Down East Schooners and Shipmasters

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Introduction

BLOOD, SEA AND EARTH

My last book, Lost Maine Coastal Schooners: From Glory Days to Ghost Ships (The History Press, 2010), was the product of a most unusual circumstance. From out of nowhere, at nearly a half century of age, I became obsessed with Maine schooners. An avid equestrian and professional horsewoman for thirty years, I set aside my boots and spurs and began to research Maine maritime history. I recalled my fascination with the old beached Wiscasset Schooners that I had first seen as a small child going home from a clambake in Boothbay. I begged my parents to stop so that I could see the vessels more closely. Many a child growing up in Maine must have seen the old wrecks on numerous occasions, but my fascination never waned. I remembered that my great-great-great-grandfather Captain William Peachey, who was born on Mount Desert Island in 1805, was a master of schooners. Next, I began to hear the sound of the ocean and seemed to intuitively know what it was like to be on a sailing vessel—although I had never sailed in my life. I seemed to have a familiarity with nautical terminology that I had no conscious recollection of ever hearing before.

After the publication of Lost Maine Coastal Schooners, I thought it was over; I believed my sudden and impassioned fascination with Down East schooners and Maine history had ended and that I could go back to riding and training horses, enjoying a brisk morning canter on a favorite equine without being distracted by thoughts of sailing vessels and such. But I was wrong; it had not ended. In fact, it had only begun.

Mount Desert Island called to me just as the island of Bali Ha’i called to Lieutenant Cable in Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific. I could not get it out of my mind. I remembered that I had ancestors who were among the first to settle Mount Desert Island in the eighteenth century. I wondered if that was part of what was happening.

Last summer, I felt compelled to book passage on the nineteenth-century coasting schooner Lewis R. French. I stood on the schooner’s deck one evening, watching the sun slowly set just beyond the bowsprit of the majestic vessel, wondering what this obsession with maritime history was all about. We were anchored off Stonington Harbor, where my ancestor had undoubtedly stood at anchor many times in his schooners. How had I become such an unlikely passenger aboard this vessel? I stood watching the sun set; orange, pink, yellow and gold beams extended from the horizon and illuminated the sea around the old schooner. The kerosene lanterns hung in the rigging were casting an eerie glow as present turned into past and past into present, until it was difficult to discern one from the other. And then the answer seemed to appear. At that moment, I thought I heard a voice whisper into my ear, and it seemed to say, Blood, sea and earth.

Did I really hear that or did I imagine it? I don’t know what place parapsychologist Carl Jung’s term synchronicity has in history books, but many strange meaningful coincidences began to occur. Interestingly, I found that the man who built the Lewis R. French, and after whom the vessel was named in 1871, was a cousin to an ancestor of mine. I also learned during an initial facet of my research that the shipmaster about whom I write in this book, Captain Harold Foss, was also a distant cousin. As I proceeded with my research, I discovered that many of the people I was meeting were connected to me through blood ties that went back hundreds of years. These are only a few examples of a myriad of occurrences with which I will not tire the reader. It certainly seems, however, that once we are linked by blood, sea and earth we remain so throughout the centuries.

The focus of this history book is people. Some of them have had a tremendous impact on the Maine we see today and some almost no impact at all. Many folks, if not for this book, would likely have long since passed into the realm of the forgotten; I have tried to wake them from their undusted sepulchers and give them a voice. Many others, however, have irrevocably changed the course of history, and their stories have been told countless times before this.

There have been many histories published related to Mount Desert Island, but the histories of the town of Hancock are relatively scant. Many of the stories I have chosen to place in this history aren’t well known, and that is why I have selected them. For a more complete history of Mount Desert Island, the reader has many choices. This book, however, is unique and contains information not found in any other account of the region. In addition, it focuses on the strong blood ties the people of coastal Maine have with the sea—ties that still bind, unbelievably, into the present day.

I find it difficult to tell the history of a place and not include the people who were native to the region. The European explorers and colonists literally invaded the American continent beginning in the sixteenth century. They took what they wanted with little or no regard for the native people, as if it was their right to disperse and eliminate an entire civilization. I am descended from both the English colonists and the native Wabanaki and without either would cease to exist. I have tried to represent each race equitably and tell their stories as accurately as possible.

I am tied to Maine through birth and maybe something else. Perhaps we are all stained to some extent with some otherworldly residue that won’t fade with the passing of the centuries. If so, then one day our past might be reawakened and history will become more than just something we read in books.

A TRAVELER IN TIME

Standing on the fog-shrouded deck of the two-masted Maine-built schooner Lewis R. French, it was difficult to determine exactly what century it was. The sea suddenly became curiously silent and calm—dead calm. Then a ghostly form came slowly into view, materializing only about two hundred feet off the French’s starboard rail. It was the schooner Stephen Taber. She appeared as an image from another era, a traveler in time. Unbelievably, it was June 18, 2011, and the two schooners, both built in 1871, were celebrating the 140th anniversary of their launching. Another schooner, the three-masted Victory Chimes, launched in 1900, also came into view just beyond the Taber.

"Here comes the Victory Chimes," Garth Wells, master of the Lewis R. French, announced to the passengers he had taken on for that special day. She’s three-masted and a different class of ship altogether.

Turning to look, I could make out a large schooner silently approaching our vessel, about five hundred feet off the stern. I couldn’t quite tell, in the heavy fog, if there were topmasts.

Is she baldheaded? I asked. A baldheaded schooner has no topsails.

Yup, she’s bald, Captain Wells replied, matter-of-factly.

Captain Wells looked like a Yankee skipper with his reddish-brown hair and long beard.

Not originally a Maine schooner, the Victory Chimes was launched at the turn of the last century in Delaware as the Edwin & Maude and was used to transport lumber. Surviving two world wars, U-boats and the ravages of a mechanized world, she began taking on passengers after the Second World War. In 1954, she moved to Maine and was renamed Victory Chimes. In 1997, she was declared a historic landmark. In 2003, the people of Maine voted to put her image on their state quarter.

The schooner Stephen Taber was built in Long Island, New York, in 1871 and hauled brick, coal, lumber, oysters and other cargoes. In 1936, she came Down East to haul lumber on the Penobscot Bay, where she still sails today. The Taber has carried passengers since 1946 and became a historic landmark in 1992.

The Lewis R. French was launched in April 1871 in Christmas Cove, Maine, located just northeast of Boothbay Harbor. She carried three thousand square feet of sail and hauled the usual cargoes, including bricks, lumber, cordwood, granite, fish, lime, Christmas trees and even canned sardines. In 1905, the French was sold and moved to Mount Desert Island, which was her home port until 1924, when she moved to Bucks Harbor and then Lubec, Maine. In 1973, with nothing else to do, worn out and sitting idle, the French was painstakingly restored to her original condition and began taking on passengers. The Lewis R. French became a historic landmark in 1992.

Leaning against the windlass at the schooner’s bow, Amber, a crew member, slowly cranked the foghorn, which consisted of a black box with a handle on the side. The words Sch. M. Ford, Rockland were painted on top of the wooden case, which was only about eighteen inches long but emitted quite a substantial bellow.

That looks old, I remarked, standing at the bow myself, looking out into the dusky gloom that had fallen like a shroud around the vessel and through which I could see nothing.

It’s an antique, Amber replied, smiling. "Apparently, it belonged to the schooner named M. Ford, but it’s ours now. It’s from the same time period as our ship."

Where ever did you find it? I asked.

Would you believe we got it at a yard sale in Rockland?

It’s amazing these things are still around, I answered. Who would ever have imagined that it would be put to work again, on another nineteenth-century schooner in the year 2011?

Silently, I surveyed the passengers who accompanied me on that morning’s sail. Since the participants were restricted to twenty and the reservations were only available from limited sources, it certainly seemed to be an exclusive group. There were many members of the Maine Maritime Museum, a marine journalist and myself. It seemed unfortunate that there would be so many who would never have the opportunity to sail on a nineteenth-century vessel.

The schooner Stephen Taber, built in 1871, was shrouded in fog on June 18, 2011. Photo ©Craig S. Milner.

The fog, which had descended on Penobscot Bay, lingered amidst these windjammers just before they left the dock in Rockland, obscuring all signs of the modern world, and only began to lift as we returned to the harbor. It would seem that even Mother Nature wanted to celebrate the schooners’ 140 years of stalwart resistance to change by temporarily erasing all evidence of the twenty-first century on that special day. Perhaps it is no coincidence that these ships ended up in Maine waters.

The resurrected coasting schooners, representatives of an era long passed, presented me with a considerable opportunity. The view from the sea differs greatly from that of the more traveled inland roadways, and one lucky enough to travel by sailing vessel can get a glimpse of a part of Maine that is untouched by time. Unable to resist this temptation, I booked a four-day passage on the Lewis R. French.

It was a warm day in mid-August when I headed Down East to the Penobscot Bay region in coastal Maine, where the schooner French was lying at her home port of Camden. Those indigenous to the area knew it as Megunticook, meaning place of great sea swells. According to George Varney in his 1886 Gazetteer of the State of Maine, Megunticook affords one of the noblest of marine prospects, embracing Penobscot Bay with its islands, Mount Desert at the east, and a vast sweep of the ocean on the south-east.

The first English settlers came to the area after the end of the French and Indian Wars; James Richards was the first in 1769. In 1791, the Massachusetts General Court incorporated Megunticook Plantation as Camden. The place of great sea swells can also be considered to be a place of great shipbuilding. By the latter part of the nineteenth century, there were many mills, factories and shipyards in Camden. In August 1900, the Holly M. Bean Shipyard launched the very first six-masted schooner, the George W. Wells, depriving the famed Percy and Small Shipyard in Bath of the honor. Percy and Small launched the Eleanor A. Percy on October 10. Camden certainly earned its place as a shipbuilding center and schooner town.

Arriving in Camden a few hours before sunset allowed me to get a feel of the picturesque old coastal village, touted today as one of the most charming in Maine. Visitors to Camden cannot miss the traditional New England–style white church situated in the middle of town, its immense steeple overlooking the