thirty or forty of
little
and
ships
—including square-riggers such as
— the
about 1840 w as the schooner. By the
late
rig of choice
brigs,
on the eastern seaboard
nineteenth century, almost
all
coasters
latter part of the
nineteenth century,
were schooner-rigged, and during the
with perhaps eighty
was universal. There were several reasons
coasting vessels at
anchor, to
the
Wharf
left.
in
India
ong Wharf
l
was simpler than the square
rig,
years of the cargo-carrying era, the schooner for this, all
requiring
than a comparably sized square-rigger.
A
based on economics: The schooner
less rope,
fewer spars, and
less
hardware
simpler rig required fewer sailors to handle the
Central
the middle,
\\
rig
last
harf to the right.
vessel.
And. most important, the schooner
schooners could
sail closer to
the wind, which
rig
was more weatherly than the square
meant they generally could make better time
along the coast and could be maneuvered more easily in
36
A PASSACE l\ TIME
rig:
riv
ers
and harbors and other tight
.
waterways.
therefore produce
Of course,
in
count for much.
When
more income and keep a
trips per year at less
larger proportion of
s
expense and
it.
much
competition with steamships, which were
coasting schooner
ample space
make more
In short, schooners could
in
evidence during the
zenith, the schooner’s strengths vis-a-vis the square-rigger’s didn’t
What
did count was no engineroom and no fuel hunkers and therefore
in the hull for cargo,
and no
The wind,
fuel bill to pay.
after
all.
was
free.
time and speed and regularity of delivery were of the essence, steamers had a
tremendous advantage over coasting schooners, but when
it
came
to hauling
bulk cargo,
—cargoes that would be as fresh whenever thev were delivered, now or a week from now — the schooner was king. The steamers took most of
such as coal and lumber
the passengers
just
and the high-grade
the schooners carried the
raw
freight (the perishables
and the manufactured goods);
materials.
The age of the coasting schooner, when viewed from afar, can best be described in general terms as a period of a century and a half that was bracketed by an era of small two-masted schooners at the beginning and the end, and dominated by huge multimasted schooners in the
middle. What’s more,
it
was an era during which the absolute
limits of the size,
power, and economics of the wooden hull were tested, and tested, and tested again and again.
How big could a schooner be? How many masts could she carry?
the rig be
made? What were the risks
in
building
wooden vessels
1
low simple could
so huge that they
pushed
the outer limits of the engineering knowledge of the time?
One was rather deep, much like that of the medium clippers designed for ocean passages. (Many of the deep-bodied schooners actuallv sailed foreign besides trading coastwise.) The other was quite shallow In general,
and wide
two tvpes of schooner
hull
to enable the vessels to carry
coast, especially the shoals
were
in favor.
deck loads and
around Cape Cod and, of course, the less-than-deepwater
harbors of the mid-Atlantic states and the South. Most, but not fitted
the thin waters of the
sail safely in
of the latter type were
all.
with centerboards so the vessels could get a better grip on the water. For example,
was very shallow
the five-master Governor Arnes, a very large coasting schooner, relation to her length to be offset
and therefore w as
from the centerline of the
fitted
with a centerboard. (One of her masts had
hull to
make room
for the
massive centerboard
trunk, giving the Awes an odd look when viewed from dead forward or In the early
in
aft.)
days of the schooner era, when the two-master was the archetypal coaster,
the practical dimensions of the hull were determined by the size of the
schooner owners tried to compete with steam the only way they could capacity of their vessels to carry bulk cargoes
sails.
As the
— by increasing the
— they came up against the central matter
The larger the hull, the larger the sail area required to drive it: the larger the foreand-aft sails, the more difficult they were to reef or furl in a blow There w as a point in its size when the two-masted schooner was too dangerous for its crew A smart builder, name unknown, developed a solution and in the process opened a gate
of safety:
.
~m
'll.
T BY
Till:
MILE A M) SMI El) Oil
l\
LLXGTHS "
37
38
I
PASSAGE
l\
TIME
"
in
schooner design consciousness that wouldn
by increasing the number of
be closed until after
by increasing the
increase the sail area of larger schooners it
t
and the number
sails
Wor Id
W ar
Don't
I:
size of the individual sails;
So the small two-master
of masts.
evolved into the large three-master and then the larger four-master, the even larger master, and the mammoth six-master. By the time coastal after the turn of the century, a
do
live-
had reached its apogee, just
sail
seven-masted behemoth, the Thomas
IV.
Lawson had been ,
launched.
As
in all
matters nautical, there has been endless disagreement about the origin of the
three-masted schooner. Most historians suggest that the rig dates from the 1820s or
first
1830s; certainly there are several shipbuilding towns that can point to a three-master
having been built there during that period. Residents of Mathews County, Virginia, the three-masted schooner Pocahontas of
small three-masters, the Aurora and the
1
827. Ellsworth, Maine, stakes
Fame
,
its
recall
claim on two
of 1831.
Yet according to Howard Chapelle, one of the foremost historians of naval architecture, the rig goes
back
to the very
before the schooner
came
to
beginning of the nineteenth century or even
earlier,
long
dominate the coasting trade. There are other observers who
would make the claim that the modern three-master was invented much
later:
mid-
century or even after the Civil War. George Wasson, for example, suggested that the David
Hasson, first,
built
by
his
grandfather on Penobscot Bay
three-master built in
New England.
all
old-fashioned topsail schooners
to fore-and-aft sails
on
modern schooner
that
is
—
coasters
is
came
,
that
owners’ pleasure.
more than
French. 920 tons, built
In
it,
1883 alone,
half of those in
in
many
New England. The for
in
known, three-masted
tasteless fashion),
Amanda
K. Jones.
to their simplicity of rig.
largest
built
on the
was the Bradford
C.
beauty and balance of proportion,
its
In a letter
Please note the initial
would he incomplete. Almost Hopkins,
well
you want. The core
1884.
home,
at
letter,
A.J.
Green, an Englishman,
Bucksport, Maine,
neighbor arrived a few days ago. a handsome “down
abominably
addition
of the two-masters nor the out-of-scale excess of
and seven-posters.
called the Susie P. Oliver.
.
became
all
138 three-masters were
at least
described a typical three-master of 272 tons built
P
three-master
first
Kennebunkport, Maine,
having neither the chunkiness of the four-, five-, six-,
in
they were “built by the mile and sawed off in lengths
The down-east three-master was known
...A
they carried scjuaresails
is,
shipways by the hundreds, reaching their peak during the 1880s,
off the
Atlantic coast,
admitted
Aurora and the Fame but maintained
that once the advantages of the type
when, as a saying of the time had to suit the
le
must be rigged fore-and-aft.)
Argue about the where and the when of the of the matter
I
not the
(One of the fundamentals of the definition of a
their foremasts. all sails
first, if
But Wasson was splitting hairs.
that there were earlier three-masters, such as the
they were
1867, was one of the
in
1
east’
in
1882:
The archetypal schooner (three masted)
without which an American
coaster of both
name
early
all American vessels are named after some individual (an and every name must of necessity include the initial, as Joel
They
they can
sail
are great institutions, these a vessel of
"
same schooners,
000 tons capacity with
Bl ILT
It)
Tin:
MILE
I
AD
eight
SAILED Oil
for
hands
l\
later
I
lie
days
of the schooner era.
This
owing
is
the Stephen
Tuber out of Itockland.
all told.
LEXGTIIS
and
39
The\
sail well, shift
without ballast, use but
draught. Perhaps the
schooner alongside of us feet, tht* little
Mertola
s
is
much
less
being twenty-nine
depth would make them very
but they seem to get along
by seven
feet: large
skittish in a
side of his etc.
is
their
enormous beam. This
and undoubtedly feet,
thirty-live
is
much breadth
that so
my
with spare rooms off
—
foam
like
sail
Their cabin
balls.
sea-faring friends, a skipper having
all in
his
it:
own
a
bedroom abaft, w hile on
quarters;
ten feet (lit'
fore
a cabin, ten by twelve; w ith mates berths, pantry, stew ard's room,
side.
Although schooners w ere
on
built
all
coasts,
most of the major shipyards were
England, with the center of activity being the state of Maine.
In such
hammers, adzes, and caulking mallets was part
the din of saws,
especially after the Civil
War, when the bulk of the coasting
a seafaring tradition going
back
to the first
steep shores (just the thing for launching
white
huge
settlers,
vessels),
— they loved
to build ships,
w as
New'
in
between,
of the local scene,
constructed.
Maine
deepwater harbors with
and a
skilled labor force of
men who didn’t and they didn’t charge an arm and a leg for
shipwrights, caulkers, blacksmiths, dubbers, loftsmen,
merely build ships
fleet
in
towns as Bath,
Yarmouth. Waldoboro, Rockland, Camden, Searsport, Ellsworth, and those
had
with so
seaw ay, and be terribly severe on the masts,
bathroom and companion way
bulkhead
on each
by ten
eye
s
rarely exceed thirteen feet in is
One would think
accommodations make me quite envious. Imagine, a private sitting-room, ten feet
and
gear,
tonnage than the Mertola but her beam feet.
right,
all
little
that strikes a stranger
first tiling
and
riggers,
the privilege. I nt
i 1
the 1880s, the
Maine shipyards specializing
in large
w ooden
vessels concentrated
on deepwater square-riggers, the clippers during their intense but brief maritime heyday in
medium clippers, the Maine style of which “Down Easters. But after the Civil War insurance
midcentury, and then the more practical
came to lie known around the world as rates
were higher for wooden ships
making them
less
competitive.
in foreign
commerce than
for those of iron
Faced with declining orders
for their
and
steel,
most important
product, the Maine yards shifted their attention to multimasted coasting schooners.
Maine
at the
technological improvements in the shipbuilding industry were least of
which was the steam-powered windlass. The
b\ the invention
used
first
was the three-master Charles A. Briggs
to hoist the sails, raise the
the bilges. Jobs that
in
to
first
worked
of the
out, not the
coasting schooner to be favored
1879. The steam windlass was
heavy anchor, load and discharge cargo, and even
had previously required a large crew of
needed only a handful, and the main remaining barrier schooners
many
time was a land of maritime innovation, a place where
sailors
pump
and stevedores now
to constructing ever-larger
— the operating expense of a large crew—was eliminated. Schooners
in the
200-
800-foot range became common. Square-riggers of that size would have required crews
of up to 100
men: the schooners scraped by with
Perhaps the
first
three-masted schooner can
fifteen or fewer, including the officers. t
be attributed to the state of Maine,
though nobody has been able to prove convincingly otherwise, but the four-,
40
I
PASSAGE IX TIME
five-,
and
six-
The Domino at
Effect ex- Victory Chimes, ,
anchor with her awnings rigged.
The
last
three-masted schooner on
the roast, she
was
Iniilt in
Bethel, Delaware, as the
1900
in
Edwin and
Monde. Her proportions are not nearly as elegant as the classic threemasters. as she was designed to be
able to
fit
through the Chesapeake
and Delaw are Canal.
masters can be. The
four-master, the William L. White was built in Bath in 1879,
first
,
By
the year of the steam windlass. built in 1921.
approximately 460 had been constructed, the vast majority
The
largest, at
first
five-master, the Governor Ames,
all
more than 2,000
Chase was
the time the last four-master, th ejosiah B.
was
tons, the Northland,
was
in
1
888.
,
Maine yards. in
1906. The
A total
of fifty-six,
Rockland
built in
Waldoboro
built in
in
but four built in Maine, were constructed before the big-schooner era ended. T he
was launched
six-master, the George W. Wells,
in
Camden
nine six-masters, seven were constructed at the Percy
total of
& Small Shipyard in Bath, including
Wyoming which could carry
the largest of all, the great
1900. Of the grand
in
first
,
Shipbuilding innovations notwithstanding, there
a single load of 6,000 tons of coal. a practical limit to the size of
is
wooden hulls, and the six-masters reached it. Some would say they exceeded it. They were so large, in fact, that the shipwrights had to go to great lengths to reinforce the schooner’s structures to keep less
them from hogging
—a condition
in
buoyancy than the middle, would tend over time
which the ends of the
to
with
droop from their own weight. A
massive, reinforced backbone was required; in addition, the sheer
sweep of the topsides
vessel,
— the
fore-and-aft
—was accentuated so the ends, when they did droop, wouldn’t
produce a reverse sheer, spoiling the schooner’s looks and, more important, reducing her seakeeping
abilities.
They were magnificent to
it,
they were too much, too
transport of bulk cargoes to
handle in certain
uneconomical in
late.
Designed to be the
—coal and lumber,
for the
critical situations, especially
just a
when you get right down word in the efficient, cheap
vessels, the six-masted coasters, but last
most part
when
— they proved
sailing light,
to
be difficult
and they became
few years time. What’s more, they and the other multimasted Their construction consumed mountains of
schooners became too expensive to build.
wood, and much of the premium stock that was required had
to
be hauled by other
Oak for the frames came from all over the eastern seaboard, hard pine for the planking came from the South, hackmatack for the knees came from Nova Scotia, and pine for the masts and spars came from as far away as Oregon. Shipyard schooners over long distances.
labor
may
The George j
still
have been cheap, but materials no longer were.
era of the six-master lasted a If
ust after
.
Wells to the burning of th&EdwardJ. Lawrence, the last of the type, at Portland
Christmas,
1
925. Business for all of the big multimasted coasting schooners was
dead by that time; indeed, freighters
mere quarter of a century from the launching of the
and
colliers that
it
w as
in serious decline before 1910.
Pushed aside by steam
could virtually guarantee delivery of their cargoes on time,
every time, they had become dinosaurs of the coast.
In the new, twentieth century,
shipowners soon discovered that time was more important than cheap cargo people were willing to pay a left little
room
and were converted
to the very
competition for their
A PASSAGE 1\ TIME
built.
sisters.
Many
the quickening pace ashore
w ere
up
just a
Later, in the 1930s, quite a few had their rigs cut
down
for the casuals of the sea.
few years after they were
42
premium for prompt delivery, that
fees, that
of the big schooners
laid
tug-towed barges that had provided such devastating
They made
a forlorn sight, their once-beautiful hulls
Coasting
schooners
anchor fall
at
in the
of 1900 in
Boston's outer
harbor, awaiting their turn at the
docks. The five-
masters
in the
foreground are (left)
C.
I
lie
W illiam
Carnegie of
Portland and the Jennie French Fatter of
New
York. They are
deeply laden with coal.
blackened with coal dust. lying against loading wharves long strings behind powerful coastal tugs
in
the
in
Norfolk.
\ irginia:
Cape Cod Canal: moored
tethered
in
to stake boats
in eastern ports.
There was a brief flurry of activity for the coasting schooners during every thing that floated (some just barelv) w as pressed into service. coastal
and deepwater, forced
opportunity to
make
types, including
all
a quick
freight rates higher
killing.
\\
orld
ar
\\
when
I.
Shortages of ships,
and higher, and investors saw an
Shipyards across the nation cranked out vessels of
hundreds of schooners
— more than a hundred four-masters
in the
period 1916 to 1920, for example.
But the the
boom didn
bottom
for coal
fell
t
last.
I
he wartime shortage of ships became a peacetime glut, and
out of the schooner trade in the space of a year. In 1920. the freight rate
from Norfolk to Boston was three dollars a ton;
Age of Coastal
Sail
was
it
was a dollar. The Great
over.
Enter the Lesser Age. for while by definition
some things take longer
1921.
in
to pass
than others.
in a progressive society all things 'I
must
ears ago. mechanical tractors yvere proven
to be economically superior to beasts of burden, but even today a few farmers their fields with draft horses.
In the
made
ith reins in their
in
plow
Boston, for example, there w ere peddlers and
hands. There
in coastal sail after \\ orld \\
still
1940s and 1950s. motor trucks had long since been
proven better than horses and w agons, yet junk pickers w
pass,
ar
1.
may no
but there
yy
longer have been big money to as small
nt ilt R] mi:
i
///./.
money
tv/;
s
i
///;/;
,
lx*
and hundreds of
on
i\
u:\otiis~
43
-+-+
)
PASSAGE
l\
TIME
The Stephen Taber (left) and Mary Day (right) in a
calm,
being pushed along slow ly by their
yawlboats. The Taber, built in 1871, is
one of the oldest
commercial sailing vessels in America.
The Mary Day, in 1961.
is
built
one of a
handful of schooners built especially for
the passenger trade.
schooners
in
>iill
sound condition could he had
for a song.
There were also two classes of
who were so set
people indispensable to a lingering marginal trade: those
would never change, no matter what; and those whose vision was
the\
romantic haze that economics had Not that you couldn't
do with the way they chose
to
little
in their
ways
that
so clouded with a to
make
a living.
make a living in coasting schooners after the war. There still were
cargoes for some of the larger schooners that hung on into the 1930s: lumber, coal for the
communities served by neither the railroads nor the tug-barge combinations, fishing fleets, that type of thing. if
If
an owner bought
bis
schooner
the
salt for
at a creditor’s auction;
he skimped on maintenance, making only those repairs affecting the ability of the vessel
to stav afloat
elsewhere or
and forgetting about the
who
didn’t
to escape to the sea
hod
carriers;
brow beat
if
rest; if
he hired sailors
couldn’t get a job
want a job elsewhere or who were young and driven by the urge
and therefore would accept w ages considered substandard by indigent
he pinched every penny he got from the miserly shipping agents;
his skipper to get
prudent mariners thought a paying proposition.
if
he
underway and stay underway whatever the weather, whether
it
foolhardy or not, he just might be able to
Nothing
like the
make schoonering
kind of money the owners had been making
two decades of the nineteenth century, but enough
last
who
to get by.
It
was
difficult,
in the
but
it
could be done.
The Great Depression, however, finally did them up
laid
iu
The remaining big schooners w ere
in.
the hopes of better days that never came, or sold at auction to be stripped and
converted to restaurants or nightclubs or other pie-in-the-sky schemes. The Charles Stanford, built during the
boom
years of
$5,000. Nine schooners from the
went bankrupt It
1931, w ent for
less
the
1
for
$100,000, sold
in
1931 for
New England Maritime Company, which
than $14,000. That’s $1,500 a schooner.
no piece of cake. While they had suffrom arrested development during the years of the huge four-, five- and six-posters,
was easier for the smaller schooners, though
fered
the
in
fleet of
World War
I).
little
two- and three-masters w ere
still
making their w ay along the coast, especially era, traditionally die hard. They specialized
still
Maine, where old ways, no matter the
in
in
forgotten cargoes to ports so obscure that even the burgeoning trucking industry couldn
be bothered. Cans to the sardine packers, factories, staples to the little
towns
in tin hinterlands 1
and creeks, scrap metal to the dealers metropolises near and
far.
The
the fish plants,
salt to
little
in
pulpwood
to the
connected to the sea by
t
paper
tidal rivers
Boston, Providence, New’ York, and other
coasters were cheap to
buy and cheaper
to operate,
requiring only a few able-bodied hands and minimal fuel for the make-and-break donkey
engines powering the w inches, their only nod to
Few two- or three-masters were
built after the
modern
times.
turn of the century, and only a handful
W orld \\ ar here were too mam used schooners available at too cheap a price to make new const ruction economically feasible. \\ hv build a new schooner when you could after
I.
I
have vour pick of the older ones all
few hundred dollars, drive her hard
used up. throw her away, buy another one. and do I
-+6
for a
he
I
lii-'t
cargo-cam ing coasting schooner built
PASSAGE
l\
TIME
iu
it
all
until she
was
over again?
the state of Maine, an act of faith
il
ever there was one, was
t
Endeavor, a two-master launched in Stonington
lie
(Actually, there was another, the John
before she could deliver her
first
Leavitt, built at Thoinaston in 1979, but she sank
F.
The Endeavor was skippered by
cargo.)
whose previous schooner, the Enterprise eventually was converted salt fish to
Albert Shepard,
to a cruise schooner.
,
She carried
1938.
in
Gloucester from the ports of down-east Maine,
salt
and
coal
from
Portland to out-of-the-way down-east communities and some of the isolated islands, and
any other cargoes she could cadge together. Not that many cargoes were available; not that there
was much competition
for those that were.
The majority of the small schooners ancient.
The
left
oldest in active use before
in the trade
World War
I
were
old,
and some were positively
was the schooner Polly a ,
little
48-
ton two-master built as a sloop in 1805 at Amesbury, Massachusetts. She had an old-
fashioned high poop deck and bluff bows, and it was rumored she had served as a privateer
during the
War of 1812
(subsequent research suggests that was unlikely). She was rebuilt
as a schooner in Blue Hill, Maine, in 1861.
Connecticut to Maine, although her setts
that
last
coast from
years seem to have been primarily in Massachu-
and Maine waters. She carried lumber, pulpwood,
lime, stone,
and anything
else
would keep her going.
Most of the oldest schooners
at
work between the world wars were
1800s; a few were pushing the century mark
them were the William C.
and worked the New England
II.
built in the
mid-
when they carried their last cargoes. Among
Jewell launched at Nyack, ,
New
York,
in
1853; the William
Pendleton Westerly, Rhode Island, 1857; the William Keene, Damariscotta, Maine, ,
1866.
New
York,
1871. Originally a Hudson River brick schooner, the 63-foot Ta her eventually
came
And then in
to
there
was the venerable Stephen Taber, launched
Maine and carried general cargoes
was
hogged
a tired old vessel with a
Captain Fred
in
the Penobscot
sheer, a
Bay
in
By the mid- 1 930s, she
region.
prime candidate
Glen wood,
for a
mudflat burial. But
Wood of Orland, Maine, was looking for a vessel, and the Taber was Wood took a chance and rebuilt her himself on the shore near the
available cheap, so
mouth in the to
of the Penobscot River. Until
bay
to the
1
9-1-3,
the Taber carried
paper mills on the Penobscot River,
until
pulpwood from
even that
mundane
the islands
task proved
be unprofitable and she had to find another. She was bought by Captain Frederick
Guild of Castine
in
1946 and converted to the passenger trade
former bricker, the Alice
S.
company with her fellow
Wentworth.
The Stephen Taber works vessel in the United States
in
the bay to this day, not quite the oldest commercial sailing
— the Lewis
R.
French beats her by a few months
the oldest in continuous service, an achievement that puts her
master Governor Ames and the six-master of the Golden
B.
If
homing and
all
— but definitelv
way ahead
of the five-
the rest of the great schooners
Age O of Coasting. o
in IFF ID THE MILE
I
\l)
SMI LI) OFF
l\
LFXQTHS "
4
.
—
,
Many Cargoes
IV
.
always had a contented feeling when coming back
../
which once
away from land became
a
little
to the quiet ship
world oj her own.
,
Politics
murder weddings and deaths meant as little to us as the breakfast food ads the skipper would listen to while tuning in for his morning weather report. We were healthy, usually happy ... and there was always plenty of work aside from steering and handling sail to keep us out of mischief. ,
—Francis E. Bowker, Blue Water Coaster
I awoke
early
Tuesday morning,
just before
of the quarterdeck, next to the binnacle.
the skipper? the
footfall directly
distance
With the exception of the insomniac on deck
mate checking the painter of the rowboat trailing off astern? a passenger
watching the morning stars?
— no one
else
was up and about.
and water gurgling against the oak planking next
to
I
could hear gulls in the
my ear.
As time passed and
broke, a shaft of light from a thick prism of glass set in a bronze ring partially
illuminated the tiny compartment;
my boots
the bunk,
A nearby
could see
I
my yellow foulweather jacket at the foot of
by the door, the washbasin on a stand up
fishing boat fired
becoming louder and louder it
sound of a
to the
My cabin was in the after quarter of the schooner; the overhead was the underside
above.
dawn
dawn,
as
it
its
in the corner.
engine and got underway, the
thump
of
its
pistons
passed along our starboard side and softer and softer as
receded into the distance. The schooner rolled slightly from the wake and then settled
The
back.
sensation
was of an incredibly comfortable
easiness, untroubled quiescence,
the paradox of motion in a state of motionlessness.
There’s magic in the early morning aboard a coasting schooner in a quiet anchorage.
“...Waking
in the
morning
is
different
from what
it is
ashore,’'
wrote John Leavitt.
He
“The schooner slightly
continued:
There
is
no struggling up uncomprehendingly from the maze of
dered. Wakefulness comes, slow or fast, with the dawn, of familiar sounds
hum
of
wind
and
smells.
in the rigging.
If
There there
is
is
the
and with
muted lapping
much
sleep, it,
wake and then settled back. The sensation
sodden and bewil-
was
the pleasant awareness
of water against the hull
tells of
it.
The
lingering scent of
and the
untroubled quiescence. the paradox of
wood smoke
motion
mingles with the smell of pine and spruce lumber, spiced with a whiff of Stockholm tar from the
oakum and marlin stowed
of an incredibly
comfortable easiness,
wind, the slapping of the halyards against the
mast and the rumble of the taut anchor chain
in a state of
motionlessness.”
The American
in the lockers.
MANY CARGOES
rolled
from the
49
Eagle.
a
I
the
pulled on
my
grabbed a peach from a bowl
clothes,
companion way ladder to the deck.
of a
behind Minturn,
hill
We
had no wind. The sun was climbing the back
and
rays gilding the topmasts
its
main cabin, and climbed
in the
reflecting off the second-story
town of Swans Island. There was dew on and a giant cobweb on the varnished skylight and verdigris on the clapper polished bronze bell. The air, typical of a Maine September, was cool, not quite
windows
of the fishermen’s houses
in the tiny
the cabinhouse
of the
sharp as
in the heart of the fall
Autumn was
but with just the barest hint of an edge.
approaching.
The cook
s
helper was sitting on one of the life-jacket lockers, cleaning strawberries and
throwing the hulls over the
She was nineteen years
side.
old, a native of
Aroostook County, the vast northern crown of Maine. Aroostook areas of the state, rivaling
Most of
frontier.
The County has its
own
as far
it is
its
“Down East
for
from the sea
own topography,
its
as
its
is
one of those mythical
image of wilderness and the freedom of the
Vermont. A land of forests and potato
own
—
“The County
culture,
its
own
dialects,
its
own
fields,
ethos,
and
paradoxical mix, bred by isolation, of unfettered individualism and tight
community.
It
has the reputation of being a lingering bastion of
untouched by the
sins of
Boston and
the girls have freckled faces
and the
New York, pie
is
a
New England
Norman Rockwell kind
thick with fruit
and the land
is
hominess
of place
where
abundant and
cheap.
The County heartland
—
its
an easy place
is
and a tough place
to love
to leave.
A motherland
—
natives think of themselves as different in certain indefinable respects,
move away, they have a difficult time adjusting to a new locale, even if it is no farther away than Bangor or Berlin, New Hampshire. Merely the invocation of Aroostook’s name can put a faraway, romantic look in the eye of a native gone wandering. The cook s helper, an archetypal County farm girl with sky-blue eyes and strawberryblond hair, was deep in her own struggle with the pull of Aroostook. She left home after
and,
if
they
high school for the University of Maine but dropped out during her freshman year
“because
I
didn’t
see the world
know why I was
first.
She wanted
there.
She wandered down
there were job opportunities
to the coast,
to go
home but thought she shoidd
heard through the grapevine that
on the windjammers, and walked
in the right
door
at just the
moment when our schooner’s skipper was drawing up the crew list for the coming season. “He asked me if I minded peeling potatoes and stoking a woodstove,’ she said. “I told him was from a potato farm. also told him we heated with wood. He asked me if I could I
sing,
I
and
I
told
The skipper
him
in
It’s
lights
cramped
conditions;
nights are long
50
wav
in
on
for a skipper to find a it’s
frosting
or “Blow the
hand
on the cake
know
a coasting schooner
willing to
to find
one
work long hours
who can
at
pick out the
Man Down.
a schooner tucked into
an empty cove miles away from bright
lomemade music, not to mention Scrabble and gin rummy, filling tin* entertainment void. The skipper played the pump organ and
and video rental
goes a long
could do that and play the guitar, too.
one thing
chords for “Shenandoah
The
I
hired her on the spot, even though she didn’t
from a hay rake. low pay
that
A passage i\ time
stores.
I
had alto.
a fine bass, the \\
it
mate blew
a
mean
and had
h the cook’s helper’s skills on the guitar
vour eves, our schooner, though
most musically accomplished
At
blues harp
six o clock in the
it
couldn
t
and
a so-so tenor,
and the cook >ang
a soprano that could bring tears to
hold a candle to the
\ illage
Gate. was
climbed partway up the contpanionwav ladder and pushed a trav with cream, and thick, white. navy-style mugs onto the deck. it
as
if
the
vessel in the fleet.
morning, there wasn’t much going on in Burnt Coat Harbor.
and about pounced on
still
they had been
I
lie
lost in a desert
this
he cook
coffee. sugar,
few passengers
and
\
who w ere up
was the
first
liquid
they had seen for weeks. If
there was one constant on our schooner,
day or
night, there
was
a pot
one was perking along beside
where the get
sailors called
it
on the galley it.
it
had
to
stove: long before
it
the time of
was empty, another
Coffee w as traditional even on
“ship’s tea
No matter
be coffee.
t
lit*
and boiled the beans cowboy
full
old cargo coasters, style.
A
crew could
along w ithout fresh vegetables for long periods, w ithout meat, with wet clothing and
water-soaked bunks, but they could become near-mutinous without coffee,
tin*
best
beverage for a jump-start in the morning, warmth during the day. and companionship during the long watches at night.
A couple of years ago. one of the Camden schooners left
port on a
Monday morning with
Coffee,
and
plenty of
The
Lewis
MAX) CARGOES
51
it.
galley of the II.
French.
the food pantry full but only a single
one-pound can of coffee aboard, enough
to last for
about half a day. The cook thought the helper had brought the coffee supply, the helper thought
it
had been the cook, and the skipper and the mate had been too busy taking care
The schooner w as somewhere out
of other matters to notice.
East Penobscot Bay, miles
when the terrible shortage was discovered. There were no deleted afternoon down in the galley. They were right out in the open where you
from the nearest expletives that
in
store,
could keep track of them. (The cook
s
helper, of course,
w as allow ed
blame
to accept full
for the disaster.)
Die cook
none of which came even
tried all sorts of alternatives,
the experience of a
“mug-up
Tea didn’t work. A can of “cereal beverage
of java.
behind by an English eccentric had no
("When your get-up-and-go
close to replicating
effect.
won't, Morning
Celestial Seasonings
Thunder will ”)
cook stopped talking to the galley hand, the mate took
to
left
Morning Thunder
didn’t even
come
close.
The
chewing tobacco, most of the
passengers became sullen and distracted, and even the skipper, noted for his joviality,
went crank. No
up a
We
first
came
lobsters
I
came
for tw o
days
—
crate of lobsters for the evening meal
week. The
w
relief
and a case of Maxwell House
pot of coffee was brewed
were amply fixed on our schooner.
and consumed long before the water
I
for the
borrowed a thermos from the cook,
and rowed ashore
ramshackle piers angling life
this
w ay and that out
filled
it
w alk before breakfast.
for a
found a town that wasn’t a town. There were houses clustered
no signs of
for the rest of the
to a boil.
a good slug of steaming black coffee,
ith
until the schooner put into Stonington to pick
in a village
into the harbor, but there
except a lobster fisherman stacking traps on the shore
and a few
T
w ere no people,
and an ancient dog
nosing around a bait barrel. None of the hustle and bustle associated with
life
in a town,
no automobiles coining and going, no law n mowers or garbage collectors or paperboys bicycling past the houses
and throwing new spapers
at the front porches.
Phe most exciting sight w as a down-at-the-heels boatyard w of a warning than an invitation: Boats
some
risk!
Hauled and Stored
at
ith a sign that
their planks;
one was
water. At the end of one of the piers
tilled headfirst
And
the Owner's Risk.
Eew of the boats were upright. Most were lying on
growing through
was more
their sides with
at
weeds
dow n an embankment tow ard the
was an old boat with peeling paint. “That’s the Maine
'
Queen.
from the boats that caught bait for the fishermen.
Across the
back
up
to the
just
“She used to be a sardine carrier, hauled sardines
said the lone lobster fisherman.
still
em to the canneries. Now
7
owned by Baitbag Pete.
ith a
harbor
seal
swimming
behind the stern of the rowboat and stare
bell
in
at
announcing breakfast.
my wake.
me
move, then duck down and reappear a few moments
like
camera and ground away
52
A PASSAGE l\ TIME
as
I
circled
tin*
I
le
an old
would poke
man
I
rowed
his
head
studying a chess
later farther astern.
Some
of the
One fellow hauled out a video schooner and made my landing at the boarding
passengers spotted the seal and ran below for their cameras.
ladder.
Carries
Don’t get too close to her. She’s ranker n an old boot.
water came the ring of the ship’s
schooner w
she’s
"There were no people, no signs of
hustle
with
life.. ..None
of the
and hustle assoeiated
life in
a town, no auto-
mobiles coming and going,
no lawn mowers or garbage collectors or paperboys.”
\\
hat can
Down
say?
I
breakfast table, the passengers, to a one.
in the galley at the
looked absolutely fantastic. Gone was the wan. pasty-white flesh of the office manager
and the medical technician: departed was
who managed
the restaurant trade magazine; absent were the bored expressions of
shoe salesman and the advertising copywriter. The a
week
the
woods w
in the
women
looked as
ith
Natty
Bumppo and
they had bathed
if
in
men
(Ik* last
looked as
if
had traces of sunburn glowed
deep, a morning that
in the cradle of the
w ashbasin and a bar of Ivory soap and
became lines
difficult to
back
remember
exactly what
A day
came with
get tired;
ith
them. Those w ho
in the sun,
an evening
the simple pleasures of a
w ater from the cask up on deck. At once life
was
like
at
before
we had
it
cast off the dock-
Rockland.
in
Breakfast of coffee, eggs, coffee, toast, coffee,
soft
light.
and not
Ruddy complexions,
the fountain of youth.
dimness of the
in the
tin*
they could rim for
of the Mohicans
pink cheeks, smile lines at the corners of eyes and laughter to go w
peace
woman
tension of the Boston cop and the
tin'
homemade
sausage and bacon, coffee.
up from the table. Wired from the
It
biscuits, coffee, pancakes, coffee,
French
w as a wonder anybody had the strength
caf f eine? If we
to get
had had a generator on board, we could
have hooked up everybody and produced enough juice to operate the ship-to-shore radio for a
month.
The skipper rapped on
human
\\
beings,’ he said.
Inch was
well
all
'"Let s
and good
go
"1
le
folks finally look like
sailing!
to sav, but there
was much
to
be done beforehand. While
and ambled up the road
the skipper took the yawlboat ashore (
“You
the side of his glass with a spoon.
has photographs of some of the old hay schooners,
to sav hello to
he said before he
an old friend left,
with the
tone of voice one would use w hen discussing a national treasure), the mate organized the
work
parties.
"No one w as
Tom
a
Sawy er
In
deal.
intelligent lawy ers, doctors,
and
an honor and a privilege to
pump
and polish hauled
salt
sloshed \\
1 1
was
fortune
it
it*
brass.
to
ashing
took off
be allowed
to
pillars
at all,
a
it
the bilges,
wash the joinerwork,
oil
the anchor winch,
my sneakers and rolled up my dungarees. My great good
scrub the deck w
w ater from over the side w
down
the deck w ith
vessels.
preserve the vessel.
edge
I
bunch of otherwise grown-up, was of industry and science were convinced that
almost no time
ith a
ith a
bucket
long-handled brush while the mate at
the end of a knotted lanyard and
into the corners.
on wooden
set
he announced, “but
would be appreciated.
assistance It
expected to work when they pay for their vacation,
is
to edge.
It
In
salt
water,
morning and evening,
is
a practical tradition
cleans the deck and washes the grit out of the seams and helps
simple terms, the skin of a wooden ship
Cotton and
oakum
caulking held
in
place w
is
constructed
ith a
puttvlike
ol
planks
compound
prevents water from seeping through the seams between the planks. Keep the seams wet.
54
I
PASS GE I
l\
TIME
and the caulking, squeezed by the swollen wood around it, will serve gasket. Allow the seams to dry out and you will have a leaky ship.
When most
people think about keeping a wooden vessel watertight, they dwell exclu-
sively
on the bottom of the
ing
swollen tight at the seams and the caulking
is
hull, the part sitting in the water. is
As long as the bottom plank-
sound, the ship will be watertight. But
immediate concern. The long-term problem is to keep fresh water
that's only an
dew
as a very effective
— from entering the vessel through the deck seams.
A
leaky deck
is
—rain and
uncomfortable
for passengers
and crew (anyone who has suffered through a night on the top bunk under
a see-through
seam during a rainstorm
will
understand what
I
mean) and almost
certain
ruination for the vessel.
Fresh water, not
salt
water,
is
the
enemy
of
out the deck planking and opens up the seams.
and checks
wood and gaps
in the
temperature
is
on the warmish
wooden
If
fresh water
in the joints
So
boats. is
is
the sun. which dries
allowed to
settle into
cracks
between wooden members, and
if
the
both can foster the growth and spread of rot-
side,
producing organisms. Sea water, on the other hand, inhibits these organisms, w hich cannot survive in the presence of
Wooden ships,
salt.
as a rule, almost alw ays rot
from the top
down, rather than from the bottom up.
The pow er of salt to preserve to the old shipbuilders.
huge amounts of
a
w ooden ship
They noted
salt to
that the
—
to ‘"pickle
Grand Banks
it,
in effect
—was well know n
fishing schooners,
which used
preserve their catches, lasted for years untouched by rot, so
conscientious shipwrights packed rock salt between the frames of new vessels under r
construction. to swell the
They
also instructed the crews to soak the deck twice a
day with
salt
water
deck planking and tighten the seams and to leave a residue of wood-preserving
salt.
“Wet her down in the
to
keep her dry.
w arm sun, shone
as
if it
the
mate
said:
w hen we w ere done, the deck, steaming
w ere new.
Then the skipper, having returned from his visit, noted that a light sailing breeze had come up, so he signaled the mate to pull the schooner to her anchor, and we made the deck
—
at least the
forward part
The procedure w as
this:
—
dirty all over again.
Take
the canvas cover off the ancient one-lung
make-and-
break donkey engine by the forward deckhouse, pour a dose of gasoline into the priming cup, choke the carburetor, crank the flywheel, curse, crank the flywheel again, curse again, prime the cylinder again, crank catch, adjust a valve or two,
handler to aim the nozzle at the chain as
mud as
possible,
comes
life)
to get
in the
yell at the fire-hose
as
much
honored passenger down
in the
hawsepipe
yell at the
get the engine to
ready to stow chain,
to clear
aw ay
yell at the gallev
hand
engage the anchor- winch clutch, curse the mud, curse the slippery chain, curse the
exhaust, yell at the. galley is
it
open the fire-hose feed valve,
chain locker (an accountant in real to
some more, curse some more,
cough through the dense, black exhaust,
hand
to
disengage the clutch,
yell at the
skipper that the chain
up and down. In the
meantime, the skipper and the cook
will
have put together a crew of happv
MANY CARGOES
55
—
They will have managed to get the job done, working front aft forward, with less cursing and yelling but with more grunting and sweating. “Okay, Mr. Mate,’ the skipper says, “break her free and let’s get the hell out of here. vacationers to raise the
sails.
hand
Yell at the galley
to
engage the winch clutch, curse the hose handler who’s been
paying more attention to the view than the ring reaches the hawsepipe, shut the schooner’s head to
jib to get
and
muddy chain,
lock the winch
down the donkey engine, “fish
fall off,
and
cat
lash one of the flukes to the rail), curse the leaking
it
the anchor
sails,
back the
to the
cathead
help sheet in the
the anchor (pull
’
when
from the donkey engine,
oil
tell
the cook she’s better at baking bread than coiling halyards, recoil the halyards, stow a few
odds and ends, report
The wind was of Burnt Coat
light
and
chance for Blue
to the skipper that the
schooner
is
squared away.
from the south-southwest, which meant we would be beating out
either broad-reaching or running
Hill Bay,’’ the skipper said,
up
into the bay.
“Looks
and the mate nodded.
“Chance,’’ pronounced by the down-easters with the English broad A,
word is,
for the ability to sail.
off the
wind
With a
—and go with the
fair
chance, a vessel can
tide or
like a fair
stem a foul one.
sail
With
tough going in a headwind, a driving sea, and perhaps a foul
tide.
A vessel
without auxiliary power, the schooner must stay put.
is
an old coasting
with sheets eased a
—that
hard chance, she faces
“No chance
1
'
is
just that:
with no chance, facing an
unfair wind or tide, or no wind,
is
man
looking for a chance-along in a dead calm trying to
was
say, “I
Head
off Dice
me up toward Fort
Castine and the tide was setting
would be strong enough
that
We
waiting for a chance-along.
to
overcome a
If
Point,’ he
foul tide
you should hear a coaster-
was waiting
make
for a fair
wind
running up East Penobscot Bav.
departed the harbor the hard way, tacking out of the channel to weather the Sheriff
Ledges, then headed off toward the northwest on a broad reach into Toothacher Bay. The
Mary' Day followed us out, but she towed with her yawlboat, sweating up her big bell
buoy rocking
in the swell off
Harbor
Island.
sails
by the
She squared away toward the
southeast.
The Mary Day was ger trade.
Launched
the
in
1
first
schooner in Maine to be built specifically for the passen-
962, she was designed by her
first
owner, Havilah Hawkins,
Sr.
now owned by Captain Steve Cobb), and constructed in South Bristol, Maine, by Harvey Carnage, who is so celebrated as a shipwright that another cruise schooner, which sails mostly in southern New England waters, was named after him. (she
is
Captain Havilah Hawkins business for twelve years
r
in the
with a start
bunks in a
—had
“With a
been
in the
windjammer
sold his two schooners, the 63-foot Stephen
Taber and
,
to look like a coasting
passengers in mind.
room
when he
to his friends
Wentworth and ordered a new one from Carnage. He designed the
the 76-foot Alice S.
Mary Day
— “Buds”
He provided
schooner but laid her out with the comfort of the
standing headroom in the cabins and sitting-up head-
(a not-inconsiderable
bunk with only
a foot or
fair
chance, a vessel
can
sail
with
sheets eased that
is,
wind
off the
— and go
with the tide or
convenience when you think about waking up
stein a foul one.'
two of clearance), even sloped the cabin
The Mary Day.
MAM
CARGOES
sides.
a
which made comfortable backrests
for passengers
on deck. But I fawkins was also
a great
believer in the rustic experience of the coasters, so he intentionally excluded running water
and other modern indulgences and avoided
Our skipper was cut from
all
the trappings of a gold-plated yacht.
same cloth. “A coasting schooner is a coasting schooner,”
the
he said. “The Mary Day may not have carried real cargo like this one, but at least she looks as
A Maine
she could have.
if
some
schooner shouldn’t be
all
gussied up like a yacht. Look at
Hot showers. Flush
of those vessels! They’re floating motels.
toilets.
Jesus,
what
9
t
a mess!
A
I)
with both topsails
fast schooner, especially
set,
roaring out on a broad reach into the Gulf of Maine.
and took on a 1920s frame
Nova
If
To many of the
quite a sight
you squinted your eyes
Grand Banks
Canadian border, with empty cans
Cargo: the great legitimizer.
Maty Day made
you could see her outward bound
of mind,
Scotia, with a hold full of salt for the bluenose
just this side of the
the
fleet
for
just right
Lunenburg,
or off to Lubec,
for a sardine plant.
surviving coastermen from the pre-World
War II days, a schooner isn’t a schooner unless it is carrying cargo. Even some of those who were born too late for commercial sail feel that way. A schooner that has been “dude schooner, a “skinboat to
make It’s
for gullible fools
and desperate
—
somehow suspect men who will do anything
converted to a yacht or to a passenger-carrying windjammer
is
a buck.
an interesting concept, especially
if
you consider that the cargoes of the coasting
schooners didn’t even come close to the romantic sort carried by deepwater
from Java, tea from Ceylon,
from the
Pribilofs, ivory
No spices
from the Gold Coast.
The Maine coasters carried very unromantic cargoes, messy stuff that most part was ignored by the rest of the world. Coal, coke, lumber, stone, ice, salt,
Nothing for the
seal pelts
sail.
like that.
pulpwood, lime, dried another, which
fish, bait,
A schooner might carry coal on one trip and
hay.
meant the hold had
before the latter could be stowed.
to It
be cleaned of the
was a
sail.
coast, carrying
Bay
dirt of the
in
Maine waters during the
last
to the
paper
former
years of
coasters, relatively small vessels, operated mostly along the
pulpwood
and general supplies
and
on
dirty business.
There were three tvpes of coasting vessel
commercial
grit, dust,
salt
factories,
cordwood
to the lime kilns in
Maine
Rockland,
Communities with no railroad service and poor roads.
to the isolated
Boston coasters, medium-size schooners, traded between Boston and the Maine coast •
t
with such cargoes as lumber, stone, lime, and hay to the westward and coal, coke, and for the
salt
fishermen to the eastward. The third type, simply known as schooners or coasters,
were large vessels sailing anywhere on the eastern seaboard
—
to
New
York, the Chesa-
peake. the Carolinas, even the Caribbean. Their outward-bound cargoes were typically ice,
lumber, and stone: they would return with southern lumber (hard pine, oak, cypress),
coal,
and
salt.
Our schooner and the Mary Day. if time could be turned back, would be bay or, at the most, Boston coasters. They weren’t large enough to trade successfully much beyond Massachusetts. In fact, there isn’t a schooner today in the entire windjammer fleet that 58
A PASSAGE IX TIME
The
Victory Chimes, im»w the
/jiTni iiiu
fiiffoct,
stepping along
with a “good chance." Relatively slow in comparison to the rest of the fleet,
needs a good breeze her going.
she
to
keep
The three-masted ram schooner Domino
could.
Effect , ex-Victory Chimes., carrying
passengers out of Rockland, originally from the Chesapeake Bay, theoretically has had the capacity for bigger-time coasting, but she
where she
is
a slow, logy vessel that takes forever to get
going and just as long to return.
But every once cargo under
is
in a while
and want
sail
someone
to
will get all
worked up about the romance
do something about
crew, load a cargo of something and take
it
it.
Build a
wooden
somewhere, and prove
to all the troglodytic
cynics in the waterfront saloons that nineteenth-century economics can twentieth.
All
you have
to
do
is
of carrying
ship, get together a
work
in the
believe.
The year was 1979 and the second great fuel
crisis of
the decade
was
in full swing.
Motorists waited in line for hours for the privilege of buying a couple of gallons of gasoline at
whatever outrageous price the suppliers
felt like
charging. Service-station workers were
no longer known as Bob or Dick or Sid; they had become Misters overnight, with more
power of
in the
community than
commerce. Hardware
the
stores
manager
of the
bank or the president
of the
chamber
were stripped of woodstoves, chain saws, bucking horses,
mauls by those who feared a slow, agonizing death by creeping hoarfrost
and
splitting
the
coming winter.
in
Apocalvptic futurists were talking about the paralysis of modern
society, survival of the fittest, terror in the streets,
doomsday.
Alternative sources of
energy (anything but petroleum) were the thing; R-factors and down-filled fireside reading bags became hot topics of conversation.
Edward Arthur
Ackerman pounded his chest and declared that he was a “merchant-adventurer, the first of a new breed of real men who would spit in the eyes of the OPEC cartel and revive sail-powered cargo schooners, which had been dead for more than thirty years. Before a crowd of 2,500 cheering spectators, he rode his brandnew two-masted cargo schooner, the John F. Leavitt., down the launching ways at Roy (“Ned”')
Wallace’s shipyard in Thomaston. She was the
first
of the type to be built on the coast
Ackerman was the toast of the town, the coast, the nation. He didn’t mind telling anyone who was willing to listen that he not only knew what he was doing but knew more about it than anyone who came before and expected to come after. Here of Maine since
1
938.
he was on the deck of his
who still thought
there
—positioned —
poised
own
coasting schooner, surrounded by a
was a future
to
bunch
for internal -combustion engines,
become the King of Cargo. He was
of ignoramuses
and he was
so sure the clock
perfectly
had been
turned back that he already had the plans for a larger, three-masted schooner on the
drawing board.
Ned Ackerman had no previous experience in the schooner business beyond a modest amount of pleasure sailing. A college teacher, a graduate student in medieval English, he had picked up a copy of Wake of the Coasters by John E. Leavitt in the early 1970s, and, by the time he finished reading it for the third time, had come under the thrall of humping cargo from port to port. Yes, there had been a mild energy
60
A PASSAGE
l.\
TIME
crisis in
1973, and yes, there
1
had been cautious speculation about
the viability of commercial
sail,
.
but nobody,
including Ackerman, believed the economics were such that trailer trucks, railroad cars,
and motor
vessels
were
in
any danger of serious competition from schooners.
All
Ackerman wanted was a stout vessel of his own to fill any niches that might exist: a little lumber here, some stone there, and a few passengers to pick up the slack. le wasn’t the only one who was looking in that direction. The Apprenticeshop of the Bath Marine Museum (now the Maine Maritime Museum) had built a replica of a Tancook whaler, a small schooner formerly used in the Nova Scotia fishing industry, and was using it to carry cordwood from the mainland to some of the islands that were long on softwood (not so good for wood-heating purposes) and short on hardwood (great for wood heat). And down in Massachusetts, a couple of entrepreneurs had built a -iO-foot scow sloop and were carrying general cargo from New Bedford to Martha s Vineyard and back. I
Things might have worked out
for
Ackerman, but between the time he contracted with
Roy Wallace for the construction of his schooner and when she was second “free
oil crisis
energy
of the 1970s struck,
—wind,
solar,
the alternative-energy
and anyone who was doing anything
geothermal,
etc.
movement. Every
together enough gas for the trip was
actually launched, the that involved
—became a national media hero, the
journalist
toast of
and commentator who could cadge
making the pilgrimage downcast
to
Thomaston to {tut
The brand-new schooner John
down
Leavitt slides the launching at
Wallace’s
I
ways
in
Thomaston in A few months
l
( )7‘).
later
on her maiden voyage she w as abandoned at sea
during a
winter storm.
MAM
CARGOES
6
compared Ackerman with the shipmasters and shipowners
together stories that inevitably of the
Great Age of
He was on
Sail.
television, the radio, in
magazines and newspapers;
he and his schooner were stars of at least two ongoing documentary movies.
The pressure
of the public eye
is
a powerful force.
Overnight a quiet operation that
might or might not work became a high-powered David-beats-Goliath deal that not onlv
was going
to
had to work. The alternative-energy gurus applauded. People The world was ready for it. Ned Ackerman, the medievalist-turned-
work,
magazine loved
it.
it
romantic, became the romantic-turned-media-star with a streak of hubris that would,
in
a few short months, lead to his public humiliation. r
The nub
of the matter
of the cruise schooners,
is
Ned Ackerman w as
that
which w ere similar
to the
inexperienced. Unlike the skippers
John
F. Leavitt
except
in
the nature of
the cargo they carried, he didn’t have to have a Goast Guard-issued license.
w as designed and constructed
to
come
just barely
The
vessel
behind the threshold of Goast Guard
regulation and therefore not be subject to stringent rules about ballasting, bulkheads,
and manning. Even
Ackerman had been subject to Goast Guard licensing requirements, he would not have been allowed to sit down and take the exam because he loading,
didn
t
if
have the requisite sea time. Yet the rules had been circumvented in such a way that
Ackerman could simply say he was a schoonerman and he would be result
was
The
tragic in almost all respects.
The Leavitt was launched during the
fall.
summer of 1979, and the vessel was prepared for sea w ith the media yelling, “Go, Ned, go! and Ned Ted Williams at the plate Ackerman secured a cargo for
in the
In the press of publicity
strutting the quarterdeck like
from Boston
Haiti
a schoonerman.
in
—
—
December.
was the worst possible time of year
It
for a coasting
passage under any circumstance, never mind in a new, untried schooner under the
command I
of
an inexperienced
sailor.
he outcome was predictable.
After a series of minor disasters en route to Quincy,
Massachusetts, where the cargo was loaded (some say overloaded), the schooner ran into
an Atlantic w inter storm east of New' York certain
amount
of
damage, had
to
just after
Christmas, and, after suffering a
be abandoned. Thanks to'the work of the Air National
Guard, which helicoptered the crew
off the vessel, there
w as no
There are those who said the Leavitt would not have been
loss of life.
lost if
she had been in the
hands of one of the capable skippers of the old days, such as Captain Zeb Tilton of th e Alice S.
Wentworth or Captain Parker Hall of the George Cress. There were others who said
neither Tilton nor Hall
schooner
in the winter.
had been under
"I
sail
and had
so foolhardv as to go offshore in a coasting
But most of the talk revolved around the dashing of a dream that
so close to realization.
A
romantic had tried
failed tragicallv before the first
which tw
A PASSAGE IX TIME
isted
from
side to side
to revive coastal cargo-carrying
shipment had been delivered.
m glad there are no eels trying to follow' us today,’
stern at the wake,
62
would have been
the skipper said, pointing over die
behind us. “They d break
their backs!
The cook had taken the wheel
He was
so the skipper could concentrate
talking to various schooners along the coast about the immediate weather
conditions and the prognosis for the future. There was
where
on the radiotelephone.
be the next night, when the
to
much back-and-forthing about
NOAA weather forecasters predicted high winds and
rain from the edge of a tropical storm. There were the popular foulweather harbors, of
course
—Gilkey on
Islesboro, Burnt
Coat on Swans Island. Pulpit on North Haven
—but
there were also several harbors favored by the individual skippers, virtually their
personal harbors of refuge. lest
other vessels get there
The passengers were
all
They were loath to discuss them out loud on the radio waves first and lay claim to the best holding ground. over the place, settling in to the rhythm of the day. There was
the usual cluster around the skipper
are called the Barges?
’’) .
.
of the fore cabinhouse, side of the vessel, full
.
own
and
a
u (
Did I ever tell you why the two rocks
bunch down
in the galley, a pair
some reading, some watching
off Ship Island
playing cards in the lee
the procession of islands on either
and some helping the mate, who had
his
Tom
Sawyer operation going
bore.
The mate
carried a notebook in the back pocket of his dungarees for keeping track of
had
the endless chores that
to
be done. Grease the stuffing box
the topsail sheet, fix the boarding-ladder socket, varnish the thing.
main
yawlboat, overhaul
skylight, that type of
Anyone who was idle and didn’t want to remain in that condition could ask the mate
for a project.
He would
and
assess the abilities
was
sort of
fun, but
notebook out of
pull his
and
his pocket,
sincerity of the questioner,
if
you promise 1
11
to
you have
let
do
and keep from
right
it
it
for a while, look
and sav something
the vast bulk of Mount Desert to starboard.
and seals in her wake as we headed Bartlett Island
and Mount
in
farmhouse, barns, outbuildings, II
s
so
I
much
getting the dirty polish on the
Hill Bay,
Tinker Island to port and
The schooner picked up dolphins off her bows
toward Bartlett Narrows, a narrow passage between
Desert. There
which could only be described
World War
“Well,
like, it
up
it.
were sailing with a quartering breeze up Blue
Island,
study
keeping the job of polishing the brass binnacle to myself because
woodwork,
We
in the
was
we passed Hardwood
a rush to the rail as
as paradise on the coast of Maine.
fields,
orchards
landing barge with a ramp
at the
Dock, boathouse,
— a gentleman’s farm served by an old
bow and
a tiny pilothouse perched on the
stern.
We
lost
much
of our
wind
in the
narrows, just ghosting along surrounded by dark
spruces, green-black in the sun, with crows overhead
and twisting in the
sky. Fish broke in the channel
submerged rocks, and the shores were penetrated the heart of something.
so close
and the ubiquitous
and
so silent that
it
seemed
A
as
if
of half-
we had
Not darkness, that was for sure, but a primeval
The rudderpost groaned
bearings, the water hissed along the sides of the hull, a black crow
woods.
wheeling
and kelp waved from the edges
presence that had never changed and would be everlasting. its
gulls
cawed deep
in
in the
passenger reached for his camera.
“Don’t bother,’’
his
companion
said.
“Something
like this can’t
be captured on
film.
MANY CARGOES
63
64
I
PASSAGE
l\
TIME
"Fish broke in (he channel
and kelp waved from
(he
edges of half-submerged rocks. ...The rudderpost
groaned
in its hearings, the
water hissed along (he sides
crow cawed deep in the woods.” The Mercantile. of (he hull, a black
—
V
The Turn of the Tide
Every age has
its
survivors which linger on after
their contemporaries
have gone.
— Robert Simper, East Coast Sail
W
e
turned west at the top of Bartlett Island, threading our
way below Newbury Neck
and above Long Island, which dominates the upper half of Blue at
560
feet the
major landmark on the peninsula bearing
its
I
lill
name
Bay. Blue Hill
— was
straight ahead.
Viewed from where we were, broad-reaching with a rush of foam toward Blue
and the town
of Blue Hill at
head, the primary colors were not at
its
dark green of the conifers and the
light
many
I
lill
blue but rather the
its
sides, has not
on the coast, a good part of the local yacht-club
—was getting underway en masse
middle of a racecourse
is
been
in
fleet
for
— Blue
Hill has a sizable
an afternoon
race.
A
prettiest
summer
schooner
in the
not unlike the proverbial bull in a china shop.
"Kollegewidgwok Yacht Club!
the skipper
harrumphed, spinning the wheel and
bringing the schooner through the eye of the wind onto the other tack.
German
hill,
decades since the old-growth forest was stripped away.
As the skipper brought us into the outer reaches of Blue Hill Harbor, one of the
community
Harbor
green of the hardwoods. The bluish cast of the
said to have been caused by great stands of blue spruce on
evidence for the
all
itself
“Sounds
like a
university for Chinese-Indians.
Like most of those craft, freighters,
who make
their living
from the sea on schooners, tugboats, fishing
and tankers, the skipper was contemptuous
of yachts
and yacht clubs and
yachtsmen. His attitude was a reflection of the division between those who work with their
hands and those who don it
more
bluntly.
It
was
t,
or between
‘‘real sailors
and
as the skipper
idlers,
would put
also a legacy of that time, fifty to seventy-five years ago,
when
the
cargo trade was dying and schoonermen found themselves without work. Most went off in
other directions
retired.
— motor
— and the old-timers now known as the service sector—they became paid hands
vessels
A few went into what is
and
fishing boats, perhaps
on private yachts and professional boatmen It
was quite a comedown
proud
of their
for skippers
independence.
I
real
Flags and pennants living,
along the lee
summer people. schooners, who had been
yacht clubs, employed by
and mates of coasting
he lucky sailors
who managed
to
hang on
to berths in the
rail,
yaw boat snug I
at
water easks
in the
davits, the Stephen
ruber romps happily along on a reach.
few schooners
still
thinking them
damned
in operation
looked
down
who worked
fools
for
former companions,
their noses at their
damned-fool “rusticators” and “summer
complaints.
Our skipper’s attitude was paradoxical. His living had depended for years on summer people, since most paying passengers in the schooner fleet were “from away,” “Straps
character of the visitors. hot for a while. Over in
Camden,
buy ice-cream cones and sumably But
eat their ice
lumber
in a
or “strap-hangers
tourists are
them while
eat
cream
in the skipper’s
he was,
mind, he was
still
(On
strolling
to a
“cone-eaters,” as so
around the
village.
riders
—were
many of them
The
locals pre-
own homes.)
bunch of yachtsmen
in
Breton red trousers
wore bright blue running shoes with the
his feet the skipper
lettering
on the
sides. “I don’t
run or jog, and
look like a damned-fool yachtsman either,’ he said.)
The Maine windjammer trade began seeing their final days. particularly hard,
and
all
in the
1930s as the
sectors of the
commerce meant few
cargo coasters were
last of the
was the heart of the Great Depression, which
It
cargoes,
increasing competition of trucks
Maine
hit
— the farms, the sawmills, the canneries, — were having a time surviving.
economy
the shipyards, the boatshops, the shoe factories Little
subway
—animate passengers instead of inanimate stone or
name of the manufacturer in oversize white t
for
involved in the cargo-schooner tradition, since
—and was not bowing and scraping shoes.
known as
— slang
in dishes, in the privacy of their
way, carrying cargo
and white boat don
the
down-east term for out-of-staters. (Impolite terms come and go, depending on the
polite
I
the
difficult
and when that condition was coupled with the
and
ever-
railroads, the demise of the coasting schooner
was
ensured. At the beginning of the decade, for example, there were fewer than 100 small
schooners gone.
still
working the
New England coast. By World War life
was threatened
affected by the vessels passing really gave a
hat
their
but a handful were
They went so fast that the coast was just about empty of working sailing craft before
anyone noticed that a way of
\\
II, all
happened
—not that anyone other than the
sailors
damn.
to all those schooners over the years?
Many were
converted to power,
masts pulled or sawed off at the deck, pilothouses built on the afterdeck.
became
freighters, sardine carriers, fishing draggers,
Others had their
rigs cut
down and were used
tugboats. Those that weren
wharves
in the
t
so lucky were laid
and general-purpose
as barges hauled
up
hope that business would improve
in
They
lighters.
around the coasts by
back coves and alongside
at a future date; they
derelict
were taken
to the
breakers yards to be stripped of salvageable gear and then broken up; they were driven
ashore and burned where they
lay.
Quite a few were converted to other purposes.
Some
of those purposes were bizarre.
The three-masted stone schooner Annie B. Mitchell became a lobster storage pound. The William Bisbee w as done over as a pirate ship for the Florida tourist trade. The C.II. Edwards was given a two-story house on her main deck and became a machine shop on 68
A PASSAGE IX TIME
the Portland
w aterfront. The Larolta w as disguised
a? the Arbella. the shij that brought >
over the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and tercentenary celebration.
The Fannie
F.
became
the centerpiece for a
Hall was transformed into the Mayflower of
manner of a dress rehearsal for the full-scale replica built in England in the 1950s for that port. The Regina w as hauled ashore to be set up on blocks: she became author Booth rarkington s w orkshop and private museum in Kennebunkport. The M.M.
Plymouth,
in the
Hamilton, a schooner that had been converted from the
last of the
Chebeague stone sloops. THE
Tl
R\ OF THE TIDE 69
Blue
Hill
Blue Hill
Harbor. itself is in
the right background.
The the
faint outline of
Camden
Hills,
the far side of scot Bay.
on
Penob-
can be seen
on the horizon.
was brought
Duxbury, Massachusetts, and turned
to
The Janies
research into marine borers.
Onset, Massachusetts.
The
L.
into a laboratory for scientific
Malay was transformed
tearoom
into a
in
goes on and on. All of these vessels were given the short-
list
term treatment: hard use, no maintenance, zero respect.
was
It
a sad era for the coasting schooners, as
it
was
fishermen and pilotboats. The vessels were disappearing so
thoroughly that tion,
WPA ran
American Merchant Marine Survey, a
Historic
document as many the
as possible before they
out of money).
It
were gone completely
was obvious
its
salvation, the schooner fleet
special
(or, as
it
program
someone came up with
would be merely
a
to
turned out, until
anyone who took even a cursory look
to
the situation that in a decade or two at the outside, unless
plan for
being bowdlerized so
fast or
1936 the federal government, through the Works Progress Administra-
in
up the
set
had served as
for their sisters that
at
a creative
memory.
o
Someone did come along
— a fellow named Frank Swift, who
in the
mid-1980s was
living
camp he had built on Toddy Pond in East Orland, Maine. File Depression swing. Swift may not have been as bad off as the hoboes riding the rails and
with his wife in a
was
in full
the urban unemployed selling apples and pencils on the street
workers scrabbling for oranges to pick and weeds existence
common
and trying a
little
The notion
in
of this
and a
of having a career
Getting by
little
make ends
of that to
—going
to
work
—grabbing
to sell to the tourists
meet.
with a future
especially those living in the rural areas
—was
and on
alien to
most
the down-east
everv meager, short-term opportunity that presented
— was the rule rather than the exception.
Digging clams,
itself
berries,
at a job
farm
the itinerant
but he was living the marginal
Maine during the Depression, making jewelry
Maine residents of the time, coast.
to hoe,
and
packing sardines, selling
gifts
and antiques
felling trees,
to the tourists
raking blue-
— whatever
took to
it
keep heat in the house and food on the table. “I
had
to find
pulpwood
something
vessels
to provide for
unloading
in
my family,
Bucksport, and
I
Swift was to say later. ‘T had seen
wondered why I couldn’t
instead of carrying freight, carry people on Maine-coast cruises.
concept, though not totallv original. Ever since the locals have been entertaining
them on
summer people
It
get a vessel
was an
started
and
interesting
coming to Maine,
the water in one fashion or another.
Nobody knows when the first Maine-coast fisherman took the first visitor out in
his
dory
or sloopboat, but by the beginning of the twentieth century, there were plenty of coastal
towns
— Bar
1
larbor.
Boothbay Harbor, Rockland, Portland, and others
— where
could hire a boat and a skipper for yourself or join other passengers on a daysail. of the big hotels, like the
Samoset
in
you
Many
Rockland, had arrangements with owners of
Friendship sloops and other types of traditional working
craft,
who would
entertain
vacationers with cruises on the bays, picnics on the islands, and fishing expeditions on the
cod and haddock grounds.
In the
Essex. Massachusetts, in 1820.
70
A PASSAGE
l\
TIME
1890s, for example, the ancient pinky Susan, built
was available
in
South
in
Bristol to rusticators looking for
the “authenticity” of the
Maine way of living. For the modest price of admission, they got
a chance to see the coast through the eyes of a
shamelessly embellished and therefore
902
in 1
to
in
the
more amusing
residents
and
tourists.
—often was
in a dialect that
He was born
at sea, but not in the coasting-schooner fleet.
Saranac Lake, New York, an Adirondack town with
summer
—
stories
someone from Philadelphia, New York, or Boston.
altogether charming to the ears of
Frank Swift had experience
all
working waterman and hear
its
own tradition of catering
But Swift had a saltwater frame of mind, acquired in
part from studying the contents of a sea chest that had belonged to his great-uncle, a
harpooner on a whaling ship
and
fast sailing in the trade
in the
1840s. With typical boyhood visions of exotic ports
winds, he enrolled as a cadet aboard the schoolship Newport
Navy barkentine that served as New York
a former U.S.
,
merchant-marine
state’s floating
academy. Subsequently he served as an able-bodied seaman, then quartermaster, aboard the Barber Line
s
steamship Elkton which carried case ,
oil to
I
long Kong, I lawaii, and the
Philippines.
The
sea
may have been
in his blood,
but Frank Swift had an
1918-19, he studied silversmithing and jewelrymaking
artistic
bent as well. In
at a craft school in Milton,
New
Hyde Park, New York, where he crafted pewter reproductions and jewelry. In the 1 920s, he directed plays at a community theater in Poughkeepsie, New York, and in the summers worked as a counselor at a boys’ camp in South Waterford, Maine, where he taught stagecraft. Eventually he moved to
York, and afterward took a job at the Val-Kil Forge
in
Maine permanently.
The genesis of Frank his experiences as a trips,
Swift
s
idea to take passengers on
summer-camp
windjammer cruises came from
counselor. Occasionally the boys
and one of their favorites was a few days under
sail
,
mouth
The Cress
of the Penobscot River.
,
field
on the coast aboard the schooner
George Cress skippered by Captain Parker Hall of Sandy Point, the
would go on
originally
named
just
below Bucksport
the Peter Mehr/iof.
at
was
Hudson River brick schooner of 1885. According to legend, she South Street (New York City) crimp a broker who specialized in
a heavily built 79-foot
was renamed
after a
—
procuring seamen, willing or otherwise, for the coasting-schooner
among the darker elements of the shipping business and were notorious shy of the antislavery laws. They would get sailors in hock and then
shipowners looking for a crew; get
sailors
drunk, haul them,
still
In short, the George Cress
remaining small schooners
commercial
sail.
was a still
and polished and treated
1
lere
sell
their services to
rest;
and, generally
out on the waterfront.)
salty old vessel with a colorful history, typical of the
tramping along the coast during the
The camp boys and
kicking around the coast.
who were down and
for operating just
inebriated, aboard ship,
depart with their advance wages, and take a promissory note for the speaking, prey unmercifully on those
(Crimps were
fleet.
was a
their counselors loved the carefree
vessel that, unlike a yacht, didn’t
like a sacred icon.
have
last life
to
days of
on board, be coddled
The boys brought their own bedding, just
like
THE TURN OF THE TIDE 71
72
A PASSAGE IX TIME
the real coastermen, drank water out of a cask, dove into the cold waters of the bay from the bowsprit
and
off the taffrail,
They had
of Captain Parker.
Captain Parker equal in fame in
and fished and skylarked and
a grand old time.
Hall was at the time the most famous skipper on the Maine coast,
J.
of
all
New England
to
Captain Zeb Tilton of Martha
Originally from Massachusetts, Captain Hall was born,
War. (Some obituaries
listed his
his birthdate in 1862.)
known
and wide
to sail
as the
without a crew
it
He came
“Lone Mariner
to
s
Vineyard.
was thought, during the
Civil
—
when he died in 1948 which, if true, Maine when he was middle-aged and was
age as eighty-six
would put far
listened to the wild yarns
New England
of the
Coast,
— even though the normal complement on a
George Cress would have been two or three. (He took
to sailing
1 ’
since he preferred
vessel the size of the
singlehanded early in his
A stutterer, Captain Hall was a tough old buzzard who could do the work of five normal men and was as proficient at seamanship and seat-of-the-pants navigation as anyone who had ever stood behind the
career after he had been attacked and robbed by his crew.)
wheel of a schooner.
“He was a rugged individualist,” wrote John Leavitt, “who liked to violate every ancient superstition of the seafaring profession.
flipped over on their backs,
Blue paint he used in profusion, hatch covers
and he whistled, stuck knives
seagoing convention with complete abandon.
I
in masts,
and otherwise flouted
asked him once how he managed to
set a
mainsail on those larger schooners with no hoisting engine and he replied, 'C-c-c-cal late I
w-w-w-was
_
a
“jest
j
j
m-m-m-mite
have been nearing sixty or more
much vounger man. He was
not
hef-hef-heftier than th
at the tall,
m-m-mains
He must
1.
time but he had the strength and agility of a
perhaps 5
feet
8 inches or even a
but he
little less,
was so wide shouldered that he almost had to turn sideways to go through an average door, and he always did
pounds but After
so going
down
a
companionway. He probably weighed
Frank Swift
the mid- 1930s,
left
when
the boys’ camp, he remained friends with Captain Hall,
Swift
was struck by the inspiration
all
and
all
it
those city folk just dying to get
expect a
and paving stone out
man who had
to
away from
it
all
spent his entire
of Vinalhaven to snicker
ditional coasting-schooner cargo for a
salesmen. There
But Captain
1
lall
is
and savor
bunch
life
sailing
a taste of the real Maine,
if
of
A PASSAGE IN TIME
Frank
Swift’s idea t
if
he had.
done
to put
would soon enough be gone.
man was approaching the matter with totally may have been a great seaman, but he was t
tra-
and life-insurance
something wasn
Not to sav that either
businessman. Frank Swift wasn
work?
boxboards out of Bangor
of rusticating secretaries
was no dope. He was well aware that
Captain Parker Hall
it
and laugh over the idea of trading
no way to tell what would have become
the remaining schooners to use, they
74
in
to organize passenger cruises
those skippers, hands, and cooks on the beach without jobs. Wouldn’t
You would
and
Sandy Point and discussed the idea with the not make sense? There were all those schooners, laid up and wasting away,
aboard coasting schooners, he went over
and
200
was mostly bone and muscle.
it
captain. Did
well over
out to save the world: he
altruistic motives.
also a successful
was simply trying
to
keep his
—
family’s
life
would put
idle
in fact. Hall
amenable
We
The
latter
summer people and
tourists
was
easier than
had been the day
it
it
would have been
the coasting-schooner model,
respond very slowly to
on her
sails
that
was one that might provide that could
may and many of the
make
and a skipper
locate a schooner
not seem so important, but old-timers did
of the operation. Then, as
Bay
Hill
before,
if
a
—such an
now, the personality
it
was
was what
is
enough
still
known
to
make
tacking considerably
Our schooner,
like
most
built
on
She would
to sailors as slow in stays.
rudder when we tacked unless there was considerable pressure
die
from the wind. To counteract
boom down
Not
into the rising southwesterly breeze.
the winds were light.
if
skipper would bear off slightly to could, then
was a scheme
as important as the condition of the vessel.
worked our way hack down Blue
as strong as
—
this
was a scheme
this
requirement
would work against the success
of the skipper
all, it
was so enthusiastic he helped Swift
to the endeavor.
skipper resented attitude
Perhaps
schooners and sailors to work, but above
income and then some. Hall told Swift that
a decent
money;
together in a time of economic hardship.
make
this
sure the sails were
we would
and gain
all
tack, the
the speed he
assisted
by a few
The skipper would then announce, "Hard alee!
passengers, would stand by the jibsheets.
and throw the helm down quickly, spinning
The schooner would slowly
full
and the mate,
‘Ready about!
the deck,
a barker at a carnival spinning the
tendency, just before
Wheel
the spokes of the wheel in long strokes like
of F ortune.
—ponderously
it
seemed
at critical
times
—pivot on the
centerboard, the bowsprit describing an arc on the horizon, the stern swinging a similar arc
aft.
As the bow came up into the wind, the
the mate’s gang
new
tack, they
would
would trim
in the
it
was trimmed
if
necessary and work their
right, secure
Should the vessel jibsheet after the
The mate and
it.
way
some circumstances
especially difficult
in the breeze,
how kept swinging over onto the and, when the skipper nodded that
his party
to the foresail
would then trim the
stavsail sheet
and main.
onto the other tack, the mate would not cast off the
passed the eye of the wind. The
restrained on the “wrong” side over. In
shuddering and shaking
other sheet of the jib
resist falling off
bow
sails
cast off the jibsheet; then, as the
—and the pressure
jib
of the
would therefore be backed
wind on
it
would
force the
bow
—such as when the direction of the seas might make tacking
— the mate might back the
bow an
staysail as well to give the
extra
jolt
of wind.
when Murphy s Law takes over and everything tacking properly. The vessel might “miss stays" come up
There are those times, thankfully seems to conspire against
—
toward the eye of the wind,
come up
into the
ill
hesitate,
and
fall
right
wind and become locked there
the sheets slashing hack
w
rare,
and
bring her around, but
again. (In an emergency,
il
forth.
in the
hack onto the original tack
“in irons,” the sails
In the latter situation,
— or
shimmying and
quickly backing the headsails
former, the only recourse
is
to build
the vessel has an auxiliary engine or
if
up speed and
the yawlboat
THE
77
is
RX OF THE
try
rigged
TIDE
76
A PASSAGE IN TIME
.
and ready
to go. the skipper
Missing stays
room
plenty of
power.)
ith
not a big deal out in the open water w
is
to
can drive her around w
maneuver, but
it s
ith
no other vessels around and
A
serious business in confined quarters.
passenger
schooner once missed stays on an ebbing tide at the mouth of Pulpit Harbor as she was
down on the ledge, w here she remained pinned leaving her high and dry. They got her off later without much damage,
trying to clear Pulpit Rock. She was forced
went out.
as the tide
but the embarrassment to the skipper and crew as they sat on the ledge w aiting for the next
high tide to float their schooner free was acute, to say the
least.
Rut tacking ship and missing stays and trimming sheets were of concern only to the crew
and the handful of guests who cared about the working of our schooner.
Most of the
passengers w ere along for the beautiful vistas and the penetrating w armth of the sun. and they w ere getting plenty of both
—
hills,
headlands, islands, mountains, half-tide ledges
with foaming green-blue waves surging around them, lobsterboats. the occasional
we reached
pleasure boat. As
the lower end of the bay. a schooner
Passage, a long pennant streaming from her
emerged from Casco
main topmast and an American
flag at the
leech of her mainsail.
"That of A., of
bound
for everyplace,
smoke mushroomed over
later,
the skipper said, taking off his cap the side of the
the report of her saluting
Evans and
cannon w hacked the
"Someday
I've got to get
and waving
trailed off astern.
side of our hull.
breech-loading swivel mounted on her starboard
One
L
the Isaac H. Evans. Captain Eddie Glaser, out of Rockland. Maine, the
s
rail.
It
"Damn,
A
was
A
it.
.S.
puff
few seconds a
little
brass
the skipper said.
one of those things."
of the passengers pointed out that the
Evans over there and our schooner over here
were living museums of maritime history. "It s
better than that,
the skipper said. ‘‘These schooners are alive because they
Museums can't keep schooners in stock because Museums are death to wooden schooners.
just like in the old days.
They
re quickly gone.
Though view
.
characteristically bluntly stated, there
was a certain
Following the death of commercial cargo-carrying
museums, and museums
them on
exhibit.
A
crevice.
The
moored next
rot to a
they’re dead.
validity to the skipper’s
sail,
scores of established
specially established for the purpose, acquired vessels
few were hauled out on land, where they baked
planks shrank and their seams opened and rainwater worked
and decay progressed
work
its
in the
sun and their
wav
into every
left in
the water,
devious
exponentially. Most vessels w ere
and put
wharf or quay. and. though the deterioration was slow er.
it
nevertheless
took place. Just as idle
The Isaac
an unheated, unoccupied, unused house w
w ooden ship w
ill
deteriorate faster than she
of the institution in charge of her well-being.
crew
will
ill
would
Though it
be able to minimize the decay considerably
with the l SS Constitution. "Old Ironsides,
museums do
in
quickly
fall to
rack and ruin, an
sailed, despite the best intentions
if is
true that a full-time shipkeeping
— witness the U.S.
Xavv’s success
Charlestown. Massachusetts
—most
not have the resources to provide such a crew
II.
anchor
in a
awning
is
Tl
R \ OF THE TIDE 77
at
An
rigged under
her forward boom, and the yawlboat has
come
alongside the boarding
ladder to take passengers ashore.
THE
Evans
calm.
“More schooners have survived skipper said, “and that’s a
as
working
vessels than as
museum
exhibits,” the
fact.
Consider, for example, the schooner Bowdoin one of the current stalwarts of the Maine ,
coast.
Launched in
1921
at the
Hodgdon Brothers yard in East Boothbay,
planked and framed of the very best white oak
to
she was heavily
withstand the worst conditions of the
northern seas, as she was designed on a fishing-schooner model specifically for Arctic exploration.
Under the capable hands
Donald
of her owner, Admiral
MacMillan, she
B.
proved her superiority in twenty-six voyages and almost 300,000 miles in some of the most hostile waters of the world, surviving innumerable gales, brushes with ice,
In 1959, his career ended,
Museum
MacMillan donated the Bowdoin
and groundings.
to the Mystic Seaport
The vessel was in remarkably good condition at the time, considering her experiences, and MacMillan expected she would stay that way. Eight years later, she was a mess. The museum’s priority at the time was the development of its site, not the care of its vessels, and the Bowdoin went downhill rapidly in the absence of even in Connecticut.
She deteriorated so quickly,
routine maintenance.
and
exhibition
became
laid up,
in fact, that she
which made matters worse.
was taken out
Covered with a
of
plastic tarp, she
a greenhouse for rot.
Admiral MacMillan,
to put
it
mildly,
was
He encouraged the formation of museum and bring her back to Maine.
exercised.
an association to take over the schooner from the After years of hard
Association
work and herculean fund-raising
managed
to her renaissance
Some
to return her to sailing condition.
Schooner Bowdoin
efforts, the
of those
who
contributed
were passenger schoonermen Captain Jim Sharp, formerly of the
Adventure and Captain John Nugent of the day schooner Olad out of Camden, and ,
boatbuilder Jim Stevens of the venerable
yard where the Bowdoin was originally
Maritime Academy
Frank
in Castine, the
Goudy & Stevens
built.
Bowdoin
shipyard, located next to the
Today, operated by the cadets because she
lives
Swift’s first season in the passenger-schooner trade
is
at the
Maine
used.
was the summer of 1936. Even
Admiral Donald MacMillan’s old arctic schooner
Boudoin underway
in
Eggemoggin Reach.
Launched
in
1921 in
though there was a rather large supply of schooners on the market that year, because the
demand
— and therefore the asking price of a
lower, Swift couldn’t afford to
buy a schooner
Captain Parker Hall had suggested that Swift
fully
found vessel
—was low and getting
outright. Actually, even test
if
he could have,
the waters modestly, rather than rush
an innovative business that might prove to be a poor investment. The ideal situation,
into
East Boothbay, retired in 1959 to
become
a
ship, she
museum was
later
restored to sailing
condition and now
is
a training vessel for the
Maine .Maritime
Academy
in Castine.
Captain Hall thought, was to charter a schooner for a single season. The capital outlay
would be minimal, and Swift would be better able condition, one that
hadn
t
one of the smaller schooners on the Maine coast
78
new venture into unknown territory.
A PASSAGE IN TIME
still
in
working
been laid up for a long period and therefore would not need
more upgrading than a single season demanded. Swift found what he was looking for in the centerboarder Mabel, for a
was
to find a vessel that
— and
Built in
1881
at
54
feet
and 37 tons
for that reason the perfect vessel in Milbridge,
Maine, she had seen
THE
77
RX OF THE
TIDl
7 ()
—
—
thousands of tons of cargo
bricks,
cordwood, hay,
lumber
coal,
—pass through her
hatches, hut she was in remarkably good structural condition and was available for the season.
It
much
wasn’t
of a job to clear her hold
and build rudimentary cabins
for eight
passengers, and to rig her properly as a sailing vessel. Captain William Shepard, one of the veteran coastermen of Deer
and the Mabel was brought
to
Isle,
was signed on
as skipper, his wife
was hired
as cook,
Camden on the western shore of Penobscot Bay for a season
of sailing.
The
and the skipper and the cook may have been
vessel
The health
w rong.
economy had improved
of the
Depression, but vacationers and tourists were hotels, guest houses, fishing
and
tations
camps, and cabins
slightly since the onslaught of the
scarce,
and Swift was competing with
in the pines
—
with established repu-
all
with rock-bottom prices. Even at $25 per passenger, meals included, for
all
a week-long cruise, of seeing the
still
but the year, 1936, was
right,
Frank Swift had difficulty persuading people to try this barebones way
bay and the
No track record, no money to spend on advertising,
islands.
lots
of wrinkles to be ironed out. u
We had only three lady passengers on our first trip,’’
time,
By
believe,
I
we took
the end of that
off without
first,
Swift
was
“The next
to say later.
any passengers.”
short season, the best you could say
was that Swift had gained
w ould work and what would not. Come the end of the summer, he went back to Toddy Pond, Captain Shepard and his wife returned to Deer Isle, and the Mabel went back to her owner. In short order she was sold to a down-east fishexperience and a sense of what
packing company as a sardine freighter; her accommodations were torn out, her cut down,
and an engine was
But the Mabel
,
it
War II, when Frank into
own, the
its
Swift’s
little
Windjammer
freighter
Cruises, as he called his business, finally
was offered
passenger trade, where she lasted until the Slow
,
for sale again. Swift
late
purchased her
and put her back
disappointing start or not, Frank Swift had been undeterred. ,
characteristic
is
her*
wooden
—a capable but The
latter
hard for a few seasons, she became too
difficult to
vessel,
7
fleet.
That second year hadn’t been much better than the
much
1937 he
after Swift
maintain and was dropped from the
t
in the
and sure enough,
a sure sign of a tired-out
bought her outright and drove
wasn
In
schooner with a nearly straight stem and a flattened sheer.
little
this time,
work
to
came
1950s.
chartered the Lydia M. Webster a 58-footer built in Castine in 1882
homely
was
seems, was destined for the windjammer trade. Shortly after World
rather than chartering her, rerigged her as a schooner,
7
rig
installed.
first,
future for this type of business, at least not the
and
way
it
it
appeared that there
had been run
to date.
much capacity, but that didn’t matter, as a week with only five passengers was considered a great accomplishment. What to do? Pack it in? Fimp along marginally, depending on word-of-mouth advertising? Up the ante and
The Webster,
like the
Mabel, didn’t have
go for broke? Captain Swift
80
—which
A PASSAGE IX TIME
is
what he had become by then, an experienced skipper
decided to give
one
it
last shot, pull
out
all
the stops, recharter the Lydia M. Webster,
another schooner, advertise, and raise his prices to pay for 1938,
when
rate to
$30
a dollar
was
all.
(To raise your prices
in
meant jumping from the 1927 $27-per-person
a dollar,
still
it
buy
one week and offering a $10 discount for two weeks.) Strapped for cash,
for
however, he couldn’t afford even the few hundred dollars then asked for a seaworthy schooner.
was
laid
fact,
On the advice of Captain Hall,
up
at
Great Wass Island and
in
he therefore bought the Annie
Wass before she could even be
sailed
be grounded out on the beach for conversion. There, Swift hired a gang
to
Sandy Point
of
unemployed carpenters and shipwrights. required several days to overhaul the rigging, partly install cabins for ten
“It
passengers, and paint her,” Captain Swift said later. credit at the still
Kimball, which
need of serious work to make her serviceable. In
she had to be considerably recaulked on Great to
F.
lumberyards and food stores
operating on a shoestring.
credit,
It
in
“It
was fortunate
that
had good
I
Camden, Belfast, and Rockland, because I was
was also fortunate that those businesses saw fit
because in future years, when windjamming took
to
extend
they would gain considerable
off,
trade from a grateful skipper.
The Annie
Kimball, like the Mabel and the Lydia M. Webster, was small and old
F.
(56 feet long, built in 1886 in Boothbay), but she was a pretty
came
to
be
known
A bay
as the “Pride of the Penobscot.
teristics of a fishing
schooner, she
cargo-carrying days variously in
Advertise, stick
choice of schooners,
bare bones, and aside
and
trade, he
it
coaster with
charac-
finally hit
upon
the formula
out through thick and thin, offer potential passengers a
buy cheap, don’t
get fancy, keep
— most of — don't be sentimental. all
maintenance expenses down If
a schooner can't hack
get another. In the twenty-five years Captain Swift
owned
many
had been a Maine coast regular, homeported during her Deer Isle, Boothbay, and Jonesport.
With the Webster and the Kimball, Captain Frank Swift for success:
thing that quickly
little
remained
it,
in the
or chartered twelve different vessels, including several
to the
toss her
passenger
Maine coasting
schooners, one from the Chesapeake, a yacht, and even Captain Irving Johnson’s famous
Yankee a former North Sea pilotboat. ,
But
all
of Captain Swift’s passenger schooners didn’t get
retired in 1961, he sold later sold in the
them
to
two of them, the Mattie and the Mercantile,
Les Bex,
Maine windjammer
to her original
who
Beet.
sold (In
them
to
Swift
Jim Nisbet, who to this
day
1990, after a complete rebuild, the Mattie reverted
name, the Grace Bailey .)
Affectionatelv sail
known out of
as the “green boats
Camden, following
the
routes as their sisters back in the 1930s.
reaches of Blue Hill Bay
Late afternoon found us
in the lowest
Swans Island on one
and Bass Harbor,
other.
to
When
Ray Williamson. They remain
because of their traditional dark-green topsides, they
same
thrown away.
We
had such
side
a
good
at the
—the northern neck of
southern end of Mount Desert, on the
sailing breeze that the skipper, rather
THE
than take us into
TL
RM OF THE TIDE 8 1
Mackerel Cove or Bass Harbor for the night, kept us straight on through the passage
between Placentia and Swans, down for a tantalizing peek into Lunt Harbor and the tiny village of Frenchboro
(“How do you
like that for
an island community?
the skipper said,
pointing past the anchored lobsterboats to the white church, the white school, the white
houses connected by beaten paths), over toward Great Duck, and then north to the
Western Way, which leads past the Cranberry
Isles into
Southwest Harbor.
The mountains of Mount Desert, the centerpieces of Acadia National Park, stood proud making their
against the purple sky. Gray-and-white gulls wheeled around fishing boats
way back
to harbor.
A
black-hulled Coast Guard buoy tender, overhauling a channel
buoy, heaved in the swell rolling up from the Gulf of Maine. The coasties, usually a jaded sort to
accustomed
daylong variety of interesting watercraft, nevertheless lined the
to a
watch us sweep
An
past.
officer
on the bridge cupped
his
hands
to his
rail
mouth. “You’re
the fifth in an hour,” he yelled, “but you re the best!
“The best?
the skipper said under his breath, doffing his cap like Prince Philip
acknowledging the cheers of the commoners. “You bet your boots we is
the finest schooner on the coast of
We
foredeck crowd into shape.
re going to jibe.
Up ahead in Southwest Harbor was lobsterboats,
black-hulled
and other J.
&
Maine and...Hell
the usual
complement
s
This
...Whip that
bells! ...Mate!
s
Right now. Let
craft, plus four schooners:
re the best.
go.
of visiting
the white-hulled
and
local yachts,
Timberwind the ,
Riggin the brightly painted Heritage and the private schooner-
E.
,
,
yacht Deliverance. Their heavy masts and delicate rigging were silhouetted against a
luminists sky.
“No room for us,’ the skipper said. “They’ve got all the good holding ground. Someone ask the cook to come up here and call the harbormaster over to Northeast Harbor on the radio. If it’s clear, we ll go in there. The answer, as it turned out, was yes, all clear. The wind, right on our stern, died with the sun. We drifted with the incoming tide and not even a hint of a breeze up the channel toward the inner harbor, the skipper a study of outward calm, his inner tension betrayed only by the occasional twitching of his jaw
muscles.
It
was a
straight shot with
on the balconies of sunset, pink
their
summer
sails.
— huge, old-money Nobody
spoke.
It
and on and on and on, an eighth of a
hanging in limp folds from the anchor go.
gaffs, the
when
it
The chain roared through
cottages, then died away.
pool of Northeast Harbor.
82
so silent
we thought
mile, a quarter of a mile, the sails
seemed
had wrung the as
if
A PASSAGE IX TIME
last
ounce of forward
time had stopped and the entire
universe was vibrating like a tuning fork, he nodded to the mate.
and the
—
hand,
mate standing by the foredeck winch, waiting
Finally, after the skipper
out of the schooner,
into the water.
estates
was
in
watching the
the clink of the ice in the cottagers glasses.
We drifted on
momentum
“cottages
and orange, illuminate dur
we could hear
to let the
an audience. Several people stood, cocktails
the hawsepipe.
The anchor splashed
The sounds echoed
We were attached by a silver thread
off the hills
to the deep, black
Three schooners,
al the
end of a perfect day of sailing,
with the
make
their
last of the
way breeze
toward a snug anchorage.
Fog Mulls and Black Pigs
VI
In that sense of direct inheritance the few venerable coasters ,
among today
windjammers, from wherever they were launched are the legitimate heirs ,
Maine's carefully nurtured but
dam
still
's
to
credible tradition ofpokin' long, pickin'
mebbe nosin up Tenants way with th toyde, when an if it scayles up, fer thet lot o ax han les Fred promised an a decklud o hay, eff th gol ram sun 'll jes' peek aout long huff t' droy th fethahs up
th
'
buoys
in th
'
'
thick,
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
on a shag.
—Joseph E. Garland, Adventure, Queen of the Windjammers
There’s no other way to describe it. Wednesday morning came weird. Mist on the water, clouds pushing in from the west, atmosphere with a clammy moistness that demanded a woolen sweater. As soon as you put one on, you
“Weather change coming on,” the skipper
felt
hot and steamy.
said, tuning in to the
NOAA
mariner’s
advisory.
“...Matinicus Rock, wind south-southeast, 4 knots.” a
drunk gargling through a mouthful of
Cashes Ledge Buoy, south seas every nine seconds.
at
6 knots, air temperature 57, sea temperature 59, three-foot
Variable cloudiness with patches of fog reported
coast. Visibility six to eight miles, at 2 knots,
The weathercaster sounded like mothballs. “Mount Desert Rock, south at 6.
under one mile
in fog.
all
along the
Rockland has a southeast wind
Southwest I larbor calm wind, Jonesport south-southeast 3 knots.
Now for the
mariner’s weather discussion....
“Hold on
“A
your hats,” the skipper
to
said, wincing.
tropical storm, currently off the Carolinas,
seaboard and
is
is
working
its
wav up
the eastern
expected to veer off to the eastward at Cape Cod. High winds, high seas,
higher than normal tides, and heavy rain are expected later tonight and into tomorrow
from Massachusetts northeastward Following breakfast ries
to the
Bay
of
—a knock-down-drag-out
Fundy and Nova affair of
Scotia....”
pancakes with more blueber-
than batter, country-sausage patties the diameter of coffee-can covers, and maple
syrup that tasted pure and very well could have been the assembled ship “I figure
we
ll
s
—the skipper announced
his
plan to
company.
gers
have an interesting day of sailing before the weather gets nasty," he
“Anyone who wants supplies
A boatload
for the next
said.
day or so better go into town with the vawlboat.
to the
Adventure after
a trip to
town
supplies.
because tonight
this schooner’s
a borrowed shell.
You want
going to be buttoned
down
tighter than a hermit crab in
beer, toothpaste, shoelaces, get
it
now.
of passen-
and crew return
for
Anyone
who wants
to gets a
turn at the oars.
FOG ML LLS XD BLACK PIGS 85 I
—
So a boatload of passengers went ashore while the skipper pored over
He had
considered the alternatives.
command
tradition of
at sea,
his charts
and
a lot of alternatives to consider, but in the age-old
he kept his deliberations for the most part to himself.
He
had a few words with the mate and talked for a bit over the radiotelephone with the skipper of the in
Timberwind which was over ,
Bucks Harbor, made a few notes
Southwest Harbor, and the Mercantile which was
in
,
in his
pocket notebook, and then dropped
He checked
the yawlboat lying to her painter under the schooner’s transom.
made
engine carefully and
We
got
underway
suddenly behind
was a calm and relaxing
It
coming up
us,
fast in
proud of
his vessel that
“Bloody blast still
“Too
make
late to
it
smiles
and handshakes,
until
sailer,
jib.
made
all
the smarter by a press of
Her skipper, Captain Douglas Lee, was off.
our skipper said, caught by surprise. Our yawlboat was
down, and the
astern, slowing us
sail, all
he never missed an opportunity to show her
to hell!
it all
Way past Sutton Island and Little ,
canvas that included a topsail and a flying so
of fuel in the tank.
our wake, was the Heritage one of the newest and
She was a smart
finest schooners in the fleet.
over the
the yawlboat, leisurely raising the working sails in the
long, lazy swell off Bear Island, then taking the Eastern
Cranberry Island.
into
morning. The wind was moderate and blowing into
at 9:30 in the
we pushed out with
the harbor, so
ample supply
sure there was an
down
a race,’" the
topsails
were
still
in their stops.
mate moaned. “Lee has got us now.
Our skipper and Captain Lee were
great rivals, always ready to duke
1
out whenever
it
came storming up to our stern, hung there for a tantalizing moment, then pulled out and surged along our windward side, blanketing our sails and slowing us down even further. The gap between the two schoonthe opportunity arose. In a matter of seconds, the Heritage
ers couldn’t
have been more than
fifty feet.
Passengers crowded the
Her mate, halfway up the main shrouds, was grinning like the Cheshire in the
nonchalant pose affected by
all
of the Heritage.
rail
cat.
Her skipper,
schooner captains in the presence of an audience
especially one that has been thoroughly
whipped
—was chomping on a
fat cigar.
11
“Good morning, Captain, Captain Lee said cheerfully in a singsong voice at the exact moment when the two schooners were precisely aligned, windlass to windlass, deckhouse to
deckhouse, mainmast to mainmast, wheel to wheel, skipper to skipper. “Your vessel
sure
makes
a
handsome
Our
We
seem
be going too
to
Our skipper tipped
morning.
Captain Lee called out. “See
“Say, mate,
down.
sight this
if you
he said
it.
1
politely.
can do something to slow this schooner
he said under his breath, not even moving
Without a sideways peek
on the top of the cabinhouse and pretended navigational dividers.
cap
fast.
skipper’s face turned to stone. “Nuts,
his lips while
his
Our mate leaned over
to
at the
Heritage he leaned over the chart ,
check a distance with a pair of brass
to tie his shoes,
showing
his
backside to the
other schooner. It
was over
in a
matter of minutes (“Thanks be to Cod,
11
the
mate whispered). The
Heritage pulled ahead, cut across our bow, jibed her sails over, and shot under our lee back into the Eastern
86
Way. Meanwhile, we hauled
A PASSAGE IN TIME
the yawlboat
up
into the stern davits
and
“Suddenly behind
up
fast in
coming
our wake, was the
Heritage. ...She sailer,
us,
made
was a smart
all
the smarter
by a press of canvas that included a topsail and a flying jib.”
set the topsails
while the skipper, after calling angrily to the cook for a cup of coffee, vowed
revenge at the earliest possible moment.
By midmorning we were
drifting
among the islands
ocean and a cloud cover
in a flat, oily
like the
off the southern
end of Mount Desert
gray underside of a low
granite, dismal green spruce, the surface of the sea the color of cast iron.
ruffled here
and there by
stray breezes first
from the south, then from the north
Pink
steel roof.
The water was
from the southeast, then from the
east,
—a confusion of directions that made the
then
sails slat
back and forth randomly; the booms and gaffs, brought up short by the rigging, jolted the schooner as
if
she were being slapped by a giant hand. Every once in a while,
pick up one of the puffs and, after
much running around and
we would
adjusting of sheets by the
deck gang, would surge along for a few hundred yards until the breeze was gone and the
and the
sails
would go limp again.
sheets
We weren’t alone on the heaving sea, though there was an indefinable loneliness to the scene, not unlike the isolation one can feel walking
We were here
city.
and everything
else
was
there,
down
a major boulevard in a strange
and between us was a
vast expanse of
Several schooners were in sight, a yacht or two, and a couple of sprit-
trackless space.
rigged pulling boats, dirty white on the outside, orange-red on the inside, from the
Hurricane Island Outward Bound School. And, of course, the usual complement of lob-
from trap buoy
sterboats racing
to trap buoy, the fishermen driving their craft as
if
they
were at the wheel of Grand Prix race cars taking the turns at Monte Carlo. One of the boats, a cross between a traditional
had a super-amplified all.
down
east lobsterboat
stereo system aboard.
No
and a drug smuggler’s switchblade,
chanteys for this
Across the water came the disembodied voices of Pete
the Heritage
‘That... that ... thing over there,’’ he said, pointing with the soggy “is
not at
Townshend and Boger Daltrey,
“Whooo are you? Who-who? Who-who?....” The skipper, still smarting from our encounter with green cigar,
salt of the sea;
,
was disgusted.
end of a half-smoked
a sorry excuse for a lobsterboat, and the jughead who’s driving
it is
so
brainless he probably cleans both ears with one continuous Q-tip.
To “We would
pick up
one of the puffs and, after
much running
around and adjusting of sheets by the deck
gang, would surge
along for a few
hundred yards the breeze
and the sheets
until
mildly.
The Mary Day.
like
many
fashions of the yachts
place
of his colleagues, believed in the timelessness of the sea
and saw them
and the pleasure
modern
—
craft
in fact,
little
and therefore
it
and the
thought to the changing
he expected such changes to take
—
modern society but he considered was appalled by the introduction of
as evidence of the corruptions of
traditional vessels to be just that,
devices, especially electronics, on schooners, lobsterboats, sardine carriers, fish-
ing draggers,
and the
The changes on
and the
would go limp.”
He,
enduring nature of the working vess'els of the coast. He gave
was gone
sails
say that our skipper was an unreconstructed traditionalist would be putting
like.
(Never mind that he loved his
the coast of
Maine since the
last
own
radio.)
days of cargo-carrying and fishing
under sail have been even greater than the skipper would have liked to admit. Just as there were
88
still
a few sailing coasters in the
A PASSAGE IN TIME
1
930s, there were also a handful of lobstermen
who
FOG ML LLS AM) BLACK PIGS 89
were holdouts
and fished under sail, a considerable number worked under oar
to progress
from peapods and
dories; the only refrigeration
speed was registered in the single
hundred
dollars tied
up
digits,
in his vessel
around was plain ordinary
and a fisherman might have
and
much
as
boat
as a
few
Today’s fishermen, by contrast, have
gear.
thousands and thousands of dollars invested in their operations fishing has
ice, fast
become, an entrepreneurial operation), and
it s
(for that
is
what
lobster
a rare lobsterboat that doesn’t
have serious electronic equipment on board: Loran, sonar, radar, stereo sound systems
for
entertainment while hauling traps, radiotelephones, the works. The engines have become so powerful
and the boats
in Jonesport
—open only
built
so fast that the winning speeds at the annual lobsterboat races
to competitors in
and juiced up only for racing
working craft; no pseudo-lobsterboats specially
— are measured
The passengers on our schooner,
to
in the forty-plus-miles-per-hour range.
whom this experience was totally new, couldn’t see
now and the most recent past, because to them the present seemed identical to the past. From where our schooner sat, wallowing in the swell off Baker Island, there was simply the present and the possibilities of the future. For all the passengers knew the differences between
or even cared, today t
rock n
roll
s
sailor was yesterday’s
boogie-woogie and
all,
and would be tomorrow’s; today’s fisherman,
was simply son
to his father
and the father
to his sons.
who was old enough to have seen both the end of an era and the beginning of another, may have wished such an uncomplicated view were true but nevertheless knew
The
skipper,
The Who represented not evolution but revolution. Though reader of Joseph Conrad, he would have appreciated Conrad’s
that a lobsterman listening to
he
may
words
not have been a
in
The Mirror of the Sea
:
own time a man is very modem. Whether the seamen of three hundred years hence will have the faculty of sympathy it is impossible to say. An incorrigible mankind hardens its heart in the progress of its own perfectibility. How will they feel on seeing the illustrations In his
to the sea novels of to guess.
our day [the turn of the century], or of our yesterday?
But the seamen of the
last
generation, brought into
It is
impossible
sympathy with the caravels of
ancient time by his sailing ship, their lineal descendant, cannot look
upon those lumbering
forms navigating the naive seas of ancient woodcuts without a feeling of surprise, of affectionate derision, envy,
and admiration. For those
things,
whose unmanageableness,
even when represented on paper, makes one gasp with a sort of amused horror, were manned
by men who are
his direct professional ancestors.
No; the seamen of three hundred years hence will probably be neither touched nor moved to derision, affection, or admiration.
They
photogravures of our nearly
will glance at the
defunct sailing ships with a cold, inquisitive, and indifferent eye.
Our ships of yesterday will
stand to their ships as no lineal ancestors, but as mere predecessors whose course will have
been run and the race shall be, not
We were right
in the
Whatever craft he handles with
middle of lunch when the fog rolled
of the later morning, a
90
extinct.
skill,
the
seaman
of the future
our descendant, but only our successor.
A PASSAGE IN TIME
in.
It
mass of gray mush on the horizon that
had been
for a while
visible for
much
seemed fixed
in
place but over time drew closer fiction
movie,
it
oozed
to the
and
closer.
Like an amorphous monster out of a science-
westward and swallowed everything
in
its
path.
distant schooner, then several yachts, then another schooner, a lobsterboat
and another, then if
the sea
they had never existed
—
buoy off the southern end of Baker Island and then us. With the fog came a damp
—
condition that muffled or silenced
some sounds and amplified
First a
and another
if
it
were
in a distant
disappeared as
chill
and a strange
others. Lobsterboats that
world, both miles
above the surface of the water. The loneliness of the day became ‘''Ears
Guide
to
away and high
lonelier.
more valuable than your eyes in the log, Roger Duncan wrote in A Cruising the New England Coast. “Fog seems to affect the transmission of sound. A horn are
clearly audible ten miles
away may fade out at
three miles
and nearly blow you out of vour
shirt at half a mile.
FOG
\ll
a
damp
chill
and a
strange condition that muffled or
all
we knew were about a mile away sounded as if they were just beyond the range of our vision, which was maybe a hundred feet; the swell breaking on the shore of Baker Island, about half a mile away, sounded as
“With the log came
LLS
I
XD BLACK BIGS
(
)
1
silenced
some
sounds and amplified others.”
The Svlvina W.
Heal.
Overall
we could hear
whistle on the
a cacophony of sounds
buoy south of Baker
some of the yachts, and the
made by
The
fog signaling devices.
Island, the canned-air horns of the lobsterboats
whistles of the rest.
The mate
and
sent one of our passengers
much
forward with an old-fashioned fisherman-style hand-cranked horn, which didn’t so blast as bleat like a lost sheep.
According to the rules of the nautical road, signals are required for in the fog
—powered
vessels
long and two short blasts;
must sound a prolonged
all
which one sound was
tion
vessels
blast every minute; sailboats, one
virtually indistinguishable
from which the sounds were coming was next
produced an avant-garde symphony
from the next
— and, worse, the direc-
to impossible to determine.
however, had considerable experience in the fog and was surprisingly calm it.
They were
direction
what
is
On
it
quite skilled in figuring out
was
known
what
vessel out there
in the
its
In
fog.
is
fog,” “a
but there are
a “fog mull,
dungeon o
In ascending order fog,”
and “a
thick
helmsman on
a medium-size vessel such as
much beyond
the bowsprit.
In “a thick
the moisture
stuff,
is
of
the
“a dungeon o fog,
ours would not be able to see
“This
was where and what
own distinctive descriptive phrase.
of density, they are “a mite thick,” “thick o
feet in front of
in the face of
Which was a good thing, because we were right in the middle trade as a dungeon o fog, the penultimate condition.
several grades of this, each with
heavy-duty
Our crew,
taking.
the coast of Maine, the general term for fogginess
dungeon o
underway
vessels at anchor, five seconds of bell-ringing per minute.
In our vicinity, with lots of vessels nearby, the signals in
all
is
so dense as to
make
dungeon
o’ fog,”
a visually impenetrable wall a few
your eyes.
what
I
like
about windjamming,” the skipper said sarcastically, wiping the
condensation from his glasses. “The view.
we were in a relatively good position, as the skipper had taken us on a course away from Mount Desert and there were no islands or ledges in our path. Yet the crew was taking no chances. The mate was Aside from the danger of collision with other vessels,
keeping a lookout up in the bow, the cook was amidships on the starboard
mate was on the port
side,
There are legendary abilities to find their
and the passengers were instructed
stories
keep their eyes peeled.
along the coast about the old-timers and their uncanny
way through
some could navigate by
to
side, the galley
the fog by seat-of-the-pants navigation.
smell, sniffing out spruce trees
It is
said that
on islands and headlands,
mudflats, sawn oak in shipyards, lumber schooners with aromatic cargoes (especially
cedar shingles), even canneries alongshore
— each supposedly with
its
own
odor.
They
could also navigate by listening to “the rote,” the sound of the waves on the shore. steep,
and
sandy shores,
grinds.
On
it
pounds.
On open shores,
sharp ledges and granite
with rounded rocks and boulders,
cliffs, it
with the geological characteristics of the coast,
crashes.
who was
A
sailor
who was
it
On rolls
so familiar
as familiar with the trend of the
shore as the winding of the path to the outhouse back home, would listen carefully and
“make the rote. And then there were 92
A PASSAGE LX TIME
the old-timers
who
studied the waterfowl. Giles M.S. Tod, in The
Down
Last Days of Sail
Captain Zeb was sailing close to shore in a thick o fog with a
the Alice S. Wentworth. voting boy up in the
Zeb Tilton and
East, relates a wonderful story about Captain
bow keeping
“Suddenly the boy shouted
a lookout.
aft that there
were ducks ahead. The old
man
hollered
Be they walking or be they swimming?
forward:
“When
the
boy
me
right, then,
called
lad.
back that he thought they were walking, the captain
ready about and hard alee!
yelled: ‘All
taking his vessel back into deeper
tints
waters.
No sailor, however experienced,
likes to
spend extended periods
in the fog, especially close
shore as island- and ledge-infested as that of Maine. But our skipper, after listening
in to a
once again to the
NOAA
weather forecast, was confident we were
would
back
whence
either slide
to
it
came
s
through an edge into clear
w as
had been
We
sail
still
cloudy and the winds were
And
as fluky as they
still
we could see w here we were going and where we had from Little Duck Island.
ith
one of two choices:
into a harbor, anchor,
choice
may
meant
the loss of time
sail
been.
offshore until the fog cleared, or feel his
and wait out the weather. For
not cause too
respite, a vacation
many
problems, but for the old cargo skippers, to be fogbound
and therefore money. To the crews, though,
it
something even pleasant
is
to the skipper chafing at the delay
to take
it
There
other than philosophically.
them had been
nothing
is
Such town
my
old bunks, waiting out a fog mull in
a cargo schooner
—a place
like
may have been
is
genuine peace
How many times at
of a period of frenzied business activity in the city in recent years have
one of
too long-
do under such
to
circumstances except eat and sleep, read or work on hobbies, and there
and quietude, completely insulated from the rest of the world.
in
which prevents him from
getting to his next loading or discharging port, although most of
in
could be a calm
from hard work.
kind of fog. Perhaps not
on the coast
wav
a passenger schooner, the latter
“In a remote harbor or cove,’ w rote John Leavitt, “there
be
patch that
the forecast had been for all-out fogginess for an indefinite period, the skipper would
have been faced w
this
in a large
out of in short order.
the morning, but
in
were not very far
If
It
we could
worth of feeling our way on pins and needles, we broke
sure enough, after about an hour air.
or that
w ished
I
the end I
could
some quiet down-east harbor!
lucky enough to be biding
Stonington or Carvers Harbor or Castine
and. in some cases, an opera house for entertainment.
(In
its
time
in
a coastal
— w here there were
stores
Maine, an opera house w as
usually a multipurpose hall for vaudeville acts, movies, stereopticon shows, lectures, tow n
Many
meetings, plays, and even the occasional traveling opera show.
towns, such as
Camden, Stonington, Rockport, and Belfast, still have their old opera houses and them regularly.) If not, perhaps there may have been a trader at anchor nearbv. Traders were schooners
fitted out as floating stores.
general stores might stock, plus
much
they didn’t.
I
use
They carried everything landside
lomeported
FOG
in larger
l
II
tow ns such as
LLS \XD BLACK
I’ICS
93
— .
Rockland and Portland, they would
downeast with an assorted cargo of canned and
sail
bulk goods, clothes, boots, foulweather gear, candy, pulp novels, kitchen utensils
moment
at the
— and anchor
for a
—anything and everything that might be
week or so in harbors, coves, and, if possible,
deep inland near isolated communities. Better
wharf
— “There’s a trader down the farthest reaches of the countryside and people would come from
came before World War years afterward, a few
“As
may
and near
to stock
called at
still
some
tidal rivers
up on
Word would
at the old mill
The
supplies.
when a veritable fleet of them ranged the
lie
to a
go out to
wharf”
traders heyday
coast, but for several
of the island villages.
be imagined,” wrote George Wasson
local storekeeper in
I,
far
demand
in
than anchoring, they would
still
such were available, easily accessible to their customers.
if
ax handles, tobacco,
tools, fishing supplies,
in Sailing
Days on
the Penobscot “the ,
was by no means enthusiastic over the visits of traders, and viewed them
much the same spirit often shown in later days towards department and chain stores.
The prime must
requisite for a trader
was a wide,
also be of shoal draft in order to
holes where the best trade
stiff vessel,
not easily careened
at the smallest
lie
wharf
.
.
by wind. She
in out-of-the-way "gunk-
was found. On deck, between the masts, was built a diminutive
but real house, clapboarded and shingled, with doors in the after end and windows upon
one
side.
A
sign prominently
announced
"Five
and Ten Cent Counter.
cut high in order to swing over the house on deck in years
The
foresail
was
These vessels were always well along
and sometimes they were badly strained through long
lying
aground
at
wharves
only suitable for smaller craft.
Perhaps the most colorful floating entrepreneur on the coast during the old days was a cobbler
named
Cottle,
who
ungainly, unseaworthy craft
built a flat-bottomed sailing
— and
sailed
it
scow
—reputedly
a slow,
from harbor to harbor. The scow had a rickety
house built on deck with windows on the sides and a rusty stovepipe sticking up through the roof.
Deep.
A
sign on the house read:
Cottle
floating
would blow
W.
Cottle. Boots
into a seaside
town or
and Shoes Repaired on the Rolling
village
on a
workshop on a beach or a mudflat, and stay there
fair
wind, ground out
until he
had repaired
all
his
the
boots and shoes and harnesses there were to be repaired. Then, on the next fair wind and tide,
he would be off to the next harbor.
Closely allied to the traders were the packets, schooners that followed regular routes
along the coast, carrying passengers and freight.
Forerunners of the steamboats that
connected the down east ports to the fnajor cities and towns to the w estw ard,
many of them
continued on into the steamboat era, especially those that called on harbors never served
by the steamers. They were the principal mode of transportation
in
and out of most of the
small coastal and island communities of Maine. At the beginning of the Civil War, near the height of the packet trade, there were as
The Mary Day flat
calm.
It’s
in a
Maine from Boston.
time
Packets traveled on a
for her skipper to start
thinking about
whistling up a wind.
many as twenty individual packet lines serving
set
schedule
subject to the vagaries of the
—
wind and
at least as set as tide
any schedule could be that was
— and departed from
their
own wharves
in
Portland. Boothbav Harbor. Rockland, Bangor, and others. In Portland, for example, a
94
A PASSAGE IX TIME
mwi'
FOG Ml LLS AM)
MACK
PIGS
95
fleet of
packets
left
from Widgery’s Wharf, which was
known
also
as the Portland Packet
Pier.
Though today s windjammers carry passengers only, no freight, and concentrate on bringing them out and back from here to here, instead of from here to there, they are
many
nevertheless a continuation of the packet tradition. In fact,
mers of the Frank Swift outright, the
Annie
F.
fleet
had been packets. The
on Deer
to ports to the eastward.
,
,
Isle for
Lillian.,
and the Enterprise which had been ,
and therefore was
the packet trade
windjam-
schooner Captain Swift bought
Kimball ran out of Southwest Harbor
Others included the Lois M. Candage the specially built
first
of the early
ideally suited for
conversion to a cruise schooner.
About one-thirty
in the afternoon, the
wind came up hard from the south-southeast,
heeling the schooner over sharply and causing the mate and the galley into the rigging to furl the topsails
on Long
Island,
still
But the wind died as quickly as floating
seaweed and seabird feathers, sliding slowlv along
setting us in
scramble
our course to the southwestward.
scum
of driftwood
and
in a tidal current that
was
rose, leaving us adrift in a
it
to
We boiled along past Richs Head
and ease the pressure.
sailing outside the islands,
hand
toward Marshall Island, the major island
approaches to Jericho Bay.
in the
The
sails slatted
that
was heaving in from the Gulf of Maine. The skipper, watching us slowly bearing down
and slapped
as the vessel rolled
back and forth with the long, easy swell
sideways toward Black Ledge, became apprehensive. “Let’s get the yawlboat
down and
he
start the engine,’
said.
So the mate climbed into the yawlboat and we lowered away
until
he and the boat were
out of sight under the transom. There was the sound of the starter, then nothing. Again,
and again nothing. Then
cursing,
and nothing.
“Calling an engine a blankety-blank shithead won’t get
over the stern.
“Come up
closer to the ledge,
and take the wheel.
here, mate,
which was populated by a couple of
holding their wings outstretched as
it I
started,
give
11
fat seals
a
try.
We
drifted
and half a dozen shags
into their embrace.
welcoming our schooner
if
it
the skipper yelled
The skipper, an expert mechanic, struggled with the engine for a quarter of an hour until he pinpointed the problem: a dirty fuel-line look up at the ledge from the or
some such
thing,
little
and dive back
out for quieter territory, just
hamburger on
Every
filter.
engine compartment and say,
when
and between
u
Holy bumblebee
in again. Finally, after the shags
seemed the schooner’s
it
the jagged rock, the engine coughed
past Black Ledge
thirty seconds or so, he
and
Spirit
and Drunkard
made
the skipper
ledges,
piss!
and seals had cleared would be ground
to
The yawlboat pushed
us
side
started.
would
and we were
into the lower
reaches of Jericho Bay.
The episode with windless, our old fog yet to be
96
felt,
the engine
bank within sight
to the southwest, a dull
A PASSAGE IN TIME
jumpy and
to the east, the
impatient.
Here we were,
edge of a tropical storm, unseen and
sky above and a greenish-black sea below. The
passengers were bored and
the cook
listless,
was down below arguing with the
galley
assistant....
“We need
wind!
the skipper bellowed at the
There are various ways
sails.
to raise a breeze, all of them quite dangerous, as there
is
no way
You can call a breeze and get a zephyr, or call a breeze and get a hurricane. There’s just no way to tell in advance what you are going to get. Some sailors, however, think there is. They think there is a sliding to control the size of the breeze once
you have called
for
scale of severity, starting with sticking a knife into the
it.
mast
to raise a quiet breeze, next
throwing a penny overboard for a strong wind, and finally throwing a penny overboard
and
saying,
u
black pig
at the
same time
Our skipper would have none
of
for a real blast.
He knew
it.
had a
better
method
Ancient Mariner
(“I
—
random
recite
never
set sail
out loud and see what happens.
it
and
was, he wasn’t taking any chances with that.
He
wind strong enough
verses
to
blow out the
from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime
of the
without a copy’’), the theory being that you read a verse
If
nothing, read another.
If
that produces only a zephyr,
read another. Simply keep on reading, with pauses to check the level of
and the incansails,
tation were all as likely as not to produce a
with the price of sailcloth being what
that the knife, the penny,
effect, until the desired
wind has been achieved.
“Silence, please,’ the skipper said, opening a ragged edition of Coleridge to the first of
several
marked
He
took off his cap and put on a pair of reading glasses.
Down
dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
'Turns
sad as sad could
And we The
in
pages.
did speak only
be;
break
to
silence of the sea!
We live in the modern age. We believe in science, we believe in meteorology, we believe the absolutes of digital readouts from black boxes stuffed with semiconductors. We
believe the analysts in the
employ of the Coast Guard and the National Transportation
Safety Board when they tell us that untoward circumstances aboard ships at sea are caused
by none other than
failure to
pay attention to proper safety procedures.
tanker went aground off Valdez, Alaska, causing the biggest
oil spill in
because of pilot error or too much liquor at the wrong time or failure to at the proper scale or
something
attendants with straitjackets
if
conference and announced that that the skipper
like that.
We
would
call for the
American
set the
history,
radar screen
white truck and the
commandant of the Coast Guard stood up at a press the reason why the Exxon Valdez went on the rocks was
the
was wearing red mittens or the trim of the
painted blue. Yet not that long ago belief that tragedy
We believe a huge
— and
was caused by bad
still
luck,
among some
vessel’s superstructure
sailors
today
was
—there was the
and that bad luck was produced by
certain
carelessnesses.
FOG MULLS AND BLACK PICS 97
Day after day, day after day, li
e stuck,
As
idle as
nor breath nor motion; a painted ship
Upon a painted
ocean.
There was a long string of “nevers,
things a sailor
must never do or allow
to
be done.
Never depart on a Friday or launch a vessel on a Friday or allow the keel of a new vessel
on a Friday. Never wear red mittens or stockings or mufflers, especially
to be laid
shipyard where a
new vessel was under construction, and never paint any trim on
a vessel
blue.
Never turn a hatch cover bottom-up. Never watch a departing ship out of
Never
sail
aboard a ship that stuck on the ways when
on board. Never whistle while underway or drive a
sight.
was launched or had a bootjack
it
nail
in a
on a Sunday,
as a gale will be the
certain result.
The
very- deep did rot:
That ever
this
0
Christ!
should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon
the slimy sea.
There were, however, ways first if
to
banish bad luck.
voyage of the season, a vessel should
the vessel
or tide
It
was
set sail to the
said, for
northward
course were to the south or the east or the west, even
s
from the north, she should
were violated, there was no Alone, alone,
all, all
first sail
northward, however
telling the horrors of the
if
example, that on the for
good
luck.
there were a foul
briefly.
If
Even wind
that principle
consequences.
alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a
My soul in It
was
saint took pity on
agony.
said, for
another example, that good luck could be brought upon a vessel >
horseshoe were nailed, open end up, to the end of the bowsprit.
were to
fall off
If
if
a
a horseshoe so affixed
during the coiirse of A voyage, tragedy would befall the vessel and her crew.
But soon there breathed a wind on me, Nor sound nor motion made: Its
path was not upon the
sea,
In ripple or in shade.
It
to
98
was said on the coast of Maine that there were people imbued with the ingredients
ensure good luck and that those people should be treated with the proper respect. “A
A PASSAGE
/.V
TIME
I Protected from possible foul
weather from any
direction, the liiggin
& E.
has found a snug
anchorage for the
night.
certain
woman, renowned
for her ability to control weather
fortune to seafarers, lived alone a mile or
was well worth while
\\
asson. "It
to
buy of her heavy
to
more back from
up
Flips
to
to furnish general
Aunt
and
tobacco and snuff,
tea,
to see that
her woodpile never
Polly’s small dwelling, with offerings given
purchases made, often preceded trips to the Grand Banks or to Bangor. man... ‘Maybe there coastin to
Bangor
wan
River,’
t I
much
nothin so very
always kind of
good and plenty with old Aunt
good
the shore,” wrote George
keep Aunt Polly supplied with
knit stockings, mittens or ‘nippers,
unduly diminished.
and
felt
in
it,
but to the
better-like
when
last
day of
and
Quoth a
my
goin
things had been fixet 1 up
Polly.
Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,
Yet she sailed softly too:
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze
On me alone
The schooner
s
it
—
blew.
snug hole was
to
be Southeast Harbor on Deer
Isle, at
the eastern end of
The approaches from Jericho Bay were full of ledges and small islands, but the chart showed a large harbor well inside bounded by Stinson and Whitmore
the Deer Island Thorofare.
necks, which would provide protection from virtually
By suppertime, when we gentle breeze
still
had a few more miles
the dinner bell
go to our anchorage, our once-
and the passengers trooped happily below
of the galley stove, leaving the skipper
The main cabin of the Aftrenlure.
00
to
directions.
had turned to a raw, cold, and penetrating wind that blew hard from the east.
The cook rang
1
all
A PASSACE IX TIME
and
the
to the
warmth
mate and me alone under the darkening
sky to
sail
the rest of the way.
The clouds were low and raggedy, and
had angry whitecaps with spray driven
off their tops.
Rain lashed the deck and ran down
our necks. The cook’s helper brought up an oilcloth-covered tray and
main cabinhouse. Hot wait until
and steaming
biscuits
coffee
the tumbling seas
left
on top of the
it
—a full-fledged meal would have
to
later.
Before us was a sight not easilv forgotten: the wet, emptv decks; the glow of the running lights in the rigging; the rain
his black
running
Lunenburg fisherman-style
off the sails; the white, boiling
oilskins
the canvas cover off the windlass and flaking
lights of the
tin 4
skipper
in
and seaboots; the mate up forward pulling
down
the glistening anchor chain; the surf
breaking on the ledges; the buoys pushed over on their sides by the weight of the rising storm: the dim
wake;
houses in the
little
tidal current
and the
villages of Sunshine
and
Ocean ville.
We water
sailed
deep into Southeast Harbor, as far as we could go and
low tide
at
are
crowded tonight,
lobsterboats. Not a yacht in sight.
the
mate
called
There were no other schooners inside
to float the vessel.
and Burnt Coat
Pulpit,
down
the
We came up
companionway hatch
was no stampede, you can be sure of After supper, there soft
was singing
amber glow of the kerosene
coffee
on the table and told
Maine
in the
rigging
into the
wind and
—and
let
rain
Bucks,
only a few
go the anchor; then
for volunteers to help furl the sails.
main cabin and cribbage
lanterns.
pounded on
“I bet
There
that.
in the
stories,
the skipper said
have sufficient
—
And then
in the galley
some apocryphal and some
the deck above
Outside, in the thickening storm,
it
under the
the skipper set a pot of fresh-brewed not,
about the coast of
days of wooden ships and iron men. As he spoke, the wind
and the
the gale.
still
and the schooner swayed
was a black, black
moaned
in the
to the force of
night.
FOG Ml LLS AM)
A ( K FIGS
III
1
0
1
A Town by
VII
At
many spots
the
along the coast and
Edge of the
nature has provided granite
rivers
hand that it lies almost on the surface ready to be was not even necessary to quarry deeply for it. II hen Dix Hurricane Fox and Crotch Islands and Stonington in Penobscot Bay ... are mentioned the Maine Coast man thinks of granite. with so lavish a taken.
It
,
,
,
,
— William Hutchinson Rowe,
It was a
restless, thrashing,
The Maritime History of Maine
wringing-wet night, the wind blowing out of the east and the
northeast and the north in gusts as high as 50-some-odd knots, the temperature the
fifties,
mast boots,
ventilators, portlights,
compartments,
its
way below through deck seams,
companionway hatches, any and
But the crew kept the woodstove
in those
in
the atmosphere penetratingly raw. Sheets of rain, almost horizontal at times,
smashed against the schooner, and moisture worked
ings.
down
fires
all
unsealed open-
stoked in the galley and the main cabin, and
at least, a cheerful, reasonably dry
Not so on deck. Rain and spray, thunder and
lightning,
warmth
prevailed.
wind shrieking
in the rigging,
halyards slapping so sharply and rapidly against the masts that the sound was like
machine guns during the
fiercest battles
on the Western Front. The vessel rolled and
lurched to the storm. The skipper and mate were up nearly the entire night, securing loose gear, checking the rigging (especially the slightest sign that the
anchors (two had been
foulweather gear, including thick towels
were soaked to stand
anchor chain) for chafe, and watching for the
to the skin
and remained
that
itself
fireworks display, the end discrete blasts of
wind
someone had ripped
tea
full suits of
their necks to fight off the rain, tliev
way no matter how
by the galley stove and drink strong
The storm blew
might be dragging. Despite
set)
around
often tliev
ducked below
and have a quick smoke.
out a couple of hours before dawn. Like the crescendo at a
came with a series of thunder-and-lightning salutes and several
that were strong
enough
a curtain aside, the stars
your eyelids back. Then, as
to peel
appeared in the blackest of black
skies.
if
The
skipper and the mate, exhausted, stumbled below. They pulled off their sodden clothes,
hung them
to dry in the galley,
and
fell
into their
Thursday morning, the entire schooner awoke of the northwest
way
hatches,
bunks
at once.
for a few hours rest.
The alarm was the happv sound
wind breezing through the rigging. The cook threw back the companion-
and a
river of cold, dry air flowed
through the hull and drove out the A
Toil 7V
BY THE EDGY OF THE SEA
1
03
Early risers greet the
sun after a stormy night at anchor.
dampness
had
The sun was
in a matter of minutes.
that delicious braciness to
September, Vermont
in
woodsman’s
struck like a
it,
like
out
—not a cloud
dry cider, that
mid-October, western Virginia ax, even
Cold autumn
air or not, several
galley with a pail of hot water
wash
who
in early
to
their hair
Canada
November.
A new
shirts
swimmers were out before
and offered her
under the saltwater hose by the
suspenders and announced that the sail
breakfast, doing laps
and crustacean too,
if
dealer.
on.
It
w as
that
kind of a morning.
first
swimmers
were out before breakdoing laps around the schooner.'’
A PASSAGE IX TIME
shirt,
snapped
order of business was to clear out of Southeast to the friendly
neighborhood
“Lobster and steamed clams on the beach tonight,
Bartlett’s
“Cold autumn air or
04
around
A woman emerged from the who wished forward cabinhouse. Most of the men
them
down the Deer Island Thorofare, and pay a visit
nice to the cook!
1
had
services as a rinser for those
mirror that had been tacked to the foremast.
“Sweet corn,
fast.
Fall
beginning.
Harbor,
not. several
in late
and woolen sweaters and
At breakfast the skipper, spruced up somewhat by a clean red-checked
fish
air
hadn’t shaved yet during the week got out soap and razors and scraped and hacked
in front of a
his
— and the
socks were pulled with relish from the bottoms of seabags.
the schooner as the rest of the passengers cheered
to
common
sky
though the equinox was technically three weeks away.
Foulweather gear was happily abandoned, and flannel
warm
is
in the
Market has any
in.
fie
said.
Maine crazy pudding for dessert if you’re
Our schooner came upon the town suddenly. We were on the Deer Island Thorofare, just past Buckinaster Neck and Webb Cove. The Thorofare, a long channel separating the major island of Deer
highway
Isle
from the
Merchant Row. had the
lesser islands of
feel of a
—a liquid one, not an asphalt one.
One minute we were surrounded by
the wild, lonely emptiness of the coast, the surf left
by the storm foaming around the ledges and the sea under the unobscured sun the color of a bluebottle
fly.
The next minute,
we were brought up
after passing a point,
short by
the appearance, as in a knee-buckling vision, of the archetypal Maine-coast town perched
on the edge of the
sea.
The
houses, almost
all
of
them shingled
together without logical pattern on the slope of a steep, ledgy as old-fashioned looking as a
It
was
a
“What
—
to
borrow a phrase from a colleague
is
this
— Opera blouse.
town.
—
So authentic, so unbecould
make
to find a
more
just looking at
it
town?” one of the passengers asked. the skipper said,
“You
By the looks to the south
of things, Fishington
w ith
have
II
authentic tow n on the coast of Maine, and
if
and hard
to look long
you do,
it’ll
w ould have been
probably be
a better
in
Canada.
name. The harbor, open
Merchant Row and
a clear, unobstructed view of the islands of r
on the horizon, was packed with fishing boats and other commercial
were no yachts. The shore w as ringed with leries, fish
buyers, boatyards,
of schooners for to
largest building,
rust.
“Stonington,
Flaut
The
crowded
down-home, downtown, down-
east, finestkind, first-rate, working-class, island fishing
your eyes
hill.
Model A Ford, carried a painted sign
punctuated in the nineteenth-century manner.
lievably salty that
or white, were
an anchor w
piers, docks,
and a packing plant. A
craft.
Isle
au
There
wharves, bait shacks, chand-
full -bore
fishing
town w ith
a couple
good measure. The dark-green-hulled schooner Step hen Taber was lying
ith
her reefed main
still set;
she w as cocked into the wind like a weathervane
atop a horse barn on a saltwater farm. The schooner American Eagle with a sheer that ,
wouldn’t quit, was anchored nearby.
One
of the last fishing schooners to be built on the east coast, the
launched back
in
1930
in Gloucester, Massachusetts, as the Andrew
soon converted to an eastern-rigged dragger
—w hich
is
American Eagle was
and Rosalie. She w as
to say, her rig
was cut down, a big
engine was installed, and a pilothouse was erected on her afterdeck. draggers have their pilothouses up forw ard. Both types nets across the ocean floor.
the western rig being
much
fish
(Western-rigged
by dragging open-mouthed
In recent years, the eastern dragger has fallen out of favor,
preferred for the better visibility
for the clear afterdeck for handling the fishing gear.)
it
offers the
helmsman and
Retired from fishing in 1983, the
American Eagle was bought by Captain John Foss, formerly of the Lewis R. French to her
schooner configuration, and
w indjammer
fleet
fitted
with an auxiliary engine. Her
first
,
rebuilt
season in the
was 1986.
We sailed into the harbor w ith all sails set and cast our anchor between the two schooners that
had preceded us. “Schooner sandwich,”
the skipper veiled over to Captain Barnes
on the Taber. “You and Foss are the bread. We,’ he said wdth a mock bow, “are the meat.
A
TOWN BY THE EDGE OF THE SEA
1
05
A crowd
of schooners
waiting for a chance-along. In the
foreground
is
the
Mary Day. decked out with a new set of colors.
said Captain Barnes, returning the bow, “turkey meat.
“Yeah,
Luckily for us, our skipper didn’t hear the remark, or Despite the magnificent weather, he had been in a foul
(“Look
lack of sleep the night before.
if
he did, he wasn’t letting on.
mood
all
morning because
of his
‘contemporary houses,’' he had said,
at those
pointing out a pair of A-frames cantilevered over an otherwise- unspoiled ledge.
know what In half to stand
they should do with them? Burn them. Or send
little
else
watch, the ship
s
company was
waterfront motel to rent a
took
to Sugarloaf. ”)
an hour, with the exception of the mate and galley hand, who remained behind ashore.
the fishermen’s co-op to arrange for lobsters a
them back
“You
advantage of the
full
room
first
The skipper and
and clams; a gang
collectively
the cook went over to
of passengers
went
off to
and take hot showers; and everyone
chance to range unfettered around a genuine
full-
service town.
Stonington was as good as any coastal town to be
be slightly overstating the situation.
set loose in,
though
“full-service’
We found a drugstore and a market
(Bartlett’s)
may and
a classic dry-goods store (Epstein’s), a couple of tiny motels, several tourist shops, a
summer-only restaurant, and two year-round eating establishments that drew customers from miles around everything else repair shops
—Connie’s and the Fisherman’s Friend, up on the
—the supply
— related
Stonington
a
is
stores, the cannery, the buyers, the boatyards, the engine
to the fishing industry.
town with a
apocryphal, part not.
rep,
if
Townspeople of
—
mean a place of legend, part independent mind clannish, standoffish, un-
you know what
I
—
Rum-running during Prohibition and
friendly to outsiders.
the occasional drug-running
now. Lobstermen arguing among themselves over hereditary rights for setting their traps
shotguns.
comes
and
Fishermen
to shove,
a rough, tough
in
settling their differences with fists
to certain territories
and crowbars and knives and
Rockland and Vinalhaven, no slouches themselves when push
speak of their Stonington brethren with a certain wary respect: “They’re
bunch over
Which means,
there, that’s for sure.
of course, that of all the cruise schooners’ ports of call, Stonington
the closest to providing the feel of the coasting harbors of the Golden Era
visitors
“from away
small as
it is,
— “outlanders” as the
locals
It’s
fact that the
sometimes
call
them
— the town,
as
has a certain intensity, an excitement of being the center of the surrounding
commerce, of the place where everything that matters
There’s the feeling of being on a frontier, an edge, a world.
—a
comes
who are proud of their heritage, love and hate at the same time. To outsiders,
townspeople,
territory, of
Just about
hill.
far, far
the fishermen
s
co-op shuts
silent as a
going to happen.
distance from the larger, “real,
one of those towns where you can hear your own footsteps
day and where everything goes
is
middle
ol the
north-country forest in the late afternoon,
when
in the
down and the lobster buyers go home and the post office closes
for the day. It is
a
new town
built just before
as
and
island communities,
108
A PASSAGE IX TIME
New England towns
go, the majority of the buildings
after the turn of the century,
was
at the height of its
when Stonington,
having been
like other coastal
powers. Originally called Green
s
Landing,
it
was a
tinv settlement of saltwater farmers
the tip of Deer
Isle.
But
and fishermen on the rim of a minor cove
at
in the late nineteenth century, a substantial granite -quarrying
industry employing hundreds of people took hold in the area, especially on several of the
and Green's Landing became a seaport and the seaport came
smaller, nearby islands,
be
named
came to a
for the stone shipped to the
rely less
to
westward. But modern construction techniques
on cut stone and more on precast concrete, so most of the quarries closed
few decades ago, most of the stonecutters
left, all
of the coasting schooners disappeared,
and most of the townspeople who remained joined the fishermen or the industries that supported them.
where once
Island; a
(The only quarry
still
in business
workforce numbered
its
in the
is
across the Thorofare on Crotch
hundreds,
now
it
employs about half
dozen full-time workers.) Evidence of the old quarries
on. by,
and
is
everywhere around Stonington, which was constructed
The houses
for stone.
are built on stone ledges: the foundations are of cut
There are stone walls, wharves, curbs, moorings, and, of course, headstones
stone.
cemeteries
— though surprisingly, the markers, even
far less elegant
for
some
of the great quarrymen, are
than one would expect. Perhaps the townspeople were too busy cutting
the time to
monuments and bridges and buildings make monuments to themselves.
Stonington
is
stone for the
a deceptive
town to the visitor.
It
of
New York
seems backward
City
in the
World of the
coast.
To
outsiders
it
looks as
if it
and couldn
t
find
most pleasant sense
of the word, a throwback to the turn of the century, a Mystic Seaport or a Disney
in the
— dare
I
say
were put there primarily
to
it?
make
home and hearth for the inhabitants. Similar towns on the coast of Maine Boothbay Harbor, Camden, Bar Harbor understand that notion and cater to it. After all, there's money to be made bv stocking bait shacks with native art manufactured in Hong Kong and chandleries with Tthe tourists feel good
and only secondarily
to provide a
—
—
and
shirts
soft-serve ice cream.
differently, and, like a diminishing
But in Stonington the local people see their town
number
of fishing communities along the coast, they
are quick to protect their interests.
Not
to say that they
have been entirely successful. There are several small
only during the summer, for the tourists, and
many choice
stores,
open
pieces of waterfront property
have changed hands recently. Most of the fishermen are convinced that ten years from
now
the commercial wharves and piers will be in the hands of the outsiders
place
left for
them
will
be the new municipal
attitude of the townspeople
community
to
is
fish pier.
that authenticity
is
and the only
But for the most part, the prevailing the most important aspect of the
be preserved. As far as they are concerned, working lobsterboats are
unpretentious and utilitarian and therefore authentic, and the people
who own and work
on them share the same characteristics. Yachts and other pleasure craft are
and not what they appear
to be
and therefore unauthentic, and
their
all
gussied up
owners and guests
are ditto.
A
TOWN BY THE EDGE OF THE SEA
1
09
Stonington.
at
t
ho
southern end of Deer Isle, is
a full-bore
fishing town.
harbor
is
The
circled with
wharves, bait shacks, chandleries, fish buyers, boatyards,
and
a
packing plant.
make this attitude obvious. “It’s a game, a show, a resident said. “On nights in the summer when the schooners are in town, part of the sport for some of the people is to go down to the harbor Oftentimes, the people of Stonington will go out of heir t
and entertain themselves by poking fun Like genuine islanders
all
you
old-fashioned fishermen,
and run out well
of
town on a
little
about the “cute
you insinuate
in
If
but your
have been.
life
little
any way
town
that island
and the “quaint, life
somehow
is
it.
»
The townspeople
of Stonington have never been
happy with
the
common
perception
by outsiders that they are quaint, not particularly smart rustics living in a charming
nineteenth-century village not side
you
You might not be tarred and feathered could be made so miserable that you might as
you will hear about
rail,
attempt to cover up their feelings.
— an
the middle of the street (a temptation few tourists in
talk out loud
if
culturally substandard, then
at the outlandish outlanders.
— and make
down
ignore the sidewalk and walk resist), if
to
along the coast of Maine, they are open and unpolished
almost universal characteristic
Stonington can
way
and overgrown Christmas
much bigger than half a citv block, with bait trees
on the
that perception. In their minds, they are
other. In fact,
normal people,
if
barrels
little
on one
the truth be known, they hate
liv
ing normal working people
s
bumper sticker on a truck at Conarys Wharf is any indication: \\ ork Is for People \\ ho Don Know low to Fish.) Like anyone else any where else, they get up in the morning, go to work, put in an honest day's labor, come home, eat supper, lives. (\X ell.
not totally,
if
a
t
I
entertain themselves for the evening, go to bed. get again.
110
I
I
up the next morning and do
it
all
over
hey do not see themselves as unique. Threatened, perhaps, but not unique.
PASSAGE
l\
TIME
The
threat
comes from two
The first is the Deer Isle Bridge, which connects mainland. The second is our schooner and others
directions.
the northern end of the island with the like
it,
which dump scores of passengers
accident, both threats originally
summer
the
of
came
And by
right in the middle of town.
to pass coincidentally. u
1938 and the use of coasting schooners
(
The bridge was opened
skinboats
in the
vernacular) to carry vacationing passengers developed at just about the
came by land and they came by
moved
But don
t
get
for
me wrong. The townspeople don
What they do regret
living in a sphere other like to visit
—
t
it,
or they would have
life
are
more
readily available.
hate the bridge; in fact, back in
at least the vast
than tourism
1
938 they
—
majority of islanders
that people
is
into the pool
of
mainland
who make their
on the mainland, especially tourists
quaint fishing villages, have every right to use the bridge, too, and exer-
cise that right in increasing
It is
like
themselves as
perhaps a microsecond to regret the passing of the familiar ferry service across
accessibility.
It
same time. They
Isle still see
They are out of the mainstream and
Eggemoggin Reach and then did a half-gainer smack
who
Stonington
a long time ago to Ellsworth or Bangor or Rockland or somewhere else where
goods and services and the conveniences of modern-day
paused
in
sea.
Bridge or no bridge, the people of Stonington and Deer islanders, not mainlanders.
historical
isn’t the tourists
numbers.
themselves
who
strike fear into the hearts of Stonington residents.
a fear of the changes the tourists are likely to
well as a corollary apprehension that too
many
make on
tourists
the character of the town, as
might take a
liking to the place,
buy some property, and stick around. For example, when a small, unassuming restaurant
down by
was sold
the fish factory
establishment so
it
now
a few years ago to an outsider,
caters to tourists
know who
they are and what their town it
But change
is
working
After class,
all,
the people of Stonington
pure and simple. Historicallv,
has always depended on blue-collar employment
ting, boatbuilding, fishing, carpentry,
white-collar jobs, tourism,
is:
the
and summer people, the year-rounders voted
against the change by withholding their patronage.
prosperity or the lack of
who upgraded
mechanics
—
and has had
little
— stonecut-
dependence on
and entertainment.
creeping up on Stonington, just as
it is
penetrating into the other farthest
A lobsterboat underway off Stonington.
A roll X BY TUT EDGE OE THE SE
I
111
reaches
Maine. There are, for example, as
ol
many
real estate brokers as fish
buyers in
town, w hereas not that long ago, the ratio was heavily weighted in favor of the buyers. Yet
something about the Stonington attitude that indicates the community
(here's
once again,
just as
to that of the
it
survive
will
survived the transition from a stonecutter's and schoonerman
fisherman when the big quarries w ent out of business. There
is
s
town
indeed an
unpleasant element in the town, a rawboned fierceness that surfaces from time to time
when
pressures
—primarily
and
political
social
—build
up and demand
without that, Stonington w ould be just another coastal tow
summer and boarded up and empty
The view!
climbed
I
to the
brow
of the
dous scene on the coast of Maine,
I
w
in the
hill
inter
n:
— a pretty
behind the town.
have never seen
it
unbearably crowded little
If
village
w
ith a
in the
view.
more stupen-
there were a
The wharves,
.
release, but
the gulls circling the
fishing fleet, the green-blue sea, the granite shore, the spruce-capped islands, the great
bulk of
au Haut.
Isle
The Stephen Taber had the harbor wing-and-wing
her
time.... Heave!
wooden -shelled
and hauled up her anchor and w as heading out
down wand. The
preparing to get underway.
sails,
more
set all sail
I
crew' of the Tmer/ccm Eagle
was sweating up
could hear the shouts of the mate
u (
blocks, the gaff jaw s
and mast hoops
sliding
up the masts.
r
on the decks and the coffee percolating dow n
oil
from our schooner and
The American on a side
street
towns w
been
it
and pennants snapped tree next to a
go,
one
in the galley.
I
imagined
sails
I
and the
An hour or tw o aw ay
looking
could have been
down on
in the breeze.
From where
in
one of the
stood,
remaining New' England
few'
a maritime scene right out of a Winslow
fifty or seventy-five
and smacks and
I
white-clapboard Maine-style two-story house
growing by the walkway,
sailing sloopboats
s
was already homesick.
under a maple
ith heart,
painting,
I
Eagle's flags
mums
with yellow
Let
the auxiliary engine ticking over, the sheaves turning in the
),
could smell the tar in the igging and the cotton canvas of the sun-bleached linseed
of
years ago.
If
the streets of the towai
the
7
Homer
power lobsterboats had
had been
dirt,
it
could have
been a hundred years ago or more. I
walked over
to the
Fisherman "s Friend
for a
cup of coffee and a fried-haddock
sandwich, and then followed a winding road through the back of town
N
Marine, the largest single busihess in Stonington, employing about half a hundred
people.
The American
Eagle, one of
the last fishing schooners built
on the east coast. She
was soon converted
power dragger. but
to a
On
a small island tucked
town by a causew ay w ith
a lobster
behind Green Head, the boatyard
pound on each
fisherman’s yard, building and repairing in
men w ant. all
to Billings Diesel
In addition,
parts of the New;
it
serves
England
steel,
side. Billings
wood,
is
fiberglass,
you w on
t
connected
to the
primarily a commercial
whatever the
many of Maine’s cruise schooners and
coast. Yachts, too, but
is
fisher-
larger vessels
find very
many
from
people
in
in the
mid-1980s, following her retirement, she
was
rerigged as a sailing vessel.
Stonington bragging about
that.
There was a time, not that long ago. w hen scores of yards along the coast of Maine could handle large
112
vessels.
A PASSAGE
i\
Any harbor worthy
TIME
of a
name had
at least
one marine railway, and
I
Toil
\
BY TUB EDGE OF
TIIE
SE
I
113
A
lobster
pound
in the
foreground. Billings Diesel
&
Marine
in the
back-
ground. Billings, just on the other side of
Green
Mead from Stonington.
is
one of the few boatyards with adequate facilities for
hauling large schooners.
usually several, for hauling coasting schooners decline of the fleet
came
and
sailing fishermen, but along with the
a decline of the institutions that served the fleet: the building
and rigging
repair yards, the sawmills, the sail
lofts,
the chandleries, the shipsmiths, the
sawmills. Today, the yards that have the facilities for hauling
such as ours are few and far between: Billings
Snow's and the North End Shipyard
in Stonington,
There are a few others, but they are too expensive or don a
wooden vessel requires, or both.
fishing vessels;
it's
It’s
Wayfarer Marine in Camden.
storage
laying up the vessel in a yard. the water doesn
t
Boothbay Harbor.
work on wood.
quite another to
craft, the big
better for several reasons, not the least of
is
in
understand the particular care
dry storage during the off-season months. Bather, they are
Wet iti
t
servicing a schooner
one thing to work on fiberglass, aluminum, and steel
Unlike vachts and lobsterboats and other small for
and
Rockland, and Sample's
in
The most important
schooners are not hauled
left in
which
is
the water year round.
that
reason, however,
it
is
is
cheaper than
that a schooner
dry out, a condition that hastens the end of a large wooden
hull: the
planking shrinks, the wood checks, the seams open up, and the joints become loose.
when
true that a dried-out hull will swelf^gain cycles of wet
and
dry, the hull will lose
and maintain it there
and
its
It is
put back into the water, but after several
resilience. Better to leave the vessel in the
— with the exception of a brief haulout. usually
in the spring, to
water
work
on the bottom.
At the end of the season
— usually
in
mid-
October
to late
topmasts sent down, and running rigging removed. As
warehouse ashore, and what weather.
To keep
rain,
isn't
is
snow, and
carefully secured
ice off
1
-+
1
PASSAGE
l\
TIME
sails
as possible
are unbent, is
stored in a
and protected against the winter
the vessels, temporary wood-framed shelters
covered with sheet plastic are erected over the
1
much
— the
hulls.
Stripped down, covered over.
fendered and buffered for protection against
moored with heavy
ice
lines in protected corners of
Rockland. Most are fitted with automatic bilge
On
bilge water rises too high.
such harbors as Camden, Rockport. and
pumps or alarms to warn
the
owner
occasion, a shipkeeper might live aboard, but
up housekeeping
iron constitution to set
and other hazards, the schooners are
in a
damp, drafty schooner
in a
it
if
the
takes an
lonely winter
harbor with the wind howling out of the north and the temperature below zero.
A
laid-up schooner
may
look alone
and abandoned, but such
owners work on the vessels during the winter months, the roof, the translucent material yielding sufficient light
warmth during
the day.
A woodstove,
its
At winter's end April
—the cover
life
and
a certain
amount
bending on the
of solar
exhaust pipe exiting through the plastic cover, is
hoisted to the masthead to
in
Maine can come anytime between mid-March and
stripped off and spring fitting-out can begin.
late
Scraping, sanding,
painting, varnishing, oiling, going over the above-water planking, setting anti
shop
goes on.
—which
is
Most
not the case.
plastic cover serving as a
provides additional heat. At Christmastime, an evergreen
prove that, indeed,
is
up the
rigging,
the crew works for weeks to get the vessel shipshape for the
sails,
coming season. Sooner or later, the schooner is towed over to a marine railway to be hauled so the
bottom can be maintained
(the Coast
Guard
requires hull inspection at least once
every eighteen months): planking and fastenings inspected, caulking renewed as necessary.
and antifouling paint
the founding of
Rockland
hauled out there because
was the yard of choice, but since
applied. For years, Billings s
is
it
End Shipyard in 1973, many much closer to their homeports.
North so
But every year one or two schooners opt for old-style careening
onto a
soft,
of the schooners are
—running the vessel The
protected shore at high water and waiting for the tide to go out.
vessel
is
allowed to lay over, resting on the turn of the bilge, and the exposed side of the bottom
is
scraped and painted.
On the next high
tide, the vessel
follows, six hours later, the other side of the
wooden
bottom
is
—
is
turned, and
at
the low tide that
scraped and painted. Only a sound
vessel can be careened, as the strain on the hull
edge of the keel and the turn of the bilge
is
—unsupported except on the
considerable.
In the old days,
some
smaller schooners were laid alongside wharves and tied securely to bollards. tide
went
V-shaped
out, they
would be standing upright, which was
the 1
bottom would be reasonably accessible
in section, as the
was not much good
for
fine for vessels that
U-shaped
vessels, since the
bottom of the
side
of the
When
the
were rather
to the crew, but
it
U would be resting in
mud. have watched the Mary Day ah d the Stephen Taber careened at the head of the harbor
Camden, and "picturesque is hardly the word to describe the operation. The schooner heeled way over so her masts jut over the green grass of the town park, the crew in kneein
high rubber boots tools, painting
mucking around in
the low-tide
with rollers on long wooden poles
— "The
apprehension of the skipper
tide, the tide!
mud, the frantic scraping with big iron and brushes as big as floor mops, the Are we going
to
make this
photographers and videotapers recording a scene as old as seafaring
tide?
— the
itself.
A TOUXBl THE EDGE OF TUB SEA
1
15
An hour packed w
after noon, the skipper
ith lobsters
and
the cook were at the
The
sweet corn, and three huge watermelons. this
time of year, three dollars a pound
have been
town landing, the yawlboat
(almost 100 pounds, enough for twm critters per person), clams,
—
price of the lobsters
at least twenty-five cents
had been high
more than
for
would
it
Burnt Coat Harbor. The skipper said he wished he had put
at the dealer's in
in there.
“You're looking at almost four hundred dollars in groceries for one meal,’ he said. “No
w onder me and the wife
The news from
eat a lot of
the waterfront
driven ashore during the storm
BNM
had
to
baked beans
in the winter.
do with a couple of fishing boats that had been
—one had been pulled
off successfullv,
with moderate,
damage; the other had been pulverized between two giant boulders
fixable
earlier in the
week between a
schooners.
seemed that a
It
local
—and a
set-to
lobsterman and the skipper of one of the cruise
large vessel
—perhaps
a schooner, perhaps not
— had
sailed
down by Isle au Haut and destroyed a considerable The lobsterman, who was out several hundred dollars, blamed
through a patch of lobster-trap buoys
amount the
of valuable gear.
“goddam
and took out
skinboats
his
Thorofare between Kimball Island and
rammed
anger on the next one to anchor in the narrow'
Isle
au Haut. He hauled
off
and intentionally
the side of the schooner with his lobsterboat; the schooner’s skipper,
nothing of the
lost gear,
almost got into a
fistfight.
back and forth before the lobsterman backed
A
of angry words
lot
and
who knew
threats passed
off.
“Figures,’ the skipper said, getting hot under the collar as he related the story.
something goes w'rong, blame the biggest convenient thing to hand. None of us
potwarps wrapped around our rudders and centerboards. What the do? See a bunch of pot buoys and head right for them? Plus fellow' that the so-called
to
hell
“When
like to
does he think
we
I’d like to point out to that
goddam skinboats buy a lot of lobsters around here and that ought
count for something.
As he spoke, the schooner Mistress emerged from behind Green Head and put Stonington for lobsters and clams. One the smallest vessel in the schooner
amateur builder on Deer
Isle,
Camden, and
finished
molasses, odd-looking in
it
fleet.
Her construction w as begun
but in the tradition of so
off as a miniature cruise
many
in to
of the “green boats,” she was, at 40 feet on deck,
many
in
1960 by an
part-time backyard
boatbuilders, he never finished. Captain Jim Nisbet bought the hull in 1966, took to
have
respects, but a cute
model-like qualities. She carried a crew' of tw
o,
schooner
little
—
tiny, slower
it
over
than cold
craft nevertheless for her ship-
w ith three staterooms
for tw o passengers
each, the perfect vessel for six friends sailing together.
We
watched the Mistress come
embarked
to
the last of our passengers,
anchor smartly off the fishermen’s co-op wharf,
motored out
to
our schooner, stow'ed the supper
and got underway. It w as a perfect afternoon for sailing. A hard, dry breeze from the northwest. Smooth water in the lee of the islands. Sunlight reflected like dancing diamonds on the surface of the sea. The sharp smell of seaw eed in
supplies
down
the
Perfect.
1
16
air.
in the galley,
A PASSAGE IX TIME
"The perfect vessel sailing together.”
for six friends
The
Mistress.
“Oh How She Scoons !"
VIII
9
Among other to look at the
me was never water and especially
things [the schooner captain] told
dancing sunlight on the
the dancing moonlight.
It will
turn
,
you
inside out in a minute.
— Frederick Sturgis Laurence
W
e sailed west
on the Thorofare, between Crotch Island and Green Head out into East
Penobscot Bay toward Vinalhaven, which was shimmering bright sun.
like a
jeweled
gown
in the
Up the bay we could see Butter and Eagle islands; down the bay the lighthouse
on Saddleback Ledge; and way
off in the distance to the south, the
low smudge of Seal
Island on the horizon.
bow your heads, the skipper said when we entered the square by Mark Island, West Mark Island Ledge, Scraggy Island, and The
"Take off your hats and patch of sea cornered
Brown Cow. “Somewhere below of the
first
us he the mortal remains of the Lydia
schooners in the Maine windjammer
Swift's second vessel, and, like
M. Webster, one
The Webster was,
fleet."
in fact.
Captain
most of the early passenger-carrying schooners, she was
discarded after her better days were over. In 19^5, her crew punched holes in the hull
below the waterline and allowed her
to
to sink to the
bottom of the bay.
The Lydia M. Webster died in an era when there were so many sailing cargo vessels be had for next to nothing that it did not pay to rebuild tired-out cruise schooners. It
didn
even pay to maintain them properly. The easiest and most economical approach
t
was to wear them out, then strip off all the useful gear
—
sails,
spars, ironwork, anchors, stoves, steering wheels, davits
plenty
more where those came from. They were seen
blocks, deadeyes, compasses,
— and get
rid of them.
as wretched,
There were
broken-down, unim-
“A schooner
a vessel with two or
more masts, mast as
portant, valueless, used-up, useless bags of bones.
taller
The Webster was lucky. Her burial at sea was at least reasonably dignified, though is
not
known whether or not her owner held a memorial
Most cruise schooners met their end as
if
over after the annual Lion's Club yard
suppose every
man
(or boy)
who
service after the plug
was pulled.
they w ere no more important than old junk
sale.
The
it
lovely Alice S. Wentworth.
left
1863 —
— was
wrote John L.
wharf
Boston as an example of Ye Olde Shippe from Ye Olde Tymes of Yore until she
in
OH.
tied to a restaurant
HOW SHE SCOONS
'!”
1
fore,
sails of the fore-andaft
type
“I
“Mine was the then handsome Alice
Wentworth.
as or
than the
—triangular
or quadrilateral in
Leavitt.
S.
tall
the after
and with principal
shape
ever went to sea had a favorite vessel,
is
nothing more than
1
— in other
words, they are not squaresails.”
The Roseway.
sank and had
to
be broken up and removed. Ditto for the Lois M. Candage 1912, which ,
rotted alongside a restaurant in Damariscotta, Maine.
The Lillian. 1876, was beached and broken up at Sandy Point. The Annie F. Kimball., 1886, was abandoned on the shore of Camden's inner harbor and eventually went to pieces of her
own
hauled ashore
in
The end
accord.
Camden and
1909, came more quickly; she was
for the Enterprise ,
burned. The Mabel., 1881, Captain Swift's
mer, in terminal disrepair, sank of her
own accord
off Maine’s
first
windjam-
Seguin Island. The Clin-
ton 1886, rotted to nothing in a Stonington boatyard. So, too, the ,
Era S.
Cullison. 1888,
The Maggie 1871, was left by a wharf in Rockland, Maine, and ultimately burned. The Grace & Alice 1910, was laid up at Carney Island and stripped by vandals. By the standards of today, a time of increasing awareness
on the shore of Cape Ann, Massachusetts.
,
,
of the value of maritime preservation,
it
was a shameless waste
of historic vessels
—no
matter the perception of their condition. Perception, of course,
is
everything.
In the 1930s,
40s, 50s
— even
for
most of the
—old
wooden ships were perceived as nothing more than old wooden ships, valueless hulks that had been superseded by superior vessels and therefore seldom given a thought. The sooner they were gone, the sooner the seas and waterfronts would be free of a bunch of unreconstructable eyesores. Never mind that these vessels were living links with our past; never mind that they represented a maritime tradition that had once been so strong that trivialization by destruction bordered on the criminal. They were like the old buildings in Boston and Bangor, T Wharf and the Portland Railroad Station, burned and torn apart and allowed to collapse in on themselves and then replaced by something 1960s
“better.”
The schooner tradition may only amount to a low rise on the of
American
schooner
history, but
rig itself
is
it
sweep of the landscape
nevertheless goes back to the earliest days of our country.
several centuries old,
commerce can be traced back
and
its
New.
The
use to propel vessels in coastwise
at least to the seventeenth
century in the Old World and the first
schooners were pleasure
to a vessel with a certain type of rig,
although over the years,
early eighteenth century in the craft,
larger
(It is
thought that the
but experts are not in total agreement on that.)
The term schooner refers vessels so rigged
Anyone
have developed a hull form that has “schooner
written
all
over them.
Grand Banks fishing schooner, for example, on sight, even if the rig has been cut down and deck structures have been added. So, too, the coasting and pilot schooners. But, technically speaking, a schooner is nothing more familiar with the type can identify a
than a vessel with two or more masts, the after mast as with principal
sails of
the fore-and-aft type
other words, not squaresails.
(known generically as
tall
as or taller than the fore,
—triangular or quadrilateral
In the nineteenth century, there
in
shape
and
—
in
were many schooners
topsail schooners) that carried square topsails
and sometimes even
topgallant sails on the foremast in addition to the fore-and-aft type, but such squaresails
120
A PASSAGE IN TIME
The pinky schooner
Summertime.
(Most British schooners were rigged with squaresails on the
were only secondary.
foremast, as were die legendary Baltimore clippers.) foreign, carry square topsails
carry such a
Bool,
set
The earliest-known
illustration of a
Maine windjammer fleet
schooner
whose pen-and-ink drawing shows the yacht
Amsterdam. The
is
in the
successfully pinpointed the origin of the schooner rig, though plenty of
historians have tried.
fore-and-aft
on the foremast, though none
a few schooners, primarily
rig.
Nobody has
named
Today
sails
vessel
shown running before
is
is
no bowsprit; no
There are a few eighteenth-century
famous being
staysail or
of the burgomasters of
underway; both look
much
jib.
like
The date
illustrations extant of
Among
in
showing Boston Harbor
One
is
earlier
or seventeenth centuries
in the sixteenth
Massachusetts,
European
History of the
American
in
at the
at
anchor and the other
is
schooners seen today along the Maine coast.
the normal course of colonization. Yet there
in Gloucester,
1600.
schooners
Most historians agree that the schooner rig originated in Europe Netherlands
is
die vessels in the anchorage are several
schooners, including two without square topsails.
America
artist
the wind, wing-and-wing; she carries
a Paul Revere engraving
beginning of the American Revolution.
in the
by a Dutch
with short gaffs at the head; the foremast, shorter than the mainmast,
way forward. There
waters, the most
is
7
in
l" 13.
is
—and was brought over
a belief that the rig
by Captain Andrew Robinson
origin notwithstanding.
J.
to
was invented
—evidence of an
This theory was published
Town of Gloucester Cape Ann. by John ,
—probably somewhere
in
I860
in the
Babson:
-on.
non
sin: sc
'
oaxsi
121
A current tradition of the town relates of both a positive
the origin of the “schooner”;
and negative kind, confirms the
and abundant testimony,
story so strongly, that
it
is
unnecessary to
take further notice of the verbal account. Dr. Moses Prince, brother of the annalist, writing in this
town, Sept. 25, 1721, says, “Went to see Captain Robinson’s lady, Nc. This gentleman
was the
first
the use that
contriver of schooners, and built the is
now made
of them, being so
first
of the sort about eight years since; and
much known, has convinced the world of their how mankind is obliged to this gentleman for
convenience beyond other vessels, and shows this
knowledge.
Nearly seventy years afterwards, another visitor gives some further
particulars of this interesting fact. Cotton Tufts, Esq., connected with us in Gloucester,
September
8,
1790, writes:
“I
by marriage, being
was informed (and committed the same
to
name from this circumAndrew Robinson of that place, having constructed a vessel which he masted and rigged in the same manner as schooners are at this day, on her going off the stocks and passing into the water, a bystander cried out, ‘Oh, how she scoons!” Robinson instantly replied, ‘A scooner let her be! From which time, vessels thus masted and rigged have gone by the name of ‘schooners’; before which, vessels of this description were not known in Europe nor America. This account was confirmed to me by a great number of persons in Gloucester. The strongest negative evidence corroborates these statements. No marine
writing) that the kind of vessels called ‘schooners’ derived their stance; viz., Mr.
dictionary, no commercial record, no merchant’s inventory, of a date prior to 1713,
containing the word “schooner” has yet been discovered; and as an historical fact, that the first vessel of this class
by the respectable authorities above
Howard
had her
it
may,
therefore, be received
origin in Gloucester, as stated
cited.
Chapelle, the leading historian of naval architecture
in
theory of the Gloucester invention of the schooner “a childish fable
America, called the
and
Professor E.P. Morris, one of the eminent scholars on the fore-and-aft story in
was a pack of hokum made up
1860 quotes Cotton Tufts
—
heard It is
upon at
after the fact to justify a folk legend.
1790 quoting some unnamed person
once that there never has been any such word
at that.
thought the
(John Babson
1791 who says he
The Oxford Dictionary it
does.
1790
is
“And
English language.
It is
it
may
given,
story.
says that the “scoons” story “looks like an invention.”
Most
was not derived from “scoons,” but “scoons” was made up in humorous attempt, to account for the word “scooner,” and the whole
“Scooner
an attempt, perhaps a
in the
only as quoted from this one passage. The story hangs
on “scoons. and “scoons” hangs on the
story of
in
the verb “scoons” as the source of “scooner” that the story depends.
ol course, in all the dictionaries, but
certainly
rig,
go
In 1927, Morris wrote:
).
be said
in
let it
”
nothing more than a picturesque adornment of the Gloucester tradition.
Yet the word had to have come from somewhere. Though English-language dictionaries
cannot pinpoint the origin of the word, perhaps
ignored slang, and scoons could have been slang. After ship,
run
is
thought to have come from a slang word for
all,
fast
is
the
because early dictionaries
word clipper,
motion: to
as in “clipper
clip, to clip along, to
at a fast clip.
Arthur Clark, on the other hand, theorized
122
it
A PASSAGE IX TIME
in his
History of Yachting (1904) that
schooner came from the Dutch schoon. cited as evidence, Clark
though
it
Dutch-Latin dictionary of 1599, which he
In a
found that schoon was defined as “beautiful or
fair or lovely,
did not have a nautical connotation.
But the Gloucester story really
two parts
lias
to
it.
One has
to
do with the origin of
t
lie
word, the other with the invention of the type. Granted, the evidence points toward the
development of the schooner
long before 1721, but the British maritime historian
rig
David MacGregor speculates that the supposed coining of the w ord then may have had nothing to do with the
rig.
“The ‘scooning
1982, "may have applied to a
Such
rig.
a theory
of the Gloucester two-master,
new hull-form
rather than any alteration of an established
worth future exploration, especially since
is
Gloucester fishing schooner
came
he wrote in
to be seen as different in character
in later
years the
from other working
schooners.
There are several schooner subtypes
—coasters, fishermen, pilotboats, and yachts
and, to further confuse the matter, there are even sub-subtypes: bay coasters, packets, brickers, traders, stone droghers, Gloucester fishermen, oyster dredgers,
Today’s windjammers
reflect this diversity.
an outgrowth of cargo-carrying under
1930s
is
not
much more than a
sail,
Though
the Maine cruise-schooner trade
and the
tradition
it
indjammer
original coasters of today’s w
w av
of
The Mary Day, the
Mistress,
life,
the
coasters.
all
fleet,
vessels that at
one time actually
carried cargo, include the Stephen Taber, the Lewis R. French, the Grace Bailey,
Mercantile.
is
has followed since the
continuation of the time-honored coasting
schooners that are engaged in the business are not
The
and more.
and
the
and the Heritage, though based on the coaster
model, never actually carried cargo. The ex-fishermen are the American Eagle, the Isaac //.
Erans. and
the,/.
& E.
Biggin.
The Nathaniel Bowditch But
it is
not
all
The Timberwind and
seems.
it
built as a yacht
The French spent part of her career as a fisherman.
on fishing- schooner
The Bowditch was built
as a yacht
for passenger-carrying, but she
1
was modeled
served as both fishermen and coasters. And, built for fin fishing out of Gloucester,
lines
and years
later
was converted
somewhat on fishing-schooner
eventually was converted to a working fisherman.
w as
the Roseway are former pilotboats.
a yacht.
as simple as
The Roseway was to a pilotboat.
is
The Summertime was
after the old-time
among
lines
and
built specifically
pinky schooners, which
the fishermen, the American Eagle
whereas the Erans and Biggin were
built for
oyster dredging on Delaware Bay.
We
flew across the
bay toward
tin*
lower corner of Vinalhaven, the surface of the sea dark
Smoke from a fire on the and blowing horizontally downwind like a ragged
blue with patches of purple from the gusty northwest w ind. island
was
pennant.
rising a
hundred
The schooner’s
feet
or so
rigging,
under tremendous strain on the windward
thrummed and hummed w ith the force of the afternoon Iree
side,
The cook and the galley hand, thenbecause supper would be cooked on the beach, came on deck w ith mugs breeze.
on. non she scooxsr
123
of coffee and stretched out in the lee of the similarly situated, tucked here heel of the massive bowsprit
We
and there
main cabirthouse. Most
of the passengers were
—behind the deckhouses, the water casks, the
—protected from the cold wind and warmed by the sun.
jibed off Brimstone Island,
rounded Saddleback Ledge Lighthouse, the major
lighthouse marking the entrance to East Penobscot Bay, and sailed on a broad reach into the Isle an
Haut Thorofare, the narrow channel between
Kimball Island
all sails set, flags
was stepping along
and streamers
of speed, grace, and, above
“Will you look
at that!’
east
and
About halfway through we passed the Timberwind coming
to the west.
the other way. She
au Haut on the
Isle
all,
thoroughbred
like a
down the homestretch: wake astern, the picture
trotter
and frothing
aflutter, a roiling
smartness.
more than a
the skipper said with
trace of envy.
“Enough
to
bring tears to a glass eyeball.
The Timberwind was a beautiful
sight, indeed. Built in
of the Portland (Maine) Pilot Association, she
Portland Harbor for more than three decades in
1931 as the principal pilotboat
had patrolled the outer approaches
all
to
types of weather, putting pilots aboard
incoming vessels and picking them up from outgoing ones. Retired from service
in
1969,
she was converted to passenger-carrying in 19^1 and based in Rockport, the only
windjammer homeported there. At 70 had an even smaller capacity,
feet
on deck, a hair smaller than our schooner, she
had been
as she
built not for cargo-carrying but as a
seagoing home-away-from-home for the Portland
pilots.
The best-looking cargo-carrying coasting schooners had outward appearance that
—suggested honesty,
—
if
vessels
a
homey handsomeness, an
have personality (and most
sailors say that they
They were designed by men whose names may not have been household words but who nevertheless knew how to achieve good looks in a vessel within the constraints of great cargo capacity and small do)
crews: John
J.
solidity, perseverance,
and Fred W. Rideout
most graceful coasters ever
built.
attractive, yes; pretty, yes; but they
pilotboats
and
along like a thor-
oughbred
trotter
down
home-
the
roiling
and frothing
wake
astern, the
The
pilotboats
aesthetes.
Some
and
to
when
be upstaged
fishing schooners
all
of
whom designed some
seen from a distance, were
in the looks
Built for
department by the
both speed and sea-
combined the rakishness
first
fishing schooners.
of the clippers, the
2-+
Cup, the lovely schooner-
Grand Bankers, were designed by
men who
helped
and the Morgans, the Cabots and the Forbeses,
Edward
McManus's eye
a passaci l\ TIM I.
set the nautical tastes
also designed pilot atid
Burgess, his son Starling, Dennison Lawlor. B.B. Crowninit
is
true that
Thomas McManus, perhaps
American fishing-schooner designer of all time, was
true that
s
lines.
fishing schooners, especially the
Arthur Binney. John Alden. While
greatest
1
winner of the America
of the greatest yacht designers,
of the Vanderbilts
shield.
The Timbertvind.
tended
yacht America, was built on pilotboat
grace, and. above
smartness.”
and
designed for a specific purpose. The
picture of speed,
all.
Their vessels,
—
elegance of the finest yachts, and the refinement of traditional craft that have been
stretch: all sails set. flags aflutter, a
of Bath
their close cousins, the fishing schooners.
worthiness, the pilot “She was stepping
strength.
Wardwell of Stockton Springs, Camden, and Rockland; John M. Gamage
of Rockland; Miles M. Merry of the
and
for a beautiful line
and
a
a former fish dealer,
it
is
the also
sweeping curve was as well developed
on.
ho u
shi:
scoo xs:
125
as
any
artist
s.
It
could he said, in the larger view of things, that McManus’s sensitivity
lay closer to the art gallery than
it
did to the fish house, though he probably would never
have uttered such a thought out loud. Pilotboats
had
to be fast, because the business of piloting
harbors were served by several pilotboats, and the be the one
to put a pilot
aboard and thus
harbor. (Speed, however, wasn
sometimes were
t
everything. Pilotboats
in very tight conditions.
reach an incoming vessel would
worked in all sorts of weather and
Seaworthiness, weatherliness, and maneuverability
important as speed.)
just as
he saint requirements prevailed for
t
lit*
fishing schooners.
fishing grounds received the best price for her catch: faster in trips
during the season.
It
fishing >kilb of the crew.
126
was the requirement
I
PASSAGE
l\
TIME
The first and
vessel in
faster out
from the
meant more
therefore stood to reason that the difference between a good
season and a lousy season depended as
It
larger
collect tin* fee for bringing the vessel safely into
1
I
first to
was competitive. The
much on
the speed of the schooner as
it
did on the
(As with the pilotboats, seakindliness was important as well.) for speed that
drew public attention
to the fishing
and
pilot
Two different
schooner
types: the Adventure. a
fishing schooner
(left);
and the .Mary Day and the Heritage, variations
on the old coasting schooner theme.
schooners and away from coasting schooners
had
t
to
lie
coasting schooners, even though the skills required to design
lie
just as finely
honed. “The fact
about the coasters, “that one of these big Yankee schooners It
happens that her way
worthy of honor difficult
The
for that.
by which
somewhat from
differs
wrote John T. Rowland
a masterpiece in her way.
that of the fish killers, hut
conditions her design
a naval architect has ever
is, is
must
fulfill
is
it
no
are probably the
been confronted, and the way
down-east shipwrights managed to harmonize seeming contradictions
is
in
less
most
which our
rather wonderful
when you come to study a hit. But not much fame accrued to the designers of coasting schooners, since theirs was not the task to create fast vessels. Too bad for them, there was flash in speed, dash in speed, glory in speed. Everyone wanted to know about the man who drew the lines of the fastest it
fisherman on the Atlantic or the swiftest pilotboat out of Portland or Boston or 1
larbor.
\\
ithout speed, a pilotboat
the toasts of the coasts
— and
was nothing,
so, too,
Banker was nothing.
were their designers.
—came beauty:
automatically produce the other
a
And w ith
\\ it
ith
—as
New York
it.
thev were
if
one must
hulls that were slim in relation to their
on.
i
ion
she scoo.xsr
127
length, sharp hows, fine sterns,
huge presses of canvas, low houses, sweeping
Like racehorses, race cars, and yachts, everything that
them
made
sheers.
made
these vessels fast also
beautiful.
Few of the magnificent Atlantic
pilot schooners
remain today, as thev w ere graduallv
made obsolete by motor vessels beginning in the 1930s and 1940s. In the Maine w indjammer fleet are the Timberwind and the Roseway but he latter looks more like a t
,
fisherman than a pilotboat and the former, while beautiful
in
everv respect, can't hold a
candle to some of the Boston pilot schooners of the turn of the century, such as the
Law lor and
magnificent Hesper designed by Dennison ,
built to a yachtlike
standard of
excellence.
Likew
ise
the fishing schooners,
which began
when
to die out
the
Age of
ground
Sail
to
between the world wars. Though few were abandoned with quite the
a halt in the decades alacrity of the great
multimasted schooners, most were ruthlessly converted
made
vessels or. at the very least,
over as power vessels assisted by a
power
to
minimum
of
sail.
Their rigs were removed, and engines and pilothouses installed. Schooners that had once
been as
than the sw
fast as or faster
iftest
yachts, that
had
thrilled the eye of
anyone w ho
appreciated sailing vessels with balance, dignity, and nimble-footedness, that had swept in
from the Grand Banks and Georges Bank with the cockiness of the undisputed
were reduced to draft horses of the sea w and,
at best, a few' scraps of old
canvas
ith set
best,
peeling paint, smoke-belching exhaust stacks,
on stubby masts as a
faint
reminder of what
they once had been.
But one of the best of the in the
mid- 1950s
is.
the A dven ture out of Gloucester
to carry passengers along the
achusetts, a derivative of a that
last,
Thomas McManus
bow sprit
she didn't carry a
Maine coast. design, she
(The knockabout
rig
.
and Boston, w as revived
Built in
1926
in Essex,
Mass-
was a knockabout schooner
was the fashion for many of the
later Atlantic fishing schooners primarily for safety reasons; schooners with bowsprits
were dangerous for their crews while furling headsails during a blow on the open waters
The Adventure w as
of the fishing grounds.)
the last sailing fishing schooner to
work out
of the Boston Fish Pier, though in the early 1950s, just before she retired, most of her
motive pow er came from an engine, w ith minor assistance from staysails
She was
masts. fleet, (
laid
up
briefly, then
sailing first out of
bought and rerigged
1
\\
indjammers
stopping speed. She
is
now a museum ship
came
e
to
anchor
heart of Merchant of Deer Isle in
i
pass
for
both her in
size (121 feet overall)
Bow the
of
tightly
and her heart-
Gloucester.
the bight formed bv McGlatherv .
windjammer
and Bound
islands,
smack
in
die
packed collection of islands between the southern end
and the northern end of Isle au Haut. Easily the most dramatic island grouping
the Penobscot
128
in
for the
98~\ w hen she retired, theAdventure w as unofficially known
"Queen of the
\\
1954
on shortened
Rockland and eventually, under Captain Jim Sharp, out
iamden. Between then and
as the
in
set
\
of the Heritage a roiling :
of the major passages
'Aon
Both schooners charged for the passage betw een Beach and lorse
Captain Fee shouted back.
"You might
()()
I
PASSAGE
l\
trailed off
as well start cooking! 1
1
wake
anchor stands the loser to supper.
on the coast of Maine.
re on.
separating the two
TIME
I
lead islands on one
SAILORS
AM)
ISLA
XDS
167
168
A PASSAGE IX TIME
side
and Great Spruce Head and
emerged and corrected courses
—a larger
Little
more
She held her lead and gained a
little
When
North Haven, a straight shot
for
vessel with
Heritage
Spruce Head on the other.
sail
area and a longer waterline
in clear water, the
—was
more, enough so we could read the
port on her transom. But this
was Penobscot Bay and
minute passed, the wind, true
to form, lost
more
of
its
it
was
both schooners
slightly ahead.
name and hailing and
late afternoon,
The Heritage
strength.
as each
a heavier,
,
wider, and deeper vessel than ours, sailed better in strong winds, while ours, though
hardly a thoroughbred racer, was a shade faster in competition off Egg Rock Ledge and dead even as
Rock and the eastern shore
Pulpit
light
we
winds.
close, in fact, that
I
were gaining on the
of the entrance, both vessels almost within touching
distance, streaming along on a broad reach straight for the
were so
We
entered the harbor channel between
We
back shore of the harbor.
could see the lines of concentration on Captain Lee
s
brow and
clearlv hear his instructions to the crew.
when
Just
seemed that both schooners would be dancing partners
it
hard
forever,
aground on the harbor shore, our skipper, who held the windward edge, shouted Captain Lee, ‘Tin going to turn turn to port and shot
up
was
still
to
And he
jibe.
waiting for the
of victory
did and
The Heritage
into the wind.
drop the hook.
to starboard!
way
to
,
we
did.
jibing,
come
and Captain Lee
replied, “Fine, then
Our schooner turned, quick
to I
II
and
as a cat,
turned a wider, slower arc; while Captain Lee
off his vessel,
our skipper was signaling to the mate
A cheer erupted from the crowd on our deck, followed by a single shout
from the winner of the anchor
pool.
Later, Captain Lee
came
across in his
yawlboat with a large basket covered with a red-and-white-checked tablecloth, and he
and our skipper
sat
on the cabinhouse, their backs
as the sun set in screaming pinks
Our supper was an dough
and
rolls, salad,
to the
mainmast, and ate
and oranges behind the Camden
all-out feast. Roast beef, gravy, green peas,
cherry and peach pies
tea, the table livened
still
their
supper
Hills.
baked potatoes, sour-
warm from the woodstove oven,
hot coffee,
with laughter and storytelling. Following the meal, as was
on Friday
traditional on our schooner
of the galley, including the cook
night, the
and the
male passengers kicked the
galley assistant,
women
out
and washed the dishes and
pans and cleaned the tables and benches and swabbed the galley floor and sang songs
and drank
beer.
peaches, rock
Then we grabbed
salt, dishes,
a bucket of crushed ice,
some heavy cream,
sliced
spoons, and an old-fashioned hand-cranked ice cream
ma-
chine and went on deck.
The
galley assistant got out her guitar
then the skipper stood up by the
rail
and sang about
lost love
and told one of his patented
and long voyages, and
stories.
Much later, when
most of the passengers had gone below to their bunks or were stretched out on the roof of the main cabinhouse, of the
waning moon. F rom deep
Heritage their anchor ,
in
its
presence.
I
felt
lights
lit,
I
in a
in sleeping
bags
took a long, slow row around the harbor in the light
cove about half a mile away, our schooner and the
were the picture of a past I had never seen
—
yet here
I
was
verv fortunate.
“She held her lead
and gained a
little
more, enough so we eould read the
and hailing port on her transom.”
SAILORS
AND ISLANDS
169
name
"lie sal
and our skipper
on the cabinhouse, their
backs
to the
mainmast, and ate their
supper as the sun
set in
screaming pinks
and oranges behind the
Camden
Hills.”'
SAILORS
\XI)
ISI.WDS
171
,
VT
yn ^
T/ jU^i'
' i
IjMm
..
MM ''Ayr
m\W
'
S*
fXjRM
M.
mm
/
~
1/^
?•
T jA
.> \
|
Another Link
XI
The caulking mallet striking against
its
Chain
in the
iron creates a piercing, ringing
sound
which carries for a great distance and lets the world know that something going on, that work is being accomplished, that ships are taking form.
is
— Dana Story. Frame-Up!
The door to the North End Shipyard in Rockland. lingering cold of an early spring day.
pushed
I
it
Maine, was slightly
ajar, despite the
open without knocking and stepped
into
room with exposed rafters and an ancient wooden floor that undulated like the ocean on a calm day. Directly in front of me was a huge maroon shipsaw with portable a large, square
rollers,
table
but the machine was quiet, as was the entire shop: the polished surface of the
was proof enough
To my
right, in
of the miles of heayy oak that
its
blade.
one corner, was a blackened forge surrounded with anvils and tongs,
quenching buckets, hammers, bags of lene
had been cut by
steel
soft coal.
There was a welding torch with acety-
and oxygen tanks, and along the south wall was a long workbench littered with cutters
and nippers,
vises
chunks of scrap
and grinders. Nearby were a
steel
and
lathe
curls of shining metal.
and a
drill press,
and underfoot were
Four sooty welders' masks rested on a
shelf.
At the back of the room, to the
left
of the shipsaw.
was a thickness planer half-buried
by coarse wood chips; on the north wall was a bank of switches and transformers. By
my
hand was an even larger planer, and through a door to the side was the granddaddv of them all a huge, black, baroque machine fitted with rollers and guides and adjusting left
—
wheels, a working antique, a planer that finished lumber on pass.
On the walls hung recently galvanized ironwork
was buried
and 1
in
sawdust.
I
could smell the mustiness of
all
four sides with a single
for a large sailing vessel.
damp
The
floor
ashes, the freshness of cedar
pine, the sharpness of green oak.
crossed the
room and pulled
from an old rope-bound
sail.
I
aside a gray canvas curtain that
entered another room, a joiner
bench running the length of the north planes and
drills,
wall.
saws and clamps: some
s
had been roughly cut
shop with a long work-
On the bench were tools of every description in boxes, others left lying
where they had been
The coasting schooner
used. L nderneath were even more.
A film of fine dust covered everything, even the posters
Heritage, the newest
and calendars tacked
Through the cobwebbed windows
schooner
to the wall.
I
AXOTHER LIXK
could see a huge
I\
THE CHAIA
1
73
in the fleet.
steambox and firetube boiler, the latter topped with a stovepipe and a brass steam
and beyond
that
was
in
an L shape.
ahead of me, leading
Diiectly
and a wharf topped with three cedar-shingled limber-
a small cove
frame buildings connected
whistle,
and a small apartment, was a
to a storage loft
staircase,
behind which stood a matched pair of bandsaws and a table saw. In the southeast corner were shelves of paints and
and along the
oils,
thinners and solvents, tars and proprietary compounds,
side of the staircase
On
nuts, screws, nails, drift pins.
were bins of fastenings, mostly galvanized the floor
was a
brim with worn but obviously cared-for hand
tools.
To my right was
a
bolts
packed
and
to the
homemade wood-
from odd pieces of steel and iron bolted and welded together; the stovepipe,
stove built its
large shipwright’s chest,
—
in
long traverse to the chimney, was supported with scraps of baling wire. Caulking tools
hung on
the wall.
A faded sign hung over a door: open,
its
Ship’s Store
& Office.
crammed with papers and
pigeonholes
In the office, a rolltop desk stood
canceled checks; on top was a ledger,
surrounded by ripped-open envelopes and hastily penciled notes. Half models and framed photographs of ships hung on the paneled walls; well-thumbed catalogs from chandleries
and
industrial suppliers
were jammed
in a
bookcase.
A
black cast-iron Victorian stove
rested on a rough brick hearth; the fire within settled a bit,
woodsmoke permeated
and the pleasant scent
of
the room.
Against the wall was a small drafting table with a rectangular sketchbook open on its
surface.
schooner.
Drawn
carefully in profile
The caption
November
was a nineteenth-century two-masted coasting
said Heritage.
28, 1979
Last winter
I
spent a
that a Penobscot
month putting
all
the ideas on the drawing board. Everything
Bay windjammer should have and big enough
to
go anywhere. The
money spent (Linda says $17,000 floor), is our new schooner 93 tons, 93
result, three sets of lines later, countless hours, lots of
to date, yet
we haven’t even
finished the lofting
—
feet
long by 24 feet wide by 8 feet draft, with a centerboard, two topmasts, main topsail,
and
flying jib.
It
will
be beautiful but such a long
way away.
We’ll get there
somehow.
We are trying to do this without killing ourselves. We plan this as a five-year project. The idea
is
to stop
contain ourselves
when we run out of money each year. Fat chance. Hopefully we can so we don’t go and borrow too much too earlv and get into trouble....
— from Captain Douglas Lee’s journal The shop crew was sheltered the Heritage “Everything that a
Penobscot Bay
windjammer should have and big enough to
go anywhere."
The
lteril(i"c.
1
outside, tearing flown a
and obscured her from
temporary sheet-plastic shed that had
full
view since her keel was
laid in early
980. Captain John Foss was up on the roof with a few helpers, freeing the trusses with
a chainsaw, while Captain Douglas Lee operated a mobile crane that lifted each piece clear
and lowered
The
air
it
was
to the
ground.
electric with excitement, for the
Next week a team of house movers was 174
A PASSAGE
l\
TIME
to jack
end of a monumental
up the schooner and
effort
shift
was
in sight.
her sideways onto
ANOTHER LINK
IX
THE CHAIN
1
75
where she was
the railway
to
be launched; two weeks after that, she would slide into
Rockland Iarbor. One year of thinking, one year of planning, three years of building, and 1
a
new wooden schooner would be
afloat, despite the scuttlebutt that said
day and age could afford to build such a
anymore enough
for
vessel, that said
wooden construction on such
to invest so
much
married
in the late
skills
foolish
little.
where they met and were
college,
1960s, they had been rebuilding old schooners and sailing them in the
Doug
passenger trade.
nobody would be
a scale, that said
Ever since Doug and Linda Lee graduated from
in this
nobody possessed die
an endeavor that would return so
in
nobody
started out with the Richard Robbins a tired ,
New
Jersey oyster
dredger, assisting with her reconstruction and then sailing aboard her as galley hand,
mate, and finally skipper.
He and
Linda, with the part-time assistance of John Loss and
other volunteers, rebuilt the former Delaware Bay oyster dredger Isaac her as a husband-and-wife team.
down-east cargo schooner Lewis trade. All
He and Linda and John R. French.,
II.
Loss in partnership rebuilt the
which Loss then skippered
was done on a shoestring, on an almost
Evans., sailing
in the
capital-less, pay-as-you-go,
passenger
learn-how-
when-you-must basis. They ate hot dogs and macaroni and hung their hats in the cheapest housing to save money, and when the money ran out, they took jobs, any jobs, to get started again.
They waited on
table, clerked in shops, repaired small
shoveled fish meal, and did anything else to they really wanted to do
—
own
sail their
make money
machinery, did odd jobs,
so they could
do the only thing
coasting schooner in the passenger trade.
December 28, 1979
We
started lofting on the 4th of
—
December drawing
1
December.
2 days with numerous distractions to
in the
Got the fair
lines faired
up the
by the 15th of
Then picking off and transom 12 more days
lines.
frames (40 of them), the centerboard, and the
—
with numerous distractions....
January
1980
8,
Today is an
historic occasion. This
that will be in the schooner.
timber with a
forklift, since
January 12, 1980
Today of
the
gammon
first
it is
!
keel piece. to cut
the cut
day we actually cut into a piece of wood and planed the stem. We flipped over the
first
too heavy for us to horse around with cant dogs....
«
two pieces of wood were joined together.
We
fastened the
first
piece
knee to the stem....
January 23, 1980 We haven t am more keel stock generator,
is
Today we
and they
to
don’t really have
work with. Brooks Mill has had trouble with their any logs big enough for the 10 V 2 " x 12 V 2 " x 20'
Out of desperation we cut
both sides
so confusing
at
once, laying out
we made two
all
all
the futtocks for frame
the pieces at the
pieces for the
same
same
1.
What
a job!
I
time. Sure enough,
tried it
got
spot....
— from Captain Douglas Lee’s journal 176
A PASSAGE
l\
TIME
Much
is
made
especially down-easters, to
commentators of Foss fact,
late
have suggested that
this trait
is
a thing of the past, corrupted from
may be true, but the Lees and
lure of modern comforts. This
lode.
Doug and Linda and John wanted
coast, they also
and maintain it
Englanders,
know nothing of it. You would be hard pressed to find a more independent lot; in if you hung around Rockland long enough, you would swear you had discovered the
mother
of
New
do what they want, when they want, the way they want. Social
by the insidious
the populace
Yankee ingenuity, that fabled quality of
of so-called
their
was simply the
atavistic
own schooners to sail up and down the
own self-contained
have their
to
own
not only wanted their
shipyard, where they could haul
and embark and disembark
their
desire to be totally in charge of their
own
— the ambition
vessels,
own
to
a nineteenth-century shipyard to
own
passengers. Part
affairs,
match
their nineteenth-
century vessels and their nineteenth-century frame of mind. The modern the latter has been to
become
affiliated
with a
museum and
foundation grants to re-create and restore a “historic
much independence that way. So just when the Lees and Foss appeared
rely
but part was
way
to achieve
on government and
shipyard; but, of course, you don’t
get
Evans they were building
to
have
it
made
—they owned the Isaac H.
their reputations in the passenger-schooner marketplace, they
,
had income instead of outflow
— they
leased, then
bought outright a parcel of land on the
Rockland waterfront with a couple of tumbledown buildings and weeds
in the
yard
—an
industrial site with a fish-rendering plant next door, a steel fabrication plant out front,
a seaweed-processing complex across the water.
was enough
to
send them back
It
wasn
t
and
particularly expensive, but
it
adventurous housing and macaroni and hot-dog
to
suppers.
January 31, 1980
Today
I
went over
the 20' x 12
to
x 10 / 2 1
'/‘i"
Brooks "
Mill.
There was Karl himself
pieces of keel.
Still
need two more
just starting to
like
it.
I
saw one of
ended up as Karl’s
helper
February
1980
2,
amazing to me, the amount of logs we have looked over just to get keel pieces, and we still don have them.... The chances are some slim that you can look at a log and actually get what you want out of it. It is
t
February
8,
1980
Condemned bad spot February
the second 18' x 10" x 12" timber
six feet
12,
from the
gotten from Brooks. O
A
big, O
1980
Yesterday John and best log of the
we have
top....
lot.
I
went over
to
Brooks
Mill.
I
picked out what
I
guessed was the
None looked particularly inviting, with badly split butts and bigrotten-
ANOTUER LINK IN THE CHAIN
1
77
We out four feet off the butt, leaving eighteen-plus feet. The butt seemed
looking knots. to clear
and one
it
really looked pretty good. Karl spent almost
What a
looks great.
this
and two
and
up and
surprise!
time that started out 26 feet off the top.
convinced Karl
feet long.
to
move
in
another piece
log,
—a huge
We cut six feet off the butt to find good wood,
Got two 12 x 12s, one 10-footer, and one 8-footer, the forward
below the
after fillers,
I
two hours sawing that
Now we
keel.
have everything to build the
keel....
— from Captain Douglas Lee
s
journal
The Lees and Foss founded the North End Shipyard, where outside users could rent space and lease tools and do their own work; Doug, Linda, and John, who wanted to be independent and free from others demands, would work on their own projects. It was there that the Lewis R. French was rebuilt, a couple of new yawlboats were built, and a sandbagger w as restored; Dave and Sue Allen rebuilt the schooner/. & E. Riggin; Ken and Ellen Barnes rebuilt the Stephen Taber and converted the sardine carrier Panline., John Foss converted the old fishing schooner American Eagle and other ow ners hauled their ;
vessels for
major
repairs.
up the yard
Just setting
was a major undertaking.
itself
The
buildings had to be
strengthened and modified, a marine railway for hauling vessels had to be industrial-quality tools
had
to
be purchased
most of them were. There were chimneys
and plumbing
—and
rebuilt
if
they were secondhand, w hich
to rebuild, permits to
be obtained, and wiring
to install.
Most projects were done from scratch. To save money, the shingles building w ere
built,
made with an
for the
main shop
old shingle-saw ing machine. Big jobs were tackled as
if
they
were small, and small jobs were done while the glue was setting up or between supper and the evening
new s. What are the time periods we are talking about here?
the Isaac H. Evans:
1
974-76,
set
1
97 -73, rebuild 1
up the yard and rebuild the Lewis R. French
;
1
977, think
about the future.
February 24, 1980, Sunday Day off, don’t you know. Spent the morning planing the sides of the deadwood. the afternoon
finished both
I
In
feathers....
tail
February 25, 1980 Started building the framing floor in the afternoon. Since the Heritage
board
vessel, the
framing floor
is
built straddling the keel
for the
The
bow and
stern can be
half frames in
way
frames can be
made and
be.
t room enough ahead made and stood up. Then the half frames
stored off to the side until
of the centerboard are
a center-
where the centerboard wall
This was planned when we put up the building; there isn vessel to put the floor. All the full
is
made
last,
of the
we
re
ready for them.
then the framing floor w
ill
be
torn up.... Captain John Foss boring the sternpost for a
rudder
February 26, 1980 7
We
fitting.
178
finished building the framing floor
A PASSAGE
l\
TIME
by lunch, then started
lining out frame 30,
I
\
OTHER
Ll.Xk
/ \
Tin: (HAI\
n
(
)
which
the
is
frame of the after section. ...At about 3 p.m. we suddenly realized making the timberheads. So John and rushed over
first full
there wasn’t any six-inch stock for
Karl was sawing oak
to Brooks’s.
six-inch stuff.
March
I
at the
time, but he agreed to
saw out
several pieces pf
arrived around 5 p.m. That’s service!
It
1980
1.
People started arriving before lunch, and by 2:30 over 150 people had come to see the
Frame-Up. At 3:01 we stood her up and
way back April
I
said,
“OK,
And
that’s it.”
slid
her under the keelson.
When
was
it
the
all
a tremendous cheer went up....
1980
1,
Quit work on the Heritage for the winter, started fitting out the Isaac H. Evans for the
summer.
—from Captain Douglas Lee’s journal By 1977, things were R. French.,
Foss.
owned
starting to fall into place at the North
in partnership
End
Shipyard. The Lewis
by the Lees and Foss, had joined the
There were plenty of small- and medium-size jobs to be done
fleet,
skippered by
in the off-season:
work
on the rundown houses they had just bought, maintain their vessels, improve the shipyard, but nothing time-consumingly, mind-paralyzingly, finances-back-to-zero big.
For a while there, things started
to look up:
When John went out to the front of his house
hammer went right through the rotten wood, back of which
to renail a loose clapboard, his
was a rotten stud, below which was a rotten
sill,
over which rested rotten floor joists. John
happily jacked up the house, tore everything out, laid
bunch of new
But
joists.
let’s
not kid ourselves:
It
down
a
new
was a house, not
sill,
and threw
in a
a boat.
Meanwhile, Doug and Linda Lee were thinking about a bigger schooner. They talked about more passenger-carrying capacity and room for the children they hoped other practical considerations, but the true motivation was probably tied
End Shipyard itself. have
in
mind
After
in the
and
North
anyone who goes to the roubl&of setting up a shipyard must t
the building of ships.
There comes a time construction,
all,
up
to raise
in
every boat-rebuilder’s
when he comes
life
to the realization that
when he
more
starts to think
or less the
about new
same amount of work
goes into the rebuilding of someone else’s idea of what a boat should be as would go into his idea of the
own from one.
same
scratch?
and rebuilding
thing.
The Fees had, it,
else’s
dream when you can
build your
indeed, considered finding another old hull, a bigger
but they rejected the idea after taking stock of what they had
tools, the facilities, the *
Why rebuild someone
knowledge of supply sources, the
skills
—the
developed after years of
They knew that if they didn’t build a new schooner now, they might never, and they knew that John Foss was as itchy to try a truly big, challenging project as they were and would help them.
full-time experience.
180
A PASSAGE l\ TIME
End
of October [1980]
Resumed work on
the Heritage.
November 12. 1980 Glen and spent a good part of the dav working on the centerboard log. which is over three feet at the butt and 30-plus feet long. It had been a beautiful oak tree obscuring someone’s view of the water. It cost me $500 plus cartage and had been soaking in the cove since Julv. The game plan is to rough it out with the chainsaw mill. \\ hen the lilt truck tried to move it, the weight of die log broke the frame of the truck. A bad 1
morning....
November
1-t,
1980
Rich Ford showed up with a helper and the "Alaskan
Mill.
\\
eset
Took
first cut.
November
We
15,
had a
three
their
on Tuesdav. which of course covered the framing
pile.
a half hours....
1980
real earlv blizzard
Got things shoveled
up
and
up a four-inch piece
and they made
of garboard stock as a straightedge guide along the top of the log.
off over the next
few days. Late Friday afternoon we started tearing
the framing floor....
December
10,
1980
Finished framing today. All frames, including the transom, transom side pieces, and the knightheads, are
Tomorrow
a
in.
new phase
Essentially a phase
begins
over, that of the
is
—planking
backbone and framing.
—from Captain Douglas Lee
s
journal
Doug and Linda Fee met John Foss back around 1972, when John w as in the Coast Guard down in Boston and used to hang around the schooner fleet in Camden and Rockland during his time off duty. le knew' a career in the Coast Guard wasn’t for him, that working on schooners was, and given the same background (Maine upbringing, I
—
college education, fanatical interest in boats inherited
he and
Doug
hit
it
off the first time they met.
weekends working on the Isaac
from similarly obsessed fathers)
John spent the
rest of his
Coast Guard
came through, moved back to Maine and into partnership w ith the Fees. All three owned equal shares in the North End Shipyard: all three owned shares of the Leu 'is II. French based on money It.
Evans, and w hen his discharge papers
invested and hours of labor put into her reconstruction, though Foss, as skipper, controlled her fate.
The partnership was extended
to the
proposed new schooner, with the
understanding that the Lees would be the controlling owners and trade their shares It
wasn
t
in the
French
some point would
for Foss's share in the Heritage.
a paper partnership, though, with a docile wife thrown in for good measure
to give controlling interest to
and John
at
Foss,
one party.
It
was a working deal
worked as hard and invested
as
much
as
— Linda Lee.
anyone else.
Doug Lee Decisions were made
wart tKR u\k
i \
like
tiii:
at i/a
1
8
182
A PASSAGE
l\
TIME
Booming up
the Penobscot
Bay on a close reach.
want a traditional
and
craft,
that includes the size
of the materials she of.
"I
the
same
is
built
size. ..she
would have been built with one hundred years ago."
few these friends would have, were settled by majority vote.
jointly; disputes, the
A
five-year plan for building the Heritage
was drawn up
in the fall of
1978, with the
expectation that construction on the schooner would begin in 1979 and she would be
launched in the spring of 1984. The intention was of money during the
first
four years and a large
to
borrow reasonably small amounts
amount during the fifth, when they could
expect heavy outfitting expenses. Since they estimated their
own
labor on the project to
be worth $85,000, the total investment would be $3 1 5,000. They hoped to get bank loans
amounting
to
$200,000, leaving $1 15,000
to
be raised
among
themselves. Small loans
from private lenders and the summer income of the Lewis R. French and the Isaac H. Evans
would cover
that.
As things turned
out, the financial estimates
were right on the button, but their time
schedule was out of whack: They were a year ahead! By the time the Heritage was ready for sea in 1983,
$300,000 had been spent on the
vessel, not including the partners labor.
Almost $200,000 was borrowed from the bank, but not originally planned.
Instead, the partners
went
right
resources, then took out a big loan to finish the job.
up
increments as
in increasing
to the last year
on their own
The bank had no quarrel with
Three years of full-blast building experience was proof enough that they were a planked-up, decked-over passenger schooner
is
collateral
that:
serious,
enough for even the most
and
flint-
hearted loan officer.
The market value
—the
amount she woidd cost if she had been conventionally financed and built in a commercial yard was well over $500,000. In fact, of the Heritage
—
some people suggest you couldn’t build
a
wooden
vessel like the Heritage today for less
than three quarters of a million dollars.
January
3,
1981
The past week has been a landmark. The
first
piece of planking
was fastened on. The
aft piece of four-inch-thick
garboard on the port
side, starting at the sternpost
running 26
takes a mighty
But after steaming for
feet
forward.
It
twist.
five
and
hours
it
The excitement of the moment can really get you caught up. Everyone rushed around pushing and hauling and throwing big clamps around as if they weighed ten pounds, when some of them must have been pushing 80 to 100 pounds. Everyone had sore backs that night....
twisted easily,
and we had plenty
of time to
work
it.
January 15, 1981 Six planks today. Most so far....
January 17, 1981
24 planks
this
week
January 20, 1981
work today we had a long discussion on the scantling sizes actually required. Haddie Hawkins would build a vessel much lighter. He is correct that you don’t need After
1
84
A PASSAGE IN TIME
the strength
we
But what
re building into the Heritage.
is
the real reason for building
the vessel?
the
(1)
I
(2)
I
want
to be able to sail a large coasting schooner
want a traditional
around the
coast.
and that includes the size of the materials
craft,
same -dze framing and planking she would have been (3) The vessel must last a very long time
built
'lie is built of.
with 100 years ago.
February 16-20. 1081
34 planks.
March 9-13, 1981 -+3
planks.
March 20. 1981 The hull planking after lunch.
is
on the port quarter
finished, with the last shutter going in
right
Both happy and sad
—from Captain Douglas Lee’s journal Building a wooden schooner the size of the Heritage takes an incredible amount of materials, the cost of which can be secondary to their supply.
imately 100. 000 board
feet
of
lumber went
I
liink
about
it:
two tons of
into her. three tons of fastenings,
ironwork, a mile of rope, five thousand square
feet of
canvas, plus
all
Approx-
the bits
and pieces
—the windlass, galley donkey engine, pumps, steering mechanism, beads, plumbing, —and then the accommodations thirty-three passengers
of working gear
stove,
for
electrics
blankets, mattresses, pillows,
life
was an
and getting
it
delivered
never mind building
it
into a ship.
this stuff
jackets, eating utensils, pots
It
exercise in logistics that
was no mean
most observers believed that some materials, like
ironwork, just cottldn
t
in
is
in
when you
consider that
short supply,
and
others,
the vessel: white pine for the decking; red oak for the
backbone, framing, and planking; and Douglas it
would deter most people,
feat, especially
wood, were
like
Just locating all
be found.
Three types of wood were used
easiest to locate:
and pans.
in plentiful
fir
for the ceiling.
The Douglas fir was
the
supply and was custom-ordered from the west coast. Pine
and oak were another matter. After
all.
you can
t
walk
into a
lumberyard today and pick
out the stock you want in the dimensions required, especially proper crooked stock for the
double-sawn frames.
The
proprietor would scratch his head and ask
if
knottv-pine
paneling would do. Like the shipbuilders of a century ago. the the trees as they stood, having
the rough planks in their
went
into the
them felled and hauled to a
own shop.
the Brooks Mill of nearby
trio
I
It
buying
for the pine,
ripping and finish-planing
hey shopped locally for the oak, striking a deal with
Thomaston
appropriate widths and lengths.
mill,
woods
was
for the best stock that could be
found
in the
a fortuitous choice, because Karl Brooks turned
out to be as interested in seeking out and supplying quality timbers as he was in
WOTHER
I.t\k l\
making
THECH l/A
185
money. His perseverance
in milling the right stock at the right time for a particular job
was part of the reason why the Heritage could be launched a year ahead of
What
of the impossible-to-find ironwork
plan.
—the mast bands, the chainplates, the block
yawlboat davits? Finding no supplier for those, Doug Lee decided
straps, the
to
make
them himself. He set up a forge, read a number of technical books and articles, talked with blacksmiths, and pounded hot steel for a couple of months until the job was done. It II:
sounds
If
like the
we
exists,
it
philosophy of the
ll
get
it; if it
logistics
doesn't,
we
branch of the U.S. Army during World War
make
11
it; if it
can’t be done, we’ll do
it.
January 22, 1982 I
was fastening the trailboard knees, using the half-inch “hole-hog”
drill.
I
had drilled
with one bit and was about to switch to another and was talking to Eric, when
1
put
my My
hand on the drill (rushing as usual). The countersink grabbed my cotton glove. hand went into instant pain. The little finger was torn open and the top joint bent way off to one side. My first thoughts were, Damn, now I won't get this finished today and now be bored to tears waiting for a doctor to take care of it at the hospital, which was true. T urned out it was only dislocated. Never wear cotton gloves while running a drill .... left
1
11
January 29, 1982 Peter
making
is still
working on the trailboard knees, Glen finished fairing frames and
his first covering
board on the main deck, the other John has three deckhouse grubs sanded,
I
made the
false
boards from the break,
is
now
board on the quarterdeck. John has four pieces of covering chamfered and
all
covering board, which are extensions of the main deck covering aft....
February 15, 1982
The
laying of the
March 4, 1982 Today was great,
main deck
started today....
The deck
is
working. Also the waist and inside are splined beautiful,
finished
rail
clamp
is
with four people
finished. Also the watertight
bulkheads
and screwed on. The railcap stock came from Brooks’s, $892 worth. feet long, the rest are curvy and 16
worth every penny. Six pieces are 27
long. All are eighteen inches to twenty inches
up
—twelve working days,
Looks
this afternoon.
wide at the butt.
It is
feet
We got the deck all cleaned
real impressive
— from Captain Douglas Lee’s journal Only about
six
months out
of each year were available for
October through March. The other Isaac
//.
six
months belonged
Evans. Spring was for fitting-out,
just as well:
to the
work on the Heritage Lewis
summer for sailing, and
About the time the Lees and Foss were
tired of sailing,
R.
fall it
—
French and the
for layup.
was time
to
It
was
begin
work on the Heritage and about the time they were exhausted from horsing big timbers ,
around,
186
it
was time
to
A PASSAGE IN TIME
go
sailing.
—on the the night, many weekends and holidays — but
Doug, Linda, and John were the constants during the building of the Heritage job every working day, sometimes far into
Word spread quickly along the coast that a big wooden schooner was under construction in Rockland, and willing workers who knew this was a rare chance to practice an ancient trade soon turned up to offer their services. Many were turned away, but just as many were hired according to the needs of the yard and the availability of lun< Is. Some were skilled, some were not. but it was a splendid opportunity to gain experience, since there wasn much wooden shipbuilding going on elsewhere. For the most part, Doug and John would work alone or head up a work party, such as the planking gang or the metalworkers. Linda handled the finances and much of the
they were not alone.
t
logistics, filling in
on the construction crew as required. Even after the Lees' AXOTHER
LI \ K l\
THE
first