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Anchor to Windward

BY EDWIN VALENTINE MITCHELL

ILLUSTRATED BY RUTH RHOADS LEPPER

NEW YORK COWARD-McCANN, INC.

AH* #flitf preserved. This book, or parts thereof, must
n<^ ;be Vejjroduced in any form without permission.

Typography by Robert Joscphy

To Rev. Neal Dow Bousfield

CONTENTS

1 . Winter Cruise 3

2. City by the Sea 25

3. Penobscot Bay 46

4. Matinicus 64
. Music on the Maine Coast 87

6. The Cave at Seal Island 102

7. Criehaven 112

8. Guardians of the Coast 128

9. Off Blue Hill Bay 149

10. Eagle Island, Castine,

and Little Deer Isle 181

1 1 . Way Down East 210

12. Movies at Loud's Island 246
Index 265

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

1.

WINTER
CRUISE

ON the train between Boston and Portland, Maine, I
hoped to eatch a glimpse of the sea. For the morning papers
all carried front-page stories about the fierce southeasterly
gale that hud been lashing the New England coast. I was
particularly interested in the procession of storm effects
along the shore, because, although it was the middle of
January, I was going to Portland to meet a vessel that was
to take me on a cruise along the Maine coast.

This winter voyage on which I was about to embark
had its origin one stormy night at the end of summer, while
I was reading a book in an old white house on the maritime
border of Maine. The wind and the rain were having a
wild time together outside in the darkness, crying and weep-
ing around the place like Longfellow sobbing over the

3

4 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

dead body of the robin that he shot. It was during the
early days of the war, and I had the radio turned on to catch
any news that might blow in on the wings of the storm.
Nothing much had been reported for several hours, but I
let the instrument dribble on like a leak}' tap, as the broad-
casting company switched from one warring capita] to an-
other. First the American radio reporter in London would
describe the blackout there. Then the person in Paris would
tell what life in the gay city was like with the lights turned
off. He in turn was followed by the commentator in Berlin
who presented the Nazi nocturne. It all sounded very much
like the experience of the toper in JorrocL^ who intended
to put his head out the window, but stuck it in a cupboard
instead, and said the night was hellish dark and smellcd
of cheese.

Yet those were urgent, stirring hours filled with excite-
ment and suspense, when everybody wondered if death in
new and novel forms was stalking over the Polish battle-
fields, how ships were faring on the high seas, and if we
would be drawn into the maelstrom. It seemed almost cer-
tain that we would be drawn in, since there was no escaping
the fact that, whether as nations or as individuals, we all
live under the same law, namely, if one suffers all suffer,
and a wrong done to one is a wrong done to all. Nor did it
appear as if our geographical position could save us. For,
as Macaulay pointed out of the Seven Years' War, almost
a century and a half ago, a quarrel over dynastic succession

WINTER CRUISE 5

among small European states could even then result in
minor wars in Asia and Africa, and in red men scalping
white men along the rivers and the coast of Maine.

The book I had was well suited to random reading. It
was a guide book a guide to Maine into which I dipped
haphazardly, reading snatches here and there about this
town and that, from China to Peru and from Vienna to
Paris. Maine has as quaint a collection of place names as
any state in the Union. At Paris, I read, is located the oldest
and largest factory in America devoted to the manufacture
of children's toys. From Paris I jumped to the front of the
book, where various Maine matters, such as the flora and
fauna and fishes of the state, were treated. As I casually
turned the pages, my attention was caught by a paragraph
at the end of the section on Maine education and religion.
It seemed almost to have been added as an afterthought or
as a footnote, but the moment I read it my curiosity was
aroused. This is what it said:

"The Seueoust Mission, an independent philanthropic
enterprise supported by individual contributions, has its
headquarters at Bar Harbor, and by means of its boat
brings religious, educational, hospital, and recreational fa-
cilities to the inhabitants (particularly the children) of the
islands and lonely outposts of the coast. Its work at Christ-
mas time is especially praiseworthy."

Scarcely had I finished reading the paragraph when the
lights suddenly went out and the radio became silent. The

6 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

storm had unexpectedly left the Maine Tower and Light
Company without either power or light, or at least, with-
out the ability to transmit them to the section of the coast
where I was, and as a result the whole countryside was
plunged into a darkness as profound as that of London,
Paris, or Berlin. It was useless to try to read by the light of
the fire, so I put down the book, and sat listening to the
storm, while phrases from the guide book drifted through
my head: "Seacoast Mission., .islands and lonely outposts
of the coast... by means of its boat... at Christmas time
. . . headquarters at Bar Harbor."

In a vague way I knew there was such an organisation
as the Maine Seacoast Mission, but beyond the bare fact
of its existence I knew practically nothing about it. I could
not remember ever having seen the boat. Bur sitting there
in the dark I began to wonder what kind of boat it was. A
summer boat would never do in winter. And of what did
its Christmas cargo principally consist V There would be
toys, of course, perhaps from the old toy factory at Paris;
but what else? Did the captain in December suddenly cry
in the tone of a bosun in a half gale, "Clear the decks!
Make room for Christmas!" as willing workers began load-
ing the craft with turkeys twice the si'/e of Tiny Tim?
What was Christmas like on the outer islands? Of one
thing I was sure. Whatever else might be lacking, the* re
would be no dearth of Christmas trees in this land of ever-
greens.

WINTER CRUISE 7

It was easy to imagine the Mission boat nosing its way
into a cove at some small island, as the whole population,
consisting of a fisherman, his wife, four children, a dog,
and grandma, beshawled and very spry at ninety-four,
trooped down to meet it. Visualizing the people was simple,
but I was not so sure about the winter background of the
scene. I had a little acquaintance with Maine people, but
I had never seen Maine in winter. I am afraid I pictured it
in my mind as being rather like a scene in a Russian novel.

During the next few weeks the item in the guide book
kept coming to mind, and I began to ask questions. There
was something in the item, probably the mention of medical
aid, which suggested the work of Dr. Grenfell in Labrador.
Yet if the work of the Seacoast Mission was anything like
the work of the Grenfell Mission, why had not more people
heard of it? For, when I began to make inquiries about the
Maine Mission, most of those whom I asked had either
never heard of it, or, like myself, were only dimly aware
of its existence, and the few persons I found who had ac-
tually seen the boat could not describe it satisfactorily. I
realized, of course, that this in itself probably meant little
or nothing, because most of those whom I asked were sum-
mer visitors to Maine, and it might be that I had happened
to ask just the wrong ones. But the longer I remained in
the dark the greater my interest grew.

To a large extent, I think, this was because I remembered
all those islands strewn along the coast there are more

8 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

than two thousand of them and the fact that scattered
through the islands are several thousand people, many of
them living in tiny communities, sometimes numbering less
than a dozen souls, whose only means of communication
with the mainland or with other islands is by small boat.
Very often cut off from the outside world, especially during
the winter season of storms, rough seas, and ice, those
people's lives are not gently set. The wind is keen and
the work hard. These islands and the lonely headlands
of the coast comprised the Mission field. If through the
agency of its boat and its workers, the Maine Seacoast
Mission brought to the people of these; isolated places the
spiritual and mental aid indicated in the guide book, then
I was almost certain its sea-going services were something
unique in this country. It was a work I felt 1 should like
to observe, perhaps even report on, and I began to wonder
if the Mission would allow me to make: a trip on its boat
and watch its workers in action.

If you really want to find out about something, there is
nothing quite like going directly to headquarters and ask-
ing. So on a marvelously clear and colorful day in October
I drove the hundred miles or so along the coast from
Boothbay Harbor, where I was staying, to Bar Harbor, to
call at the headquarters of the Maine Seaeoasf. Mission. I
still knew no more about it than what I had learned from
the fifty-word statement in the guide book, but even if
nothing came of the trip to Bar Harbor, I felt that the

WINTER CRUISE 9

drive along the coast in the fine autumn weather, with a
visit to the top of Cadillac Mountain on Mount Desert
Island, would be its own reward. The summer tide of traffic
had ebbed completely away and it was as yet too early
for the armed invasion of the hunters. Consequently I knew
that the main coastal highway, which has the continuous
interest of a serial story, would be comparatively free from
wheeled vehicles of all kinds. This would give me an ad-
vantage in space and time that would add to the pleasure
of the trip.

For some reason I expected to find the Mission headquar-
ters on the waterfront at Bar Harbor. I am not sure that.
I did not have in mind one of those dingy mission halls

10 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

which may be seen in the purlieus of the clocks in many
seaports. But instead I found the Mission House! in the
residential quarter of Bar Harbor. It was a good-si -/cd
house, with the offices and supply rooms of the Mission on
the ground floor, and the living quarters of the superin-
tendent above. There was nothing to distinguish it from
the other residences in the street, save for a modest sign,
such as a doctor might have, with the name on it.

The Mission House gave me my first surprise, and the
second surprise came a minute later when 1 went upstairs
and met Neal D. Bousfield, the superintendent of the Mis-
sion, who was at work at a large, flat-topped desk in a
book-lined room. I had expected to find a much older person
than the agreeable young man who welcomed me. T put his
age at not more than thirty or thirty-two. Some medical
supplies on the top of the bookcase behind him made me
think he might be a doctor, but he said he was a minister,
though sometimes in an emergency he was obliged to treat
people.

"Is the Mission boat here in Bar Harbor now 1 *" I asked.

"We sold the old boat clay before yesterday," he said.

"But we're building a new one at Damariscotta. We expect

to launch her early next month, and have her in commission

in time for the Christmas trip in December."

When I asked about the possibility of my going with
him on the Christmas run, Mr. Bousfield said that as far
as he was concerned he would be pleased to have me go,

WINTER CRUISE 11

but it was a matter which he felt he should put up to his
committee. Frankly, the accommodations on the boat were
limited, and if all requests like mine which they received
were acceded to, the Mission would be engaged most of
the time in taking boatloads of passengers for cruises along
the coast. I could appreciate the Mission's position in the
matter, and it was arranged that I should write a letter
stating my reasons for wishing to make the trip, and that
he would submit this to his committee. Then for some time
I asked questions about the past, present, and future of the
Mission, and briefly this is what I learned.

The Mission was founded thirty-five years ago by the
Rev. Alexander MacDonald and his brother, who knew
the needs of the coast people, the people of the islands as
well as the people of the mainland. According to one story,
the idea for the Mission came to Alexander while he and his
brother were on the top of Green Mountain, now Cadillac
Mountain, on Mount Desert Island. Standing there as on a
peak in Darien, looking out over the immense expanse of
sea and hills and the long line of the coast, with its rugged
headlands and island-studded bays, Alexander MacDonald
suddenly clapped his brother on the shoulder and cried,
"Angus, what a parish!"

He was a man who, once he had an idea, pursued it as
relentlessly as the Hound of Heaven pursued Francis
Thompson. He was the pioneer type, a huge-fisted man of
enormous energy and driving power, who, when he saw

12 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

anything that needed to be done, set to work doing it. If an
island needed a road, a school, or a church, Alexander Mae-
Donald started to build it with his own hands. Tie dressed
in rough clothes and beat the bounds of his far-flung
parish in the small Mission launch. Many stories are tolcl
of him on the coast. Before the Mission built its church at
Head Harbor Island off Jonesport, Mr. MacDonald held
services in a quarrymen's boarding house. In a spirit, of mis-
chief, one of the stone workers tried to break up the meet-
ing. Alexander MacDonald walked down to where the man
was sitting and said, "Brother, I think the Lord would like
it better if you did your praying outside." And taking the
burly quarryman by the scruff of the neck he heaved him
out the window. There was never any trouble after that.
After the church was built at Head Harbor Island, Mr.
MacDonald entered one evening to find most of the con-
gregation sitting on one side. He was delighted when, upon
asking some of them to move over to the other side, a fisher-
man spoke up, "What's the matter, skipper?" he asked.
"Are you afraid she'll list?"

Mr. MacDonald's successor in the superintendeney, after
a brief interval during which Angus MaeDonald oarncfl"
on in his brother's place, was the Rev. Orville ,J. Guptill,
who was the right man to follow in the founder's foot-
steps. Mr. Guptill was an organizer and builder; diplo-
matic, fearless, far-sighted. He was a fine speaker and a
marvelous storyteller. Like Mr. MacDonald, he was a

WINTER CRUISE 13

human type to whom young people always went. He could
see the underdog side of things. Like Mr. MacDonald, he
was an absolutely tireless worker, who never spared him-
self in any way, and when a call came for help never failed
to respond promptly and cheerfully. He generally dressed
in a blue yachting coat which he wore until it was thread-
bare. He was a man of little stature, but great of heart, who
gave away so much that when he came to retire he had noth-
ing, not even a pension. But he did not live long in retire-
ment. He stopped work in August owing to a bad heart,
and in October he was dead. He was superintendent of the
Maine Seacoast Mission for twelve years.

It is, of course, not only its staff but the gallant suc-
cession of boats owned by the Mission, which has enabled
the organization to serve the people of the coast. It is the
means by which the sick are carried to hospitals, convales-
cents returned to their homes, Red Cross Mission nurses,
dentists, doctors, and welfare workers transported to the
islands, supplies taken to those in need, and the dead carried
to their last resting places. In winter the Mission boat
Breaks ice in harbors to make way for mail and stores, and
in summer takes the people on picnics. In commission
throughout the year, except for the time necessary for her
reconditioning, the boat when not on cruise is kept at North-
east Harbor ready for any emergency and available for any
errand of mercy or good will.

Counting the vessel then under construction, the Mission

14 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

has owned five boats. The first one, a very small Friend-
ship sloop, was called the Hope. This was followed by
the Jgower boat Morning Star. At the suggestion of the
small daughter of a lighthouse keeper, Mr. MacDonald
named the third boat the Sunbeam, and this name Mr.

Guptill retained for the fourth boat, the one which had
just been sold. And now his successor informed me that the
boat in its cradle at Damariscotta was also to be christened
the Sunbeam, making the third boat of that name in the
Mission service. It is not a common name for a vessel,
though every now and then you run across it. A noted
Yankee whaler, a bark, bore the name; and many eminent
Victorians, including Gladstone and Tennyson, went cruis-

WINTER CRUISE 15

ing in the famous auxiliary schooner yacht, Sunbeam. Each
of the Mission boats has been larger than its predecessor,
with the exception of the new one, which was being built
on somewhat shorter and broader lines than the boat it
was to replace. The new Sunbeam was to measure seventy-
two feet in length, seventeen and one-half feet in beam,
and draw six feet of water.

It seemed to me, as Mr. Bousfield talked about the Mis-
sion, that it had been organized at precisely the right time
to be most helpful to the people of the coast. When it was
founded in 1905, sailing vessels were being superseded by
power-driven craft, and the life of the coast was beginning
to undergo the greatest change in its history. Almost every-
thing in the lives of all of us has altered during the past
thirty-five years, but the change was especially marked on
the Maine coast, particularly among the islands. How great
the change was there, can perhaps be fully appreciated
only by those who knew the region prior to the transition.
It created many problems, but throughout what has been
the most trying period experienced by the coast since the
War of 1812, the Maine Seacoast Mission has served the
people with indomitable enterprise.

It ministers not only to the people of the outer islands
and the more isolated onshore communities, but also to
the families of the Lighthouse and Coast Guard Stations.
Its services include pastoral visitations, faithful and con-
tinuous, the holding of religious services in places otherwise

l6 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

without pastoral care, and the sustaining of Sunday schools,
vacation schools, and extension work in religious education.
Its approach is undenominational. It maintains :i welfare
department through which clothing, old and new, is avail-
able, and many forms of emergency aid arc rendered. Am-
bitious young people are assisted to educational advantages
far beyond the opportunities of their immediate* environ-
ment, and a small handcraft enterprise affords employment
to some women and young folk. Much is dour for the health
of the people through instruction, distribution of simple
aids to health, like cod-liver oil, dental and other clinics.
At Christmas, gifts are distributed to more than 2,400 in-
dividuals in scores of communities along the coast.

"What," I asked Mr. Bousiield, as I rose to go, "is the
question people most frequently ask youV"

"I suppose the question I am asked more than any other,"
he said, "is whether or not 1 am ever seasick. Of course, we
sometimes get pretty badly tossed about, rsprrially in the
winter, as you'll see if you come with us. There's a tradition
that the Mission staff can stand anything in the way of
weather. But of course we're only human," he added, "and
there's a limit to what we can stand."

A long exchange of letters followed my visit to the Mis-
sion headquarters. In this I thought thr Mission officials
showed their good sense. After all, they did not know me,
and if a stranger writes and asks whethrr he may visit you,
the only reasonable thing to do is to inquire into his motives

WINTER CRUISE 17

and discover if possible whether or not he is the sort who
is likely to steal the silver candlesticks. But at length it
was settled that I should join the boat on its maiden cruise.
I hoped this would be in December, but building a boat is
apparently like building a house. It takes longer than you
think.

It wasn't until the day after Christmas that I drove from
Connecticut to Maine to be on hand for the launching of
the boat, which was scheduled to take place at high tide
the following morning at Harry Marr's shipyard in Dama-
riscotta. It was my very first glimpse of Maine in winter.
Every place has its particular season when its special
characteristics and charm are at their best, and while it
would not be true to say that the winter months are the
best months on the Maine coast the northerly blasts of
wind are apt to be a trifle too glacial for comfort at no
other time does the coast seem so alive and sparkling.
There is a quality of light, a clarity of air, that sharpens
the scene, casting a brilliant spell over trees and rocks and
water. At night this clearness of atmosphere gives an un-
wonted keenness and glitter to the stars.

In the coastlands there was not so marked a difference
between summer and winter as I had expected to find, a
fact which I attributed to the predominance of the ever-
greens. That the general New England landscape owes
much to its trees is evident by the change in outlook from
summer to winter. This change takes place gradually, some

l8 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

trees shedding earlier than others, but towards the end of
the year even the oaks and beeches give up the contest,
until at length all ranks stand denuded, exhibiting nothing
but bare limbs and trunks to the winter gales all ranks,
that is, except evergreens. They remain clothed throughout
the year, so that along the Maine coast, when* they thrive,
there is less bareness than elsewhere in New England, and
consequently less change in outlook.

There was no snow worth mentioning, but it was evident
that piles of it were expected. At the ends of the state
highway fences, saplings six or eight feet tall had been
stuck in the ground and a small piece of red cloth tied to
the top of each. These flags wen; to show the plows and
other vehicles where the fences were when the snow hid
them. A high board fence extended along the entire north
side of the bridge across the Kennebee Kiver at Bath, but
this, I think, was chiefly to protect pedestrians using the
bridge from the cold winds sweeping down the river. The
houses, of course, had a December look. All along the way
they were decorated with Christmas greens. The magnificent
old Sortwell house on the main street of Wiscasset looked
marvelous in its holiday attire. Maine has a natural ad-
vantage in decorative Christmas material. At the easterly
end of the coast, around Machias and Pembroke, Christ-
mas trees are harvested on a large scale. From these places
and other near-by sections more than a million trees are
sold annually in the Christmas market.

WINTER CRUISE 1Q

Harry Man's shipyard, where the Mission boat was
built, is down an alleyway behind a row of old brick build-
ings lining the water side of the principal street of Dama-
riscotta. These mellow brick structures, with their slanting
green roofs, their generous collections of chimneys, and

their many-paned windows dressed with granite caps and
sills, give this antique river port its character. Although the
buildings differ from each other, all seem to have been
built at about the same time, and give the effect of a piece
of town planning. Many towns along the Maine coast give
this impression of a controlling idea- It used to puzzle me
until I learned that there is scarcely a town between Port-
land and Eastport which has not at one time or another
been terribly ravaged by fire. Not once alone, but some-
times twice, or even three times. So now when I see a town
with a brick business section having a period look, I know
the chances are that the place once had a conflagration. If
I wish to know the date of the disaster, I look at the dates

2O ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

on the buildings, and from these it is usually possible to
deduce the time of the fire within a year or two. In the
case of Damariscotta, I forgot to look at the legends on
the buildings, but offhand I would say that the central part
of the town was badly burned in the late James Buchanan
or early Abraham Lincoln period.

The launching of a boat is a thrilling thing to watch,
a spectacle which people have viewed with interest if not
emotion for thousands of years. In the great days of wooden
ships, Maine was the scene of innumerable! launehings,
ship after ship sliding down the ways to take the water
with beauty. It was a Maine poet, Longfellow, who wrote
the most famous of all launching poems. It was nothing
new for Damariscotta to have a launching. The town once
rang with the sound of the broad-ax, the topmuul, and the
caulking mallet, as its shipyards turned out every variety
of sailing vessel. I spoke to several townspeople before
the launching. Mr. Castner, who runs the stationery store,
and the others with whom I talked all wished the town
had more laimchings. They were pleased that the Marr
shipyard had just signed a contract to build a $15,000
fishing boat for a Gloucester man.

Many of the people who came to Damariseotta for the
launching of the Mission boat apparently did not know that
exercises were to be held beforehand in the white Baptist
church at the head of the street. Nevertheless, the church
was well filled. I was interested to learn that Harry Marr,

WINTER CRUISE 21

the builder of the Mission boat, was not only the sexton of
the church, but also taught a class of boys in the Sunday
school. It was the second Mission boat on which he had
worked. He was foreman of the shipyard which he now
owns when the second Sunbeam was built there in 1926.
The shipyard was then owned by Jonah Morse.

Various directors and officials of the Seacoast Mission
spoke briefly at the church. Mrs. Alice M. Peasley, dean
of the Mission staff, who is known affectionately up and
down the coast as Ma Peasley, told of some of her experi-
ences on the earlier Mission boats. A sister-in-law of Mat
Peasley, the laconic Yankee skipper whom Peter B. Kyne
made famous, Ma Peasley expressed the hope that the
new boat would not be a holy roller. The exercises came
to a speedy end when a man in a windcheater jacket from
the shipyard hurried into the church with the message
that the tide was ebbing and the boat was ready to go
overboard. Everybody hastened down to the shipyard.

"Do you think they'll christen her with a bottle of
champagne?" said a man in a deerstalker cap with a twinkle
in his eye, as he hurried down the shipyard alleyway beside
me. "Looks rugged, don't she?'*

The high bow of the new vessel could be seen looking
out the great doorway of the boat shop. The pachyderm
gray bulk of her practically filled all one side of the build-
ing. She looked, indeed, as if she were built to stand almost
anything in the way of Maine coast weather.

22

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

A spray of red roses instead of the traditional bottle of
champagne was used to christen the boat, as the men went
to work with jacks to get her started down the ways. The
extreme cold hampered the work. As early as three o'clock

that morning men were busy cutting a channel through
the ice of the Damariscotta River to receive the boat when
she came out to meet the eleven o'clock tide. Waiting in
the cold it seemed as if she never would start down the
ways. Perhaps, as someone said, the grease was frozen; it
was cold enough to freeze anything. But presently the fifty-
five-ton craft began to move, as imperceptibly as a star at
first, and then she gradually gathered momentum. Still in
no hurry to take the icy plunge, she moved steadily but
very slowly.

"Look out for the chain!" someone cried. "Don't get
caught in the chain!"

WINTER CRUISE 23

Attached to the cradle in which the boat was moving
down the ways was an anchor chain. It was to be used to
haul the cradle out from under the boat once she was in
the water. It was lying out on the sawdust and chips of the
shipyard like a partly coiled snake. If the boat finally
went with a rush, there was danger that someone might
be caught in its coils and snaked down the ways. The crowd
stood clear of the chain.

The suspense and excitement increased as the stern of
the new Sunbeam emerged from the river end of the yard.
A man standing in the bow of the boat made a heroic and
triumphant figurehead, though I felt that to be perfectly
heroic and triumphant he should have held aloft a flag or
torch. At last, moving without a hitch, the boat glided
cradle and all into the river, kicking up a great white wave
as she hit the water. The crowd in the shipyard and on
the opposite wharf applauded, and a chorus of auto horns
saluted the new boat as if she were a new year. I thought
they should have rung the church bells, but probably all
the bell ringers were at the launching.

Harry Marr's marine building, which had been so largely
taken up with the boat, suddenly became vast and empty
and shadowy, like the interior of a vacant hangar; and the
boat, a third of her now submerged, just as suddenly
shrank to modest dimensions. Men quickly laid hold of the
anchor chain and pulled the cradle out from under the boat.
Then, after hauling her around to the wharf, where she was

24 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

to remain until completed, they went home to dinner.

Early in January I received a letter from the superin-
tendent of the Mission saying that while a good deal of
work remained to be done on the new boat, he was deter-
mined to take her out. He did not want to break in her
engines on the ice in the Damariscotta River, but he thought
the government ice breaker Kickapoo would open a passage
for the boat- He planned to leave Damariscotta on Satur-
day the thirteenth and go to Loud's Island in Muscongus
Bay for the week-end. On Monday he would head for
Portland to have the compass adjusted and the radio direc-
tion finder installed. From Portland he would run to the
eastward, calling at lighthouses and other places along the
coast, until he received word from Harry Marr that fittings
which the boat still lacked were ready to be installed. He
would then slip into Rockland to have the work done.
He said he would be pleased to have me join the boat for
her maiden cruise. I wired that I would reach Portland
Monday noon, January fifteenth, and gave the name of
a hotel where he could get in touch with me.

Sunday, New England was in the clutches of a bad
storm. The January thaw had come, and torrents of rain
driven by winds of gale force lashed the coast. On the train
between Boston and Portland I hoped for at least a fleeting
view of the sea, but the windows were so blurred and misty
I couldn't see anything, and before I realized it the train
stormed into the Portland station.

2. CITY BY THE SEA

FOG was blowing through the streets of Portland, and
I had the unmistakable feeling of being in a seaport, with,
docks and ships and men who go down to the sea in ships.
If any confirmation of this fact were needed, I had it when
my taxi stopped for a traffic light, and I detected on the
damp air the familiar harbor sound of a tug hooting. This
sense of being in a seaport is, I believe, partly a matter of
light. Cities situated by the sea enjoy a quality of light not
vouchsafed to inland cities. The two most beautiful cities
in New England are Hartford, Connecticut, and Portland,
Maine, but the light of these places differs because of the
difference in their location in relation to the sea.

There was no message for me at the hotel, so I left my
second-hand suitcase there, and walked down the street to
Charles Campbell's bookshop. The Portland waterfront is

25

26 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

several miles long, and I had no idea where to look for the
Mission boat. But Mr. Campbell would know where I
would most likely find her, if she had arrived. Not only do
booksellers as a rule know their towns and the people in
them, but they have the faculty of being able to dig up
almost anything you want to know in the way of local
information. Moreover, they are used to answering ques-
tions, and never seem to mind when you ask about things
which have nothing to do with books or authors. I knew
Mr. Campbell of old, and I knew there was nothing about
Portland he couldn't tell me.

It took me only a minute or two to reach his bookshop,
which is a long, narrow place, with a small gallery across
the back, like a minstrel gallery, whence occasionally comes
the musical sound of a typewriter bell. Although the shop
is small, it has chairs, because Mr. Campbell is old-
fashioned enough to believe that bookshops should have
places for customers to sit while sampling the literary wares
offered for sale. A tall, spare man with a sense of humor and
a natural curiosity about the insides of the books on his
shelves, Mr. Campbell looks like a college professor, or as
if he had stepped out of the pages of a book entitled Por-
trait of a Yankee Bookman. He has for many years pre-
scribed successfully for the literary tastes of Portland
people and of many summer visitors to Maine. Connois-
seurs of books and bookshops who pass through Portland
never fail to visit his shop.

CITY BY THE SEA 2y

When I asked him if he thought there was any chance
of the Mission boat's having arrived from Loud's Island,
he shook his head.

"Not a day like this," he said. "There's a bad sea out-
side. Even the island boat had to take it easy coming
through Hussey's Sound this morning. But I'll be glad to
call the Coast Guard Station at Cape Elizabeth and ask
if they have seen anything of her."

The Coast Guard line was busy, and one or two other
numbers which he rang yielded no news of the boat. It
was thought highly improbable, however, that she had
tried to get through to Portland. Shipping was hugging the
harbors all along the coast.

"You wouldn't like to run out to Cape Elizabeth to see
the surf, would you?" Mr. Campbell asked.

"I should be delighted, indeed," I said. "But I don't like
to take you away from your business."

"Pshaw!" said Mr. Campbell. "The girl can look after
that. Besides, I'd get a kick out of seeing it. Let me see.
She'll be back at two. Could you come back then? Or you
can wait here, if you like."

"Thanks," I said. "I have some shopping to do before
I go aboard the boat. I think I'll get that done and come
back. Where's the best place to buy red flannel under-
wear?"

It was a misty ride out to Cape Elizabeth in Mr. Camp-
bell's car, and when we reached the end we found the

28 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

visibility poor; but the wind, which had died down, had
shifted from southeast to west of southwest, and it was ex-
pected to clear shortly. The fog signal, meanwhile, was
going full blast. It was almost enough to blow a man down.

"If the wind was east, I could hear this in my home ten
miles away," Mr. Campbell said. "And it's pointed the
other way/'

It was not so misty that we did not have a clear view
of the huge combers smashing themselves to pieces on the
black rocks. With such a sea running, it was certain the
Sunbeam had not ventured out. We stood for a while be-
tween the one-story building which houses the fog signal
apparatus and the Coast Guard Station on the cove, and
then, because the seas seemed more spectacular further
along, we moved to the other side of the fog warning, where
long lines of waves were crashing into the ledges.

"It's getting chillier."

I turned to find a gray-haired man with a ruddy com-
plexion standing near me. He was dressed in the blue
uniform of the Lighthouse Service. He was the foghorn
tender, who had stepped out of his heated engine room for
a breath of air and a look at the sea. He wore no coat,
and I wondered that the damp air did not make him shiver.
He lit a cigarette and said the storm was the worst of the
winter, but the waves were nothing to what he had seen
while stationed at Mount Desert Rock. There you could
see all around. In one storm he and the other keepers rushed

CITY BY THE SEA 2Q

into the lighthouse tower, thinking the houses were surely
going. They didn't go, but the sea got into them.

"My kitchen " he began, and was interrupted by his
blasted horn. "My kitchen was filled with seaweed as high
as the stove."

He asked us if we would care to see the engine room, and
after carefully wiping our feet we entered. Everything was
painted a battleship gray and was as clean as a dairy. We
watched the pump supplying air to four large storage tanks,
and the mechanism that at regular intervals released great
blasts of it through the quartet of horns outside the building.

"Once," said the engineer, "the seas came right into this
room. Gave it a good washing."

On the way back to town I listened once or twice for
the fog signal, but I didn't hear it. It was not so misty as
on the way out, and I concluded that the fog had probably
lifted.

That night and the next morning the Portland papers
carried news of the storm. Fishing vessels had been held
in port, or had been forced to come in for shelter. A beam
trawler from the Banks laden with fish had managed to
roll into port Monday despite the heavy weather. Colliers
and tankers due in port had to wait out the worst of the
storm in the lower harbor, or were delayed elsewhere along
the coast. Longshoremen had been unable to unload baled
pulp from a Swedish steamer at Portland Terminal Pier
No. 1. A wind velocity of more than thirty miles was

30 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

reported at Eastport, and the ice in the St. Croix River
was breaking up, and was expected to go out on the night
tide. A sleet storm Monday morning at Machias was fol-
lowed by rain. No damage was done at Bar Harbor, al-
though heavy seas pounded the southern side of Mount
Desert Island. Gale conditions were reported at Rockland,
with the wind blowing forty miles an hour from the south-
east. The Coast Guard Station at Popham Beach at the
mouth of the Kennebec River had lost its weathervane, and
Old Prince Bell Buoy No. 2 at Cape Porpoise was reported
capsized. None of the Coast Guard Stations had apparently
received any calls from distressed craft, but the shore patrols
were unusually vigilant. The weather offshore was said
to be still bad.

During the evening I stepped out of the hotel for a few
minutes, and while I was gone the superintendent of the
Mission called me from Round Pond. He left word that
they would be in Portland the next day. I waited at the
hotel all day Tuesday with my bag packed, and at four
o'clock Mr. Bousfield called up to say that they had arrived
at Central Wharf. The Kickapoo had broken six or eight
miles of ice in the Damariscotta River on Saturday and
the Sunbeam had gone to Loud's Island near Round Pond
in Muscongus Bay. They had ridden out the storm at Round
Pond. The run along the coast to Portland had been some-
thing of an ordeal. Everybody was pretty well shaken up,
and he himself had never been so seasick in his life. They

CITY BY THE SEA 31

would be in port for a couple of days, and he advised me
for the sake of my own comfort to stay in the hotel that
night. Coal was being unloaded from a collier at the next
wharf and they were experiencing a coal-dust blizzard. It
was a dirty kind of storm they had not expected to en-
counter. I said I would be down in the morning.

So shortly after breakfast the next day I took a sea-
going taxicab down to Central Wharf. The thermometer
during the night had taken a disconcerting plunge down
to the zero mark. The streets which had been full of slush
were frozen; shop windows were frosted, and people, their
faces red, hurried along the sidewalks. The January thaw
was definitely over.

The Sunbeam was lying at the end of Central Wharf,
but as the tide was low only her mast and the top of the
pilothouse showed above the wharf. When I reached the
end and looked down on her I thought they should have
named her the Cinder instead of the Sunbeam. For she was
streaked and grimy with coal dust from stem to stern.
Soaking wet when she arrived, the black particles had
blown all over her and frozen on everything. She was not
equipped with a steam hose with which she could be de-
frosted and then cleaned. It would probably have done
no good anyway, since they were still digging coal out of
the collier Jonancy at the next wharf, and though there
was no dust storm at the moment, one might blow up again
at any time.

32 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

The Sunbeam carried a fifteen-foot ladder on her deck
which was leaning against the wharf, and after passing my
luggage down I did what I was to do many times while
cruising on her I descended the ladder. Librarians, house
painters, and others who are used to climbing ladders would
probably not have minded this feature of the trip at all.
They would have taken it in their stride. It really wasn't
so bad in daylight at a place like Portland, after you had
done it a few times, but it required a sense of humor to
appreciate fully your position on a dark night, when with
one end of the ladder resting uncertainly on the icy deck
and the other end barely reaching to the top of a rotten
old wharf, the boat started to move away just as you began
to ascend or descend the ladder. Usually when this occurred
you were carrying something in one hand. It was an upset-
ting situation which called for the skill and stout heart
of a fireman.

This ladder business was, of course, all the fault of the
tide, which has great ups and downs on the Maine coast.
At Eastport the average rise and fall is eighteen feet. How
much tide it is good for a place to have I am not competent
to say. Personally, I like the Maine tides, which seem differ-
ent from the tides of other places, because they never appear
to run in and out, but always to move up and down. When
later I asked Mr. Bousfield whether he favored high, low,
or medium tides, he said at once that he was a high tider.

"Apart from the fact that they make for picturesque em-

CITY BY THE SEA 33

barkations and debarkations," he said, "they are an indis-
pensable part of Maine coast life. The clam industry, which
means hundreds of thousands of dollars to the coast every
year, depends upon the tides. Without tides I am afraid
ice would be the menace it is in the Great Lakes. In areas
that are almost landlocked, the tides prevent the water from
stagnating. And you can tell time by the tide. Clocks run
down, but the tide never does."

Once aboard the Sunbeam I was introduced to Captain
Ralph J. Frye, one of the best pilots on the coast, whose
early years at sea were spent in sail, and Engineer Llew-
ellyn Damon, who was in yachts for fifteen years, the
Morgan, Whitney, and Ford yachts among others, and to
Arthur Poland, who had been shipped at Loud's Island to
do carpentry work on the boat. The port and starboard
pilothouse windows and one or two of the forward windows
had not been fitted and the spaces were boarded up. The
interior doors to the cabins and many of the lockers had
not been installed, and there were a hundred and one other
minor jobs that remained to be done.

Yet the Sunbeam^ of course, was substantially complete,
and as Mr. Bousfield showed me over her I had the feeling
that she would measure up to all the exacting demands that
were bound to be made upon her. Her most important work
is in the winter when conditions are apt to be severe, and
she was obviously built with these conditions in view. Her
hull is of very heavy construction. It is built of four-by-eight

34 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

oak timbers placed fourteen inches apart from centers, the
planking is yellow pine one and three-quarters inches thick,
and she is equipped with watertight bulkheads. The prow
is protected with a seven-eighths cast bronze shield, and the
forward part of the boat is sheathed with greenheart, a
South American wood of unusual quality for withstand-
ing ice.

The boat has a cut-away bow which enables her to ride
out on heavy ice and break it down. In the old boat ice
had to be broken by smashing into it. The new boat when
tried out walked right through ten inches of solid ice with-
out stopping. The bow is also unusually high, and although
I noticed that in heavy weather the Sunbeam threw a great
deal of water, not once did she put her nose under.

Many features of the new boat were the result of experi-
ence gained from the old boat. Thus the windows in the
deckhouse of the old boat were all right when the sun
was shining, but when the sea was rough or it rained, water
leaked in around the windows so badly that there was hardly
a dry place aboard. Even the dishes were covered with
salt deposits, according to Mr. Bousfield. Port lights were
therefore ordered for the new boat. These are large enough
to admit plenty of light, and at the same time keep the
water out. They are fitted with plate glass which is also a
safety glass.

The deckhouse is forward of the pilothouse and con-
tains the superintendent's office and sleeping quarters, a

CITY. BY THE SEA 35

lavatory, and the deck saloon. The saloon is large enough
so that in a pinch it can be used for a clinic, or for religious
services for a small group. It has a folding berth for a hos-
pital bed, the cushions of which are brown. Brown is also

the color of the linoleum throughout the boat. Both the
deck saloon and the dining saloon are finished in weldwood
and trimmed with light mahogany.

Going below, you pass the ship's clock and a supply
locker and find yourself in the dining saloon, where there
is a folding table which will accommodate eight persons.
There is also a folding berth for emergencies.

Looking aft from the dining saloon, there is a spare

36 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

cabin with two berths on the port side. This is the cabin
which I occupied and found very comfortable. The cushions
on the berths have inner springs, and there are reading
lights in the berths.

On the starboard side is the galley, which shows careful
planning down to the last detail. There is a gas stove and
an automatic hot-water heater, an electric refrigerator and
a sink with running hot and cold water. There is ample cup-
board space for dishes and cooking utensils. The dishes are
a stock pattern of plain light-brown vitreous china of heavy
design. Llewellyn Damon, who in addition to his engineer-
ing duties was acting as cook, had put hooks in the ceiling

CITY BY THE SEA 37

and hung the coffee mugs on them. In the galley is kept the
enormous dinner bell.

Forward of the dining saloon you enter the passageway
leading to the forecastle. The passageway opens on the star-
board side into the bathroom, which is fitted with a shower
capable of punching holes in your back. On the port side
is another cabin with two single berths. Arthur Poland was
quartered in this cabin, and the first night had a nightmare
from which he was awakened when he hit his head on the
upper berth. "Dreamed I went ashore/' he said the next
morning, "and struck a ledge."

The crew's quarters are located in the forecastle. The
berths here are high with drawers under them, so that the
occupants look as if they are sleeping on top of chests
of drawers. From the forecastle a companionway leads to
the forecastle deck. Llewellyn Damon was looking for-
ward to summer when this could be left open and he could
lie in his berth and gaze at the stars.

On the forecastle deck there is an electric windlass fitted
with a capstan. The Sunbeam has a light navy-type anchor
which hauls up into the hawse pipe, and a regular heavy
anchor of more adequate holding qualities for use when
the boat is exposed to the weather. This heavy anchor is
kept on the deck beside the windlass, and there is a special
davit for swinging it overside.

Proceeding aft along either the port or starboard deck
you pass the door of the deck saloon and come to the pilot-

38 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

house. This has a folding seat which provides sleeping
accommodations for two. As you look into the pilothouse
from the deck you can see the charts rolled up and tucked
into a rack overhead, a heavy steering gear, clock, barome-

ter, folding chart table, and a radio compass in addition
to a seven-inch underlit compass in front of the wheel, the
latter the gift of Henry Morgenthau. The pilothouse is
four feet above the deck and allows for unusual visibility
fore and aft. On the way from Round Pond to Portland
the visibility out the forward pilothouse windows was so
bad owing to the drenching spray that Captain Frye said
he steered part way by looking out the after windows and
getting a line on Seguin.

Practically all the mechanical equipment of the boat is

CITY BY THE SEA 39

located in the engine room, which may be reached by a per-
pendicular ladder from the starboard deck or through a
flush hatch in the pilothouse. In addition to a 23<>horse-
power diesel engine, with a three-to-one reduction gear,
there is a hot-water furnace with an automatic oil burner
and circulating pump. The thermostat regulating the heat
is in the dining saloon. The boat is equipped with a 5000
watt diesel generator and heavy ironclad batteries weighing
almost a ton. Beside the main engine and connected with
it is an auxiliary generator which, when the boat is cruising,
helps to keep the batteries charged. In the engine room is
also located an air compressor which supplies air to the
whistle and has a hose connection for use in the engine room.
There is also an electric bilge pump, with connections to
each of the four bilges, and a hand bilge pump for emer-
gencies. Connected with this pump is a fire hose reaching
to all parts of the ship. A water pump supplies water under
pressure to all faucets and to the furnace. On the after bulk-
head is a large switchboard with separate circuits to each
part, of the boat. It is hooked up in such a way that any
circuit may be switched directly to the generator. Thus,
when weighing anchor, the generator is started, which saves
taking power from the batteries. This can be done at any
point where the pull on the batteries is large. Electrically
lighted throughout, the Sunbeam has on the roof of the
pilothouse a searchlight with a twelve-inch reflector. This
light is capable of throwing a beam a mile on a clear night.

40 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

The boat also has an after hold which is used for storage
and for carrying freight, portable equipment, extra life
preservers, a stretcher, etc. This has a door leading into
a spacious lazarette, also used for storage. In this hold are
fresh-water tanks holding eight hundred gallons, and for-
ward is a tank with a capacity of two hundred and fifty
gallons. Under the decks are located the fuel tanks, holding
a maximum of eight hundred gallons of fuel oil.

Aft of the ship's one heavy mast, which is equipped with
a hoisting gear capable of lifting loads of a thousand
pounds, is the tender built from a very able model. Nested
in it is a skiff. All around the boat is a chain rail supported
by demountable stanchions, so that when it is necessary to
place large and bulky articles on board the rail can be re-
moved at any point.

How much does a craft of this sort cost? The Sunbeam,
which as I have said is seventy-two feet long and seventeen
and a half feet in beam, with a draft of six feet, cost
around forty thousand dollars. People up and down the
coast, on the islands and the mainland, natives and sum-
mer people, and many other individuals and organizations
familiar with the work of the Mission contributed the
money. The old boat was sold, and the captain and Llewel-
lyn Damon took her to Charleston, South Carolina, where
the captain, who had sailed in her for ten years, hated to
part with her.

The first day in port Mr. Bousfield spent in purchasing

CITY BY THE SEA 41

equipment for the boat, especially for the galley, and hard-
ware which Arthur Poland needed in his work. One thing
that always impresses me about a boat is the way the naval
architects utilize every bit of space. Not a cubic inch is
wasted. All is turned to the greatest advantage. Space which
in a house would be covered up and forgotten is turned into
lockers or storage space of some kind. Arthur Poland when
he couldn't work outside was kept busy inside putting
hinges, handles, and catches in places where I never sus-
pected lockers, drawers, or cubbyholes existed. This work
reminded Mr. Bousfield that hardware taken from a church
in a parish which he had before he joined the Mission staff
was once used in building a vessel on the Maine coast.

When the Unitarian church at East Lamoine, near
Mount Desert, was renovated and the old box pews re-
moved, Deacon Barney Hodgkins saved the latches and
hinges from the pew doors. He placed them in a large bowl
which he kept on his kitchen shelf, where they remained
for some time. But the deacon was a Yankee who could
not bear to think of all that hardware lying idle in a bowl,
so he decided to build a boat in order to put it to some use.
He built a schooner in which he installed much of the hard-
ware which he had salvaged from the church. He used the
vessel to take out fishing parties, but he never went in
her after some young people from Ellsworth stole the
schooner one Sunday while he was in church and sailed off
on a frolic of their own. The deacon, who was a strict Sab-

42 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

batarian, declared that the vessel had been polluted, and
was no longer safe to go in, and so he sold her.

Greenland could not have been much colder than it was
that day on the Portland waterfront. Gulls rising from the
water and alighting on the wharves immediately squatted
down to protect their wet feet and legs from the cold,
A vessel bound up river was armor-plated with ice. The
Boston fishing schooner Marjorie Parker^ which had taken
refuge in Portland Harbor, was tied up at the same wharf
as the Sunbeam. I counted her dories. There were two nests
of them, seven to a nest, all mustard color. The only sign
of life aboard her was white wood smoke coming from the
stovepipe of the after house. Coal was still being hoisted
out of the collier at the next wharf and dumped into small
coal cars which ran endlessly round and round a track high
above the wharf, like the cars of a model railway. Several

wharves away I could see the white bow and forward guns
of the revenue cutter Algonquin. My view of her was cut
off for a moment when a beam trawler backed out of her

CITY BY THE SEA 43

berth and headed seaward. She was one of the O'Hara fleet
destined ultimately to be turned over to the Navy for a
mine sweeper. She had disposed of her fare of 100,000
pounds of ground fish, and was now bound back to the
Banks for no deadlier catch than fish.

It was not until the next morning when the compass
was being adjusted and we began to run courses in the lower
harbor that I was able to get a general view of Portland
from the water. Tied up at Central Wharf the outlook was
restricted to the inner harbor, to the line of wharves on the
Portland side and the yacht anchorage and yards on the
South Portland shore. Beyond the breakwater, which makes
out from the southern side, part of the lower harbor was
visible, with one of the old granite forts sitting in the water
and behind it some of the islands in Casco Bay. The city
itself, which is on a high, stubby, saddle-backed point or
arm of land, has a remarkably picturesque and unusually
fine ecclesiastical skyline. Church spires seldom stand out
along the skylines of our cities today. They are obscured
by high office buildings, which have taken their places as
the most conspicuous landmarks in the modern urban sky-
scape. The Portland churches are outstanding, not because
the city has no high buildings, but because the business
section is located in the depressed part of the land, the seat
of the saddle as it were, and a number of the larger churches
stand on higher ground. This unusual feature gives a pleas-
ant impression of the city, for here, one feels, is a place that

44 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

has not lost its old horizon, a city with a sense of values,
wherein commerce is not glorified above all else.

We ran courses all the morning in the lower harbor from
Portland Head Light to the ship anchorage, where a Lat-

vian steamer with baled pulp from Baltic ports was waiting
a berth to discharge her cargo. Painted on her sides and on
her stack was a striped flag, red, white, and red. Some of the
crew were working on the decks. One with a peasant hand-
kerchief tied over his head looked like a woman. They all
acted as if their job was a cold one. After a while a tug
came out and towed the vessel from Riga to a pier in the
inner harbor. She had been waiting a week for a berth.

It was too cold to stay on the Sunbeam's deck for any
length of time. Yet it was the only place you could see
anything. The saloon ports were opaque with frost. Land
and water looked positively polar. Shore lines were white

CITY BY THE SEA 45

with ice. There was ice on the channel buoys. The islands,
with their summer hotels and cottages all closed, looked
desperately forlorn. Grimmest of all were the granite forts.
The grass on their ramparts was the color of dirty thatch.
The old things looked as if they had been out all night.

By noon the compass was set and we returned to the
wharf to request the Portland Lightship to start broad-
casting from its radiobeacon, so that the Sunbeam's direc-
tion finder could be calibrated. In the afternoon while this
was being done we ran outside the harbor toward the light-
ship, which is anchored five miles southeastward of Cape
Elizabeth, where we were right out among the Atlantic
rollers, and the Sunbeam danced around on top of the waves
in a dress rehearsal of what we were to see her do later. She
was carrying only a thousand pounds of ballast. Eventually
eight thousand pounds more of lead pigs had to be added to
settle her properly. Meanwhile, she yawed around a good
deal, and that night the captain said his arms were sore
from grinding on the wheel

At last the radio direction finder was brought to concert
pitch, and we sailed from Portland, leaving by Whitehead
Passage. It was late in the afternoon when we headed
Down East.

3. PENOBSCOT BAY

THE SEA, I think, must have a sense of humor, as witness
some of the odd things it does, such as suddenly making
strong men as weak as infants and smashing glassware and
crockery in the pantries and saloons of ships with all the
gusto and abandon of a music-hall comedian. It has a strong
sense of deviltry, too, as when it tears a costly government
buoy loose from its moorings and sweeps it miles away from
the land into the shipping lanes, to mock some poor wretch
of a navigator, who can scarcely believe his eyes when he
sees the thing bobbing about in the water, perhaps whistling
or playing a tune on its bell.

Yet, the sea's mood itself, whether rowdy or frolic-
some, threatening or menacing, depends upon one's point
of view. A storm is one thing to a person on land and an-
other thing to a person at sea. I may rejoice in the violent
action of the sea when perhaps it is ruining some fisherman
by wrecking his boat or his gear; while he may laugh at my

46

PENOBSCOT BAY 47

being weatherbound in his harbor when it seems vitally im-
portant to me that I should be elsewhere. As is intimated
in the old proverb about the wind that blows nobody good,
perhaps no mood of the sea, afflicting though it may be to
some persons, is in itself entirely and universally bad.

Although wind and tide were with us as we headed Down
East, and the teakettle rattled merrily on the galley stove,
and everything seemed to be set fair for the run to Booth-
bay Harbor, where we were to lie that night, the sea was
to play a trick on us before we made the harbor.

We were taking the inside passage, hugging the shore as
fondly as the Argonauts. As we emerged from under the
cliffs of Whitehead, the sun, a dull and rayless ball, dis-
appeared behind a mass of gray winter clouds in the
southwest, leaving not a trace behind, except a few faintly
stained pink clouds high above the gray southwestern bank.
A small flock of black ducks, flying swiftly above the tops
of the waves, overhauled and passed us. We must have
been logging about eleven knots. The immense character of
Casco Bay was apparent as we skirted the outer range of
islands, passing just inside Outer Green Island, the Junk
of Pork, and Halfway Rock, with its lonely lighthouse.
Jewell Island, which is on the seaward fringe, is said to
have a cave, but I could see nothing like a cavern entrance
on the side it presented to us. Eagle Island, where for many
years lived Admiral Robert E. Peary, is prominent on ac-
count of its height and its trees. There is a story that it

48 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

once belonged to two widows to whom the government
paid an annuity of sixty dollars to keep the trees standing
as a landmark for vessels. Many of the islands at the east-
erly end of the bay have literary associations, particularly
with women writers. Harriet Beecher Stowe lived on Orr's
Island, and Clara Louise Burnham had a summer home on
Bailey's Island. Ragged Island is owned by Edna St. Vin-
cent Millay.

We had hardly brought Cape Small abeam when the
lights along the coast came out. Halfway Rock astern of
us was as red as a cherry when it wasn't white. Dead ahead
Seguin Light on its high, rocky isle, a silhouette against the
sky, looked the prominent beacon it is the highest and
only first-order light on the Maine coast. Its fixed white
light is one hundred and eighty feet above the water. There
has been a lighthouse on Seguin Island since 1795. The
first keeper was an officer of the Revolution, Major John
Poleresczki of Dresden, Maine, who distinguished himself
under General Rochambeau. Our course lay inside the
island, which lies two miles south of the mouth of the
Kennebec River, where there are many dangers. It was pitch
dark when we passed to the northward of the island, a
strong tide was coming out of the Kennebec, and the Sun-
beam rolled and pitched madly. The motion became even
more violent when the engine was suddenly shut down and
we began to drift in the seaway. I heard a crash in the
galley, but by that time I could not have staggered down

PENOBSCOT BAY

49

the companionway steps to save my soul, let alone the
ship's crockery. After what seemed an interminable inter-
val, we got under way once more, and not long afterwards
we passed the Cuckolds Lighthouse and shaped our course
for Boothbay Harbor.

"What was the trouble off the Kennebec, Captain? 5 *
"The Number One lighted buoy was out. I mistook it

for another buoy. Then I saw breakers. When I see breakers

I know it's time to stop."

And the thing that went bump in the galley? It was just

a couple of vegetable dishes jumping off the shelf onto

the floor.

50 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

We left Boothbay Harbor at dawn while the harbor
lights were still burning. Burnt Island Light and Ram
Island Light, which mark the western and eastern en-
trances to the harbor, are pleasing to many people because
both have red lights with white sectors. Red is the color
many people prefer to see in lighthouses. It is a light-
house's first duty to be red, they say. With these people
it seems to be merely a matter of taste. As in the case of
wine, some prefer red, others white.

Bays and coves which we opened up were still partly in
shadow. Pemaquid Light was flashing as we passed. There
were a few patches of ice and snow around it, and mod-
erate waves were breaking lazily on the rocks below. In
Muscongus Bay we could see the lonely tower of the light on
Franklin Island. The government burned the buildings there
when they made it an unwatched beacon like Pemaquid.

"There were good doors and windows to her," said Arthur
Poland, speaking of the keeper's house at Franklin Island.
"Somebody would have been glad to get them, but it wasn't
the government way to give them away/*

Although it was broad daylight before we passed through
Davis Strait in the Georges Islands, no boats were to be
seen anywhere. Lobster buoys were plentiful, but the only
sign of life was a seal going like a scared cat. The Sunbeam
saluted Marshall Point Light at the entrance to Port Clyde
Harbor, and the keeper and his wife came out and waved
and rang the lighthouse bell.

PENOBSCOT BAY 51

"Once when I was in Port Clyde with Father," Arthur
Poland remarked, "I saw an old whiskered captain on the
deck of his vessel beating a boy with an oar."

We were bound to Rockland through Muscle Ridge
Channel, which we entered at Whitehead, giving the light-
house three blasts from our whistle, and presently we were
in Owl's Head Bay, passing the squat little tower of
Owl's Head Lighthouse on the knoll above the keeper's

house. A white boardwalk and flight of steps leads from
the house up to the tower, which is more than a century
old. The chimneys and small buildings here were painted
a cardinal red. Owl's Head, which is a harbor light at the
southwest entrance to Rockland Harbor, is one of the most

52 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

picturesque lights on the coast. Situated on a high, wooded
point rising steeply from the water, it is a dramatic accent
in the coastal panorama.

And now the Camden Hills came out by, dim and purple
in the distance. There was snow on them. On IVfegunticook.
Camden has a rather special association with the Maine Sea-
coast Mission, since it was there that the first Sunbeam was
built under the direction of Alexander MacDonald. The
boat is still in commission in Penobscot Bay. I saw her at
Stonington, where she is used as a ferry for the quarrymen
between Deer Isle and Crotch Island. Camden, incidentally,
was once the center of a great marine industry the forging
of anchors. More anchors were turned out at Camden than at
all other places in the country combined. Thousands of tons
of old iron were used in the industry annually. The iron was
cut into pieces and bound into bundles with strong wire and
fused in the forges, after which it was pounded into the vari-
ous parts of the anchors. Anchors ranging in size from a few
pounds to 7,500 pounds were made in Camden.

The water tower of the Samoset Hotel at Jameson Point
is a prominent Rockland landmark, but the hotel itself was
not the outstanding mark it is in summer. It was the same
yellow as the grass of the fields before it. Despite streaks
of snow across this grassy area, it suggested the world of
choppped straw that Munchausen found in the moon.
The keeper of the light on the breakwater, which makes out
from this point, rushed out of his house and along the side

PENOBSCOT BAY 53

of the light to answer the Sunbeam's shrilling salute.

We went directly to a large fish-packing wharf at the
head of the harbor, and after making fast, stood our ladder
against it. We were three and one-half hours out of Booth-
bay Harbor. Rockland was the first port we made in
Penobscot Bay.

Penobscot Bay, with its islands great and small, its ir-
regular shore line, and its background of superb hills, is
one of the most beautiful bays in the world. This is not
a parochial verdict. Many of the region's greatest admirers
speak from a wide experience and judge by the best the
world has to offer in the way of natural beauty. Edna St.
Vincent Millay, who was born here, mentions it nostalogi-
cally as the place where she was happy all day long.

The bay is sometimes quiet and at peace, sometimes bois-
terous and unruly. There is an admirable brief description
of it in a government nautical publication which I read
while on board the Sunbeam. You could search a long
time before finding a tidier presentation of salient geo-
graphical facts than that offered by the United States
Coast Pilot:

"Penobscot Bay is the largest and most important of the
many indentations on the coast of Maine. It is about 20
miles wide from Isle au Haut on the east to Whitehead
on the west, and is 28 miles long frorp. its entrance to the
mouth of the Penobscot River. A chain of large and small
islands divides it into two parts known as East and West

54 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

Penobscot Bays; the southern part of East Penobscot Bay-
is known as Isle ail Haut Bay. Numerous harbors indent its
shores, those of the most important being Rockland, Rock-
port, Camden, and Belfast on the western shore, and Cas-
tine on the eastern. The bay is the approach to Penobscot
River, which has several towns, and the city of Bangor at
the head of navigation."

Nathaniel Hawthorne was particularly fascinated by
the islands of the bay. He was rather envious of the owners
of the smaller ones, the islands having but a single habita-
tion, and made a note about them in his journal at the
close of the summer of 1837. He was leaving Maine at the
time, which may account for his feeling a bit broody, and
for the slight note of sadness that creeps in at the end of
the entry:

"Penobscot Bay," he wrote, "is full of islands, close to
which the steamboat is constantly passing. Some are large,
with portions of forests and portions of cleared land ; some
are mere rocks, with a little green or none, and inhabited
by sea-birds, which fly and flap about hoarsely. Their eggs
may be gathered by the bushel, and are good to eat. Other
islands have one house and one barn on them, this sole
family being lords and rulers of all land the sea girds. The
owner of such an island must have a peculiar sense of
proprietorship and lordship; he must feel more like his
own master than other people can. Other islands, perhaps
high, precipitous, black bluffs, are crowned with a white

PENOBSCOT BAY 55

lighthouse, whence, as evening comes on, twinkles a star
across the melancholy deep seen by vessels coming on
the coast, seen from the mainland, seen from island to
island."

The islands also impressed the government geologists
when thirty or thirty-five years ago they spent some time
examining the region. The islands, they said, were the high
spots of a once hilly land which during the glacial period
sank beneath the sea under the weight of millions of tons
of ice. The melting of the ice cap was followed by a period
of uplift, but the land never fully recovered its former
position. Only certain hilltops emerged above the water to
form an archipelago of islands, while the valleys remained
submerged, the smaller ones becoming tidal estuaries and
the old river valleys forming the deep-water marine chan-
nels which now comprise the main routes of navigation
through the bay.

Before the land rebounded to its present level, it stood
from 240 to 250 feet lower. This the geologists discovered
when searching for clues at Isle au Haut. Beach gravels
were found 225 feet above the shore, but from a height
of 250 feet to the highest point of the island (556 feet)
careful search failed to reveal a single water-worn stone.
According to these experts, it was the subsidence of the
land rather than the eroding action of the sea that caused
the irregularity of the coast line. This is shown by the fact
that the irregularity is as marked a feature of the protected

56 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

coves and estuaries as it is of the exposed sections of the
shore where the storm waves beat with unmitigated force.

A ragged shore line of this kind, with its many islands,
which is more or less typical of the whole coast of Maine,
exhibits all the characteristics of what in geology is termed a
drowned coast.

It is a notable fact that a reputation was won for this
region by the inhabitants 5 following three of the oldest
pursuits known to man, namely, fishing, shipbuilding, and
quarrying. Much has been written about the first two, but
not so much attention has been paid to the last. Yet for
more than a century Penobscot Bay has been famous for
its limestone and granite quarries, the former located almost
exclusively on the mainland, the latter on the islands and
the mainland. From the island granite quarries, stone has
come that has been used in building cathedrals, libraries,
schools, hospitals, jails, customhouses, post offices, state
houses, town buildings, banks, bridges, dockyards, mauso-
leums, and many other structures and monuments in the
chief cities of the country. There is Penobscot Bay granite
in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and in the Tri-
borough Bridge, New York.

At some of the islands the old granite workings can be
seen from the water. Often where the stone has been cut
in broad tiers from the flanks of hillsides the quarries look
like ancient Roman amphitheaters. Interest is lent to these
places by the antiquity of the quarrying craft. In a thousand

PENOBSCOT BAY 57

and one years, its appurtenances, like the appurtenances of
fishing and shipbuilding, have changed very little. Besides,
there is a certain nobility about work involving the taking
of great blocks of massive granite from the earth. It is a
Herculean business. Unlike mining, there is nothing about
it that seems" secret, dark, or furtive. Quarrying has always
been a clean, open, and above-board operation.

Yet an abandoned quarry may be an eerie place. Once
in October I visited the old quarries on the bridged island
of Sprucehead. It was one of those lonely autumn days
of absolute and deathlike stillness, when no wind stirred,
no bird sang, and no cricket chirped. When I listened for
the sound of the rote on the shore, I heard nothing. Every-
thing was hushed in a queer kind of calm. Not a soothing,
peaceful, languorous tranquillity, but an oppressive, dis-
quieting silence. The desolate excavations, once places of
enormous activity, suggested the cellar holes of a fallen

58 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

civilization. Definitely a place in which Edgar Poe or Edgar
Wallace would have delighted on account of its possibilities
as a setting for a murder, the only appropriate sound to
shatter its silence would have been a horrid, long-drawn
death scream. I must have half expected something of the
kind, because I left the island hurriedly, with my heart in
my rubbers.

The quarries at Sprucehead were principally paving-stone
quarries or motions, as the smaller openings were called.
Wilbert Snow, the Maine poet, who lived at Sprucehead
as a boy and still spends his summers there, wrote a poem
called The Paving Quarry, in which an old-time quarry-
man tells of the days when cities paved their streets with*
granite and he could reel off two hundred blocks or more
a day at five cents apiece. But those days are gone and the
click-clack of the drills ceased years ago at Sprucehead.

"Paving stones made a hard cargo hard on a vessel,"
said Captain Frye, who in his coasting schooner days often
handled cargoes of granite. "We used to sluice them aboard.
Ran the blocks against bumpers right into the hold. The
bumpers wore out fast."

In granite, as in nearly every kind of stone, there are
joints or planes along which it splits easily. The movement
of the earth's crust, even in the case of such massive mate-
rial as granite, has caused vertical or highly inclined joints
in the rock mass that may be followed a long way. Bottom
joints or nearly horizontal planes of divisibility are notice-

PENOBSCOT BAY 59

able features of many of the Penobscot Bay quarries. It is
the position of the joints or rifts, whether close together
or far apart, that governs the character of the type of work
for which a quarry is suited. At some quarries the parting
planes are so close together that the output is fit only for
paving stones, curbing, sills, and similar uses requiring
small blocks of granite; while at the larger quarries the
joints are so widely spaced that blocks of almost any desired
size can be quarried. Thus on Vinalhaven, at one of the
quarries of the old Bodwell Granite Company, which was
founded by Governor Bodwell of Maine, were quarried the
huge monoliths for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in
New York. These columns were turned from rough blocks
of granite sixty feet long, six feet wide, and six feet thick,
each weighing approximately one hundred and eighty-five
tons. The giant lathe on which these colossal blocks were
turned was designed to take columns seventy feet by seven.
One of the cathedral columns split after being removed
from the lathe, so the rest were turned in two sections.

The color and grain of granite are also leading factors
in determining its fitness for commercial purposes. Rock
which can be utilized for rough building blocks may be un-
suitable for dressed building material. In the important
granite belt that extends from the southern part of Brook-
lin southwestward across Deer Isle to Vinalhaven, a belt
that includes the Crotch Island and Hurricane Island
quarries, the granite is gray to pinkish-gray in color and in

60 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

grain ranges from fine to coarse. The bulk of the rock
quarried is the medium-grained pink granite. It is even-
textured, more or less uniform in color, and largely free
from the dark segregations or knots which make the granite
of some places unfit for commercial use. The granite here is
not only clear, but is distinguished by a general absence of
pyrites and other minerals which on exposure may cause
stains. Its color comes from the presence of quantities of
coarsely crystallized pink feldspar.

Some of the quarries on the Penobscot Bay islands are
among the largest in the United States, the openings cover-
ing from five to eight acres each, and averaging thirty feet
in depth. They are not so deep as the limestone quarries
near Rockland, some of which have sheer walls extending
downwards two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet. The
location of the granite quarries on the shore next to deep-
water channels by which large barges and vessels can ap-
proach to be loaded, simplifies the transportation problem
and confines the outlay for equipment mainly to the ma-
chinery used in finishing the product.

Limestone was quarried in the Penobscot Bay region long
before granite. In 1733 Samuel Waldo made experiments,
and, finding the rock suitable for reducing to lime, built a
kiln the product of which he sold in Boston. A century later,
when lime was first shipped to New York, it brought $2.00
a cask. It brought fame and fortune to Rockland. At one
time one hundred and twenty-five of the old-style, wood-

PENOBSCOT BAY

6l

burning kilns were in operation there. They are said to
have given an unkempt, smoky, and barbaric appearance
to the waterfront. In other words, there was a definite sug-
gestion of hell about the place. It must, indeed, have re-
sembled a nursery of young volcanoes. The rock on being
quarried was broken up and hauled to the kilns located
along the harborside, where, after being burned into lime,
it was placed in cedar casks and loaded for shipment on
board coasting schooners.

Most of the lime schooners were built at Rockland, which
was noted for its shipbuilding. It was the Rockland-built
clipper, Red Jacket^ which made the all-time record for a
sailing ship crossing the Atlantic. Upwards of three hun-

62 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

dred schooners were needed to handle the output of the
kilns, but they were nothing to the vast number of vessels
employed in supplying wood to the kilns. Thirty cords of
wood were required for a single burning of rock at each
kiln, and Rockland swarmed with kiln-wooders, as the fuel
boats with their high deckloads of cordwood were called.
Every old boat along the coast of Maine and the maritime
provinces was used to carry wood to Rockland. Captain
Frye's father was captain of a kiln-wooder at the age of
fifteen. But eventually the lime industry changed to coal
and oil, and later even to gas. The kiln-wooders vanished
like winter vapor, and the Rockland limers were replaced
by steel barges and tugs. Lime is still made at Rockland,
but the trade is not the picturesque business it was once.

The wharf where the Sunbeam lay in Rockland Harbor
was next to Tillson's Wharf, where the Boston and Rock-
land steamers used to dock. The island mail and passenger
boats now make it their point of departure. Several were
wintering at the wharf. The ice-breaker Kickapoo was also
there, and Captain Frye reported to her the lighted buoy
that was extinguished off the Kennebec. The Matinicus mail
boat, Mary A., came in during the afternoon. A smaller
craft than the Sunbeam, she makes two trips a week in
winter and three in summer. In 1920 the mail boat to this
island was lost. No trace of her was ever found. Matinicus
Isle was the place we were going in the morning.

In the meantime, a visitor to the Sunbeam was a young

PENOBSCOT BAY 63

man in a visored sea cap, a son of tie assistant keeper of
Two Bush Island Light. He had lost his twin brother only
a few weeks before when the scallop dragger Madeline and
Flora left Rockland for the Georges Banks and was never
heard from again. Hope was held out for some time that
the missing craft might be located. Coast Guard boats and
seaplanes made a thorough search, but no trace of the
dragger, which it was thought might be drifting helplessly
in the North Atlantic, was found. Nine men were on board
when she left port. Their dependents numbered forty-one.
One member of the crew, Edward Kelley, had a family
of fourteen. Robert Hickman, who replaced a man who
was stricken with appendicitis just before the boat sailed,
had seven children. The Madeline and Flora ran into a
storm on the Banks, and it is thought she foundered. What
actually happened will probably always remain a mystery
of the sea.

4. MATINICUS

THERE is not much earth at Matinicus Isle, but a great
deal of sea and sky. It occupies a position off Penobscot
Bay, eighteen miles southeast of OwFs Head, or twenty
from Rockland, and is one of the most distant islands of
any consequence on the Maine coast. Not quite so large
as Monhegan Island, it lies half a dozen miles farther out
in the sea, which gives the visitor to it the feeling of being
completely out of bounds.

In order to make the harbor at Matinicus at a reasonably
early hour of the day, it was necessary for us to take ad-
vantage of the morning tide, so we turned out in the dark
at six, and a few minutes later had slipped out of the
shadows of Rockland harbor and were headed down the
bay, a great comet's tail of white vapor from the Sunbeam's
exhaust streaming out astern of us on the winter air. There
was no wind to speak of, but it was intensely cold only
four degrees above the goose egg, as someone remarked

64

MATINICUS 65

and the murky sky showed no trace of a star. But the harbor
lights shone brilliantly in the frosty atmosphere, and every-
thing indicated a relatively smooth run to Matinicus.

"Is that string of lights Camden?" I asked Llewellyn
Damon, as he stepped out on deck through the engine-room
door and started forward to prepare breakfast. He glanced
up the bay at the cluster of lights to the northwestward of
Rockland.

"That's Rockport," he said. "I don't think you can see
Camden from here."

Owl's Head was a silhouette of raven's-wing darkness as
we came abreast of it, though the rest of the world was
rapidly turning gray. Islands were beginning to appear, and
presently I could see the pale line of the Camden hills.
Lighthouses remained illuminated, but they seemed to be
tiring fast, their lights growing feebler and more anemic
by the minute, with the exception of Two Bush Island
Light to the westward, which was still carrying on bravely.
We were in its red sector, and it flashed and glowed like a
pigeon' s-blood ruby in a platinum setting. I hoped for a
colorful sunrise over the water, but there was nothing but
an oysterish-gray sky that threatened snow. I went below
willingly when the bell rang for breakfast.

One thing I never ceased to wonder at while on board
the Sunbeam was the speed with which Llewellyn Damon
could prepare a meal. He would turn his back for a few
minutes in the galley and the next thing you knew break-

66 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

fast, dinner, or supper, piping hot and as appetizing as
food can be on shipboard, was on the table. It was lucky
he was so handy at the job, because he was first of all the
engineer, and when the Sunbeam was running it was neces-
sary for him to stand by in the engine room to execute any
orders signaled from the pilothouse by Captain Frye. The
pilothouse controls had not been installed for the first
voyage.

The galley, of course, presented a rare economy of labor.
Everything in the way of pots, pans, and provisions was
within easy reach. Standing in the middle of the galley,
Damon could open the door of the Frigidaire on one side

MATINICUS 67

and at the same time reach the oven door of the four-burner
Shipmate gas stove on the other side. He learned to cook
on yachts, I believe, and was at one time cook on Edsel
Ford's yacht. Rough weather never delayed a meal. The
only concession he ever made to the sea was to put up the
rails around the top of the stove to prevent the pans and the
pressure cooker from sliding off on the floor.

When I came out on deck again after breakfasting on
oatmeal, eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee, it was broad day-
light and the Sunbeam was well down the bay, rolling
gently in the long swell. Isle au Haut was on the port bow,
Matinicus dead ahead. Isle au Haut, which Champlain
christened when he visited the coast early in the seventeenth
century, is, as the name implies, a high island. Rising 556
feet from the water, it is the tallest of the Penobscot con-
gregation. But when I saw it for the first time years ago
from a small boat in the bay and asked the native boat-
man what island it was, I misunderstood him. I thought
he said, "I dunno," which struck me as very strange in-
deed, considering the upstanding character of the place.

If you did not know there was a settlement at Matinicus,
you would think as you approach it from the bay that it was
an uninhabited island. The harbor on the east side, with
its cluster of houses, cannot be seen, and the homes higher
up in the center of the island are hidden by the spruces and
firs. It appears to be just a rocky, woody island of no great
height, with a bold shore which in winter is white with ice

68 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

and snow. As you draw nearer, some of the subordinate
islands of the group begin to detach themselves, deploying
in a general easterly and southeasterly direction for a dis-
tance of five or six miles. Of these Seal Island is the east-
ernmost, while Matinicus Rock, with its two granite
lighthouses, only one of which is in commission, is the
southernmost. Other islands in the collection are the at-
tractively named Ragged Island, Ten Pound Island,
Wooden Ball, and No Man's Land, all good-sized islands,
but none, with the exception of Ragged Island, is inhabited.
In addition, there is a vast number of parasitic islets and
rocks. Threading your way among so many dangers, you
do not wonder that in the past vessels commonly came to
grief in these waters.

Bound as we were to Matinicus Harbor from the north-
ward, Captain Frye took the Sunbeam through the passage
between the northeast end of Matinicus Island and No
Man's Land. Perhaps No Man's Land does not look so sad
and desolate in summer as it does in winter, but even with
green grass instead of brown it would still have a bare and
blasted appearance. Once as thickly wooded as Matinicus,
it is now a treeless waste, with only a few dead trunks left
standing to remind you of its former state. One of these
which retained a couple of its limbs looked to me like an
old man holding up his arms in an attitude of despair.
There is no mystery as to what caused the death of the
trees. It was the sea birds flocking there in great numbers

MATINICUS 69

a case of too much fertilizer. The same thing is happening
on other islands up and down the coast. No Man's Land
was once a sanctuary of the Audubon Society. It is the
ruined trees, I think, that make the name of the island
seem so aptly descriptive, using No Man's Land in its
modern World War sense. In England the name has been
used for centuries to designate certain common lands not
belonging to anyone in particular, and when twenty-five
years or so ago British troops in France applied it to the
strip of land between the opposing lines of trenches, the
French thought it intensely English. The island near
Matinicus I have seen referred to as No Man's Land in a
book published three quarters of a century ago, and I
wouldn't wonder if the name dated back twice that length
of time. In any case, it is undoubtedly an English importa-
tion.

Captain Frye awoke the island echoes with three long
blasts of the whistle. It was the signal that we were nearing
the harbor. I had not looked at the chart and had no idea
how the entrance was to be negotiated. Some harbors are
so easy to enter that without any previous knowledge of
them you can tell almost at a glance the probable course
that will be taken. All is plain sailing. Matinicus Harbor,
however, is not so simple as all that. It is somewhat com-
plicated, and therefore more interesting. It is a cove lying
behind an island and a six-hundred-and-fifty-foot break-
water, the entrance to which is mazy with ledges. The

70 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

breakwater, which makes out from the northern side, is not
a neatly cemented sea wall, but a barrier composed of great
blocks of granite piled higglety-pigglety on top of each
other. It protects the harbor in easterly weather, though
during a storm from that quarter, tons of sea water are
driven over it Nevertheless, the fishing boats sheltering
behind it are quite safe. It was the first time the new
Sunbeam had visited Matinicus, but entering the harbor
was an old story to Captain Frye, who, after a little fast
work at the wheel, first this way and then that, brought her
safely inside.

The harbor is a small, shallow-water harbor, and as soon
as we entered a curious thing happened to the Sunbeam.
In the large harbors we had visited Portland, Boothbay,
and Rockland she seemed a small vessel, but in a little
harbor like Matinicus she suddenly grew to formidable
dimensions. Docking her at the old stone wharf on the
northwestern side of the harbor seemed as much of a job
as berthing the Queen Mary in the North River. Wherever
we went, the Sunbeam seemed to undergo an Alice-in-
Wonderland change of one kind or another.

Some idea of the size of the harbor may be gained from
the fact that the anchorage behind the breakwater, where
the Matinicus navy rides when in port, is only about two
hundred yards square. Within this area were three lobster
cars and a score or more of lobster boats. The lobster cars
of the Maine coast, whenever I saw any, invariably brought

MATINICUS 71

to mind the raft in Huckleberry Finn. They are in reality
almost completely submerged wooden cages, in which the
lobster buyers keep the live crustaceans purchased from the
fishermen, until such time as the lobster smacks come to
take the lobsters to market. As a rule, they are unpainted,

but one of the cars at Matinicus presented a colorful ap-
pearance the morning of our arrival. There was a weathered
red shack on it, with a black roof and a rusty stovepipe.
Tied to it were two boats, one pea green, the other white.
The man standing on the car wore an ensemble of yellow
oilskins and red rubber boots. The lobster boats lying in
the anchorage, most of them a brilliant white in the gray-
blue water, appeared to be larger and more powerfully
engined than the inshore craft we had seen. At no time

72 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

while at Matinicus did I hear a single engine of the put-put
class. Fishing at Matinicus is a deep-water business, and a
good engine is essential.

The whole fleet was astir as we rounded the breakwater.
Owing to the bad weather, it had not been out for several
days, but the men were now preparing to leave for the
fishing grounds. Some had already gone ; we had seen them
on the way as we approached, while others were warming
up their engines. Local custom seems to govern the hour of
departure of the fishing boats in the different villages of
the coast. At some places they leave long before sunrise,
but at Matinicus a more reasonable hour is kept. The run
from Rockland to Matinicus had taken an hour and forty
minutes, so it was about a quarter to eight when we reached
the harbor. By eight o'clock the anchorage behind the
breakwater would be destitute of lobster boats, and a
squadron of skiffs and dories would be lying at the moor-
ings where the larger boats had been.

The bustle in the harbor and the appearance of the
wharves and buildings around it made an agreeable im-
pression. It was a Breughelesque scene. Here was no dead
or dying port, but one that was very much alive. It was
obviously the home of an alert race. Most of the people
on the Maine islands are the descendants of the original
English settlers. At Matinicus if you should stand on the
old stone wharf and shout the name Young, more than half
the population, which numbers one hundred and thirty,

MATINICUS 73

would probably answer back, for the Young element is
very strong in the island. The family is, indeed, the largest
family of Matinicus. Its suzerainty over the island was
established many years ago when the leaders of the rival
houses of Young and Hall adopted a simple expedient to

decide which of the two patriarchs, old man Young or old
man Hall, should be the uncrowned king of Matinicus. It
was agreed that the one who could shout the loudest should
be king. So the two men went up together to the top of
Mount Ararat, the steeply wooded hill overlooking the
harbor, and on this commanding elevation endeavored to
shout each other down. Both were seafaring men accus-
tomed to making themselves heard above the sound and
fury of storms, and it was thought that the contest would
be a close one.

Hall was heard from first. Filling his lungs with pure

74 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

Matinicus air, he let out a blood-curdling yell that would
have shamed a Penobscot chieftain. It was a yell of which
any man could be proud. It made the welkin ring. But
the sound had scarcely died away when Young stepped
forward and let loose the mightiest human holla ever heard
on the coast of Maine. It nearly blasted Hall off the top of
Ararat. It rocked the shipping in the harbor, sent clouds
of seabirds into the air with frightened cries, and stam-
peded the seals sunning themselves on the outer ledges. It
reached the neighboring islands and echoed and re-echoed
throughout the archipelago. There was not the slightest
doubt as to who had won the kingship, and as soon as Hall
recovered his senses he congratulated Young on becoming
the founder of a dynasty.

Horace Young, the postmaster and general storekeeper,
came down to the wharf to take our lines. The office and
store are close to the wharf, so he did not bother to wear
a hat, coat, or gloves. But it is never so cold at Matinicus
as it is on the mainland. It is six to ten degrees warmer in
winter and that much cooler in summer. In the autumn the
frosts come later to the island than to the mainland. People
who visit Matinicus in the fall are sometimes surprised to
find flowers blooming a fortnight after all the mainland
flowers have perished. Yet the winds of winter are keen
and searching, and in accordance with coastal custom, the
people "bough" their houses. In November spruce boughs
are piled around the foundations. The heavier boughs are

MATINICUS 75

placed on top to hold down the lighter ones, and stakes
also are used. This keeps the winds from seeping in, and
prevents the frost from striking deeply and heaving the
foundations. The green banking gives the houses a snug
and festive Christmas look. Towards spring, however, the
green grows rusty, and when in April the banking is at last
taken away it is usually a deplorable brown.

Most of the houses at Matinicus are out of sight above
the harbor in the elevated central part of the island, where
the land is relatively flat. Here are located the church
and the school. The houses, of which there are perhaps
twenty-five or thirty, are widely spaced, and the effect is
that of a New England town common, a mile or so long,
with the houses facing each other on either side. There,
are fields and pastures and woods of coniferous timber.
Despite a noticeable dearth of barns, the impression made
upon one is of a farming rather than a fishing community.
In the old days it was both, but not so much farming is
done at Matinicus now. All the men are lobster fishermen.

The land on Matinicus is said to be excellent farm land,
but the soil of most of the maritime islands is pretty thin,
and not well suited to agricultural purposes, though the
islands generally afford fine pasturage. Sheep have been
raised on the islands since the earliest times, the flocks in
many cases lending a patriarchal, even Biblical, touch to
them. In summer, passing hilly islands where sheep were
grazing, I have caught myself looking for bearded shep-

y6 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

herds of the Old Testament type. Originally, I suppose,
the islands were chosen for sheep billets because, being
moated places, they afforded a certain measure of protection
against the visitations of wild beasts, and there was no need
to build fences. They were not, however, safe from human
raiders, and not so many years ago there was a good deal
of sheep stealing among the islands. Vessels would drop
anchor near an uninhabited island where sheep were left
untended, and stock up with mutton. At one time there was
so much slaughtering and stealing of sheep on the islands in
the vicinity of Deer Isle that it was said to have affected
the value of the islands.

Apparently there have been sheep on Matinicus for up-
wards of a century. The cover on the superintendent's berth
in the Sunbeam was made from Matinicus wool. Whether
the Matinicus dogs worry the Matinicus sheep or not, is a
question I did not hear ventilated while on the island ; but
I know that they do not bother them in summer, for the
sheep are then in exile on Ten Pound Island, between
Matinicus and Ragged Island. Eagles are sometimes a pest,
if not at Matinicus or Ten Pound, at islands only a few
miles away. The bald eagles seize the baby lambs in their
talons, carry them up into the air, and kill them by drop-
ping them on the rocks. They then descend and gorge on
the carcasses. It's a bloody business.

Cows and pigs as well as sheep are raised on Matinicus,
but there are very few horses. A good deal of butter is

MATINICUS 77

homemade, and many islanders have their own smoke-
houses in which to cure bacon and ham. From the poultry
yards come broilers and roasters, to say nothing of eggs.
No better potatoes and cranberries are grown anywhere. If
I am not mistaken, one of the largest farms now in opera-
tion on the island is that of Mrs. Marian Young. There is a
truly magnificent barn on this farm. It is perhaps a century
and a half old, and looks to be good for another century
or two. Among the vicissitudes of weather which it has
withstood during the many years of its existence must be
reckoned the worst storms in the annals of the coast. When
I went to see Mrs. Young, a strong wind was drifting the
snow around the barn, and Kipling's line about the great
Canadian barns in a blizzard drifted into my head. "Then
do the heavy timbered barns begin to talk like ships in a
cross sea, beam working against beam."

The house, which is not so old as the barn, is the oldest
house on the island. It was built in 1800, and is typically New
England low and rambling, with a great central chimney.
Maine houses sometimes mislead you as to their age, be-
cause in many cases the large chimney has been removed
and replaced by a small one. But happily this has not
been done at the Young house, which still has its old fire-
places. The original kitchen across the back of the main
part of the house is now the living room, and most of
one side is taken up by the great fireplace. On one of the
walls is a quaint mirror, which, according to family tradi-

yg ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

tion, has hung in the same place ever since the house was
built. Through the upper panels of one of the doors two
hearts were cut, but the romantic story of these, if any,
has been lost. Sitting in the living room beside a table on
which were the latest books and talking with Mrs. Young,
it was difficult to realize that I was on a remote island off
the Atlantic coast.

Sunday I was invited to dinner at the home of Mr. and
Mrs. Judson Young. Mrs. Young's father was the keeper
of Grindel Point Light at the island port of Gilkey's Har-
bor in the upper bay. The light was discontinued a number
of years ago, but the tower remains as a landmark. At the
time her daughter was born, Mrs. Young went to the main-
land, where she was nursed by the mother of Edna St.
Vincent Millay. Mrs. Young's family and the Millays be-
came acquainted when the two families lived in Appleton,
Maine. After the birth of the baby, Mrs. Young stayed

MATINICUS 79

for a while with her family at Grindel Point before re-
turning to Matinicus. Mrs. Millay accompanied her to
Grindel Point and to Matinicus. Like everyone who visits
Matinicus, she was fascinated by the island. She liked it so
much that she said:

"Wouldn't Vincent just love to come out here, and sit
around on these rocks and watch the waves !"

"Why don't you send for her?" said Mrs. Young. "Tell
the other girls to come too."

So Mrs. Millay wrote to her daughters in Camden, and
Edna, Norma, and Kathleen Millay came out to Matinicus
on the mail boat and stayed at the Youngs'.

"She had the handsomest hair," said Mrs. Young, speak-
ing of Edna. "You wouldn't call it red guess it was
auburn. Just like my heifer sweater rust and brown. She
liked the sweater so well we swapped. The three girls were
in one bedroom. They never knew where anything was.
Couldn't find their clothes when they had dates, and bor-
rowed my stockings. A little twelve-year-old boy used to
take Vincent around the island. One day I said she ought
to go down to the Gut where Jud was, and she went. She
was so taken with it she wrote a poem."

Mrs. Young had a newspaper clipping of the poem. It
was written in September 1913, when Edna St. Vincent
Millay was seventeen. It is a sonnet in which she tells how
on a salty day in autumn, when things were not to her
liking, and "inland woods were pushed by winds that flung

8O ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

them hissing to leeward like a ton of spray/' she thought
of how the tide came pounding in off Matinicus, running
through the Gut, and how the island women stood in their
stripped gardens, with slapping skirts and dahlia tubers
dripping from their hands, gazing seaward where the men
had gone. It is a very interesting poem, not only as an
example of the early work of a major American poet, but
also as a Maine poem. Edna St. Vincent Millay was in-
fluenced by her environment, but in all the books of her
verse there is scarcely any mention of Maine. Matinicus,
however, inspired her to write a poem that is wholly Maine.

Living at the Youngs' house, occupying, in fact, the same
room the Millay girls did when years before they were
there, was Mrs. Laura J. Varney, the American Red Cross
Nurse, who is attached regularly to the Mission staff. Mrs.
Varney is a public health nurse assigned to the coast under
the Delano Red Cross Nursing Service, which provides
visiting nurse services to isolated communities in all parts
of the country, from the Aleutian Islands in Alaska to the
islands of the Maine coast, and from Washington and
Idaho in the Northwest, through California and Arizona,
to the mountains of Virginia, North Carolina, and Ten-
nessee. One cannot see the work of the Delano nurses at
first-hand without having the greatest admiration for the
program and for the efficiency of the nurses engaged in
the work.

It is perhaps worth recalling that it was a nurse, Jane A.

MATINICUS 8l

Delano, the first chairman of the National Committee on
Red Cross Nursing Service, who, as a result of her own
experience in ministering to the people of a lonely mining
community in the West, saw the need for a general health
nursing program in places cut off from ordinary medical
aid. She not only saw the need, but made provision in her
will for the establishment of such a service. Miss Delano,
after a brilliant career in the nursing profession, died in the
line of duty in an army hospital in France in 1919.

The present policy of the Delano Red Cross Nursing
Service is to aid a community for a few months rather than
a continued period. In this way, more communities can be
served by the nurses, who, in addition to many other duties,
conduct classes in home hygiene and care of the sick, which
prepare the women and girls of a community to carry on
after the nurse leaves. The response of the people to this
educational work and the broadening effect it has had upon
the service has more than justified the policy. In accordance
with it, Mrs. Varney was to remain at Matinicus through
January, February, and March, and was then to be trans-
ferred to another island. There is a local nursing association
at Matinicus which gives generous financial support to this
Red Cross service.

On the way down to the harbor, or, as they speak of it
on the island, going down to the shore, I stopped to see
some paintings by Mrs. Esther Ames, of whose work
Matinicus has reason to be proud. Exceptionally interesting

82 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

were her water colors of Matinicus Harbor. They were
interesting historically as well as esthetically because they
showed the changes that have taken place at Matinicus. In
one picture, for example, were a number of sloops, but now
probably not one is left in the island fleet.

Curious about the government of the island, I asked
Captain Leon Linwood Young, one of the assessors, about
it, and from him I learned that Matinicus had been a plan-
tation for exactly one hundred years. Many Maine towns
were originally plantations, a form of local government
which goes back to the days when the state was a province
of Massachusetts. In organization it is not unlike the New
England town form of government, except that it has fewer
officers. There are no selectmen in a plantation; its affairs
are administered by a board of assessors. If the population
is less than 200 and the grand list less than $100,000, the
state supports the poor. A plantation is authorized to elect
one constable.

There is something exceedingly pleasant about the word
plantation, suggesting as it does an estate, a family affair,
fruitful and well-to-do. Matinicus suggested this and some-
thing besides. An island sharply delimited by the sea, it
made me think of a walled town, proud, independent, and
self-sufficient behind its rocky bastions and outworks, a
place which once you enter you do not like to leave.

It is, indeed, "an island like a little book, full of a hun-
dred tales," and Captain Young is the possessor and un-

MATINICUS 83

rivaled teller of the tales of Matinicus. I had heard of him
before I visited the island. Both Captain Frye and Llew-
ellyn Damon had told me he was one of the best talkers
and most amusing storytellers on the coast. They hoped I
would meet him while we were at the island. He came on
board one evening, and when he left we were all weak
from laughter. Any attempt to reproduce his stories would
result only in a pale reprint of the original publication.
The personality that entered into them, their piquancy and
flavor, defy translation to the printed page.

One of his stories in particular I wish I could retell as
he told it. It was about a man who retired from the sea
and brought his spirit compass with him. Once, when there
was a drought and funds were low, the retired captain
remembered his compass. He said, "That compass contains
alcohol." Nobody knew how old the compass was, and the
skipper and his crony had no idea whether the stuff in it
was safe to drink or not. But they hit on a practical plan
to test it. They decided to try it out on an old man who
lived down the road. If he took a drink and lived, they
knew it was all right for them to drink. Accordingly, they
tapped the compass, drained off a little, and took it down
to the old man. He drank it and it didn't kill him. So the
skipper and his crony had quite a time till the compass was
dry.

As we sat around the table in the dining saloon, Captain
Frye borrowed my pencil and every little while let it roll

84 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

down the table. The tide was ebbing, and at low water the
Sunbeam would be completely grounded out. Finally the
captain nodded as he watched the pencil.

"It's all right/' he said. "She's listing toward the wharf."

When the Sunbeam was grounded out in daylight, Llew-
ellyn Damon would don his rubber boots and splash out
through the mud to clean the bilge cocks.

"There are chips and shavings in a new vessel," he said,
"that get into the bilge cocks and clog them."

At other times he would go clamming at low tide. A clam
hoe was carried on the Sunbeam. If the clamming was good,
we had a chowder which would have won a trophy in any
cookery contest. Damon declared that the secret of making
chowder, whether clam or fish, was to use condensed milk.

In the cold weather it was noticeable all along the coast
that at low tide the smell of the fishing ports was nowhere
near up to summer strength.

MATINICUS 85

I was sorry while at the island not to meet Charles A. E.
Long, the meticulous historian of Matinicus, but he was
absent on the mainland, or, to use a phrase I often heard
among the islands, he had gone ashore. His Matinicus Isle:
Its Story and Its People is an engrossing book, which I read
before I visited the island and reread afterwards. One of
his most interesting chapters is devoted to wrecks. Tis an
ill wind that blows nobody good, and many of the wrecks
that occurred at or near Matinicus were an undoubted boon
to the islanders. Mr. Long does not go so far as to say that
the people hoped for these disasters, but he says they were
wonderfully quick to take advantage of any that did come
their way. It was nothing short of providential that, a few
years before the Civil War, when they were about to build
the island schoolhouse, the brig Mechanic laden with lum-
ber was lost on the west shore of the island. Part of the
salvaged cargo was used in constructing the school.

Every house I visited at Matinicus had a radio. Prob-
ably not a home on the island is without one. But great
differences exist between the islands of the Maine coast.
They are like different civilizations separated by the sea.
Some islands have only one or two radios, others none.
Those you see, of course, are the battery kind.

The people of the Maine islands are extremely fond of
music. Mr. Long, whose history of Matinicus was published
in 1926, says there were at that time on the island no less
than fifteen pianos. But the radio may even then have been

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

coming into use there, because he adds, "Five pianos were
recently removed."

What kind of music do the people like? I think they like
all kinds. The fishermen of the coast seemed especially
fond of mountain music. Not the yodeling songs of the
Swiss mountaineers, but the homely American mountain
folk ballads sung nasally to the accompaniment of an old
hill-billy band.

5. MUSIC ON THE MAINE COAST

ON the Maine coast you can have music wherever you go.
Not merely the kind that comes over the air waves, but
the home-grown, native variety, which is often fine, stirring
stuff. There is an old saying that a lonely land makes a
man sing, which may account for the fact that whenever
a few people foregather on any of Maine's oceanic islands
singing is one of their favorite pastimes.

Captain Frye, who sometimes went ashore nights at
island ports to visit old friends or former shipmates, as
often as not reported, cc We had a sing-song/' A splendid
tenor singer himself, the captain learned about music in
his youth from his mother, who was a singing-school teacher
in the Down East port of Harrington. cc When my mother
bought a new song book/' he said, "we would start at the
beginning and sing our way right through it."

The captain also learned as a lad to play the cornet.
That was in the days when every coast town worth its salt

87

88 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

had a cornet band, and it was the ambition of most boys
to play in the local band. But one night a man with a fiddle
came to the Frye home. The captain listened to his music
for some time, and then said to himself, "I can play that
instrument as well as he can." From that time on he played
the violin.

Mention by the captain of his cornet days brought back
the time I heard one of these instruments played in church.
One Sunday morning in a midwestern town I was taken
to the Methodist church, where the leading local dentist,
a little man with a swivel eye, surprised me by playing a
cornet solo while attired in full evening dress, complete
with white tie and tails. Edgar Allan Poe says, "We are
often made to feel, with shivering delight, that from an
earthly harp are stricken notes which cannot have been un-
familiar to the angels." What effect the little dentist's
playing had upon the angels that Sunday morning I have
no way of telling, but I know that when he got to the
twiddly parts of his piece I got to shivering so hard with
delight I almost had to leave the church.

One of my earliest Maine memories is of a barber in
Eastport standing outside his shop door on a summer day
practicing on his cornet. Without a customer's chin to cut,
he was cutting capers on his cornet. But this is by the way.
The cornet, of course, is not so popular now as it was then.
I was reminded that there is a fashion in musical instru-
ments as well as in other things, when after leaving the

MUSIC ON THE MAINE COAST 89

Sunbeam I broke the land journey home by staying over-
night at the Boothbay House at Boothbay Harbor. This
ancient hostelry, which dates from the eighteenth century,
has been run by the present owner, Mr. Harris, since 1890.
I was talking with him in the office after supper when there
drifted through the halls of the old hotel the sound of an
instrument I had not heard for years. Although it was mid-
winter, someone upstairs was playing Stars of a Summer
Night on a mandolin, and my mind went back to the days
when golden lads and lasses everywhere plucked or
twanged a mandolin or guitar. Probably it was the romantic
tradition of these instruments that gave them such a vogue.
The tradition of the serenade, of moonlight and love and
roses. And this probably accounts, too, for the later popu-
larity of the ukulele. Neither the mandolin nor the guitar
was much of a solo instrument, so the young folk of thirty
and forty years ago organized mandolin clubs, and there
was massed tinkling of such pieces as Juanita, Our Director
March, and The Merry Widow Waltz.

Not long after this I saw in an antique shop in Portland
an instrument which I believe was the fashionable instru-
ment just before the mandolin had its day. This was a
zither, a shallow, boxlike instrument, with strings across it,
that lay flat on the table. Its tones were about as colorless
as those of the mandolin and guitar. Yet none of these in-
struments, even at the height of their popularity, ever suc-
ceeded in completely usurping the place of the piano in

QO ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

the parlor. My sisters, for example, played both the zither
and the mandolin, but most of their musical hours were
spent at the piano, playing everything from "Chopsticks" to
Chopin. They were very angry when they discovered that
my tame white rats had built a nest in the old square Stein-
way.

What songs the captain sang when he went ashore nights
are not beyond all conjecture; I know beyond any doubt
that those he liked best were the hymns, especially the sailor
hymns, such as Let the Lower Lights Be Burning, Throw
Out the Life Line, Master, the Tempest Is Raging, Pull For
the Shore, Sailor, and Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me. This last

MUSIC ON THE MAINE COAST Ql

hymn is one of the most popular on the coast, and it is
interesting to note that the tune was composed by a Maine
man, John Edgar Gould, who was born in Bangor in 1822
and died at Tangier in 1875. He was a member of a firm
of Philadelphia piano dealers, and seems to have proved an
exception to the rule that successful piano salesmen usually
cannot play a note. As a dealer once explained the matter
to me, the salesman who is capable of doing anything more
than strike a few chords to show off the tone and key action
is almost certain to think more of his playing than he is of
displaying the instrument. So absorbed does he become in
his prowess at the keyboard that he forgets to mention to
the prospective buyer the beautiful finish of the case, the
easy weekly or monthly payments, and the free piano stool,
with the result that no sale is made.

Also linked with Maine is the famous old nautical hymn,
Throw Out the Life Line> Someone Is Sinking Today^
which I heard sung spiritedly on the coast. It was written
by Rev. Edward S. Ufford, a Baptist preacher, who for
many years conducted the Bethel Mission, near Snow's ship-
yard, on the waterfront at Rockland. In those days Rock-
land was a port of intense marine activity, and Mr. UfFord
worked among the seamen from the crowded shipping in
the harbor. He often preached holding a coil of rope in
one hand.

Wilbert Snow, the Penobscot Bay poet, who knew Mr.
Ufford, told me not long since that the hymn was written

92 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

half a century ago, after Mr. Ufford had watched the drill-
ing of the crew of the Coast Guard Station on Whitehead
Island, at the western entrance to the bay. Snow, who was
born on Whitehead Island, where his father was a coast-
guardsman, said that he once discussed the hymn with an-
other poet, Vachel Lindsay, who declared that it reeked of
the coast. A whole book might be built up around Throw
Out the Life Line, Lindsay said.

Another Maine hymn writer was Rev. Edwin Pond
Parker, author of Master, No Offering and other hymns,
who was born at Castine in 1836, and was educated at
Bowdoin and Bangor Theological Seminary. Ordained and
installed as pastor of the Second Congregational Church of
Hartford, Connecticut, in 1860, he served as pastor or
pastor emeritus of this church until his death sixty years
later. He was a member of the famous Hartford literary
group, which included Mark Twain, Charles Dudley
Warner, and Rev. Joseph H. Twitchell, the latter one of
the Innocents Abroad. In his younger days Dr. Parker
taught singing in various Maine towns. A musician as well
as a poet and preacher, he composed both the music and
the words of his hymns. Yet, despite his coastal origin,
none of his compositions has the sea or seafaring for a
theme.

The extremely popular hymn, Let the Lower Lights Be
Burning, is not native to the seacoast, but came from the
shores of the Great Lakes. It was inspired by the harbor

MUSIC ON THE MAINE COAST 93

lights of Cleveland. Mr. Bousfield sometimes illustrates this
hymn with a colored chalk drawing which he makes while
the hymn is being sung. At one place he induced the illus-
trator of this book to make a drawing for the hymn on a
blackboard.

"How much time do I have for it, Mr. Bousfield?"

"About three minutes/'

Still another sacred song in great request, especially by
older people, is Beautiful Isle of Somewhere.

Strange to say, one of the best-liked hymns on the coast
is Life Is Like a Mountain Railroad. Some of the islanders
with whom this hymn is a favorite have never seen a rail-
road. Its popularity is very likely owing to its having a
certain roll and go which makes it easy to sing without
any accompaniment. I noticed in places where there was
no organist or violinist that the hymns with a swing went
best. The unusual railroad theme is carried through the
entire hymn. Here are two of the verses:

Life is like a mountain railroad,
With an engineer thafs brave;
We must make the run successful,
From the cradle to the grave;
Watch the curves, the fills, the tunnels;
Never falter, never quail.
Keep the hand upon the throttle,
And the eye upon the rail.

94 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

As you roll across the trestle^
Spanning Jordan 9 s swelling tide^
You behold the Union Depot
Into which your train will glide;
There you'll meet the Superintendent^
God the Father^ God the Son,
With the hearty, joyous plaudit^
"Weary pilgrim^ welcome home"

A portable organ weighing thirty pounds was carried on

the Sunbeam for use at places where there was none. At

MUSIC ON THE MAINE COAST 95

Matinicus we were going to take it with us to Criehaven in
a lobster boat, but we left it behind when we heard that
the person who usually plays for the Mission services had
gone to the mainland. Mr, Bousfield asked me if I could
play, but I told him truthfully I could not. It would not
have been fair to do what a medical student whom I knew
did in the organ-playing line. Asked by a theological stu-
dent, who was to hold Sunday afternoon services at a
country chapel, if he would go along to play the hymns,
the medical student consented. And play he did, but with
only one finger. On the way home the theological student
nearly murdered him.

One sees many different makes and styles of organs in
Maine. The Mission has collected many of these instru-
ments and distributed them among the islands. Half a
dozen have been taken to Frenchboro, and as many more
were waiting at Northeast Harbor to be taken there and
elsewhere. Most of these organs suffer from some disease or
other, but they are none the less appreciated. There was
one thing about them I was eager to learn, but failed to
learn. Although I inquired diligently, I could find no one
who could tell me the difference between the privately
owned and driven melodeon, the harmonium, and the ordi-
nary cabinet organ. As someone once pointed out, a Mason-
Hamlin line separates them. One person whom I asked, said,
"The direct attack is best. Just pull out all the stops and
pump like the devil."

9 6

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

YI

The music of bells, which is frequently heard on the
Maine coast, is something one associates with the sea quite
as naturally as one does the sound of an anchor chain being
run out, a rope being rove in a block, the lapping of waves

MUSIC ON THE MAINE COAST 97

along a vessel's side, or the tide washing a beach. For bells
are put to a variety of marine uses. They are part of the
system of buoyage. Almost all lighthouses have them. So
does every ship. Docks and wharves are often equipped
with them. Time is designated on shipboard by a special
system of bells. And because marine bells have figured im-
portantly in their lives, the people of the coast have never
been chary of buying bells for other than marine purposes.
Maritime Maine, indeed, abounds in great, middle-sized,
and little bells of every kind.

Of all these, the sound of the bell buoy is the most un-
earthly, perhaps because it is not rung by any human
agency, but is operated by the uncertain action of the sea.
Not only the irregularity of the sound, but the general
mournfulness of tone, the grave note of warning, and the
utter loneliness of the thing itself tethered amid endless
acres of water make it seem non-terrestrial. It is neither a
part of the land nor a part of the sea, but is like a thing
existing sadly in limbo. No one, I am sure, ever heard a
merry or joyous bell buoy. I used to think that it would
be a melancholy experience to live on the edge of the sea
near a bell buoy, but once when I did live for months
within sound of one on the Maine coast, I found that, as
in the case of almost any oft-repeated sound, I soon got
used to it and did not notice it at all; though when it was
replaced I had to accustom myself to it all over again,
because the new bell buoy had a slightly different tone

98 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

from the old one. I used to listen to it at night, and could
sometimes tell from it the state of the sea and the direction
of the wind. In a southeasterly I could hear it plainly. It
sounded crazy to me.

On April 17, 1939, the Cranberry Island Coast Guard
picket boat, with Captain George Clark and Engineer
Calvin Alley, rescued from Long Ledge Lighted Buoy, near
the southwestern end of Mount Desert Island, two fisher-
men, Lennox Sargent and Gilbert Oakley of Southwest
Harbor, whose boat had caught fire and burned under them.
They clung to the buoy, which is a gong buoy, for several
hours before they were rescued. While the men were hold-
ing on for dear life in the wet and cold, the four hammers
of the buoy beat the gong incessantly.

Lighthouse bells, which are used as warnings in thick
weather, are much larger than any of the bells or gongs
suspended in the skeleton superstructures above the floats of
buoys, and are generally operated by clockwork and are
sounded at regular intervals. Each lighthouse has its own
special signal, such as a group of two strokes every twenty
seconds or one stroke every ten or fifteen seconds, so that
those who hear it can tell what particular bell it is and get
their bearings from it. In returning the Sunbeam's salutes,
the lighthouse bells were rung by hand. Often a child could
be seen running along a boardwalk or down a pathway
from the lighthouse to the bell to answer us. At Bass Har-
bor Head Light on the southwestern point of Mount Desert

MUSIC ON THE MAINE COAST Q9

there used to be a dog that would get hold of the rope and
try to ring the bell whenever the Sunbeam saluted. It is a
big bell, but the dog sometimes succeeded in ringing it.

The large bell at Pemaquid Light was removed a few
years ago when that place was converted into an untended
light station, and ever since has hung in an antique shop
in Waldoboro, Maine. It is a huge thing, a i,5oo-pounder I
should judge, with an awfully solemn tone. Despite all the
service it has seen, it is still in good condition. If I remem-
ber the inscription on it correctly, it was cast in the Sixties
at a foundry in Boston. Every year I inquire the price of
the old bell, but it remains the same, namely, sixty-five
dollars. I like to ask about it, because the dealer always
rings it to show off its vibratory qualities.

Church bells play an important part in the religious life
of many island communities. Since services at some islands
are not held regularly, the bell is an important means of
notifying people when there is to be public worship. At

100 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

Matinicus the bell is rung first to let the islanders know
that there will be a service; the next bell is to warn them
that there is only fifteen minutes before church, and then
it sounds again at the beginning of the service. At Louds-
ville, the island community in Muscongus Bay, there is a
dog that jumps up and runs to the church whenever he
hears the bell ring.

The United States government once became interested
in a Maine-coast church bell. During the Civil War the
Methodist church at East Boothbay bought a new bell
which was shipped from New York on a steamer that was
captured by Confederate raiders, who took their prize to
Canada. In a Nova Scotia town they sold the bell to a
church that needed one. After the war the bell was traced
and the government compelled the Nova Scotians to give
the bell back to the East Boothbay church. Unfortunately,
it proved to be such a sour-toned bell that people couldn't
endure the sound of it, and after listening to it with gritted
teeth as long as they could, they bought another the bell
which can be heard today ringing out over the waters of
Linekin Bay and the Damariscotta River on Sunday morn-
ings.

Foghorns are heard more frequently in summer than in
winter on the Maine coast. Commonly likened to a cow
mooing in the mist, they have always sounded to me like
one of those colossal curly instruments in the band that
grunt. No two foghorns in the same locality sound exactly

MUSIC ON THE MAINE COAST 101

alike, nor is it intended that they should. On the contrary,
by employing various types of apparatus to produce the
blasts reed horns, diaphragm horns, and diaphones a dif-
ference in tone is achieved, which, taken in conjunction
with the time spacing of the signals, facilitates station
identification. Some have an alternate pitch signal, a high-
and low-toned blast, while others have units of duplex or
triplex horns that produce a so-called chime signal. Fog-
horns differ in range of audibility, but sound is an eccentric
thing, and sometimes areas exist near a first-class fog signal
where it cannot be heard. The government is constantly
warning mariners not to assume that a signal is not sound-
ing because they cannot hear it, or, if they do hear it, not
to judge distance solely by the power of the sound. Maine
foghorns are practical and blatant. They never sound like
the horns of elfland faintly blowing.

There is a community chorus on the coast which should
be mentioned. It is the frog chorus of Matinicus Isle. There
were no frogs on the island, but the islanders liked to hear
them in the spring, so they imported a few from the main-
land, which they released near the island's one small ice
pond, and now the place is full of them.

6. THE CAVE AT SEAL ISLAND

ON the way to Matinicus Mr- Bcmsfield had mentioned a
cave on Seal Island, six miles to the eastward of Matinicus.
He had never seen the cave himself, nor did he think many
people had, but he understood from local fishermen it was
worth seeing. He said that if the weather was favorable
when we reached Matinicus, it might be possible for us to
land at the island and visit the cave. I was immediately
enthusiastic. For, quite apart from the fascination which
all such places possess, there was the added feature that
a cave on an uninhabited island, a score or more of miles
out in the sea, must be about the last thing in the way of
a cave on the Atlantic coast.

Yet it was not surprising that there should be a cave at
Seal Island. The rockbound coast of Maine abounds in
caves. Some islands have more caves than there are in
Shakespeare's plays. Most of them, of course, are sea caves,

which have been created by the action of the waves, push-

102

THE CAVE AT SEAL ISLAND 1O3

ing, prying, and tearing at the rocks. Some are accessible
only at low tide, when the sea, having looked in, has turned
and fled. The high margin of tidal variation along the coast
gives a little fillip of adventure to visits to these ocean
grottoes, as there is the possible but admittedly not very
probable danger of being cut off by the tide. Doubtless
the chief peril of caves lies in the fascination which they
have for children. Inquiries concerning Broodier' s Cave at
Monhegan brought only shakes of the head. The people
there do not like to talk about it, because it is considered
a menace to the children of the island, and attempts have
been made to fill it in. But if you ever want to know whether
there are any caves in a particular locality, ask the chil-
dren. They always know where they are. Their reports,
however, of the size of caves should not be taken too
literally. A cave that appears mammoth to a youngster
may seem small to a grownup. Most of Maine's oceanic
caverns are shallowly carved. None is measureless to man.
It is an odd fact that while cave study must have been
among the earliest interests of mankind, it is only lately
that we have had a word for it. The word is speleology.
It is a perfectly sound word philologically, but that is all
that can be said for it. Cavern is a romantic word and so
is grotto, but speleology is dully prosaic. It suggests a sys-
tem of reformed spelling, or at best the spells which witches
use to put their necromancy on people. Cave worship, I
suppose, goes back to Neanderthal or Piltdown, possibly to

1O4 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

even more elderly prehistoric gentlemen. Nobody knows
when man first sought the wet glooms of underground
caverns to worship devils or deities. It has even been claimed
that cave worship antedates both gods and devils. Norman
Douglas says that it is a cult of the female principle, a
manifestation of early man's instinctive desire to hide in
the womb of Mother Earth, from whom we derive our
sustenance and who when life is over receives us. One
wonders if there is a possible outcropping of the idea in
the lines of the famous hymn:

Rock of Ages, cleft for me.

Let me hide myself in thee.

I forgot all about the cave at Seal Island until well along
in the afternoon of our first day at Matinicus, when Mr.
Bousfield said he thought he had persuaded Bradford
Young to take us to the island in his lobster boat. I went
round with him to another wharf and down onto a float,
where I was introduced to a tall young fisherman with
humorous blue eyes, who it was at once plain was not at
all eager to take us to the cave. It wasn't that he didn't
want to be obliging, nor that he had already been out on
the water for hours in the nipping January air. It was sim-
ply that he didn't like the looks of the weather. He glanced
at the steely sky disapprovingly, and said he was afraid the
wind would shift. If it backened in, it would bring snow,
and it was no fun being out in an open lobster boat in a
snowstorm. If the weather held for a couple of hours, we

THE CAVE AT SEAL ISLAND 1O5

could make it, but he didn't have any faith that it would
hold. He was anxious, however, to accommodate us, and
was willing to leave it up to the others, who were more
weatherwise than he. We went with him while he con-
sulted two of the older men. They too looked at the steely
sky and sniffed the air. Then they pronounced judgment.
They said they thought there would not be much change
leastways, not for awhile. They thought we could get to
Seal Island and back before there was a turn for the worse.

"That settles it," said Bradford Young. 'Til have to
borrow a skiff from someone so we can get ashore at the
island/ 1

One of the weather prophets offered us his dory, but the
bottom was thick with ice, and the sides were also glazy
with it. Salt had been thrown into the dory, but there had
not been time for it to take effect. We borrowed a small
ice-free skiff at one of the lobster cars, and taking it in
tow, doubled the breakwater, and set our course for Seal
Island.

It was not so cold in the lobster boat as I had expected.
Slanting up over the engine breast-high to the helmsman,
who stood amidships, was a spray hood fashioned from a
heavy tarpaulin. It was frozen stiff, and by keeping in the
lee of it you were pretty well protected as to the sub-cincture
portions of your body against both wind and water. Con-
siderable comfort was also to be derived from the heat of
the engine imprisoned beneath the hood. If you crawled in

1O6 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

under the cover past the engine, you were in a warm canvas
cave.

Outward bound we had a good view of Ten Pound
Island and Wooden Ball Island. The names interested me,
but I was to ask many persons before finding out anything
about either one. Two other islands I knew bore the name
Ten Pound, one on the Maine coast, the other on the edge
of Massachusetts, and I wondered if the duplication had
been caused by the people taking the name with them when
they moved from island to island. The Sandwich Islanders
used to have this custom. I wondered still more how the
original Ten Pound Island came by its name. Was it
bought from the Indians in the early days for the sum of
ten pounds, or did the first white child born on 'the island
weigh in at that figure at birth? All sorts of explanations
suggested themselves, but the one I finally received at
Matinicus was the most reasonable and interesting of all.
Ten Pound Island derived its name from the fact that a ten-
pound cannon ball was once found there.

Wooden Ball Island does not appear on the chart to be
a circular island, nor could I see as I looked at it from
Bradford Young's lobster boat any connection between its
appearance and its name. Yet the physical aspect of
Wooden Ball was the only explanation anyone had to
offer of the name. It was suggested that when the island was
wooded, it may, when viewed from a certain position, have
had the hemispherical appearance of a wooden ball floating

THE CAVE AT SEAL ISLAND

in the water. Perhaps it did. I did not look at it from all
angles, nor did I know it in the days of its forested glory.

We made the six-mile run to Seal Island in a little over
half an hour. As we drew close to it, a large flock of black
ducks and old squaws flew up over the southwesterly end.
This is the highest part of the island, which is a forlorn and
treeless place about a mile long. The headland, which looks
immensely old, rises sixty feet above the water. We passed
to the northward of it into the long curving Western Bight.
Here more ducks rose, moving out of the bight at a tangent
to our course, flying very fast and low over the water.
Seal Island is a breeding ground of Mother Carey's chickens
or stormy petrel, the frail-looking birds sometimes seen
five hundred miles at sea, but we saw none of these har-
bingers of storm.

Near the shore we picked up an old mooring shaggy with
seaweed, and, making fast to it, pulled the skiff alongside. It
was the first time we had really looked at the skiff, and it
suddenly appeared woefully inadequate for the job. It was
all right for one man, or possibly for two men, but not for
three. However, it was relatively quiet in the bight, so we
decided to go all together. Bradford Young, who was to
handle the oars, got in first, then Mr. Bousfield in the bow,
and I followed in the stern.

"Don't breathe, anyone," said Mr. Bousfield.

"I suppose you fellows can swim," said Brad Young
cheerfully, "but if anything happens, I'm a goner."

1O8 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

Few fishermen on the coast can swim. Five-sixths of the
time the water is too cold for swimming, but I have always
liked the explanation a fisherman gave to a summer visitor.
He said, "We aim to stay in the boat."

We landed on the rocks near two small, deserted weather-
beaten houses. "All houses wherein man has lived or died
are haunted houses," says Longfellow. The Seal Island
houses certainly looked as if they might be haunted. The
door of one stood open to the winter winds, as if ghostly
children had entered and thoughtlessly left it ajar. As we
hurried by, I caught a glimpse inside of an iron bed with
a mattress on it. We raced up over the island through a tall,
rank growth of coarse, straw-like stuff, until we came out on
the rocks at the edge of a declivity. The sea was visible on
our right, and before us was a downward-sloping series of
snow-covered rock terraces, which terminated abruptly in
a wall of great blocks of granite. It was a wild-looking
place, but I saw no disheveled cave men peeping at us from
among the rocks, and down we went in the wake of Brad-
ford Young. When he reached the bottom, he nodded to-
ward a dark fissure at the base of the barrier, an irregular
cleft six or eight feet long, and possibly a yard high. "There
it is," he said.

Peering into the dark interior, I could see that the cave
slanted downward to the right under the rock wall in the
direction of the sea. We had been warned that in rough
weather the sea enters the cave, but listening at the en-

THE CAVE AT SEAL ISLAND 10Q

trance we heard no sound of surging waters at the lower end.
The tide was out, and while the sea on that side of the
island was rough, the waves were not of storm proportions.
The entrance was not difficult. Mr. Bousfield, who had
brought the electric lantern, went in feet first, hitching
himself down sideways over rough slabs of rock till there
was sufficient headroom for him to stand upright. The light
of the lantern revealed that what at first blush appeared
to be stalactites hanging from the roof were in reality noth-
ing but a small cluster of large icicles. I was sure the cave
was granite, not limestone, so it was merely a perverse hope
that led me to think it might contain stalactites. Twenty-
five or thirty feet from the entrance the cave opened up into
a spacious chamber twelve feet high and large enough,
according to Mr. Bousfield, to hold one hundred and fifty
people. As he was a preacher used to judging the number of
persons gathered in a particular place, his estimate, I have
no doubt, was correct down to a whisker.

It was much warmer inside the cave than outside. The
floor was strewn with fallen rock, but it was dry and free
from ice, which showed that if the sea at times does flood
the interior, it had not done so lately, though the island
had only a few days before been beaten by the worst storm
of the winter. The same thought about the cave occurred
to all of us it would make an excellent air-raid shelter.
There is a legend that during the Spanish- American War it
was stocked with provisions, so that it could be used by the

HO ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

islanders as a hide-out in the event of a naval raid on the
coast. Before the destruction of the Spanish fleet at San-
tiago, rumors of enemy cruisers flew up and down the coast,
and the island people were genuinely apprehensive of a visit
from Spanish ships and sailors.

From the main chamber two passageways led to the shore.
The easterly one was the less obstructed of the two. It had
plenty of headroom and was nicely arched at the end. I
doubt if either of these exits is noticeable from the sea, un-
less you happened to know precisely where to look for them.
The distance through the cave, which was roughly Y-shaped,
was about two hundred feet. A speleologist would, I think,
give pretty good marks to this insular cavern.

The expected change in weather came while we were
still at the cave. It began to snow, very leisurely at first,
then in deadly earnest. We hurried back to the skiff and
rowed out to the boat as fast as we dared. I was surprised
to see another lobster boat in the bight. A Matinicus fisher-
man was hurriedly pulling his traps. Young hailed him as
he passed, asking how many more traps he had to haul. I did
not get the answer, nor did I understand at first why we
did not start immediately for Matinicus. We were then
in a driving snowstorm, which cut down the visibility worse
than fog. But Bradford Young was apparently in no hurry;
he seemed to be interested only in the other boat. At length
the reason for the delay dawned on me.

"Are you waiting for him?" I asked.

THE CAVE AT SEAL ISLAND 111

He nodded. "We'll go in together, 5 ' he said. "They'd
never find you in this weather if anything went wrong."

We watched the fisherman as he hauled his remaining
traps with a quick turn of the warp around the winch head
or capstan. When he had dumped his last trap overboard we
stood out of the bight together. As we cleared the head-
land, a third lobster boat from the eastward joined us.
Nothing was said, but the three fishing boats stayed close
together all the way back to Matinicus.

Several weeks later I was surprised to discover that
the cave at Seal Island was apparently indicated on the
large government chart under the name Squeaker Guzzle.
I doubt if I would have known from the name that the cave
was meant had I not heard the people of Matinicus speak
of it as a guzzler, a word which they applied to sea caves
as if it were the generic term for such caverns. Thus they
spoke of another guzzler presumably so called because it
guzzles water at the southern end of Matinicus, which I
hoped to visit, but the sea proved too rough.

Looking back, I realize that it was really an exceptional
bit of luck that gave us a few hours of calm winter weather
during which we were able to land at Seal Island and visit
one of the most interesting caves on the Maine coast.

7. CRIEHAVEN

IN Matinicus Harbor I saw a lobster boat with the curious
name Racketash painted on her stern. I guessed she was
from the neighboring port of Criehaven on Ragged Island,
for Racketash was the Indian name of Ragged Island. But
the settlers changed Racketash into Ragged Ass, and by this
name it was known for many years, until at length it became
simply Ragged Island. Before I visited the island or knew
about the Redskin origin of the name, I supposed it was
called Ragged Island either because it had a tattered and
torn coastline, or because it was so thinly clad with soil
that the bare rocks showed like the flesh of a beggar seen
through his rags. But explanations of place names, no
matter how plausible they may seem, often prove wide of
the mark. Hypothesis, it is well to remember, is not the
same thing as fact.

112

CRIEHAVEN 113

Criehaven is a mile and a half or two miles from Matini-
cus Harbor, and on returning from Seal Island another
member of the Young family Max Young took us there
in his lobster boat. Mr. Bousfield was to hold services at
Criehaven that night, and had invited me to go along. We
left the harbor by way of the narrow and picturesque thor-
oughfare between Matinicus and Webber Island, along
which are fish houses and spindly landing stag- s. This is the
Gut which inspired Edna St. Vincent Millay's Matinicus
poem. At its narrowest part it is scarcely half a cable's
length in width, and Max Young had to watch sharply not
to become embroiled with other fishing boats. It was like
navigating a crowded canal. There was some calling back
and forth as we went through. I think it had been a good
day for the fishermen. Since it was several days since they
had been out, they were getting a good price for their lob-
sters. Twenty-five cents a pound was being paid at the lobster
cars. Max Young had brought in eighty or a hundred
pounds. He had also caught in one of his traps a large cod-
fish, which he was taking home. It lay frozen in the scup-
pers, as glamorous in death as in life.

I admired his boat, which was about as trim and smart
appearing a fishing boat as I had seen. She was a thirty-six-
footer, staunch and streamy, with a professional naval look
about her, as if she had been built to the special design of
an architect rather than by the rule-of-thumb method of
a local builder. But she was wholly a Criehaven produc-

114 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

tion, the creation of the late Peter Mitchell of Ragged
Island, who knew the boat-builder's art. I mistook an-
other boat in Matinicus Harbor for Max Young's boat a
day or two later, but it was a natural mistake. It was an-
other Mitchell boat.

"It's strange/' said Llewellyn Damon, "but no matter
how many boats a man builds, there's something personal
about them all."

Emerging from the Gut into rough water, Max Young
left the after steering wheel for the helm in the forward
house. We followed him inside. An old coat hanging over
the door preserved some of the heat from the fire that had

CRIEHAVEN 115

been burning in the tiny stove. Even on the frostiest morn-
ings, I thought, an hour's run to the fishing grounds would
be no hardship in such a boat. The pilothouse was just
large enough for three or four persons to stand. There was
an advantage in not having it any larger. Within its narrow
limits you were able to brace yourself to meet the motion
of the boat, thus saving yourself from being thrown about,
though the boat was as steady and well-behaved as you
could ask. She carried a trimming sail which helped to
keep her upright in the seaway. She would climb up a
wave, seemingly bend, and then glide down the other side
in an extraordinarily graceful and seaworthy way.

Criehaven, like Matinicus, has a breakwater, but whereas
the Matinicus seawall is to protect the harbor in easterly
weather, the Criehaven barrier is to mitigate the force of
westerly storms. There is a gas beacon on the end of the
Criehaven breakwater. Its white flashes were illuminating
the surrounding water as we passed within a biscuit toss of it
and entered the harbor.

Everybody who visits Criehaven meets Captain Herbert
J. McClure, popularly called Captain Mike, who is the
owner of the only wharf at Criehaven, and the keeper of the
store on the wharf. The post office is in the store, and Mrs.
McClure is in charge of it. Mr. Bousfield makes his head-
quarters with the McClures when he is in Criehaven. After
we climbed the ladder at the wharf, we entered the store,
where I was introduced to Captain Mike, a genial giant of

Il6 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

a man with a white mustache. Fishermen in rubber boots
and mittens kept coming in, warming first their hands and
then their backs at the stove. They would talk quietly for

a while and then go out. The talk was mostly about lobster-
ing how many fathoms of line on the traps, the price of
lobsters, and how many they had on hand and, of course,
the weather, which plays such an important part in their
lives. Some stood and others sat on low barrels or kegs,
which Captain Mike had provided especially for sitting
around the stove. Each of these seats had a small board
across the top to keep the sitter's legs from going to sleep.
They seemed quite new, but there would be plenty of use
for them in a presidential year.

CRIEHAVEN 117

The McClure home, where we went for supper, is beauti-
fully situated among the trees at the top of a wooded path-
way leading upward from the wharf. From the broad front
porch you can look out over the village and the harbor to
the sea. Monhegan Island, fifteen or twenty miles to the
westward, is visible by day and its light by night. From
the back door you can look out across the other side of the
island to Matinicus Rock, only a few miles distant, where
after dark the light flashes like stage lightning. Beyond the
Rock there is nothing but thousands of miles of ocean. Mrs.
McClure said that their mainland weathervane was the
femoke from the twin stacks of the cement plant at Thomas-
ton, twenty-six miles away. They judge by the smoke what
kind of a day it is on shore.

Forty people live at Criehaven in the winter, and there
must be almost the same number of cats, for one woman
alone has eighteen of the creatures. These are not the
famous lonj-haired Maine coon cats, but the snug-haired
variety, though there are coon cats on the island. The Mc-
Clures have one, a big fellow named Jigger, which stays in
the store nights, but likes to visit the house when it gets a
chance. Jigger is a nautical name bestowed by the boy in
the McClure family, who when the cat was a kitten thought
it carried its tail like a jigger sail on a boat. Mrs. McClure
had an aquarium filled with goldfish, but she did not seem
mistrustful of the cat when it was in the house, perhaps
because Jigger is given all the fish it can eat and so would

Il8 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

never dream of bothering to catch any on its own account.

I wondered if the presence of so many cats on the island
accounted for the total absence of rats. Matinicus has both
cats and rats, but Criehaven only cats. Till I looked into
the history of the islands I thought this might be explained
by Matinicus having all the shipwrecks, but on that score
the honors between the two islands seem to be even. On the
shore of one of the coves at Ragged Island is a tiny skull
orchard where lie buried five unidentified seamen whose
bodies were washed ashore from a wreck; and Matinicus
also has its unknown sailors' graves. Perhaps the answer
is that Matinicus, being much older in point of settlement
and more than twice as large as its neighbor in population
and area, was in the past more frequently visited by ves-
sels, among them some that were infested with rats.

It was not until 1849 that Robert Crie of Matinicus
built a house on Ragged Island at the place which now bears
his name. Ragged Island was for many years a part of the
Plantation of Matinicus Isle, but in the Nineties it seceded
from the parent island in consequence of a dispute over a
school matter, and since then has plowed its own political
furrow.

After supper we all bundled up, and, armed with the
electric lantern and flashlights, set out for the meeting. It
was hard walking through the snow, as it concealed
boulders over which I constantly stumbled. I am not sure
that we followed what might lawfully be called a road, but

CRIEHAVEN

presently, perceiving the error of our way, we crossed a
field where the footing was better and soon reached the
meeting place. Criehaven has no church, so services are held
in the schoolhouse. Most of the congregation squeezed
themselves into the primary seats attached to tiny desks.
Those of us who, because of our bulk or our rheumatism,
found the scholars' seats impossible, sat on benches along
the wall. The weather was anything but favorable to the
meeting, but I think half the population of the island was
there. There was no organ, but Mr. Bousfield, who led the
meeting in rubber boots, chose hymns with a swing, or per-
haps I should say hymns that could be swung, and they
went remarkably well. Everyone really cut loose and joined
in the singing. There was more spirit than you find in most
city churches.

The launching of the Mission boat furnished Mr. Bous-
field with the subject of his sermon ("Prepare ye the way
of the Lord"). If I am not mistaken, his method is not to
ransack the Bible for a text from which to preach, but rather
to take some problem, work it out, and then find relevant
scriptural citations to sustain his conclusions. His Crie-
haven sermon and others which I heard him preach were
very carefully thought out, and skillfully built up with a
series of pictures, many of them from the actual life of the
fishing villages, which brought them home vividly to his
hearers. The cumulative effect of this method is singularly
forceful.

12O ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

After the service I stopped at the store while Mr. Bous-
field used the only telephone on the island to call Bar Har-
bor 86. When the government laid the cable from the Coast
Guard Station at Whitehead near the mainland to Matini-
cus Rock Light, the Mission used its influence to have
Matinicus and Criehaven connected with the mainland.
Since the cable had necessarily to pass close to both islands,
it was possible for the government to give each place a
telephone without going much out of the way. The Coast
Guard Station connected Mr. Bousfield with the Rockland
telephone exchange, which put through his call to the Mis-
sion House. By communicating nightly with his headquar-
ters, the superintendent not only kept abreast of all Mission
business, but made the Sunbeam available for any emer-
gency call.

"Why not a ship-to-shore telephone?" I asked.

"Some day we'll probably have one," he said. "But the
calls now have to go through Boston. We would have to
pay toll charges from Boston to Bar Harbor. It would cost
too much money."

While he was talking on the telephone I took the lantern
and glanced around at Captain Mike's well-stocked shelves
of groceries. His store is probably the outermost grocery
on the Atlantic seaboard; it is one of the few I.G.A. stores
on the Maine coast, for Captain Mike is one of America's
independent grocers. I was interested to see what he kept
on hand. His supplies, I found, were the same as those of

CRIEHAVEN 121

any well-managed island store. Very much in evidence, of
course, were the best-selling staples, such as oatmeal, corn
flakes, beans, ketchup, marshmallow fluff, coffee, candy, and
tinned milk. But the standby articles of diet on the coast
are fish and potatoes. Wilbert Snow, the poet of Spruce-
head, told me that the first lines of verse he learned were :

Fish and potatoes, the fat of the land;

If you won't eat that, you can starve and be damned.

It was pleasant to get into the lamplight and warmth
of the McClure house, where Mrs. McClure showed me
some interesting photographs which she had taken on the
island. Documentaries is the best word, I think, to de-
scribe them, since many of them recorded dramatic events
in the history of the island, such as storms and shipwrecks.
One series of snapshots was of a four-master that was lost
on a ledge near Criehaven. This was the Ethel M. Taylor,
which was wrecked eleven years ago. She struck in thick
weather. Her stern was in eighteen or twenty fathoms of
water, and in island opinion she could have been pulled off
with an anchor ; but the skipper delayed too long, and the tide
swung her around onto the reef. Her position was then
hopeless, and she was a total loss.

Pictures of ships are naturally popular on the coast.
There is always a large demand for the calendars of the
Plymouth Cordage Company and the Columbia Rope Com-
pany, because of their colored reproductions of ship paint-

122

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

ings. You see these calendars everywhere. One hung in the
McClure kitchen.

"Bless my soul no pie!" exclaimed Captain Mike the
next morning, as he gazed at the well-laden breakfast table
Mrs. McClure had set for us. But he was mistaken. There
was pie, and he was able to uphold the old New England
custom of eating it for breakfast.

After breakfast Max Young came to take us back to
Matinicus. It was Sunday morning and Mr. Bousfield had
to be there for church school. In the evening he was to hold

CRIEHAVEN 123

regular services in the Matinicus church. As in many other
places along the coast where there is no established minister,
the only religious services at Matinicus and Criehaven are
those conducted by the Mission.

As I came out of the McClures' house, I paused for a
moment to look at the view. Everything was covered with
snow roofs, rocks, trees, the wharf, the breakwater, and
the boats in the harbor. But snow seldom lasts long here.
The salt air and the sea winds make short work of it. Among
the snow-burdened trees on the opposite side of the harbor
the crows were holding a town meeting. I hoped to see one
of the American ravens which haunt these islands, but the
only one I have seen on the coast was a stuffed specimen
in a glass case at Bar Harbor. It seemed a smaller bird than
the great, glossy ravens I once saw flying about in the precincts
of the Tower of London. The British birds had a wing
spread of more than a yard. There is a tradition that every
time one of these London ravens dies, one of the Beef-
eaters at the Tower also dies. But no such ill omen attaches
to their American cousins, the ravens of Criehaven.

When we left Criehaven the plan was that we would
return the following morning in the Sunbeam to take a
woman who was ill to the mainland. But the next day we
received word that it was too rough for the Sunbeam to
enter the harbor, and the woman was not well enough to
be moved anyway. Mr. Bousfield asked Mrs. Varney, the
Red Cross nurse at Matinicus, to go to Criehaven in a small

124 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

boat at the earliest possible moment, and a week later the
Sunbeam returned and removed the woman. They brought
her down to the side of the harbor on a sled, and then trans-
ferred her to the Mission boat from the wharf. Sometimes
it is possible to carry a sick person right out over the ice to
the boat. It is a dramatic thing to see a group of fishermen
carrying a person on a stretcher across the ice. It is a much
easier way than bringing a person out in a small boat and
then making the transfer, or taking someone from a wharf
when the tide is low. At no time is there any lack of willing
hands to help. There are no better neighbors in the world
than the people of the Maine islands. In times of crisis and
danger, all differences, if any exist, are forgotten, and every-
body rallies around the one who is ill or in trouble. It is
the same spirit which the men in the lobster boats showed
at Seal Island when they stayed together in the snowstorm.

The Criehaven woman was apologetic because she had
no money to pay for her transportation, which, of course,
the Mission did not expect. She said that eight years before,
during another illness, she had been taken ashore on the
old Sunbeam^ and when she got home she gave a supper at
which she raised thirty dollars for the Mission. If she got
out of this illness, she would do the same again. That is the
spirit of these people.

From Matinicus we steered northward for Vinalhaven
Island, which lies at the entrance of Penobscot Bay. We
were bound for North Haven, but we stood in towards

CRIEHAVEN 125

Carver's Harbor, at the head of which is the town of Vinal-
haven. We did not enter the harbor, but, steering north-
westward through the Reach, crossed Hurricane Sound, and
finally threaded our way out through Leadbetter Narrows.
This is one of the most beautiful parts of Penobscot Bay,
a region which is the special preserve of the poet Harold
Vinal.

"I wouldn't be surprised if we ran into some ice up in
here/' said Captain Frye, as we passed the light at Brown's
Head at the western entrance to Fox Island Thoroughfare.

This Thoroughfare, which leads from West Penobscot
Bay to East Penobscot Bay between the islands of North
Haven and Vinalhaven, is extremely narrow where the vil-
lage of North Haven stands on the northern side. Drifting
cakes of ice came out past us on the tide as we proceeded,
some of which at a distance looked as if they were gulls
resting on the water. The curious islands called the Dump-
lings were icy and looked more like buns. Beyond them the
Southern Harbor was frozen. At the village we had to break
ice to get in to the wharf.

Chinese antiquities and rare objets d'art are perhaps
hardly the things you would expect to find in a small village
on a Penobscot Bay island, but that is what I found at
North Haven. For Mr. Bousfield's father, Dr. Cyril E.
Bousfield, who for the past few years has been the doctor at
North Haven, operated a hospital in China for forty-two
years, and brought back many rarities when he left China

126 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

in 1935. Incense burners, ancient idols, vases, rice wine cups
I can't begin to enumerate the things I saw in the Bous-
field home. Many of them had been in the same families
for hundreds of years, but recent governments in China put
on such heavy taxes that the families were obliged to sell
them. One of the bronze vases had been dug out of the
Chao-Yang wall, which was built in 60 A.D.

"When China became a republic/' said Dr. Bousfield,
"they pulled down the walls around the towns in South
China."

Dr. Bousfield, a graduate of Cambridge University, was
a volunteer worker for the Mission for a couple of years
before he settled at North Haven, cruising on the old Sun-
beam with his son.

"But I couldn't stand it," he said. "The sea water got
into my berth and froze."

CRIEHAVEN 12J

Some of the experiences of the Bousfield family in
China, where their lives were often in danger, are contained
in a book written by Mrs. Bousfield called Sun-Wu Stories^
which was published in Shanghai.

There are many estates on the island of North Haven,
including the Morrows' and the Lamonts'. The church in
the village, which was built by the summer people and the
natives, is Episcopal for ten Sunday mornings in the sum-
mer, and the rest of the time Baptist.

Late in the afternoon we returned to Rockland, where
more work was to be done on the Sunbeam. That night in
a borrowed car Mr. Bousfield and I drove out to call at
Owl's Head Light. It was the first of a number of calls I
was to make with him at lighthouses,

TTT

8. GUARDIANS OF THE COAST

WHERE do lighthouse keepers go on their vacations?
What is their favorite reading? What are their hobbies?
These were some of the questions I asked Mr. Bousfield,
who as missionary pastor of the Maine Seacoast Mission
has within his wide-flung parish fifty-four lighthouses, nine
out of twelve Coast Guard stations, and a lightship.

I wondered if light keepers were like the sailors one sees
on leave rowing about in small boats on the artificial ponds
of city parks, or if during the course of the year they see
so much water that when their holidays come round their
ruling ambition is to get away from it. It is true that a few
keepers occasionally visit other lighthouses, but the thing
most of them like to do best is to jump into a car and drive
as far inland as possible. And I dare say that when they

sight one of those filling stations designed to represent a

128

GUARDIANS OF THE COAST

lighthouse, they bear down hard on the accelerator and pass
it with averted eyes.

The sea being so much with them accounts, perhaps, for
the great passion lighthouse keepers have for reading west-
ern stories. Tales of the rolling plains rather than the roll-
ing ocean hold them spellbound, relieving the tedium of
their lives. To the beat of waves, they like to read of the beat
of horses' hoofs; and prairie schooners are more apt to
occupy their minds than coasting schooners. Nor do they
ever seem to tire of these melodramatic yarns of action and
suspense, all written to a formula, in which anything so mod-
ern as a motor car, a radio, or a telephone plays no part. Inevi-
tably, virtue triumphs, of course; but villainy and vice get
a good long run for their money, though the wages of sin
never result in the enjoyment of an old-age pension.

Captain Frye, I discovered, shared the lighthouse keepers*
love of western stories. Reclining in his bunk at night, with
no other sound save the lip-lap of waves along the vessel's
side or the occasional straining of a mooring line, he would
read westerns until blind with sleep. One evening, sitting
around the table for supper, we estimated that he read two
or three hundred a year.

Detective-story magazines are also great favorites with
the light keepers, but by and large the most popular maga-
zine on the coast is the National Geographic. Many others,
however, are in request. The Mission distributes almost
every variety of popular magazine from the Reader's Digest

130 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

to Good Housekeeping^ and from Popular Mechanics to
Field and Stream.

The magazines are collected and sorted at the Mission
House, tied securely with proper nautical knots in bundles,
and prior to each trip a mixed cargo of them is stowed in
the glory hole of the Sunbeam. Then, before landing at a
lighthouse or going ashore at some island or mainland point,
bundles of assorted magazines are brought on deck and
placed in the skiff or dinghy with the landing party.

After landing at a number of lights I began to see great
virtue in the pulp magazines, their feather weight making
them much easier to handle than the ordinary kind, which
become leaden in no time. The difference is noticeable when
you begin climbing up to a lighthouse over slippery rocks

GUARDIANS OF THE COAST

and rough ground in bitter weather, especially if you have
to do any jumping from rock to rock. At some places it
seemed as if the leaps required were positively Nijinskian.

cc How many periodicals does the Mission distribute a
year, Mr. Bousfield?"

"From four to six tons. Handling magazines is the way
I get my exercise."

In addition to the magazines delivered personally by Mr.
Bousfield and other members of the Mission staff, each
lighthouse is given a subscription to any magazine it wants
within certain price limits. A one-man light is allowed a
$2.50 subscription, a two-man station a $3.00 one, and
a three-man light a $3.50 subscription. Most of the maga-
zines selected are fiction magazines. The money for this
has for a number of years been donated to the Mission by
one person.

The government supplies some reading matter to the
lighthouses. Portable libraries, each containing several
dozen books, are circulated among the stations. Years ago
I spent a week at Body Island Light on the Carolina coast,
where I had occasion to resort to the chest of books kept
in the watchroom. But the only book I recall in the collec-
tion was Southey's Life of Nelson. On the Maine coast the
Mission also supplies books to the lighthouses. Mr. Sargent,
who has charge of the Mission library, makes up assort-
ments for any lighthouse that wants them. At one lighthouse
they were delighted with the lot they had just had. The

132 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

government books, they said, were too serious. Mr. Sargent
had sent them just what they wanted. He had given them
fiction, including plenty of crime thrillers and westerns that
went with a bang.

Games also help to assuage the loneliness of lighthouse
life. The great indoor game of the Maine coast is checkers.
It is played in the bait sheds, the barber shops, the general
stores, and the lighthouses. Its popularity would have
pleased Edgar Allan Poe, who thought it a better game
than chess. Whether it is better or not is arguable, but if
you wish to know why Poe considered the "unostentatious
game 57 of checkers superior to the "elaborate frivolity of
chess," turn to the opening pages of The Murders in the
Rue Morgue, the tale in which Monsieur Dupin, the French
detective, ancestor of all fictional sleuths from Sherlock
Holmes to Ellery Queen, solves the mystery of the death
of Madame L'Espanaye and her daughter. A peculiar kind
of sailors* knot tied in a bit of ribbon was one of the im-
portant clues in the case. Chinese checkers was sweeping
the coast when I was there, but this is a passing phase, and
not a serious threat to the orthodox game of checkers. Of
card games, cribbage and sixty-three were the most popular
at the lighthouses.

Some of the light keepers paint for a hobby, decorating
shells and bits of wood with marine views, or they use regu-
lation artist's canvas or academy board for their composi-
tions. Unacademic the work may be, but it is virile, and

GUARDIANS OF THE COAST 133

when it comes to drawing a ship the artists are perfection-
ists. In the eyes of the coast people any picturization of a
vessel that is not technically correct is intolerable. When
Miss Rand, the Mission worker at Little Deer Isle, drew
a picture of a vessel moored to a rock to illustrate some
point in a talk, a sailor promptly pointed out to her that
she had placed the ship in an impossible position. It would
be on the rocks in a jiffy, he declared.

One satisfactory thing about calling at a lighthouse is
that you always find someone at home. A light station is
never left untended. At a one-man light the keeper's wife
looks after things during her husband's absence. There is
always the chance that thick weather may set in, and the
clockwork for the warning bell will have to be set in motion.

Although light keepers do not plan to be away in foul
weather, an unexpected shift of the wind may bring fog,
and storms have been known to blow up suddenly. More
than once bad weather has temporarily prevented a keeper

134 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

from returning to his light. Many tales could be told of
the heroism of the women of the lighthouses who have
single-handed kept the beacons burning. Perhaps the most
remarkable instance was that of Abby Burgess, a seventeen-
year-old girl, the daughter of the keeper at Matinicus Rock,
who for four weeks tended the two lights then in use there.
She also tended her invalid mother and four younger members
of the family. During that month it was impossible for any-
one to land at the Rock. Another time when the father was
away and couldn't get back, the family subsisted for several
weeks on short rations, consisting of a cup of cornmeal and
an egg a day apiece. Again Abby kept the colors flying.

Ma Peasley, the veteran Mission worker, while sta-
tioned at one of the islands, furnished the means for keeping
one of the coast lights working. Aroused at night by a
knock on her door, she opened it to find the light keeper,
who told her he was having trouble with his light. What he
needed to fix it, he said, was a rib from a corset and a large
safety pin. Ma Peasley supplied the articles.

A few of the lighthouses are stag stations. Women are not
allowed to live at these stations, because the lights are not
considered fit places for women to live. The living accom-
modations are too cramped for the keepers to have their
families with them. Saddleback Light is a stag station, and
so is Halfway Rock midway between Cape Elizabeth and
Cape Small. Naturally the men at the stag lights some-
times get on each other's nerves, but they know that it is

GUARDIANS OF THE COAST 135

a result of the isolation, and that the cure for it is a brief
respite ashore.

"When we begin to quarrel," one of them said, "we know
what's wrong."

At the lighthouses where there is more than one keeper
the old caste system of the sailing ships prevails. The rela-
tionship between the head keeper and the assistant keeper or
keepers is that of captain and mate. In calling at these light-
houses, most people, out of deference to the captain, call
on him first.

The most important visitor to a light station is the govern-
ment inspector, who visits each lighthouse twice a year, in
the spring and fall. Everything is made shipshape in antici-
pation of his visit. One light keeper's wife, who was always
commended by the inspector for the spotlessness of her
house, used to cover her newly finished floors with old
quilts. When the inspector was seen in the offing the

136 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

quilts were hastily taken up, stuffed into sacks, and placed
with the bags of potatoes in the storeroom. The exact
time of the inspector's arrival is not known, but his move-
ments are known. Through the coastal grapevine the
wardens of the lights keep posted as to his whereabouts.
The minute the inspector finishes at a light, the keeper con-
siders it his duty to ring all neighboring lighthouses, in-
forming them of the course the inspector took when he left.
One thing the first World War did for the light stations
was to give them telephones, but even before that, news
is said to have spread along the coast with remarkable
rapidity.

Landing at some of the island lights, especially those
located on bold, rocky islets, is difficult even under favor-
able conditions. At Saddleback Light, at the entrance to
East Penobscot Bay, they swing out a hoisting boom and let
down a bosun's chair. Here you are pulled up after the
fashion used at the Meteora monasteries in Greece before
the monks got too old and fat to man the windlasses. The
usual landing procedure at the island lights is to run your
skiff onto the wooden slips that extend down into the
water from the boathouse. This is a ticklish piece of busi-
ness. At precisely the right moment on the right wave the
boat has to be driven onto the slips. If you miss, your posi-
tion is immediately critical. The heave of the sea may carry
you in over jagged rocks, which may upset you when the sea
suddenly withdraws and lets you down on them. But usually

GUARDIANS OF THE COAST 137

there is a keeper on hand to grab the boat while you jump
out, and all hands quickly haul her up out of reach of the
sea. Landing at these lights is particularly difficult in winter
when everything is covered with frozen spray.

Captain Frye was expert at sizing up the landing condi-
tions at any light in advance. He knew from the wind, the
tide, and the state of the sea whether or not the attempt to
land could be made with reasonable prospect of success,
and the best point at which to make it. As it is sometimes as
difficult to get away from a place as it is to land, the captain
would warn us that it was breezing up and we had better not
stay too long. The average lighthouse visit lasted an hour.
In that period the weather could change radically for the
worse. When the captain saw us coming off he would stand
in to pick us up, maneuvering the Sunbeam to protect us
as much as possible as we came tossing in alongside.

The people of the lighthouses keep in touch with each
other through the medium of a news column in the Rock-
land Courier-Gazette^ which is as fine and salty a paper as
any published on the Maine coast. Under a drawing of a
lighthouse and a headline which I have taken for the head-
ing of this chapter Guardians of the Coast are printed
personal items about lighthouse keepers and their families.
This praiseworthy feature was, I believe, the result of a
suggestion made by the Mission when ME. Guptill was
superintendent.

At some of the deep-sea lights, which are manned by

138 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

three keepers, the men sometimes hire a teacher for the light-
house children. From seven to a dozen children of school age
may live on one of these lonely rocks. At least they did in
the days when large families were the rule, and both
Seguin and Matinicus Rock have had teachers, though a

woman whose husband was once one of the keepers at Seguin
told me that while he was stationed there she lived in Bath
in the winter so her children could go to school there. School
at Seguin was held in the building where later they kept
a cow.

Many sons and daughters of different lighthouse families
intermarry and commence lighthouse keeping on their own
account. While I found no lighthouses that were hereditary
in the sense that the wardenship passed from father to son,
I did find families which for several generations have had
members in the service.

GUARDIANS OF THE COAST 139

One matter which I was able to investigate somewhat
during the course of my visits to lighthouses was the rumor
that during the migratory periods of autumn and spring
great numbers of birds are killed by flying into the lights.
I had even heard it said that the keepers gathered them by
the barrel. But the rumor, like that of Mark Twain's death,
proved greatly exaggerated. Such tragedies do occur now
and then, usually during thick fogs or storms accompanied
by high winds, but not in alarming number. Sea fowl are
seldom involved, the chief sufferers being the smaller land
birds. In clear weather the lights rarely lure birds to their
death.

This may be because the birds have learned to avoid the
lighthouses, just as they have learned not to fly into tele-
graph wires. For there are not nearly so many casualties
from either cause as there used to be. The fact that most of
the victims of the lights fall during bad weather would seem
to indicate that the so-called sixth sense or instinct that
guides the flight of the migrants is not always absolutely
unerring. Elaborate theories have been advanced to explain
this mysterious directional sense. It has been described as
electric or magnetic. But whatever it is, it is not infallible.
In exceptional weather the sense fails to function, and
the birds become confused, lost, frightened. Blinded, per-
haps, by the strong light in the tower, some birds then find
the lighthouse a death trap.

When I asked Mr. Bousfield about this perishing of the

14O ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

birds at the lights, he said he was under the impression
that after a severe storm in the autumn or spring as many as
fifty or sixty dead birds might be picked up outside a single
lighthouse, but it didn't happen very often.

"I wish you had been with us when we came in from
Frenchboro one night," he said. "You could have seen the
effect of our searchlight on the gulls. It was after a bad
storm somewhere offshore. There was no wind, but the old
sea was giving the Sunbeam a real abdominal motion. It was
blacker than ten cats in a row, and every few minutes the
captain switched on the searchlight as we approached great
patches of foam, which in some places were two hundred
yards wide and possibly a mile long. It was exactly like
cotton or wool. As we neared one of the islands where the
gulls congregate, they were disturbed by the light, and
great clouds of them rose into the air. Maybe five hundred
of them. They flapped and floundered around, blinded by
the rays of the searchlight. I have never seen anything quite
like it the confused, helpless mass of white birds, and
the uncanny white foam on the water. It was like something
out of the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor."

In many of the lighthouses I noticed that the keeper kept
a gun standing in the corner or hanging on the wall, doubt-
less for ducking or pothunting purposes in season, of
course. One of them admitted he sometimes got a "mess o'
birds."

"For a game pie?" I asked.

GUARDIANS OF THE COAST

He shook his head. "The missus stews 'em," he said.

Nearly every lighthouse has a dog, which is sometimes
a bird dog. At Libby Islands Light they keep cocker spaniels
for use as retrievers.

At one lighthouse I inquired about a great snowy owl that
was mounted in the parlor. It was a magnificent specimen,
and I did not notice until after I spoke that it looked slightly
motheaten. I was told the cats got it on the floor one
morning and mauled it. A case of furry mousers maltreating
a feathered mouser. The keeper said he shot it while sta-
tioned at Manana, the Gargantuan rock next to Monhegan,
where he said he had bagged a great many of these huge
owls. But the owls, of course, were not drawn there by
the light, because Manana is a fog signal station, not a light
station. For all I know it may have been the hooting of the
mechanical warning during fog blotouts that aroused the
curiosity of the owls and attracted them to the place.

Yet neither the lights nor the keepers of the lights are
serious destroyers of birds. The lighthouses are, in fact,
friendly places. At many of them you see birdhouses
erected by the keepers to attract the birds. Several of the
Maine coast light men are ardent students of bird life
and are members of the Audubon Society. At Pond Island
Light, at the mouth of the Kennebec, the gulls come up to
the kitchen door to be fed, returning as regularly as the tide.
A starling spent last winter at this lighthouse; and just
before we called there a northward-bound goose had made a

142 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

two-day visit to the island. Its movements were watched with
the greatest interest by the keeper and his wife. This keeper
was leaving the doors of his boathouse open in readiness for
the dozen or so pairs of swallows that nest in the boathouse

every year. Another island keeper, who retired a short time
ago, had a parrot which perched on his shoulder. In talking
with people, the keeper never failed to include the bird in
the conversation, turning to it repeatedly with, "How about
it, Polly? Ain't that right?"

A bird story told me at still another island light took me
straight back to Rabelais to the time when Pantagruel
was at the island of Medamothy buying rarities, which, it
will be recalled, included the life and deeds of Achilles in
seventy-eight pieces of tapestry four fathoms long and three
fathoms broad. A ship arrived bearing Gargantua's carver,
who was sent by his master to observe and report on Pantag-

GUARDIANS OF THE COAST 143

ruel's health and circumstances. When the carver had
saluted Pantagruel, he took a gray pigeon from a basket,
and having tied a white ribbon to its feet, let it loose. If
any ill fortune had befallen Pantagruel, he would have
used a black ribbon. When Gargantua was informed that
the feathered messenger had returned to the dove house
wearing a white ribbon, he rejoiced over his son's welfare.
This was the custom of the noble Gargantua and Pantag-
ruel when they would have speedy news of something of
great concern.

The story which recalled this concerned a pigeon that
alighted one afternoon on the windowsill of one of the
island lights. The keeper noticed at once that the bird was
carrying a message, not in the form of a white or black
ribbon, but a written message contained in a tiny metal
case or capsule attached to one of its legs. As the bird
seemed tired and hungry, the keeper, who was curious about
the message, got a bowl of water and some crumbs and
proceeded to stalk the pigeon in the approved manner of
Mrs. Martin Johnson and John J. Audubon. But the bird
was too wary to be caught. It flew off to the ridgepole of the
house, then to the railing of the parapet deck of the light.
There it remained, refusing to come down, until at length
it flew away.

"And ever since," said the keeper, "I have been wonder-
ing where the bird came from and where it was going and
what message it was carrying."

144 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

At several lighthouses they told me that any dead birds
found around the lights were sent to the park naturalist at
Acadia National Park, Mount Desert. So when I landed at
Bar Harbor I went to see Maurice Sullivan, the park natu-
ralist. I found him with his assistants, all in uniform, in
a spacious office in the basement of the public library. The
light from a cheerful fire blazing on the hearth was reflected
in a tall glass case filled with stuffed birds. Mr. Sullivan
was very cordial and answered a great many questions, not
only about birds, but many other matters as well. We
talked, indeed, about everything from the nesting habits
of puffins at Matinicus to the wild calla lilies of Great
Cranberry Island, and from the ravens on the outer fringes
of the coast to the ankle-high, blue-green juniper that
thrives along the shore. I asked about the trailing yew at
Monhegan Island. Was it really a species of yew? Mr.
Sullivan had never seen any, so would not venture an
opinion. But he thought that the bake-apple berry, which
is found in the southern extension of the Labrador tundra at
Mount Desert, might be unique in this country. It is a
low-growing, orange-colored berry, not unlike the raspberry.
Unique or not, it has a rather nice name.

I had come, however, primarily to inquire about the birds,
and Mr. Sullivan pulled out reports and gave me one of the
information sheets he sends to lighthouse keepers. The sheet
contained instructions for wrapping up the bodies of the
birds and mailing them to Mr. Sullivan, and a number of

GUARDIANS OF THE COAST 145

questions to be answered when the birds were shipped. The
questions concerned the date the birds were found; place
of finding (foot of light, etc.); cause of death, if known;
kind of weather and wind direction when the birds were
killed, and the steadiness and color of the light and the
distance visible. Mr. Sullivan said that birds practically
never fly into a red light, and I gathered from the reports
which I looked over that not many fly into the white lights.
Not all the birds, however, that meet their fate at the light-
houses are sent to the park naturalist. Collecting and for-
warding the bodies is purely voluntary, and though Mr.
Sullivan stands ready to tell any light keeper the names
of the birds which he sends in, some keepers do not co-operate
with him. The fact, however, that a keeper fails to report
does not necessarily mean that he isn't willing to be helpful.
Perhaps no birds are found at his light, or the lighthouse
may be so isolated that it isn't feasible to save and send
those that do fall.

Lighthouse keepers as a rule do not do much fishing.
There are some who put out a few lobster traps and occa-
sionally do a little hand-lining, but it is merely for their
own consumption. Light keeping is a full-time job, and the
government does not expect its men to engage in fishing
on a commercial scale.

On July i, 1939, the administration of the Lighthouse
Service was taken over by the Coast Guard, and when I
visited the lights in the winter and early spring of 1940

146 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

most of the keepers were wondering what was going to
happen. When the superintendent of lights visited the Sun-
beam in Boothbay Harbor I asked him if the merger had
anything to do with national defense, but he said he thought
it was primarily an economy measure. I liked the way he
spoke proudly of his men.

Mr. Bousfield, who is in a position to know the men of
the Coast Guard and the character of their work, had noth-
ing but praise for the fearlessness of these seamen, who
when a call comes for help never hesitate to go out whatever
the weather.

"As I have come to know the men and some of the
stories of their rescues, I have formed a deep respect for

GUARDIANS OF THE COAST 147

them," he said. "I can appreciate the terrific odds against
which they work. Today their job is more hazardous than
in the days of sailing ships."

"I am surprised to hear you say that," I said. "I sup-
posed their equipment had been so improved that life-
saving was easier and less perilous than it used to be."

"But the character of the work has changed," he an-
swered. "It's no longer confined to rescuing the crews of
vessels cast on the reefs. The Coast Guard now combs large
areas of angry water to find some small craft. The areas
searched may be filled with sunken reefs, and the work may
have to be done at night in a raging blizzard. Even with
an intimate knowledge of these waters, the risk is great.

"When night comes and a lobster boat fails to return to
port," Mr. Bousfield continued, "the other fishermen know
something is wrong. No time must be lost in searching for
the missing boat. The fishermen know what landmarks their
absent colleague used in setting his traps, and the compass
direction. Also at which end of his gang of traps he com-
menced hauling. With these data, the Coast Guarders start
out. Figuring the direction of the wind and tide from the
most likely place the boat may have been, they begin the
search, proceeding cautiously, of course, if the night is dark.
If they didn't have an intimate knowledge of every acre
of the areas searched, plus extraordinary skill in navigating,
they would be sunk. The Coast Guardsmen are the twen-
tieth-century heroes of the sea."

148 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

"Would you say that the work of the lighthouse keepers
has changed any'?" I asked.

"Not so much as that of the Coast Guard. But their
problem is different. It's an exacting job, because they
can't leave the station unguarded. They have to stand sen*
tinel duty. It is interesting to see with what care they cast
frequent glances over the water to see that all's well. Any-
thing that doesn't look just right they report by telephone.
Nothing escapes the eyes of the keepers. Often in landing
at a lighthouse the keeper will say he spotted us miles away,
recognized us, and that we must have come from such and
such a place. Or he will ask where we were headed when
we passed on a certain date when the storm was so bad.
Lighthouse keepers never miss a trick. Those on the Maine
coast are a remarkably fine lot of men."

9. OFF BLUE HILL BAY

ONE of the roughest patches of water on the Maine coast
is between Swan's Island and Frenchboro, but it was as
calm as a garden pool when we crossed it one morning early
in March after lying all night in Burnt Coat Harbor.

This was during my second voyage on the Sunbeam. I had
arrived at the Mission House in Bar Harbor the afternoon
before, where I was greeted by Mrs. Young, the office
secretary, who performs many offices for the Mission. She
was working in the clothing department, the large room
that resembles a general store, laying out garments and
accessories for the spring crop of babies along the coast.
It looked as if the crop would be a large one. A minute or
two later Mr. Bousfield came downstairs from his study,
a briefcase in one hand, a pair of rubber boots in the other.
He said he had just had Captain Frye on the telephone.

The captain said the glass was falling. It stood at twenty-

149

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

eight point six, which was rather low, and by tomorrow it
would probably blow. We had better not stand on the
order of our going.

So we lost no time in getting the luggage into his car,
already laden with half a ton of magazines, and in driving
the twelve miles across Mount Desert Island to Northeast
Harbor, where the Sunbeam was waiting for us. Snow and
ice were visible under the spruces as we traversed the island,
and there were large downward-forking tracts of it on the
flanks of the mountains, whence came coolish drafts, though
the day was really mild, considering the season. The road
up Cadillac Mountain was closed with remnants of belated
snow.

OFF BLUE HILL BAY

Northeast Harbor is a beautiful harbor at any season
of the year, though it is a much livelier place in summer
than in winter, for it is a yachting center, which swarms
with cruisers and sailboats during July and August, but the
rest of the time is practically empty, save when the Sunbeam
is in port. The Sunbeam was lying at the coal wharf a little
to the westward of the harbor entrance, and our first view
of her was a bird's-eye view, because the tide was out, and
we had to look down on her from the dock. The captain and
Llewellyn Damon were on hand to get the literature and
luggage aboard. A man with a small child watched us as
we unloaded the car, stacking the magazines on the wharf.
As soon as it was unloaded, Mr. Bousfield drove the car
away to leave it in some place of safety during his absence.
By the time he returned, the magazines had been swung on
board and lowered into the glory hole. This was done with
the boom in the same way luggage is loaded on a liner,
except a box instead of a net was used. Then we descended
the ladder, the lines were taken in, the whistle screamed,
the child howled, and it was westward ho! for Swan's
Island, our first port of call.

The view of Mount Desert from almost any point is im-
pressive, but I think it is most impressive from the sea,
because the granite cliffs are on the seaward side, and from
sea level the mountains pile up into the sky until they seem
almost Alpine. Looking back at them as we headed south-
west, they were a marvelous blue-gray, slightly misty about

152

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

the peaks, with extensive areas of snow, the whole collection
overhung by great dark clouds. This is the section of the
coast where the rocks are red red granite and gray-and-
white granite which, with the greenness of the evergreens,
makes the coast here strikingly colorful, even in dull
weather, winter or summer.

We went out the Western Way past Bear Island, with
its lighthouse and buoy depot, past the Cranberry Islands,
including Sutton Island, where Rachel Field has her sum-
mer home, past other islands. The Mission, Mr. Bousfield
said, used to go to Great Gott Island for services, but now
there is only one person on the island in winter. All these
islands are bold, and darkly and mysteriously wooded.

The sea was smooth, and the Sunbeam steady. On the
southern side of Swan's Island, which is only a few miles
from Mount Desert, we passed one of the numerous Spout-

OFF BLUE HILL BAY 153

ing Horns found along the Maine coast. A dark, narrow
cleft in the rock, it throws water high in the air when rough
seas come trampling in on the returning tide and force the
water upward through the horn. But the horn wasn't play-
ing when we passed it. Wind and tide were not right for it
to be roaring and booming. The change in weather indicated
by the barometer would perhaps bring it into action.

To be perfectly picturesque, a harbor ought to have a
lighthouse at its entrance, preferably a lofty white tower set
on a high point of land, its light visible for many miles at
sea. This requirement is fairly fulfilled at Burnt Coat Harbor,
the chief port of Swan's Island, which we entered just
before sundown. This curious name, Burnt Coat, with its
suggestion of ordeal by fire, is a corruption of Brule-cote, or
Burnt Hill, which Champlain gave to the island when he
visited it in 1604. Much the same thing happened in the
case of the islands of North Haven and Vinalhaven. Orig-
inally christened the Fox Islands by Martin Pring, who
discovered them in 1603, the name survives only in Fox
Island Thoroughfare, the name of the narrow reach of
water that separates the two islands. But whereas Pring
named them the Fox Islands on account of the silver foxes
which he saw there, Swan's Island did not derive its name
from being a haunt of wild swans at least, not any of the
feathered tribe. It was named after Colonel James Swan,
who bought the Burnt Coat group from Massachusetts in
1786.

154 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

Colonel Swan was one of the most obstinate men who
ever lived. He remained in a debtors' prison twenty-two
years simply because he refused to pay, or allow anyone
else to pay, a debt that he considered unjust. It was a case
in which a policy of appeasement would seem to have been
the wiser course, but he steadfastly refused to adopt any-
such policy, perhaps because he liked being a martyr to a
principle. A Scotchman by birth, he came to Boston when
a mere lad, and grew up to be an ardent patriot. He was a
member of the Boston Tea Party, and was wounded twice
at Bunker Hill. After the Revolution he speculated in lands
which had been confiscated from the loyalists. Apparently
he made and spent money with the greatest of ease. About
the time that General Knox became interested in settling in
Maine, Colonel Swan purchased the Burnt Coat group of
islands, building a large colonial mansion on the largest
island, the one that now bears his name, where he also
erected a sawmill. The island was then covered with a fine
stand of hard timber suitable for shipbuilding. But his
dream of developing his island empire soon faded, as the
colonel found himself in financial low water. He went to
France to recoup his fortunes, where, with the help of his
friend, Lafayette, he became the financial agent of the
French government. For a while he seems to have prospered
exceedingly, but misfortune overtook him once more, and
in 1808 he was thrown into St. Pelagie, the Paris debtors*
prison, where he remained until a few days before his death

OFF BLUE HILL BAY 155

in July 1830, at the age of seventy-six. The house which
Colonel Swan built at Burnt Coat sheltered many of the
first settlers while they were building their own homes on
the island. As many as a dozen families occupied the Big

House, as it was called, at one time. And a family in those
days was generally a numerous tribe. The house is no
longer standing.

As we hauled in past Burnt Coat Light, I glanced aft
over the port quarter across the waters of Jericho Bay to
the western sky. It was clear near the horizon, a clear
orange, but heavy gray clouds were pressing down on it,
squeezing the daylights out of the orange. Whether this
betokened bad weather or not, I did not feel competent to
say, but it didn't look good to me.

On the east side of Burnt Coat Harbor there is a settle-
ment called Minturn, and on the west side is the village of
Swan's Island. Minturn has a white church, a black wharf,

156 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

and an old, gray, paving-stone quarry. This quarry, an
outrageous gouge in the steep hillside that rises abruptly
from the rocky shore, could not have been more advan-
tageously located. Schooners could come to the foot of the
quarry to be loaded, and to judge from the extent of the
workings and the size of the grout pile, millions of granite
paving blocks must have been produced at this seaside
quarry in the days when cities paved their streets with
stone.

I did not have much time to look at Minturn, as our
business was on the opposite shore, at the larger village of
Swan's Island, where we were soon tied up to a large but
lonely fish wharf under the high wooded ridge that extends
along the western side of the harbor, a quarter of a mile or
so below the steamer landing and the village center at the
head of navigation. Here we were to lie all night, making
the short run across to Frenchboro early in the morning. It
was a good place to spend the night, because Burnt Coat
Harbor is well sheltered in all winds, while the harbor at
Frenchboro, though it affords good holding ground, is
somewhat exposed in northeasterly weather.

After supper I went ashore with Mr. Bousfield. The dark-
ness had shut down quickly and completely. There was a
total absence of stars, but there were lights in the village,
and over on the Minturn side the headlamps of a car moved
across the blackness along an invisible road. We could have
gotten nowhere without the aid of the electric lantern or

OFF BLUE HILL BAY 157

light of some kind. On climbing the ladder, with the sound
of water below and the smell of ripe lobster bait above,
we had to pick our way across the wharf among lobster
pots and odds and ends of gear, and then climb a rough
path up to the road, along which it was by no means smooth
walking to the village.

We had gone only a short distance when we heard a
steamer whistle. It was the mail boat from Rockland feel-
ing her way into the harbor. We could see her searchlight
playing about. It is a narrow and tricky entrance, but Mr.
Bousfield said that on a clear night Captain Frye could
make it without lights. We paused to watch the boat pass,
an inky shadow, the lights from her ports and saloon win-
dows dancing on the dark flood. As the steamer neared her
berth, we could hear people calling to each other, and a lot
of laughter when she finally docked. It was the climax of
the day at Swan's Island.

With daily mail service and telephone connections with
the mainland, life on Swan's Island is not so drastic as it
is at other islands less in touch with the outside world.
Although I did not enter any of the stores, I did visit a
number of island homes, which were very pleasant and
comfortable, and the people as gracious and cordial as any
I have met anywhere. There was no place at which we
called that I did not wish we could have stayed longer. The
talk was mainly about the town meeting which had just
been held, about lobsters, and things like that. In the vari-

158 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

ous villages on Swan's Island there must be five or six
hundred people, or at least enough to make a town, for it is
one of a number of island townships in the Penobscot Bay
area; and here as elsewhere in New England the annual
town meeting is a prime topic of conversation immediately
before and after the event. Inevitably, too, in a place like
Swan's Island, where the occupations and tables of the
people are largely furnished by the sea, the subject of fish-
ing breaks into the talk. In the Seventies and Eighties
Swan's Island was the greatest mackerel seining port on
the Atlantic coast. Its importance today as a lobstering cen-
ter is shown by the fact that the island has one hundred
and one registered motor craft, a majority of which are
engaged in the lobster trade.

At the first place we called, the man of the house was
about to leave to get his paper, which had just arrived on
the boat, and it took a good deal of urging to get him to
go for it. When we learned from his family, and from the
young school teacher who sat by one of the lamps cro-
cheting, that he was anxious to get his paper not so much
on account of the war news as to see how Popeye was get-
ting along, we refused to listen to his protests any longer,
but insisted on his going. So presently he went, but not
before he had visited with us and had shown me a couple of
swords made from the elongated snouts of swordfishes.
These he had polished and carved and decorated in the
skillfullest manner. Scrimshaw work, I believe it is called.

OFF BLUE HILL BAY 159

There is always something of interest to see in a Maine
home.

During the course of this call the reason why we had
come to Swan's Island came to light. Mr. Bousfield visits
the island about once a month for services, but I knew that
this time he had not come for that purpose, and I was
equally aware that it was not his habit to visit places on
sleeveless errands. I began to perceive why we had come
when he led up to the approaching stay of one of the Red
Cross nurses whom he was transferring to the island. Before
we left the house he had arranged for the nurse to live
there during her sojourn at Swan's Island. And at this
house and at the next one a further reason emerged. In
May the Mission wanted to hold a dental clinic at the
island. Could a certain sum of money be raised among
the islanders to help defray the expenses of the clinic?
The women to whom he put the question thought it could be
done, and I know it was done, because I have since learned
that the clinic there was a success. This work is carried out
by the Mission in places where there are no dentists, in co-
operation with the State Department of Dental Hygiene.

Early the next morning when half awake I looked out
the porthole of my cabin, and a dimmer, damper, dismaler
scene it would be difficult to imagine. But I soon discovered
that I was peering under the wharf into a dark forest of old
dock piling covered with barnacles and rock weed. Yet the
outlook was not much brighter when later I looked out the

16O ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

other side. It was a gloomy, overcast day, but the surface
of the harbor was unrippled by any wind, and we found
the same condition prevailing outside. On the way out we
saluted Burnt Coat Light, and a dog, a cat, and several
children promptly tumbled out of the house, followed by
the keeper and his wife. The Sunbeam's salute was an-
swered by the lighthouse bell, and there was mutual
waving.

"A fine family that/' said Mr. Bousfield. "One of the
few Catholic families in the Maine light service."

Despite its reputation for turbulence, the deep water
between Swan's Island and Frenchboro was as smooth as a
garden pool when we crossed it that March morning. Lying
to the southeastward of Swan's Island, Frenchboro is the
only village on Long Island, the most southerly of the
larger islands off Blue Hill Bay. It used to be referred to
as Outer Long Island, or Lunt's Long Island, to distinguish
it from the Long Island that is at the head of Penobscot
Bay, now generally called Islesboro, where are located Dark
Harbor and Gilkey's Harbor. The name, Frenchboro, prob-
ably commemorates the earliest settlers, who in all likeli-
hood were Frenchmen from Mount Desert, or from the
French settlements in that vicinity. Some of the people
whom I saw at Frenchboro had black hair and black eyes
and looked as if they might have French blood in their
veins.

The harbor at Frenchboro is officially known as Lunt's

OFF BLUE HILL BAY l6l

Harbor, and there are still many members of the Lunt
family living there. I could see nothing of either the har-
bor or the village as we approached from Swan's Island
until we were practically there. But when we slipped in
behind a small island next to the big island, the harbor
suddenly opened up to starboard, with the village strung
around it. We did not enter, but hove to at the entrance,
letting go the light anchor in a good berth between a lobster
car and one of the McLoon lobster smacks from Rockland,
which w r e were constantly meeting in small island ports up
and down the coast. Simultaneously with the plop of the
anchor into the water and there is no pleasanter sound in
the world, unless as a friend suggests, it is the noise of a
large check being torn from its moorings by a rich bene-
factor the sun came out to challenge the gray embank-
ment of clouds; but after a brief interval of brightness it
withdrew, leaving us again in the half light that seemed to
presage a storm.

There are two admirable views at Frenchboro, one look-
ing into the harbor, the other looking out of the harbor.
The inward view is of a long, moderately steep-sided cove,
around which runs almost a mile of hard-surfaced road in
the f orm of an elongated horseshoe. Along this road, on both
sides of the harbor, are dwellings and other buildings, with
a preponderance of structures on the east side, where also
are located the principal wharves, including an enormous
fish-packing wharf with facilities so obviously and vastly

l62

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

in excess of the requirements of the place as to suggest
either some local ebb tide of fortune in the fishing industry
or a radical change in its character. But the focal point of
the scene, the spot to which everything leads as to a rallying
ground or a strong point, is the church at the head of the
harbor.

Churches seen from the sea are common landmarks on
the Maine coast. They are often represented symbolically
on the charts by a dot within a circle and a legend indicat-
ing whether they are spired or cupolaed. As you sail along
the coast, it is quite usual to see an anchorage open up with
a cluster of fishermen's houses at its head dominated by a
church. Sometimes the church occupies so commanding a
site as to become the chief thing by which you remember
the place. Just as in the movies, the familiar Hollywood
shot of the Eiffel Tower stands for Paris, so does a church
come to stand in your mind for a particular coastal town
or village. Anyone who looks in at Frenchboro is not likely

OFF BLUE HILL BAY 163

to forget the church. But the most conspicuous of all
Maine's seaward-looking churches is the Congregational
church on Isle au Haut, at the entrance to Penobscot Bay.
Its white spire can be seen for miles. It can be seen when
no other buildings on the island are visible. Lobstermen use
it as a landmark by which to set their traps. And the little
Baptist church on the Atlantic side of Swan's Island the
village of Atlantic, not the Atlantic Ocean can also be
seen from afar; while at the other end of Swan's Island
the Advent church at Minturn, already mentioned, stands
out conspicuously, though it hasn't much of a spire. Its
elevated situation gives it prominence. The Congregational
church on Great Cranberry Island is likewise outstanding.
These island churches are not many miles apart.

I first noticed the view looking out of the harbor at
Frenchboro while we were rowing ashore in the cedar
dinghy. It was a grand view of Mount Desert, which I was
surprised to see so close at hand. It was perhaps a dozen
miles away, but it seemed much nearer, a clear blue above
dark islands set in a pale March sea. As in the case of the
Camden Hills, there must be some magnification in the
atmosphere that makes Mount Desert seem much higher
than its actual altitude.

It was the first time we had used the dinghy, the skiff
having been previously employed for all landings where it
was necessary to use a boat, and it was at once apparent
that a new pair of oars was needed, as the skiff's oars were

164 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

too small for the dinghy. But we got along all right, pull-
ing in past the big old fish wharf, which in the days when
the harbor was crowded with fishing craft is said to have
been the scene of many revels. But nowadays I doubt if the
sound of scraping fiddles or scraping feet is often heard in
Frenchboro. For one of the first things I learned about the
place is that there are twenty-four bachelors and only two
eligible young women on the island. And the bachelors
have recently had their ranks reinforced by the presence on
the island of a gang of woodchoppers engaged in cutting
off the pulp wood.

We landed near the fish wharf on the east side and
climbed up over ledges and through snow and mud to the
post office and general store overlooking the harbor. A
clean, well-kept place, where vigorous-faced fishermen in
rubber boots were waiting for the mail. It came while we
were there, two men carrying in the sacks and dumping
them on the floor behind the nest of glass-fronted pigeon
holes. The mail had come from the mainland to Swan's
Island on the steamer which we had seen entering Burnt
Coat Harbor the evening before, and had been brought the
rest of the way in a motor boat which couldn't have been
far behind us as we made the crossing. Although in bad
weather the steamer from Rockland occasionally fails to
show up at Swan's Island, the mail boat from Frenchboro
seldom misses a trip. Ice rarely interferes with navigation
at Long Island.

OFF BLUE HILL BAY lj

It was over this mail route that Miss Mildred Wye, the
Red Cross nurse, came to Frenchboro on New Year's Day.
Ordinarily the nurses and workers for the Mission are
transported in the Mission boat, but the new Sunbeam was
not in commission until the middle of January, so Miss
Wye had to reach the island as best she could. In the fol-
lowing extracts from her diary, which is on file at the Mis-
sion House in Bar Harbor, where are preserved the diaries
each member of the Mission staff is required to keep, Miss
Wye tells of her arrival and settlement at Frenchboro.

"January i, 1940. I arrived on deck today, much to my
joy not having to stay over night at Swan's Island. Al-
though it was fair, the sea was very rough, and I rolled
and bucked the waves with every motion of the steamer
from Rockland. There was a great deal of freight to be put
off at every stop, so I hardly expected to reach Swan's
Island before the second. We lost a half hour here and
more there, but the boat took on speed and reached Swan's
Island at 6:30, although I understand that Saturday it
didn't arrive until 9:00. I was just getting my luggage in
hand when I saw Clarence Howard from Frenchboro. He
had come for me in his launch. When he asked me if I
would go down the ladder, I said I would do anything on
earth to get over to Frenchboro that night. In the end, he
brought his launch alongside the steamer, and I hopped
over the side into the launch, forgetting in my haste to be
afraid.

l66 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

"It was a wonder I didn't catch cold coming from Swan's
Island, as the steamer was terribly hot, and of course the
launch was an open boat, with only a canopy which served
more as a windbreaker. We transferred to a rowboat as the
tide was out, and that had no canopy; still I was not too
cold. As we rowed along, I saw Aunt Rose's light in the
window. She had heard us and brought her lamp to the
front window to give us a welcome. Frenchboro seemed so
lighted up that if I hadn't known better, I'd have thought
there was electricity.

"January 2, 1940. I waited round to see if my trunk
would come over on the mail boat, but no such luck. . .

"January 3, 1940. It was bright and fair all day with the
temperature about 18 or 20. The snow, I fear, is here to
stay longer than usual, as it seems packed down so solid,
and in spite of the wind it has not blown into the sea. The
snow always makes it easier for the men to haul their wood
via sled, but now I am told the lumbermen's trucks do
most of the hauling for them. The lumbermen have shipped
500 cords of wood from the island and in the spring much
more will be shipped. It is cut and in the woods ready for
shipment. The islanders who buy and pay for their wood
can buy it for $7.00 a cord, but the woodsmen are willing
to have the men pick up the trash wood or discarded wood
and take it for their own use. A vessel came as usual last
fall to sell wood at $9.00 a cord. This was owned by the
same company which bought the island for pulp wood.

OFF BLUE HILL BAY l6j

"My trunk came over on the mail boat this morning, but
because of the tide it could not be brought up to the house
until late this afternoon. When I asked the mail carrier if
my trunk was aboard, he replied, 'Yes, and how do you
expect to get it up here?"

"I really wasn't sure myself, and thought I would have
to swim out and bring my stuff in piece by piece. It was a
big trunk, but not too large for a typewriter, a snow suit,
a heavy duty coat, etc. Freight is an awful chore with so
much snow on the ground, and, of course, heavy stuff has
to wait until the boat can get into the wharf, as it cannot be
transferred to a rowboat, etc.

"In the afternoon I visited Miss Teel. It takes quite a
while to visit the first time, as there is so much to talk
about. Miss TeeFs cat, Pat, died, and she misses him a
great deal. She really likes cats, but I wouldn't if I had
been scratched and bitten the way she was after I left last
spring. Some of the children wrote me about it, and others
told me about it, so I guess it was quite serious. I never
knew cats would turn on people who really like them. Per-
sonally, I dislike cats, and as far as I know cats do not like
me, and that goes for all kinds of cats, human and other-

wise."

Miss Saphronia Teel, whose cat attacked her with such
jungle fury, was the first person on whom Mr. Bousfield
and I called after we left the post office. Sh'e is an old
friend of the Mission. Her house is near the post office, and

l68 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

I could tell at once it was an old house by the fireplace and
cupboards in the living room. Miss Teel makes amazingly
fine scenic hooked rugs. Her favorite subject for a rug is
Owl's Head Light at the entrance to Rockland Harbor. She
told me she got the pattern for it from a picture postcard.
Her cat and her rugs brought to mind Mark Twain's cat
and carpet story in The Innocents Abroad. It is in the chap-
ter on Morocco :

"France had a Minister here once who embittered the
nation against him in the most innocent way. He killed a
couple of battalions of cats (Tangier is full of them), and
made a parlor carpet out of their hides. He made his carpet
in circles first a circle of old gray tomcats, with their tails
all pointing towards the center; then a circle of yellow
cats ; next a circle of black cats and a circle of white ones ;
then a circle of all sorts of cats; and, finally, a centerpiece
of assorted kittens. It was very beautiful; but the Moors
curse his memory to this day."

Once in a bad storm when a vessel was wrecked on
Money Ledges near Frenchboro, Miss Teel was the only
person in the village who had any faith that the crew would
be saved. It was the first day of April, and when Louis
Nickerson, a boy of twelve, who had spied the wreck from
a hill, ran down to the harbor with the news, no one would
believe him. Everybody thought he was trying to perpetrate
an April Fools' Day joke. But he finally succeeded in con-
vincing them he was telling the truth, and Alphonse Lunt

OFF BLUE HILL BAY

headed the men who went to the aid of the shipwrecked
crew. The vessel had gone broadside on, and the waves
were breaking over her. The island women gathered on a
hill to watch the perilous work of rescue. They could see
four men in the rigging of the wreck. They expected every
moment they would be washed away. After each wave they
looked to see if they were still there. Only Miss Teel
thought that the men would be saved. She made hot coffee
and had warm blankets and clothing ready for the survivors
when Alphonse Lunt and his men brought them safely into
the harbor.

According to Ma Peasley, who told me the story of the
wreck. Miss TeeFs nephew, Raymond Teel, was one of the
rescue party, and I was sorry I did not meet him while I
was at Frenchboro, because I was interested in a political
advertisement he wrote announcing his candidacy for the
legislature from his home port, Frenchboro, or rather Long
Island, which is one of the three remaining island planta-
tions on the coast, the other two being Matinicus and
Monhegan. Mr. Teel's declaration is interesting because it
rings true on a note of honest, crusading sincerity, and con-
tains a straightforward statement of the political philoso-
phy of an island fisherman. Readers of the announcement
will perhaps be glad to know that its author won the
nomination.

170 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT

To ike Voters of the Class Towns of ML Desert, Southwest
Harbor, Tremont, Lamoine, Cranberry Island, Swans Island and
Long Island Plantation:

I expect to be a candidate in the June primaries for the Re-
publican nomination as representative to the legislature from my
district- This is the first time that Long Island Plantation has ever
offered a candidate for this office ; I trust that the voters will give
consideration to this fact if they find the qualifications of the can-
didate are equal to the duties of the office.

I am a fisherman, and I should like to represent this district at
the next legislature simply as a working man, there to benefit my
fellow workers, as a boon to the common good of all. I expect the
voters to select the candidates who, in their opinion, are best fitted
to fill the offices to which they aspire; this is real democracy, and
I shall be well satisfied with the decision when the elections are
over.

At the present time there is real need to aid the fishing industry.
In my opinion, the way to a successful business is to adopt con-
structive policies and maintain them, which hasn't been the rule in
the past. Too long these interests have been exploited and laws
enacted to benefit a few. One by one, Maine's great industries have
been shrinking away, and fishing is no exception to the rule.

It would please me greatly to have an opportunity to offer some
constructive suggestions to promote the State's fisheries industry.
I really have a sincere desire to be of service to the business -of
which I am a small part. However, this decision rests with the
voters at the coming elections held during the year.

RAYMOND L. TEEL.

From Miss TeeFs we walked along the road toward the
head of the harbor, past many picturesque fish houses, with
piles of lobster traps and clusters of lobster buoys, past

OFF BLUE HILL BAY 17 1

disconsolate dories hauled up on the shore. Frenchboro is
strictly a fishing village. It has no summer trade, nor are
there any farms on the island. The children at Halloween
make jack-o'-lanterns from cigar boxes because there are
no pumpkins. Every house, of course, has its woodpile,
often with a saw leaning against it; and from many chim-
neys came bluish-white wood smoke, its evergreen fragrance
spreading through the air like incense. At one woodpile we
spoke to a boy who seemed to be sawing wood as a penance,
but he smiled as he answered our greeting. On the hillside
behind the houses long piles of neatly stacked pulp wood
showed where the woodcutters had been at work. Acres and
acres of timber have been cut on the islands along the coast,
but fortunately this deforestation is not visible as a rule
from the water as you sail by them. Many uninhabited
islands have been spared only because the paper companies
have been unable to locate the owners. Spruce is the wood
the companies want.

Almost as numerous as the woodpiles were the family
burial plots near the houses, containing anywhere from two
to six graves. There is, I was told, a small cemetery on the
island, but at one time nearly everyone who died seems to
have been buried in his own yard. I have seen many small
family burial grounds in Maine, mostly lonely little places
overgrown with berry bushes or trees, but I have never seen
a closely-set village like Frenchboro with so many small
collections of graves beside the houses. Yet it is easy to see

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

how the custom once started was continued, and one can
understand how people might like to have their dead near
them. It goes without saying that

They sleep well here.

These fisher-folk who passed their anxious days

In fierce Atlantic ways;
And found not there>

Beneath the long^ curled wave>

So quiet a grave.

Like many other islands, Frenchboro has its poet laure-
ate, a native son, a member of the Lunt family, whose
verses have appeared occasionally in the Mission bulletins.
Once while he was away from home the rats got into the
box where he kept his poems and ate them. But he took the
loss philosophically. He said he guessed the rats liked his
poems better than the people did.

An earlier laureate here was a hermit named Uncle
George, who, like a troubadour of old, used to recite long
ballads of his own composing. None of these was ever com-
mitted to paper. Ma Peasley, who listened to him many
times, said it was one of the regrets of her life that she did
not take down some of Uncle George's ballads. He was a
mine of insular folklore.

And just as nearly every island has its poet laureate, so
does almost every one have its Marco Polo, a man who has
visited strange and exotic places in the remotest parts of

OFF BLUE HILL BAY 173

the globe, and returned with a mixed cargo of rich and
colorful tales. The Marco Polo of Frenchboro was a man
named Peter Cornet, a Norwegian, who had been to the
most outlandish places. I missed him by a number of years,
but another may turn up there any time. It is a mystery
how some of these men find their way to the lonely islands
of the coast. Shipwrecks formerly accounted for the pres-
ence of many, but there are so few large ships on the coast
now that the loss of one is accounted a rare casualty, and it
may be that with the passing of the ships the Polos may be-
come a dying race, though I doubt it. I think you will
always run athwart them in unexpected places on the coast
of Maine.

At length we reached the head of the harbor, where the
church, the school, and the parsonage form a hillside group.
The church is on the road. Behind and above it stands the
school. Out-topping both is the parsonage. Mrs. Gladys
Muir who lives in the parsonage has charge of the school
and the church. The plantation pays her as a teacher, the
Mission as a worker. She is one of the representatives of
the national sorority of Sigma Kappa. She has been in
Frenchboro for seven or eight years, and has been wonder-
fully successful. The school is Maine's model rural school,
and the church is a thriving organization around which the
religious and social life of the community revolves.

Symbolic, perhaps, of the social life of Frenchboro was
the first object I saw on entering the vestry of the church.

174 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

This was a huge ice-cream freezer. And it should be said
to the glory of the islands that their church suppers are
something to make a song about. The women outdo them-
selves and each other producing pies, cakes, cookies, salads,
and other good things. Always there is such a great variety
that it is impossible to sample even a tithe of the tempting
things set forth. The platters are constantly being refilled
with beans and ham. Yet, despite the abundance of food,
no person, young or old, takes more than he or she can eat.
Every plate is scraped clean. I noticed this particularly be-
cause I have attended church suppers elsewhere in New
England where the people helped themselves to everything
and only ate about half of what they took.

The church, which was on the eve of celebrating its
fiftieth anniversary, was being renovated. Mrs. Muir had
designed a new platform for the front of the church, where
once stood one of those extraordinarily high, old-fashioned
pulpits, which for some reason always make me think of
that diabolical passage in Milton's Paradise Lost, in which
the angels in Heaven, seeing Satan roving about below,
tease him by letting down a set of steps. They are spirits in
a state of bliss, but the poor devil is a fallen spirit doomed
to eternal punishment, so he cannot reascend the steps.
Could anything be more unangelic? There is a legend that
while preaching from the old high pulpit at Frenchboro
Alexander MacDonald, the founder of the Mission, inad-
vertently drove his fist through the ceiling of the church.

OFF BLUE HILL BAY 175

The new platform had been made by a carpenter from
Swan's Island, who when I looked in was busy repainting
the interior of the church. Not only was he a carpenter and
painter, but also a glazier, for he had installed the stained-
glass windows, which had been salvaged from the Mission
church at Head Harbor Island opposite Jonesport on
Mooseabec Reach. The Mission gave up the Head Harbor
church when the population of the island reached the van-
ishing point, in consequence of the granite quarry there be-
ing abandoned. Operations at the quarry ceased a number
of years ago, but people continued to live on the island,
engaging in fishing, and even when their numbers dwin-
dled to twenty-eight, they could still boast of being a
community with a church, a school, and a post office. Now
practically everybody is gone. The islands, like the tides
that wash their shores, have their ups and downs. Some
rise, others fall, and the coastal population remains more
or less static. When Mr. Bousfield sold the church, a part
of the consideration was that the purchaser should remove
the stained-glass windows and prepare them for shipment
to Frenchboro. This was done, and the glazier from Swan's
Island had with considerable ingenuity adapted and fitted
them to the church at Frenchboro.

Although the Frenchboro school is a one-room affair, it
is not the little-old-red-schoolhouse type of building, but a
square, spacious, well-lighted structure. Outside the door
was a sturdy, homemade sled used for hauling wood to feed

176 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

the school stove, but the stove was not going because it was
Saturday. On the walls inside were pictures of Washington
and Roosevelt, and exhibitions of the pupils' work. From
this work you could tell at once that here was a school of
the most up-to-date kind. Even knot-tying is taught and
there is a rhythm band. On one of the blackboards was a
notice about banking day. Each child has a porcelain-frog
bank. Part of the money which the school receives for
books is used to pay for the batteries for the radio over
which are received the broadcasts of the American School
of the Air. In contrast with the little-old-red-schoolhouse
type of equipment, I noticed that there was a water cooler
instead of a pail for drinking water.

"We started in with hot lunches for the school today,"
Miss Wye writes in her journal for January 8, "serving

OFF BLUE HILL BAY IJJ

cocoa and white bread-and-butter sandwiches. At 9:45 I
left the house and was met by one of the children. I can't
carry very much as I walk along with my kettle this year,
as it is very full to care for eighteen youngsters. We also
gave out cod-liver oil tablets, each one being equivalent to
three teaspoonfuls of the fluid form. They are a bright
orange color, and really quite attractive looking."

Mrs. Muir, to whom credit must go for this fine island
school, was ill when I visited Frenchboro, so I only saw her
for a moment at the parsonage, but everywhere about the
island people were enthusiastic about her and her church
and school work. Even the casual visitor to the island soon
finds herself sharing in that feeling.

One annual event at the school that is largely attended
by adults is the dental clinic. At the last one sixty-five teeth
were extracted in one morning. The dentist and the dental
hygienist worked on the platform. At first screens were
placed around the patients, but at the request of the people
these were removed, so that everybody could watch the
operations. It is bad enough having a tooth pulled, but
imagine having it done before a gallery of spectators !

Here are some interesting sidelights on contemporary
life in Frenchboro from Miss Wye's journal:

"January 15. It has been a fierce day all day long. Rain
came in the night and drove most of the day. The sea lashed
high and loud even within the harbor. Mr. Dalzell, our
brave mail carrier, said it was the worst storm he'd ever

178 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

gone across to Swan's Island in. The steamer did not leave
the dock at Swan's, which means we shall have no mail in
the morning. This is considered the worst storm for over a
year. . . .

"January 18. I doubt if the men have been able to get
out to their traps. Several expect heavy trap losses owing
to the severe storm of last Monday and the high seas and
wind ever since. We heard that the Canadian lobsters are
now restricted from coming into the United States markets
as a war measure, there being need for them in Canada or
England. This may help our men a little bit, as there has
always been much said about the quota system.

"I have now decided to start the nutrition class next
Wednesday at the schoolhouse from 3:30 to 4:00 P.M. We
cannot plan for it anywhere except at the school, because
that is the most central place for the people on both sides
of the harbor to meet, and on school days the room is always
warm and comfortable. If held at the church, there would
be the question of heat. . . .

"January 22. Fair today until late afternoon when we
had snow squalls. At night the wind blew like a hurricane,
and my lamp flickered so fitfully I expected it to go out
every time the curtain? moved. It is an uncanny feeling to
know the wind is so strong, even though one's windows are
fastened tight.

"I visited every single home today where there are

OFF BLUE HILL BAY 179

women. I finished health inspections in the school this after-
noon, too. . . .

"January 26. Money is very scarce at present. The seas
have been very rough, traps have been lost, and the men
have not been able to get out to their traps much this
month, which means that few lobsters were sold. I have
learned that many of the men are now buying their clothes
through some magazine ad of a Chicago concern that deals
in second-hand clothing which has been scrupulously
cleansed. The trousers cost $1.00 a pair and coats $1.50.
Then there are work shirts too. While the majority are
khaki-colored woolen, one man got a navy blue suit which
looks very good indeed. I admire the men for wearing
these clothes."

We walked back along the bit of public highway to the
dinghy, with the view of Mount Desert framed before us
in the harbor entrance. Eighty-nine people live on the
island, but we met no one. Nor was there any wheeled
traffic on the road. Frenchboro, I believe, has only two
trucks. Yet there was a Maine state highway sign beside
the road reading "School. 5 ' It seemed redundant, but I sup-
pose it was placed there to carry out the strict letter of the
law. In many of the smaller islands the few motor vehicles
you see seldom carry license plates, doubtless because there
are, legally speaking, no public roads. Whether the brace
of trucks which use Frenchboro's seven-eighths of a mile of

i8o

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

public highway are licensed or not, I did not learn, but the
motor boats, of course, are registered.

It was still overcast as we weighed anchor, a pewter sky
over a pewter sea, I looked back at the village as we moved
away, and the last I saw of Frenchboro was the church at
the head of the harbor standing out significantly.

10. EAGLE ISLAND, CASTINE,
AND LITTLE DEER ISLE

FROM Frenchboro we sailed for Eagle Island, not the
island of that name in Casco Bay where lived Peary the
explorer, but the one in East Penobscot Bay, which is much
larger. Retracing our course to Swan's Island, we passed
Burnt Coat Light once more, but instead of entering the
harbor we bore to the westward through the channel leading
between Swan's Island and Marshall Island into Jericho
Bay, and headed for the easterly entrance to Deer Island
Thoroughfare. I was in the pilothouse when we brought
Burnt Coat Light abeam, and, glancing at the chart, noticed
for the first time that it is located on Hockamock Head,
an Indian name which I had encountered before on the
Maine coast.

An amusing legend tells how the original Hockamock

Head, which is a gray, craggy point on the inland passage

181

l82 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

between Boothbay Harbor and Bath, came by its name.
Near it in the early days was a small settlement that was
sacked and burned by the Indians. When the savages ap-
peared, like howling banshees, the settlers, according to
Williamson, the Maine historian, fled along the precipitous
promontory, where the cliffs and steeps made a series of
natural defenses. The Indians pursued the settlers hotly as
they ran across the neck to their stronghold.

"A Scotchman, less fleet of foot than his fellows from age
or corpulence, his head protected by a wig of antique size
and fashion, brought up the lagging rear, and soon fell
within grasp of the pursuing red man, whose outstretched
hand laid hold on the flowing wig for a head of hair which
promised a magnificent trophy to the scalping knife. But to
the surprise and consternation of the savage, the periwig
clave to his hold, while the apparently headless body still
ran on, leaping from steep to steep, utterly indifferent to
what had been left behind. The astonished savage, believ-
ing he had been running a race with a devil, suddenly
stopped, and dropping the wig in superstitious horror,
turned to fly in the opposite direction, crying to his com-
rades, 'Hockamock! Hockamock! The devil! The devil! 3 "

The chart also revealed many other interesting names of
islands and ledges which lay near our labyrinthine course
or not far from it such names as Hat Island, which really
looked like a piece of feminine headgear from Godey's
Ladies* Book, and Devil's Island and St. Helena, High

EAGLE ISLAND, CASTIXE, AND LITTLE DEER ISLE 183

Sheriff and Sally Prude, Colby and its mascot Colby Pup,
Shabby Island and Sparrow Island, Popplestone and
Brimstone. The origin of some of these names is fairly ob-
vious, but local information is necessary to explain many
of them.

Entering Deer Island Thoroughfare, we had a close view
of the southern end of Deer Isle and the town of Stoning-
ton. Most of the houses you see along the Maine coast are
white, but here were many yellow ones, and a number of red
barns made warm notes in the landscape, Stonington is the
center of the granite business in this part of the bay. Tied
up at one of the wharves was the first Sunbeam^ now used
to ferry the men who work in the vast quarries on Crotch
Island across the thoroughfare. Crotch Island is high and
the many large derricks that stand out along the skyline
make the place look as if some gigantic WPA project was
being carried on there. Llewellyn Damon, a native of Deer
Isle, said that the contour of the island had changed since
he was a boy, much of it having been chiseled away.
Hardly anything can be seen of the quarries from the thor-
oughfare, but the cutting sheds are ranged along the water-
front, where the finished granite is loaded on barges or
vessels for transportation to Boston, New York, and other
places. Crotch Island, which is actually crotched by a long
cove that parts it in the middle, lies so close to Deer Isle as
to bottleneck the thoroughfare, narrowing it down to a
width of not more than one hundred and fifty yards. But

184 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

there is water enough to carry through vessels of fairly deep
draft.

Across from Crotch Island on the Deer Isle side of the
passage is a yacht basin, where many pleasure craft were
lying in winter quarters. Yachting is an important thing in
the life of the Deer Islanders. Many of the largest yachts
on the Atlantic coast have Deer Isle crews. There was a
time when the American cup defenders were manned en-
tirely by Deer Isle men. There were no better sailors any-
where. Llewellyn Damon's uncle was in the Columbia^ and
he himself began his seafaring career as mess boy on a
three-hundred-foot yacht.

On Mark Island at the westerly end of the passage is
Deer Island Thoroughfare Light. As we approached it, Mr.
Bousfield scanned the shore near the light through his
binoculars, and, remarking that conditions seemed favorable
for landing, he disappeared down the glory hole to bring
up some magazines. Captain Frye, after blowing for the
light, let the engine idle while we launched the skiff. The
sea was choppy, and though we were only a few hundred
yards off the light, it seemed to breeze up suddenly and the
water to grow rougher the moment we left the Sunbeam.
I was sharing the stern with the magazines, sitting between
a pile of masculine reading matter and a pile of feminine
reading matter and holding a mixed grill of literature in
my lap, and I could see the light keeper, Alva Robinson,
an old shipmate of Captain Frye's, as he came down from

EAGLE ISLAND, CASTINE, AND LITTLE DEER ISLE 185

the lighthouse in his rubber boots onto the rocks at the
best landing place. The lighthouse keepers usually guided
us ashore in this way, or by indicator}' gestures and shouted
directions. A small black-and-tan dog nearly went mad
with excitement as we neared the shore. Without any pass-
ing motor cars to bark at, he barks at passing boats, running
along the rocks in vain pursuit of them. Mr. Bousfield
paused for what he judged to be the right moment, and then
we went in with a rush towards the rocks. The keeper
caught the bow of the skiff and there was a scramble to
get out. I was a fraction of a second late. With the bow in
the air, a wave which must have come all the way from
Baffin's Land broke over the stern, drenching me and the
magazines.

Mr. Robinson said that the rocky spot where we landed
was no place to leave the skiff, not because we couldn't haul
it up high enough to be safe, but because it was the weather
side of the island, and if the sea made up any more we
might later have difficulty in getting away. He said he
would take the boat around to the other side of the island,
and before we could offer to do it ourselves, he had jumped
in, and with the ease of an expert in small boat manage-
ment was clear of the rocks and pulling away for the end
of the island. They were watching from the Sunbeam, and,
taking their cue from the skiff's course, started at once to
follow round to the other side.

The dog cut circles around us as we trudged up to the

l86 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

kitchen door of the lighthouse, where we were cordially
welcomed by Mrs. Robinson and Miss Rachel Robinson,
who seemed pleased with the magazines despite their damp
condition. The pots and pans in the kitchen shone, and
the floors of the house were like mirrors. I had the feeling
that here was a perfectly kept light station.

The three members of the Robinson family are the only
persons on the island, and I think we were the first visitors
in five or six months. Mr. Robinson said that he managed
to get ashore for mail and supplies about once a week, but I
gathered that Mrs. Robinson and her daughter, a girl of
perhaps seventeen, had not been to the mainland for several
months. Mrs. Robinson said that she and Rachel crocheted
and made quilts and went to bed early. They had been at
the lighthouse four years. Before that they were at Matini-
cus Rock for six years.

"Don't you like it better here?" I asked Mrs. Robinson.

"Well, we're nearer things," she said, "but still it's an
island."

There was no note of complaint as she said this, but that
phrase, "still it's an island," has recurred to me many times.
I gained the impression that while Matinicus Rock is an
off-shore light it was less lonely for the Robinsons because
of the other families stationed there.

The square white tower of the thoroughfare light, which
is over eighty years old, is attached to the dwelling. The
connecting room between the two was unheated, and the

EAGLE ISLAND, CASTINE, AND LITTLE DEER ISLE 187

Robinsons were using it as a cold-storage place for their
provisions. Here were their meats, butter, and other sup-
plies; it looked to me as if they had enough to hold out
for weeks should they be cut off. In this room were also
kept the sacred vessels of the light the polished brass oil
measures, the brass box containing cleaning cloths for the
lens, and a spare lamp for the light. There was even a
brass dustpan, which was so bright it might have been used
for a handmirror.

The lighthouse tower was also unheated, and as we
spiraled up the iron stairway I asked Mr. Robinson if he
was ever troubled by the glass of the lighthouse steaming
up.

"Now and then," he said. "I have to watch out for that
in winter/'

"The fog bell how long will that run by itself?"

"Five hours ; but I don't like to let it go more than three
hours."

Deer Island Thoroughfare Light is a fixed white light, so
there is no mechanism to get out of order as there would be
if it were a flashing or occulting light. The lens, I noticed,
was French, as is a great deal of the optical apparatus in
our lighthouses. It was the French physicist, A. <L Fresnal
(1788-1827), who was the first to construct compound
lenses for lighthouse use instead of mirrors. Fresnal's name
was on a brass plate of the framework of the Deer Isle
illuminator.

l88 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

From the top of the lighthouse we had a fine view up
East Penobscot Bay towards Eagle Island Light, and down
the bay in the direction of Saddleback Ledge Light, which
marks the seaward entrance to the bay. Many are the ship-
wrecks that these waters have seen. It was on Saddleback
Ledge that a vessel came to grief as she was setting out on
her maiden voyage. This was the full-rigged ship Hualco,
1,086 tons, which was built at Belfast at the head of Pe-
nobscot Bay in 1856. Launched on the morning tide, she
left immediately on her first run. Four hours later she
struck Saddleback Ledge and sank. According to Lincoln
Colcord, the Hualco drove over this pinnacle of rock going
eight knots, with topgallant sails set. The bottom was
ripped out of her and she sank by the head in twenty
minutes. The captain and crew had time to take to the
boats, and that evening arrived back in Belfast, but without
their ship. The Hualco probably had the shortest career of
any ship on the Maine coast.

Twenty years before this a terrible tragedy occurred near
Saddleback when the wooden side-wheeler Royal Tar, 400
tons, caught fire and burned with the loss of between thirty
and forty lives. The Royal Tar was built at St. John, New
Brunswick, and was named for King William the Fourth
of England, or Silly Billy, as he was called. There is a
swagger portrait of him as an Admiral of the Fleet by
Archer Shee in the National Portrait Gallery, London; and
he is mentioned in a book of reminiscences written by a

EAGLE ISLAND, CASTINE, AND LITTLE DEER ISLE 189

Londoner, who once saw a genial gentleman suddenly look
out of his carriage window and stick out his tongue. This
turned out to be His Majesty King William the Fourth, who
wished to indicate to some old naval friends on the sidewalk
that his elevation to the throne had not made him too
proud.

The Royal Tar was on her regular run between St. John
and Portland and when near the Fox Islands was found
to be on fire. A heavy northwesterly gale was blowing at
the time and the flames spread rapidly. There were between
ninety and one hundred persons on board, and the animals
belonging to a traveling circus, including an elephant, six
horses, two dromedaries, two lionesses, a Bengal tiger, a
gnu, a pair of pelicans, and a number of other creatures,
besides Burgess's collection of birds and serpents. The ele-
phant, the dromedaries, and the horses jumped overboard,
the elephant knocking several persons into the water. Three
of the horses swam instinctively for the land and so did the
dromedaries, but the other three horses swam around in
circles until they were exhausted and drowned. The ele-
phant hesitated for a long time with its forefeet on the
rail. When at last things got too hot for him and he jumped,
the burning steamer had drifted four or five miles from land
and the elephant was lost. The wild animals in their cages
were burned alive.

One would like to record that the circus band calmed
the passengers by playing when panic threatened, but it

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

seems to have been a case of women and children last. For
at the first cry of fire the engineer and fifteen others jumped
into one of the boats and rowed away as fast as they could.
The captain in another boat stood by and rescued many
persons, who were transferred to the revenue cutter Veto^
which happened to be near the scene of the disaster, but was
afraid to approach too close lest its powder magazine
should become ignited and explode. The cutter landed forty
survivors at Isle au Haut.

An account of this calamity, which occurred October 25,
1836, is contained in Rowland's Steamboat Disaster s> pub-
lished at Worcester in 1840, with a nice wood engraving of
the ill-fated Royal Tar.

The lee side of the island where Mr. Robinson had taken
the skiff was very bold, and I was grateful for the barnacles
that clung to the long, smooth, sloping rocks which seemed
to go down deep into the water. Between high and low
water where the rocks were wet and slippery, the barnacles
acted like ashes on an icy walk. Mr. Robinson helped us
shove the skiff off and we were soon back on the Sunbeam.
As we passed the lighthouse, we gave the Robinsons three
long blasts of the whistle. Mrs. Robinson and Rachel
waved, and the black-and-tan dog raced at breakneck speed
over the rocks to the very end of the island, where with its
feet almost in the water it barked and waved its tail at us.

I think the longest flight of steps on the Maine coast
must be the steps at Eagle Island Light. It seemed an end-

EAGLE ISLAND, CASTINE, AND LITTLE DEER ISLE

less climb up them when, after landing from the skiff on
the slipper}' rocks in the shadow of the light, we began the
long ascent to the top of the bluff. Yet if there were no
steps here one would have to be something of an Alpinist
to get to the top. For Eagle is a high and noble island which

puts up a bold front to the sea. The steps are in a chasm
where some of the rocks are a coppery green and trees grow
out of crevices in the face of the cliffs. Near the water are
incipient grottoes. It is a beautiful place.

About thirty persons live on Eagle Island the year
round. A few people spend the summer there. There is a
school, but no church. Religious services are held on the
island once a month by the Mission. During the building
of the Sunbeam these had been conducted by Rev. Arthur
H. Sargent of the Mission staff, instead of Mr. Bousfield.
Mr. Sargent, who lives at Ellsworth and usually cultivates
the Down East end of the Mission field, had also relieved

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

Mr. Bousfield at Monhegan Island and Loud's Island.
While at Eagle Island, Mr. Sargent generally stayed with
the Bracey family at the lighthouse. It struck me that there
was something very fine about this veteran seacoast mis-
sionary writing sermons in a lighthouse.

Here are some extracts from Mr. Sargent's diary, which
are fairly typical of his visits to the island :

"Friday, December 29, 1939. Journey from Ellsworth
to Eagle Island in the forenoon, visits to nine homes in
the afternoon, and prayer meeting at the last house, tail-
end of the island, where the people asked me to have it.

"Saturday, December 30. Snow fell thick and fast in the
forenoon, while I wrote and studied at Eagle Island Light-
house. In the afternoon I tramped through it to other
homes for calls.

"Sunday, December 3 1 . This last day of the old year was
spent with four meetings and a church sociable. All the
children on the island (seven) came to a children's meeting
at 10:30 A.M. Eight people came to the afternoon meeting;
ten got to the evening Bible study class ; and twenty were
present for the sociable and Watch Meeting, which lasted
until the beginning of the first day of the year Nineteen
Hundred Forty/'

At the lighthouse we found that Mr. Bracey, the keeper,
had gone to Camden for supplies, and after a pleasant visit
with Mrs. Bracey, during which her daughter and the island
school teacher in shiny rubber boots came in, we slogged

EAGLE ISLAND, CASTINE, AND LITTLE DEER ISLE

through the wet snow down the island to call on Uncle
Edgar Quinn, the patriarch of Eagle Island.

On the hillside behind the lighthouse I looked down and
saw a man with a pack on his back crossing the flank of the
hill.

"Isn't that the keeper?" I said to Mr. Bousfield.

cc Yes, that's Mr. Bracey," he said. He hailed him and
glissaded down the hill to speak to him; "while I went on
up the hill until I came to a sheep fence where I sat on the
top step of a stile.

/^/5f>

This was not my first visit to Eagle Island. Twenty-five
years before, while staying for a short time on Dirigo
Island, or as it is called on the charts, Butter Island, I had

194 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

landed at Eagle Island. There was at that time on Dirigo
Island an eighteenth-century farmhouse, two or three sum-
mer cottages, and a barn which had been converted into a
summer inn of sorts. It was a galleried inn. The central
part was open from floor to roof, while on either side were
rooms, two tiers of them, the upper tier opening off a gallery
which extended along both sides and across one end. At the
other end was an enormous fireplace. There were not more
than half a dozen guests. We ate at the farmhouse, where
the cooking was done by an island woman called Aunt
Lucy. Every once in a while Aunt Lucy would disappear
mysteriously from the island. A fishing boat would come for
her in the night. She was a midwife and would go to some
island to deliver a baby. All babies, she said, were born
when the tide was ebbing. Urged by a fisherman to make
haste, Aunt Lucy would say, "There's no hurry. The tide
won't turn till midnight. The baby can't come before twelve."
I was curious to see Dirigo Island again, but I was sur-
prised when we came to a place where I could look across
at it. There was not a house left on the island. There was
no trace of anything, not even the wharf. The place had
reverted completely to a state of nature, A man who was
dragging a sled loaded with supplies told me that the build-
ings had been burned, with the exception of the barn, part
of which had been moved to Eagle Island. He said that the
houses had gone to wrack and ruin, and casual visitors were
responsible for setting them on fire.

EAGLE ISLAND, CASTINE, AND LITTLE DEER ISLE

Uncle Edgar Quinn, the island patriarch, is a carpenter,
farmer, boat builder, and fisherman. He raises and cards
his own wool and knits the mittens which he wears out
scalloping. He was ailing when we called, but he said that

he was going to do things his own way just the same. He
was looking forward to Mr. Sargent's next visit, so that
they could have a game of dominoes.

"Double twelves," he said. "That's what we play."
Mr. Bousfield thanked him for the mittens which he had
sent him. A perfectly made pair of white woolen mittens
had arrived in the mail with nothing to indicate who had
sent them. But Mr. Bousfield knew that the wool was from
Uncle Edgar's sheep and that the patriarch himself had
knitted them.

Cff Where do you go from here?" Uncle Edgar asked, and

196 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

when we told him he said sagely, "Look out for cannibals !**

On the way back through the snow we stopped for a
moment at the schoolhouse, which was built by Alexander
MacDonald. It is a sturdy, single-room, frame building.
Among other things hanging on the walls were pictures of
Washington and Coolidge, an American flag, and a large
linoleum picture map of the United States. I think the school
has five pupils, some of them quite small, to judge from the
size of the seats. Orange crates had been converted into
small high-backed chairs by simply knocking out one end
of the crate, standing it on its good end, and putting a slip
cover over it.

We stopped once more on our way to the lighthouse
steps to look out over the bay at the many islands and the
Camden Hills. There was one patch of turquoise sky with
dark clouds around it. They were low, spectacular clouds
through which the sun broke to make a long streak of glis-
tening water that reflected the light upward. The sky and
the far hills and the dark splotches of the islands gave a
sense of enormous space and the air a feeling of breezy
healthfulness.

"There," said Captain Frye, "is a lighthouse I would
like to own."

Pumpkin Island Light at the entrance to Eggemoggin
Reach is one of the lighthouses which the government sold
a number of years ago. It is on a small ledge about two
hundred yards northeast of Little Deer Isle. Of the pri-

EAGLE ISLAND, CASTINE, AND LITTLE DEER ISLE 197

vately owned lighthouses it is one of the most picturesque.
A collector of lighthouses who could bag it would have a
rare specimen.

"There's good construction in the buildings/' said the
Captain, "and it wouldn't be hard getting on and off."

Spanning the reach ahead of us was the new suspension
bridge connecting Little Deer Isle and Deer Isle with the
mainland at Bayard Point. A ship and a bridge are said
to be the two most romantic things ever devised by man, but
some yachting people were opposed to the building of this
bridge despite the fact that it has a horizontal clearance of
eight hundred feet and a perpendicular clearance of eighty-
five feet, which is enough to permit the passage of any
yacht, with the exception of a cup defender. The bridge,
which was opened in the summer of 1939, appeared to be a
slender, graceful structure as we approached it, but when,
having passed under it, we came to anchor in Sally's Cove
on the Little Deer Isle side of the reach, just east of the
bridge, it didn't look so good. This is probably its worst
angle.

198 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

After supper Mr. Bousfield rowed ashore to see Miss
Ethel L. Rand, the Mission worker at Little Deer Isle. The
wind had gone down with the sun, and the night was mostly
clear. Suspended in the western sky above the island, like
golden spiders on a thread, was the remarkable collection
of planets which early in 1940 received almost as much
publicity as the stars of Hollywood. Venus was shining so
brightly that her light made a pathway on the waters of
Sally's Cove.

Later in the evening, when the superintendent returned,
we weighed anchor and crossed the reach to Sargentville,
where we lay all night at Guild's Wharf.

A Sunday calm lay over Castine when between nine and
ten the next morning we slipped into the mouth of the
Bagaduce River between Dice's Head, with its antique
lighthouse, and Nautilus Island, with its private astronomi-
cal observatory. Although the lighthouse has been aban-
doned by the government and divested of its lamp, the
observatory presumably still houses its telescope, which I
suppose is kept pointing eternally heavenward, like an
anti-aircraft gun.

"Do the people of the coast go in much for astrology?"
I asked Mr. Bousfield.

"Not at all," he said. "They're too hard-headed for
that."

The wharves of Castine are a mile to the eastward of
the entrance on the north bank of the river, which is here

EAGLE ISLAND, CASTINE, AXD LITTLE DEER ISLE

known as Castine Harbor. It is said to be the deepest harbor
on the Atlantic seaboard. From the entrance to a point op-
posite the wharves the chart shows an average depth at
mean low water of over seventy feet. There were no signs
of life as we approached, but in response to the customary
three blasts on the Sunbeam's siren a man suddenly ap-
peared from nowhere and did us the favor of taking our
lines.

"Bringing someone to the hospital?" he inquired when
all was fast.

There is an admirable small hospital at Castine, to which
the Mission has from time to time in the past brought pa-
tients; but it was explained that this time we had come on
different business. I am not sure, but I think the man was
the skipper of the small power mail boat, the Hyppo-
campus^ nicknamed the Hyppo, which carries the mail back
and forth between Castine and Belfast. She lay a few yards
ahead of us at the next wharf, which a sign said was Acadia
Wharf. She hadn't missed a run all winter, I learned.
There were a couple of days when Castine Harbor and
Belfast Harbor were pretty well sealed up with ice, and
at both ends the mail had to be taken out over the ice on
sleds to the Hyppo, but there was no delay. If the man on
the wharf was the skipper of the mail boat, he was much
too young to have equaled the record set by Captain Isaiah
Skinner of Castine, who was the master of a packet plying
to the opposite shore. According to a statement on his

200

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

gravestone, Captain Skinner braved the perils of the bay no
less than thirty thousand times.

From the deck of the Sunbeam as she lay at the wharf I
could look up into the streets of Castine which lay supine in
the early Sabbath morning sunlight. The only movement
was that of a long-haired black cat, which walked non-
chalantly down one street, paused at the corner where a
man stood waiting patiently for nothing at all to happen,
and then passed on down another street out of sight. Nor
did a walk through the town reveal much other evidence of
life. A few cars and a pedestrian or two were abroad, but
beyond that nothing, save a very old lady sitting in the
front window of a very old house. A fine portrait of old
age serenely facing the end.

Soon the church bells began to ring and the town came
to life. A small boy asked if we had any empty pop bottles,
meaning, of course, the kind with a cash-surrender value at
the local store. Then the children from the Unitarian Sun-
day School trooped down the hill to visit the boat. This

EAGLE ISLAND, CASTINE, AND LITTLE DEER ISLE 201

Sunday School had contributed to the building of the
Sunbeam. The boys were chiefly interested in the pilot-
house, while the girls asked questions about the hospital
bed. Two dogs which got aboard went even-where. When
church was over there was a great crowd of people. The
men gravitated towards the engine room, and the women
seemed fascinated by the galley. From the advent of the
small boy in search of pop bottles until everybody went
home for Sunday dinner, there was a constant stream of
visitors. The boat apparently won the approval of the old
salts of Castine. "She certainly is rugged/* I overheard one
of them say, to which his companion replied, "Nothin*
could hurt her."

This Sunday morning call at Castine was not primarily
to show off the boat, nor to offer the services of the Mission
to the town. Castine has its own churches and ministers, and
is therefore not a regular port of call for the Mission boat.
The visit was to enable Mr. Bousfield to go to the State
Normal School to see about a student there whom the Mis-
sion was helping, and also to enable him to explore the
possibility of securing foor one of the Mission's island
churches some benches which he heard the Methodist
church was discarding. With these matters attended to, he
had gone to the Unitarian Meeting House, which is a
lovely old building, one of Maine's oldest churches. It was
built in 1791 and has a white belfry and spire. It also has
white box pews trimmed with mahogany, from which you

202 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

can look out through clear panes of glass to the village
green. The Unitarian minister, Rev. John Brigham, who
was a college classmate of Mr. Bousfield's at Colby, invited
him to speak, which the superintendent did, telling about
the Sunbeam and inviting everybody to visit the boat.

The educational phase of the visit to Castine interested
me, because it seemed an important part of the Mission
program. Many islands cannot afford to have high schools,
and yet they are too remote for pupils who want a high-
school education to become daily commuters. It is true that
the islands will pay the pupil's tuition, but there is the
further expense of board and room which has to be borne
by the pupil's family. If the family cannot pay this and
there are no relatives on the mainland with whom the pupil
can live while attending school, his formal education ceases
when he finishes grammar school. Often only fifty or sixty
dollars stands between a pupil and a year of high-school
work. And this is where the Mission enters. It tries to find
a place where the youngster can work for his board and
room. If it cannot make such an arrangement, it provides
the money. With only a thousand dollars to spend for this
purpose, the Mission manages to assist a good many stu-
dents each year, not only in high school, but also normal
school. One girl whom the Mission helped through normal
school had succeeded in getting a high-school education by
walking eight miles daily each way between Holmes Bay
and East Machias.

EAGLE ISLAND, CASTINE, AND LITTLE DEER ISLE 203

When the last visitor to the Sunbeam had departed, we
cast off and headed for Little Deer Isle again. It was a blue
Maine day which made the gulls wheeling and crying over
Castine Harbor look very white. The thermometer stood
in the late thirties and there was a fresh breeze from the
northwest. Off Cape Rosier the Sunbeam rolled a little,
but we had smooth going in Eggemoggin Reach, and by two
o'clock were back in Sally's Cove, where Llewellyn Damon
pulled us ashore in the skiff. He landed us on the shingle
near the bridge and returned to the Sunbeam^ which was
to be moved down the reach to Scott's Landing on Great
Deer Isle.

We walked a mile and a half to Miss Rand's house,
which is on a hillside overlooking the bar that connects the
two Deer Isles. This bar has been built up into a serpentine
roadway which may be crossed at any time, but ten years
ago, when Miss Rand first went to live at Little Deer Isle,
it seems to have been awash at high tide, or at all events
during spring tides. In any case, she once started to walk
across the bar when the tide was just beginning to come In.
She thought her rubbers would be ample protection, but
before she could get across, the water was up to her knees.
Lying in the bar water, which had only been free of ice
for a week, was a two-masted schooner, with a green hull
and a white rail, which Miss Rand said was Wilmot
Hardy's pulpwood boat, Enterprise. It seemed a snug berth
for a vessel to lie in all winter.

2O4 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

Miss Rand, like Mrs. Muir at Frenchboro, is a repre-
sentative of the college sorority of Sigma Kappa, which has
the Maine Seacoast Mission for its only philanthropy. For
more than twenty years it has been a loyal friend and sup-
porter of the Mission, choosing in this way to honor the
five Maine girls who in the Seventies founded Sigma Kappa
at Colby College, Waterville, Maine. Not only does the
sorority contribute nearly 10 per cent of the Mission
budget by paying part of the salaries of two workers, but

college and alumnae chapters throughout the United States
and Canada provide hundreds of gifts which are distribu-
ted by the Mission at Christmas. Valuable service is also
rendered by members of Sigma Kappa acting as volunteer

EAGLE ISLAND, CASTINE, AND LITTLE DEER ISLE

workers in the Mission field during the summer months.

In her work Miss Rand not only makes many parish calls,
but holds many meetings in her home. One room is a
branch of the main Mission library, and contains hundreds
of books for readers of all ages, including some sea books.
Among these last, I noticed such titles as Moby Dick and
Count Luckner the Sea Devil. In the experience of the
Mission, Joseph C. Lincoln is the most popular novelist
on the coast.

"Always I get news when my women meet/' reads an
April entry in Miss Rand's diary. "Mostly it is a discus-
sion of yachting jobs. They are scarce large yachts are
being sold to Canada and small yachts are slow in coming
out. Yachting is the index of prosperity on this island."

Another entry about a call in Stonington says : "Mrs. C.
sat braiding rugs before two large windows overlooking a
gorgeous view of the harbor, the two quarries, and a por-
tion of the town, besides the far horizon of islands. No
wonder she is famous for beautiful handwork with such
an inspiration."

A young girl is the subject of the following paragraph:
"She is immature and is kept busy at home so that she has
little time for study. She goes clamming each tide and can
dig a bushel of clams on a tide. The rest of the day she
helps digging out the clams. Fires from steaming clams
send up their blue thick smoke after each tide over the
whole island."

206

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

Miss Rand took us for a ride in her car around Little
Deer Isle. She drove us to Eggemoggin, an attractive sum-
mer resort at the head of the island, near Pumpkin Island
Light, and to what is called the Haskell District on the
western side of the island. A feature of this last place was
the great number of bird houses. One home alone had no
less than six. Bird houses are a characteristic of the Maine
coast. You see them everywhere, and of all shapes and
sizes, from elaborate miniature steepled churches to small
one-room bungalows. The presence of so many argues a
genuine fondness for birds.

During our tour we passed the Mission Church near the
bridge, where a meeting was to be held that evening, and
also the Latter-day Saints church. The Latter-day Saints
have another church at Stonington on Deer Isle, and they
are also strong down the coast at Jonesport, Beal's Island,

EAGLE ISLAND. CASTIXE, AND LITTLE DEER ISLE 2OJ

and Addison. The esteem in \vhich the Mission is held by
the people of the coast is shown by the fact that the towns
of Jonesport, BeaFs Island, and Addison each vote fifty
dollars a year to the Mission out-of-town funds. Down East
towns like these where taxes are the serious concern of all
do not lightly vote away their money. In all three places
the Latter-day Saints co-operate with others to make the
gifts to the Mission possible.

2O8 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

It grew colder during the afternoon, and when Miss
Rand took us back to the Sunbeam just before supper the
wind was noticeably stronger. When it came time to leave
for church it was blowing hard and sleeting. The wharf
where the Sunbeam lay was an exceptionally long one,
and it seemed to put us right out in the thick of the storm.
Things are apt to seem much worse at night, but, making
every allowance for this, I thought they were quite bad
enough. The deck was slippery, and though we had out
the breast and spring lines the Sunbeam was restive. The
waves made a great noise as they splashed through the
piling of the pier. It was pitch dark and the ladder was icy
and unsteady. The wharf was also slippery, and I thought
we should be blown off it. But with heads down and keep-
ing close to the lantern to avoid defects in the wharf we
reached Miss Rand's car. The young man who came for us
lost his hat, but he said it didn't matter. It was an old one,
and he was used to losing hats. In the summer he worked on
a yacht, and at the beginning of the season each member
of the crew was given a dozen hats, six white and six blue,
but by the end of summer they had all gone with the wind.

We had a wild ride to the church, especially on the ser-
pentine road across the bar. I was surprised to find anyone
out on such a night, but there was a crowd at the church.
I judged that there were seventy-five or a hundred present,
which I thought spoke well for the people and Miss Rand,
who conducted the services with Mr. Bousfield. Outside

EAGLE ISLAND, CASTINE, AND LITTLE DEER ISLE 209

the wind howled and the sleet beat against the windows,
but inside the wood crackled cheerfully in the oblong
stove and it was perfectly comfortable. The men sitting
near the stove were forced to take off their overcoats, and
before the service was concluded were forced to move. There
were no pews, just plain wooden chairs; but there was
an organ, and the congregation joined wholeheartedly in
the singing.

Following the service there was another wild ride back
to Scott's Landing. But the ladder wasn't so bad this time.
The tide had risen.

ii. WAY DOWN EAST

"SHE'S rolling sideways some with this tide running in/'
said Captain Frye.

We were crossing the lower end of Blue Hill Bay, and
the Sunbeam was indeed heeling to it, first to port, then
to starboard. I had to brace myself and hold on to keep
from being thrown from one side of the pilothouse to the
other. The brass ash receiver slid back and forth on the
broad shelf beside the compass. Spray froze on the deck,
on the rails, and on the sides of the deck housing. Captain
Frye's remark about the motion of the boat struck me as
a piece of flagrant understatement.

We had breakfast at seven and at seven-thirty had sailed
from Scott's Landing for Northeast Harbor, where we were
to put in for a few hours before heading Down East for
Jonesport. The boisterous night had led me to expect a
stormy day, but it was clear and colder, with only a ruffled
sea in Eggemoggin Reach. The white spire of the Brooklin
church was outstanding on the mainland side as we ran
down the reach. The Torry Islands looked winter-killed,
and it seemed a far cry to summer, when, according to

210

WAY DOWN EAST 211

Llewellyn Damon, the islands are covered with wild straw-
berries. This was a sector of the coast which the engineer
knew by heart. He pointed to a farm on the Deer Isle side
where as a boy he worked for a farmer for fif ty cents a day.
We passed Xaskeag Harbor and Devil's Head at the en-
trance to the reach, and crossing the head of Jericho Bay
passed through York Narrows into the lower end of Blue
Hill Bay, where the Sunbeam commenced to roll At the
head of the bay Blue Hill, with snow on one shoulder, stood
out a deeper blue than the water. The whole region here is
inseparably associated with the name of Man* Ellen Chase,
whose writings about it have added to the goodly heritage
of New England and the country at large.

Near the place where Bass Harbor Head Light nestles
among the spruces, at the southwesterly end of Mount Des-
ert, Captain Frye pointed out the bottleneck entrance to a
secret haven called Ship's Harbor, which he said practically
no one ever entered, not even in small boats in summer,
perhaps because the entrance looks discouragingly small.
But inside, he said, it opened up amazingly; you could run
in for a considerable distance, and there was plenty of
water. From among the ledges near the entrance to this
concealed harbor the old Sunbeam once hauled a three-
masted schooner, the Rebecca Douglas of Machias. Her
position was pointed out to me, and if ever a vessel was
hopelessly trapped, it was the Rebecca Douglas. If the

212 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

Sunbeam had not extricated her, she would, indubitably,
have been wrecked.

"What was her cargo?" I asked.

"She was going home light."

There were signs of spring at Northeast Harbor, which
we made from Deer Isle in two hours. I saw a robin on the
ice under some spruces, and walking into the town past
a road that was closed for coasting, I noticed in a shop win-
dow a goatish sign advertising bock beer. Mr. Bousfield
had gone to Bar Harbor, where we were to pick him up
later, and the captain and engineer, who live in Northeast
Harbor, had gone to their homes for a few hours. There
were people and cars in the town, but the harbor was a
lonesome place. There was no one around. Everything was
shut down. Nor were there any signs of activity on Bear
Island, at the mouth of the harbor, where is a lighthouse
and a buoy station.

It should be held to the government for righteousness,
I think, that it permits the Maine Seacoast Mission to store
furniture in the buoy depot. There among cables and chains
and marine gear belonging to the government are tables,
chairs, commodes, beds, mattresses, lamps, pictures, cottage
organs, and similar chattels collected by the Mission for
distribution among the islands. It is as safe as government
property, and the Sunbeam can get up almost to the door
to load and unload. An interesting government item stored

WAY DOWN EAST 213

here is the old submarine cable which ran from the main-
land to Mount Desert Rock Light twenty-one miles of
it wound on a single spool. If the old cable, which is flat
and oval-shaped, cost as much as the new one, the govern-
ment paid for it at the rate of seventy-five cents a foot.

When Llewellyn Damon returned to the Sunbeam
shortly before one o'clock he reported that his sixteen-year-
old son had got a deer on Jordan Mountain. Young
Damon and two other boys had spied the deer marooned
on a ledge of rock on the face of a precipice. The deer took
fright when the boys appeared and jumped to its death.
The game warden to whom they reported told them they
could have it. A man with a truck helped to get it out, and
each had a quarter of venison.

Further signs of spring were apparent on Mount Desert
during the hour's sail around the island to Bar Harbor.
The hills were a smoky color where the tops of the trees
were beginning to come to life, and the birches showed red
among the evergreens, though here and there on the faces of
the cliffs were cascades of ice. It was a day that brought out
the color in everything. Dull red was the dominant tone of the
island rocks, which also carried hints of purple and splotches
of yellow ochre and a good deal of gray. The broken rocks
on the beaches were red, with an admixture the color of
cooled lava that has been exposed to the salt air for centuries.
Curious rock formations were an accent in the picture. One
place looked like the entrance to an Egyptian tomb.

214 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

It was calm in the lee of the island, but the moment we
rounded Schooner Head into Frenchman's Bay we ran into
a choppy sea, and the pilothouse windows became bleary-
eyed with spray. The windshield wiper kept a section of the
glass clear and the doors were opened so that Captain Frye
could see to take the Sunbeam in to the wharf. He brought
her about on a wide arc right alongside the wharf, and as
he did so the superintendent with a coil of new rope over
his shoulder came down to join us.

The coast to the eastward of Frenchman's Bay is quite
as broken and island-strewn as the coast to the westward,
save at the extreme easterly end between Little River Light
and West Quoddy Head Light, where for fourteen or fif-
teen miles the shore is high, rocky, and precipitous. The
cliffs here are so high as to dwarf men and habitations,
though people and houses are scarce. The situation is
analogous to that created by Aubrey Hammond, the stage
designer, when he drew the sets for Antony and Cleopatra
at the Shakespeare Memorial Theater at Stratford-on-Avon.
He designed the scenery on such a vast scale that the actors
appeared to be pygmies.

"They didn't like it, of course," he told me. "But my
conception of the play was of an impending fate or doom
overhanging the whole piece, so I decided to make puppets
of the players."

It was not until the next day, however, that we got as
far to the eastward as Little River, the limit of our run

WAY DOWN EAST 21^

that afternoon being Jonesport. On the way to Jonesport
we passed along outside many bays and harbors, which
opened up one after the other Schoodic Harbor and
Prospect Harbor, Gouldsborough Bay, Dyer Bay, Pigeon
Hill Bay, Narragaugus Bay, and Pleasant Bay. These bays
form the approaches to towns and villages located on the
bays themselves or their tributaries. Among the numerous
islands that lie along the shore are channels affording good
inside passages which Captain Frye used whenever it was
to our advantage. Indeed, we no sooner left Frenchman's
Bay, and passed the radio direction-finder station on the
entrance point, than he took the Sunbeam through the chan-
nel between Schoodic Island and Schoodic Point, where
breakers could be seen near by smoking over the ledges. As
we came out by Schoodic Island, Petit Manan Light, which
in coast parlance is always spoken of as Tit Manan, stood
up out of the water. It is not the highest light on the coast,
but it has the tallest tower. It rises one hundred and nine-
teen feet above the rocky islet which it has all to itself, a
slender, gray-granite sentinel that has been doing duty for
nearly a century.

Among the array of islands which complicate the geog-
raphy of this part of the coast are some noteworthy single
islands and groups of islands. The Douglas Islands, for
example, on the western side of the entrance to Narra-
gaugus Bay, northward of Petit Manan, are rocky, tree-
tufted islands that might be Greek. Shipstern Island at the

2l6 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

eastern side of the bay is a beauty. It is high and tree-clad,
with a precipitous frontage on the sea all around. I should
like to own it, but I don't know any way to get on it. In
order to conquer it, you would have to be a mountaineer

as well as a mariner. Mr. Bousfield said he could see in
the island a resemblance to a ship's stern, and he tried
to point it out to me, but I couldn't see it. Spotting like-
nesses to men and beasts and things in rocks and other
natural objects is a special gift. I am blind to such resem-
blances unless they are as plain as the topiarian work in
old-fashioned gardens. But the superintendent walking
along a beach would suddenly stop and pick up an innocent
piece of driftwood which would turn out to be an amusing
caricature of some person, bird, or beast. He was like a man
I knew who, as you walked with him, would without warn-
ing pluck four-leaf clovers by the wayside. In trying to find
just one, I have vainly exhausted the years. But with so many
islands lying about it was easy even for me to see minia-
ture Gibraltars, full-sized Tarpeian Rocks, and St. Angelo
Castles with trees growing out of their tops. Just beyond
Shipstern Island, inside Nash Island Light, are two islets

WAY DOWN EAST 21 J

that really live up to their names. They are the Pot and
the Ladle. The Ladle is a rounded rock with a long tongue,
which looks like a Stone Age ice-cream scoop lying on its
face in the water; and the Pot is like a large cauldron,
which, when the sea mists wreathe about it, looks as if it
might contain an enormous steaming New England boiled
dinner.

The only vessel we met on the long and lonely stretch
of coast between Schoodic Point and Cape Split was a little
two-masted green fisherman inside Petit Manan Light. She
was a brave sight as she came boiling down toward us. She
was under power, but was carrying her mainsail to steady
and help her. Spray from the water she was throwing was
going right across her deck.

"She's sailing pretty," Damon observed.

"Bet she's got ice on her deck," said the captain.

As we passed her, he reached for the brass chain overhead
and gave her three toots on the whistle. She was the
Verna G. of Vinalhaven, most likely loaded with lobsters
from Nova Scotia for Boston.

The sun was getting low as we came abreast of Cape
Split and entered Mooseabec Reach. The sky over Jonesport
was black and squally, but to the west it was fabulously
golden, a clear winter gold with green above it. The win-
dows of the houses in Jonesport and on BeaFs Island
across the reach began to glow with reflected light. A

2l8

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

lobster boat took on a temporary glory, while a towering
four-master in the harbor was illuminated from stem to
stern. The white spire of the Jonesport church turned a
warm yellow against the heavy eastern sky. I looked for-
ward to the afterglow, but almost immediately after we
came to anchor off the town the bell rang for supper, and
all hands went below.

The next morning the clock in the white spire of the
Jonesport Congregational Church pointed to six-thirty when
the anchor was hove up and the Sunbeam headed east for
Cutler. Mr. Bousfield, standing beside me on the forward
deck, gave a very apt description of the sound of the anchor

chain coming in through the red mouth of the hawse pipe.
He said it was like a miser counting his gold, clink, clink,
clink !

We had swung at anchor all night on the fringe of the
local fishing fleet, some of the units of which struck me as
being slimmer than any boats I had seen to the westward.

WAY DOWN EAST 21Q

When I inquired about this I was informed that the further
east you go the narrower they get. As we got under way,
the fleet caught the Sunbeam's wash, which made one craft
after another start nodding and bowing to us, until the
whole collection Alice, Beatrice, IMeriam, Octaiij, Efaa*
Flora Belle, Anna M., Verna Kelly, and the rest was
curtseying away at a great rate, as much as to say, c '"Good-
by and all the best!" Only one seemed diffident, bowing
stiffly and coolly, as I thought. She had no name, only a
number, and a rather outcast, Sadie Thompsonish look. I
could imagine her saying, <c \Vell, s'long, and stormy
weather!"

It was a typical North Atlantic day, cold, gray, and in
the reach, glassy. I asked the captain what he thought of
the w r eather. "Wind's getting into the northeast," he said,
"We'll have some snow."

He put up the chart table, and taking a couple of charts
from the ceiling rack unrolled them on the table. "Just
in case it shuts down," he said.

Sea charts are fascinating things to study. Sometimes
they are more interesting than the actual sections of the
coast they represent, because they reveal more than can
be seen with the eye, and there is always the fascination
of the place names. Through the use of easily decipherable
symbols a vast amount of detail is included. Not only is
the shoreline and the depth of water shown, but the charac-
ter of the sea bottom is indicated, and rocks, bars, sand-

22O ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

banks, and other dangers, sunken, awash, and bare. The
buoys and other navigation aids marking the courses for
entering ports and negotiating passages are given; and
prominent features of the landscape, natural and artificial,
such as hills and church spires, which may be used as land-
marks, are carefully noted. Special attention is given to
lights and signal stations, their characteristics being pre-
sented in abbreviated terms readily understood by anyone.
Lines of latitude and longitude, of course, always appear,
as do the compass roses, showing magnetic variation, and
much else of practical value to the navigator.

Yet complete as these modern marine maps are, they
are not nearly so picturesque and colorful as the old maps,
which were made when the world was not so well known as
it is today, and cartographers made up for their lack of
information by filling oceans and continents with all sorts
of quaint and curious devices, such as spouting whales and
sea serpents, dolphins and sea horses, tortoises and strange
birds, mermaids and mermen, puffy-cheeked cherubim
blowing the sails of tubby little ships, and old Triton with
his wreathed horn. On one of these brilliant old maps,
Machias, Maine, which is said to come from the Indian
name Mechisses, whatever that may mean, is called Havres
des Roi Magi (Port of the Wise Men of the East), and
the Seal Rocks, Rochers Magi.

Equally quaint are the old pilot books, with their direc-
tions for getting in and out of places. Compiled for sailing

WAY DOWN EAST 221

vessels, much of their language now sounds archaic, and
the information given is decidedly sketchy in contrast to
the minute directions contained in modern books of pilotage.
Here, for example, are the directions for crossing Moose-
abec Bar from Blount's American Coast Pilot for the year
1841 :

cr When bound to the eastward over Moose a Beck Bar,
which you must not cross before two hours flood, you steer
for Kelley's Coffee House, which lies on the larboard hand
as you go to the eastward, on the N.E. point of Moose a
Beck Reach. When you are entering on the bar, you will
bring a bushy tree right against Kelley's House, which
stands on the point. Your course over the bar is east. You
leave the Virgin's Breasts, one on your starboard and one
on your larboard hand; but if you are bound for Chandler's
River you will leave the Virgin's Breasts on your star-
board hand, and Rogue's Island on the same hand/'

The Rogue's Island referred to is really Roque Island,
where a few years ago lived three hermits. They were
brothers, but each kept to his own patch of woods and
strip of shore. It was a great pastime at Jonesport for
boating parties to sail out around the island in the hope of
catching a glimpse of one of the hermits. Ma Peasley told
me she once saw one of these Roque Island eccentrics. He
was bearded in true hermit fashion, she said.

Today Mooseabec Reach is plentifully supplied with
navigation markers. Threading our way out of the thor-

222

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

oughfare, we passed what seemed a forest of spar buoys
and spindles, and other aids, including one of those mari-
time monuments, like the Fiddler in Penobscot Bay, which
is suggestive of the mausoleum or cenotaph of a dead sea
king.

When the Sunbeam had passed Machias Bay and Little
Machias Bay and saluted Little River Light at the entrance
to almost the last harbor of refuge on the southern seacoast
of Maine, a young girl ran down the boardwalk to the

white wooden pyramid on which the fog bell hung and
answered the salute. It was always the same ritual three
blasts of the whistle followed by three strokes of the bell,
then one blast of the whistle and one stroke of the bell. And
whenever this ceremonial was observed it would set me to

WAY DOWN EAST 223

wondering about the white pyramidal bell structure which
is a feature of most light stations. Why a pyramid? Did it
have anything to do with giving wider scope to the sound
of the bell? Was it to lessen the wind resistance of the
apparatus? No one seemed to know. My own theory is that
the bells were originally suspended in open tripods and rung
by hand, but when clockwork came into use the weights
were suspended in the tripod, which was boarded up to
protect the mechanism, and the bell was hung outside.
The pyramid, in other words, developed from the tripod.
But this, of course, is only a theory, and may be wide of
the mark.

Little River Harbor or Cutler Harbor, as it is sometimes
called, is considered one of the best harbors for its size on
the coast. It is small, but affords protection from all winds,
and it never freezes. It has great natural beauty, though it
was far from looking its best the day we were there. It
was one of those grim, colorless days when everything
sky, land, and water was a dull monochrome. The ther-
mometer stood at fourteen above zero, but the dampness
made it seem much colder, and the wind got to the very
marrow of your bones. Every little while there were flur-
ries of snow. We anchored inside the island on which the
lighthouse stands, perhaps three-quarters of a mile below
the town of Cutler, and hoisting out the skiff went over
the icy rail into her to visit the lighthouse.

Mr. Corbett, the keeper, came down onto the shingle in

224 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

his rubber boots and waded into the water to catch the
bow of the skiff. Then when we had landed we all dragged
the boat high up on the beach, and, taking the magazines
we had brought, walked up a path through a grove of very
old yellow birches and spruces from which moss was
hanging to the house. Here we were greeted by Mrs. Cor-
bett and the girl who had rung the bell. The girl was the
youngest of eight children and the only one left at home.
She told me that the large, yellow, long-haired cat, Teaser,
had caught all the rabbits on the island. The Corbetts, who
have been at Little River Light for seventeen years, once
kept a cow on the island, but the animal was no good
after it drank three gallons of kerosene. When I asked Mr.
Corbett what kind of a winter it had been at Little River,
he said it had been a good one. Only one day at zero, and
no bad storms. It was five or six degrees warmer at the light
than up town in Cutler, he said.

He took me up in the light tower, from which I could see
Grand Manan at the entrance to the Bay of Fundy. All the
villages on this Canadian island are on the eastern side. The
western side facing us is a continuous line of unbroken cliffs
two to three hundred feet high and twenty miles long. On
the southwestern headland, fourteen miles from Little
River, is a lighthouse, and beyond it, out in the water,
there is another light on the notorious Gannet Rock. Both
lights are visible at night from Little River. Many years
ago in a season of calm weather I landed on Gannet Rock.

WAY DOWN EAST 225

The keeper was an old man with a beard as long as Rip
Van Winkle's. He had lived on the rock nearly forty
years, and he showed me a manuscript a foot thick which
he said contained his philosophy of life. Another Canadian
light visible from Little River is Machias Seal Island Light,
six miles or so to the westward of Grand Manan, and there-
fore somewhat nearer. Machias Seal Island is American
territory, but the light on it is maintained by the Canadian
government.

After an interesting visit with the Corbetts we went up
town, as they expressed it, to Cutler, landing in the skiff at
a float and climbing icy steps to a wharf. Of the 2,300 or

more Christmas packages distributed by the Mission, about
one hundred and fifty go to children in the Cutler area.
Each package is made up for the individual, and contains
three presents. One is something useful, one is something
non-utilitarian, and the other is usually candy. Everything

226

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

is brand new, and in many cases the Mission presents are
the only presents a child receives. Children remain on the
Mission Christmas list until they are sixteen.

On the way back to Jonesport we made another stop.
It was snowing horizontally when we slipped in behind
Cross Island at the lower end of Machias Bay and
anchored off the Coast Guard Station. We had passed out-
side the island on the way to Cutler, and all we could see
was the skeleton lookout tower with a watch room at the
top, which from a distance looked like a bird house perched
high above the island. We had no occasion to launch the
skiff here, because the moment they saw we wished to land
the doors of the boathouse flew open and down the marine
railway came a large dory with men in it, their oars poised
to start pulling the moment the boat was in the water.

WAY DOWN EAST 22y

It slid in smoothly without a splash, and before we knew
it we were ourselves being run up the railway into the
boathouse. It was an odd feeling to be in a boat moving on
dry land.

Cross Island Coast Guard Station is a lonely one, and the
shore beat probably the hardest one on the coast. But sitting
in Captain Herbert Carr's office, with its polished floors and
desks and its telephone, It was difficult to realize that we
were on an unfrequented island away Down East. Inevi-
tably, a Coast Guard Station acquires something of an
institutional atmosphere, which makes it all the more diffi-
cult to realize where you are, as it is natural to associate
an atmosphere of that kind with institutions in civic centers
rather than in remote places. After we had talked a while
Mr. Bousfield called up the keeper at Libby Islands Light,
where we had hoped to land, but with the sea making up it
would have been difficult and risky to attempt getting
on an offshore station. While the superintendent talked
with the keeper, I asked about a cave which I thought I had
seen from the Sunbeam on the southerly side of Cross
Island; and I learned that there is a cave about fifty feet
deep which can be entered at low tide. A man can walk in
about half way before it becomes too low for him to stand
upright.

Learning that the wife of one of the men was living on
the island, we went to see her. She was occupying a tiny
house by the edge of the sea. A big fir tree stood near it

228 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

and the wash was flapping on the line. The house had one
room upstairs and one room downstairs. It was papered
and painted inside, and was as neat and clean as it possibly
could be. But living there must have been a lonely existence
for the girl. There were no women for her to talk to, and
her husband could only see her when he had time off. He
had to sleep at the station to be on hand in case a call came
for help and one of the boats had to go out. So she was
alone most of the time.

We walked back to the boathouse through the snow, rode
down the marine railway into the water, and were soon
rolling across Machias Bay in the Sunbeam in the direction
of Jonesport.

Jonesport will probably be associated for many years
with the famous Down East radio character, Seth Parker,
the creation of Phillips Lord. Signboards on Maine high-
ways used to point the way to "Jonesport the Home of
Seth Parker," and thousands of Sunday night listeners who
thought Seth was a real person visited the town in the hope
of catching a glimpse of him. How did Jonesport take to
this free advertising? At first, I gathered, they did not
think much of it, but when the souvenir postcard trade and
the fan mail pouring into the town raised the classification
of the post office a notch or two, they thought better of it.
Phillips Lord, who was Seth Parker, owns Bartlett's Island
in Blue Hill Bay, just across from Pretty Marsh Harbor
on the western side of Mount Desert Island. It is a large,

WAY DOWN EAST 22Q

wooded island, a place which the Budini, whom Herodotus
mentions, would have loved. They were a red-haired, blue-
eyed Slavonian race, who dwelt in the regions of the
Dnieper and ate fir cones.

The Jonesport area is historic ground for the Maine
Seacoast Mission. It was here that Alexander MacDonald,
the founder, really began his work. Jonesport, as I can
testify, is a friendly and democratic place, where everybody
speaks to you, and its attitude toward the Mission has from
the first been one of encouragement. The Mission built a
church at Head Harbor Island, which lies across Mooseabec
Reach from Jonesport. On Crowley's Island in the Indian
River it is Moose Island on the charts the Mission at one
time had a house and a resident worker. In the early days
Mr. MacDonald took Ma Peasley in the Mission boat to
Crowley's Island, and putting her ashore told her to go up
to a certain house on the island. Then without a word he
sailed away, leaving her there all winter.

"I shall never forget standing on that bleak autumn
hillside," Ma Peasley said to me, "watching the Mission
boat beat her way down the bay to the sea."

Arriving in Jonesport, we did not anchor, but tied up to
a wharf near the old Custom House. Over the door of the
building on the wharf was this sign :

SAILORS' SNUG HARBOR

S. T. OPENSHAW
Lobsters Clams

230 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

That night we had a sky pilot in the pilothouse. After
supper Mr. Sargent, the missionary pastor for the eastern
end of the coast, came aboard for the night, and when it
came time to turn in he elected to occupy the berth in the

pilothouse. It must have been very light up there, because
when we walked up into the town during the evening the
weather had cleared and it was bright moonlight. Moosea-
bec Reach was a broad band of polished silver, and there
were millions of stars. I had been on the point of falling back
on the old notion that the weather is a reflex of human
passions, but there was no need to do so now, although
Orion with his old-fashioned Civil War sword and belt was
aloft, a reminder of wars and rumors of wars.

WAY DOWN EAST 231

Mr. Sargent, who is greatly respected and liked on the
coast, ministers to about two hundred families around
Jonesport. I was to visit a part of the Mission field here
the next day and the Mission library at Mason's Bay, but
better than any report of mine on the work is Mr. Sargent's
own report. This is contained in his diary, from which I
should like to quote three or four entries.

'Thursday, December 21, 1939. Christmas trip began
with journey to White District, Jonesboro, where first
Christmas service of the season was held at the home of
Mr. and Mrs. White. Attendance was fifty-four. Mission
gifts were distributed to forty-three children, all but three
of whom were present. They had a beautifully decorated
tree.

"Friday, 22. Seventeen Mason's Bay homes were visited
in the daytime; and in the evening we had a service at
Upper Mason's Bay Schoolhouse, with attendance of
twenty-two. Measles made the attendance smaller than it
otherwise would have been. Hymns chosen by the people
were Beautiful Garden of Prayer, It Came Upon a Mid-
night Clear, Joy to the World, and Silent Night. There
was no tree.

"Saturday, 23. In the daytime I left the car and walked
to eight homes in the Quarry District and Bayview, as
roads were frozen into ridges, like plowed ground. Third
Christmas service of the trip was held in the evening at
the Basin Schoolhouse, with attendance of twenty.

232 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

"Sunday, 24. A bright winter day was spent at Moose
Neck and Cape Split. I started from the Basin and came
by way of Indian River and the East Side (thirteen miles to
get five) on account of frozen mud. In the afternoon we
had Christmas service at Cape Split, Thompson home, with
attendance of fifteen. Evening Christmas service at Moose
Neck had attendance of thirty-seven. Frank Cirone (blind)
played the violin. Mrs. Margaret Crowley accompanied the
hymns on the organ."

Mr. Sargent, as was noted in the last chapter, was at
Eagle Island for New Year's, but he was soon back in the
Jonesport region.

"Thursday, January 11, 1940. Ice in the salt-water river
between Crowley's Island and the Basin gave my plans a
jolt. Crowley 's Island meeting was to be at the home of
Charles and Rita Alley at three o'clock. When I reached
the Basin and learned that the ice made passage dangerous,
I drove back to Indian River, parked the car there, and
crossing over walked the three miles to the center of Crow-
ley's Island, arriving more than an hour after the time set
for the meeting, and found the group of twelve still wait-
ing for me. Charles Alley had crossed the ice with a skiff
on a sled soon after two o'clock to help me across. I don't
remember such persistent efforts to have a religious service
anywhere else."

At breakfast the next morning Mr. Sargent said that he
slept well in the pilot house. Neither the moon, nor the

WAY DOWN EAST 233

stars, nor anything else had disturbed hin^ It did not seem
as if he were on shipboard.

"She lay pretty to the wharf last night," said Captain
Frye. cc What wind there was was drawing off the wharf,
and she didn't bump once."

After breakfast all hands helped hoist out a portion of
the Sunbeam's cargo of magazines and lug the bundles
up the wharf to where Mr. Sargent's car stood in the
laneway swathed in blankets and quilts. Removal of the
wrappings revealed a Hupmobile, vintage of 1929, piled
high with cartons of books, which Mr. Sargent had been
accumulating at his home in Ellsworth, and was taking to
the Seacoast Mission Library at Mason's Bay. But as the
magazines were to be delivered first, and there was not
room for both, we unloaded the books, stacking the cartons
in the lee of Mr. Openshaw's Sailors' Snug Harbor, and
after stuffing the car with magazines, somehow managed
to squeeze in ourselves.

It was too early and too cold for many citizens of Jones-
port to be stirring, as Mr. Sargent drove his amiable car
tactfully through the town. One shop not yet open for
the day's business had a sign advertising chameleons, turtles,
horned toads, and goldfish for sale. One might suppose that
the people of the Maine coast had enough fish in the waters
around their homes without having them swimming about
in bowls inside their houses. But almost everywhere I went
there were goldfish. It was as if a wandering magician had

234 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

visited Maine, and wherever he stopped had produced a
bowl of goldfish from beneath his cloak.

We drove into a Shell filling station, where there was a
pile of clamshells ready to spread around the pumps. The
shells were easily procurable because of the vast quantities
of clams dug around Jonesport to supply the large clam
factories on the waterfront. They make excellent roads,
of course, though in damp weather when first put down
they are apt to have a strong odor. The rapidity with which
the shells accumulate may be judged by the fact that a
good clam digger will unearth from half a bushel to six
bushels on a tide, depending on the grounds. For these he
is paid at the rate of about a dollar a bushel. He can get
more by shucking them "shocking" it is called and sell-
ing them by the gallon. This sounds as if the clam digger
did pretty well, but when I was in Jonesport the average
digging was said to be about two bushels. With the help
of his family, a man might make from a dollar to two
dollars and a half a day for the most back-breaking kind
of labor.

WAY DOWN EAST 235

We passed a number of clam diggers* homes, some of
which were pocket-size, unpainted places that looked
scarcely large enough for one person, let alone a whole
family. Here and there along the way we stopped at these
houses while Mr. Sargent delivered magazines. At one
place no one appeared, so he left the periodicals beside the
door. A goat, its hair rumpled by the wind, showed im-
mediate interest, and was just about to breakfast on a
Saturday "Evening Post when a small boy opened the door
and snatched the magazines inside.

"It's the clamming tide," said Mr. Sargent, "so almost
everybody is out."

At length after a jolting ride we came to a crossroads
store, where the bulk of the magazines was left for later
delivery. Although I should have liked it better had the
day been milder and the wind less cutting, it was fortunate
that the roads were frozen, as we should not have been able
to visit some of the districts we did on account of the mud.
At Cape Split the children were enjoying a month's vaca-
tion from school because it was the mud season. To judge
from the way the roads were cut up, I should say that in
the spring some of the peninsula communities are as isolated
as the islands.

At Cape Split we called at the home of Harry Wass
on the western side of the Cape, but found him across
the road at his daughter's house on the eastern side. This
is a beautiful section of the Cape, and every year in June

236 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

the meeting of one of the men's organizations of the Mis-
sion, the Brotherhood of the Coast, is held here. Although
the wind was sloughing through the evergreens and the snow
under them was a cold blue, it was easy to see that in sum-
mer it would be an ideal place for a picnic and outdoor
meeting.

Mr. Wass smiled when I asked him if he was any rela-
tion to Great Wass Island on the southern side of Mooseabec
Reach. He said that the island had belonged to his an-
cestors, and that his grandson was a member of the crew
at the Coast Guard Station there. Jonesport, incidentally,
has supplied more men for the Coast Guard and light
stations than any other place in Maine. In some communi-
ties of the coast, religious doctrines separate the people
strongly, but Mr. Wass has gotten away from the fine
points of doctrine. Without much travel he has found great
things right around him. He has discovered more of interest
on Cape Split than the average person does in a journey
round the world. The loyalty of a man like Mr. Wass
is a great asset to the Mission.

From Cape Split we went to Moose Neck by a long

WAY DOWN EAST 237

detour up the Pleasant River road, which took us almost
to Columbia Falls. Pleasant River is full of curves, which
are not gradual bends, but hairpin turns. It is said to twist
around one man's barn three times. Swinging back, we cut
across to the head of Wohoa Bay and down onto Moose
Neck, where we left the car and went down on the bank
of the Indian River opposite Crowley's Island. There was
no boat we could borrow to get to the island, but Mr.
Sargent said if we looked pretty someone might come across
and get us. Prodigious cakes of ice two feet thick were
strewn along the banks, reminding me of Washington's
passage of the Delaware and Eliza leaping from cake to
cake with the bloodhounds in full cry after her. We stood
on the bank for some time in the perishing cold, but no one
saw us, and finally we got cold feet and gave up.

We went into a house to get warm, stepping over an
old coat on the floor, which was used to keep the wind
from seeping in under the door. The woman was sorry she
didn't have a boat to lend us, but the men were out in
the boat. She had seen the scholars from Crowley's Island,
seven of them, row across the river that morning. Evidence
that she had been to the county fair or to a carnival was a
collection of dolls of the kind you take chances on, sitting
on the organ.

As soon as we had warmed ourselves, we left for Jones-
port to collect the books, which we took to the library.

Few New England libraries can be so beautifully situ-

238 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

ated as the library of the Maine Seacoast Mission, which
is literally a seaside library. The books are kept in an old
schoolhouse which stands beside the road on the shore of
Mason's Bay. It is a clapboarded and cupolaed place that

clamors for a coat of paint, but otherwise is in good repair.
It could be reopened as a school tomorrow, for the scholars'
seats and desks are all there, and the stove, with its pipe
extending the length of the room, is still in working order.
The only necessary new thing would be a rope for the
extravagantly large bell, hanging in the peaked belfry. The
old rope must have rotted away, because when I sought to
test the tone of the bell, whether sweet or harsh, I could
find no way to ring it, except by going out in the school
yard and throwing stones at the old thing, which I didn't
like to do.

I was reluctant to enter the library at first because I

WAY DOWN EAST 239

knew it would be cold inside, and I was sure I should find
nothing but a lot of stupid, cast-off books of the kind you
see in the ten-cent boxes beside the doorways of second-
hand bookshops ; while outside the day had turned fine and
the view was extremely colorful. The air was still sharp,
but not nearly so keen as it had been, and the wind was
no longer the cruel wind of early morning. The waters of
Mason's Bay and of Englishman's Bay beyond were a
Caribbean blue-green, with streaks of purple and an edging
of snow. Colors reminiscent of Winslow Homer's Nassau
watercolors, but with what a difference in the temperature
of the water!

When finally I did go inside it was as I feared, as cold
as a crypt, and at first glance the books looked as dead as
the tiered skulls in the catacombs. But Mr. Sargent, before
unpacking the books we had brought, touched off the stove,
which soon made the room more comfortable, though it
was still too chilly to loiter for more than a moment or
two at any one place along the shelves. And the books in
the library proved an agreeable surprise. Ranged round the
room in improvised bookcases, grouped according to subject
matter and arranged alphabetically by authors, were nearly
5,000 volumes, comprising a collection of which any village
library might be proud. Since many of the books had come
from summer homes, fiction predominated, though there
were many other categories, with a minimum of those old-
fashioned classics which are now more talked about than

24O ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

read. Nor was the place cluttered up with old school books
and similar attic and guest-room rubbish. Here were the
outstanding successes of the past twenty years by Willa
Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, P. G. Wodehouse, Aldous
Huxley, and a host of others. Book after book was one I

had sworn some day to read, but had never got around to
reading. I could spend a pleasant summer on the shore of
Mason's Bay with this library to draw from on rainy days.
It occurred to me as I looked along the shelves that it
is in just such collections that valuable first editions are
often found. It wasn't so many years ago that an engineer
on the frozen shores of Hudson Bay wrote to a Toronto

WAY DOWN EAST 24!

dealer for an expert in old books to check thousands of
them left in isolated settlements by traders, many of whom
were adventurous spirits of literary taste, who used books
to while away the long bitter evenings. The engineer was
sanguine that there were many valuable items waiting to
be discovered by somebody who knew something about first
editions. Extremely valuable books have been picked up
in the most outlandish places. But I never heard whether or
not an expert was persuaded to make the long trek to
Hudson Bay. Like so many things which you read in the
paper, no sequel seems to have been printed.

It is from the Mason's Bay library that the Mission
makes up selections of books to be left in various mainland
and island communities. The usual number of books de-
posited in a neighborhood is one hundred and twenty-five.
Smaller lots are loaned to the light stations. As the library
was miles from the port side at Jonesport, I was certain
it was in another town, but the schoolhouse is the property
of Jonesport, which has refrained from selling it so that
the Mission can use it for a library.

A haddock chowder when we returned to the Sunbeam
at noon thawed everyone out, and at one-thirty we said
good-by to Mr. Sargent and sailed for Winter Harbor on
Frenchman's Bay. It was almost supper time when we
reached the wharf on the Grindstone Neck side of the
harbor, and a few minutes later Ma Peasley, who is sta-
tioned on the Gouldsboro peninsula, climbed down the

242 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

ladder to the Sunbeam's deck. That evening she told me
many things which I have already incorporated in this book.
Of the many evenings I spent on the Sunbeam^ the one at
Winter Harbor stands out as the most memorable.

Easter was then only a little more than a week away. It
proved to be an extraordinary Easter on the Maine coast.
Here, in Ma Peasley's own words, written, as were all the
Mission diaries which I read, without any thought of publi-
cation, is what happened in her vicinage from Good Friday
to Easter Monday:

"Friday, March 22, 1940. Up to the church by twelve.
The women came early, and we decorated, cleaned and
dusted. After finishing there, I made calls on the sick and
by the time I was ready to go home the storm was raging
and home looked good.

"Saturday, March 23. Bitter cold and drifts of snow. It
looks more like the Arctic than Maine in spring. Went to
West Gouldsboro and found the church had been nicely
shoveled out. A good fire was burning and the women came
to help decorate and clean up. Had a rehearsal with the
children and made calls, arriving home at 7 130. Wind high,
snow drifting, and mercury near zero. Rather a hard out-
look for Easter.

"Easter Sunday, March 24. Easter morning at five the
mercury two above, the wind high, and the roads drifted.
Mr. Hammond says the car cannot get through, because
the drifts are packed so hard. This means no sunrise service

WAY DOWN EAST 243

at Winter Harbor. Went up to our church to find a fire
going and the path shoveled. The church was still quite
cold.

"The car had a hard time getting through to West
Gouldsboro, for the wind was packing the drifts back a
few minutes after the plow passed. We got stuck twice and
had to shovel through. Finally arrived there and found the
church warm around the stove. Bitter cold everywhere else.
The men had filled the stove at intervals through the night,
that is, at 6 P.M., 11 P.M., i A.M., and 6 Easter morning.
But the wind raking in kept it very cold. Side roads not
broken out at all. Folks right around the village came to
service. Two of the women brought hot soapstones for their
feet. Some of the children in ski suits waded through drifts
up to their hips to come, the girls retiring behind a screen
to remove their pants and shake out their skirts.

"We had a beautiful service.

"Rushed home to get dinner as I had some people in to
eat who are alone and feel quite forlorn at holiday time.

"Intense cold, drifts, and high wind made us postpone
the home services until Easter Monday. In the evening at
South Gouldsboro forty people were out and the service
was good. None of the older folk could come out because
of the weather. Before the service I was able to call at
three of the homes where there is illness.

"So ends this early and cold Easter. No flowers and
none of the usual folk at services. Yet in many ways a

244 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

strong, impressive, and lovely day. I have a feeling we
shall long remember it.

"Faster Monday, March 25. Made a huge kettle of lamb
and pearl-barley broth and did up some glasses of jelly
in gay paper napkins. Armed with these, I started out for
the Easter calls and services. At each home of an aged
shut-in I left a glass of jelly and had a brief service. Then
I told them all about our Easter. How we all but froze;
how people smiled when the children recited gaily about
the lovely flowers, the gentle breezes, and the warm spring.
It was really funny. I was calling all day and arrived home
at 5:30 chilled and windblown and with aching hands.
Made a fire in the open Franklin and at 6:30 the high-
school group came, bringing with them visiting academy
scholars. We had a discussion about maintaining the status
quo in political and economic life. Ended in a lively dis-
cussion started by one of the girls asking if the Finns were
more wicked than most folk that God punished them so
severely. Had hard work convincing them of the goodness
of God. To them He holds the whip.

"Today twenty-five men from Winter Harbor, West and
South Gouldsboro went into the Bunker woodlot and cut,
hauled, and sawed eight cords of wood for Frank Gerrish,
who is in the hospital with a badly smashed leg."

The sea could not have been smoother when we crossed
Frenchman's Bay the next morning from Winter Harbor
to Bar Harbor. Captain Frye took a narrow haul around

WAY DOWN EAST 245

Grindstone Point, which a person without his local knowl-
edge would not have taken. It brought us out abreast of
Ironbound Island, on which there is said to be a cave. There
are many holes and pockets along its precipitous sides
which look as if they might be the entrances to caverns. And
Ironbound's neighbor, Bald Porcupine, is also said to have
a cave high up on one side. Ironbound and the Porcupines
are among the most forbidding but most beautiful islands
on the coast.

We passed one of the keepers of Egg Rock Light pulling
a peapod to Bar Harbor. It must be a three- or four-mile
pull. The peapod is very popular along some parts of the
coast. It is double-ended and rounded like a canoe, but
broader bottomed. One of the keepers from Egg Rock was
lost a few years ago while pulling in from the light to Bar
Harbor, and Llewellyn Damon said that for awhile they
had a section of his boat on the old Sunbeam.

"Did they ever find him?" I asked.

"No, they never did," said the engineer. "Frenchman's
Bay never gives up its dead."

12. MOVIES AT LOUD'S ISLAND

WE sailed from Rockland Saturday morning April twen-
tieth. It was a clear day and the sea calm. As we came out
of the harbor past the breakwater, we saw a tug towing a
four-master across Penobscot Bay toward the entrance to
Muscle Ridge Channel. The tug's smoke slanted backward
and upward above the towering masts of the schooner, and
then changing its mind slanted forward and upward ahead
of the tug, forming a great horizontal V in the sky.

"When you see smoke like that," said Captain Frye, "it
shows there's more velocity overhead/'

"It's too bad we don't see more of the old sailing vessels,"
I said.

"They're getting scarcer than ambergris," said the cap-
tain. "In Vineyard Haven I have seen a hundred sail wait-
ing for a wind. It was a pretty sight when they got out
over Nantucket Shoals."

246

MOVIES AT LOUD S ISLAND 247

We entered Muscle Ridge Channel ahead of the tug and
its tow, and as we approached Sprucehead, the captain said,
"There's Metinic just coming out by."

An indigo island four or five miles away was swimming
out from behind another island. At Whitehead Light, where
a boy accompanied by a dog rang the bell in answer to
our salute, we hauled southward directly for Metinic, the
first island on the day's agenda. From there we were to go
to Monhegan, where we were to leave Mr. Sargent, who
was to preach the next day in the Monhegan Community
Church, and then we were to run up into Muscongus Bay
to Loud's Island, where motion pictures were to be shown
at the church that night.

Metinic Island, which must not be confused with
Matinicus, is about two miles long and partly wooded. It
was once wholly wooded, but the southern end is now bare,
and the rest of the trees seem to be going. After a little
difficulty we managed to land at the southern end, where

248 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

some sheep were grazing along near the water; walking
up past an old house and along the curving margin of an
open cove, we reached a small collection of small houses.
There was driftwood along the shore of the cove and many
sea urchins and curious stones. The driftwood is used for
fuel, but it is so salty that it quickly rusts out any stove.
It doesn't pay to have a good stove at Metinic.

There were four men in the settlement. Seven is the most
ever there. They were overhauling their gear. There was a
tarring outfit in which they had been dipping the twine
heads of their lobster traps, and one young fellow was
painting lobster buoys. He was new at lobstering, he said,
and was going to tend a line of eighty traps in a peapod
boat until he became familiar with the grounds. He was
working near what he called his castle. It was the old deck-
house of a boat that had been on the island for years. It
could not have measured more than eight by twelve feet.
It was shingled, and a sturdy tile chimney stuck out through
the almost flat roof. Inside was a bunk hung against the
wall with ropes; a galley stove on top of a box, and dishes
on the shelves in the corner. Another little house with bulgy
sides was originally a houseboat. It put me in mind of
Peggotty's house in David Copper-field. A pretty little girl
named Cynthia and her brother who was older lived in
the biggest of the little houses. They had a fine Maine cat.

Very unusual in its situation was an outhouse perched
on a rock high above the water. A bridge extended out to

MOVIES AT LOUDS ISLAND 249

it, like a drawbridge across a moat, and wires kept the
house from being blown into the ocean. It was an ingenious
sanitary arrangement which would have delighted Sir John
Harington, the Elizabethan poet and godson of Gloriana,

who wrote a panegyric on these little institutions called
The Metamorphosis of Ajax, which is mentioned by Lytton
Strachey in Elizabeth and Essex.

The largest house on the island is the oldest. This was
the one we passed soon after landing, and on our way back
to the skiff we stopped, as Mrs. Ralph Post, who lives there
with her husband, was kind enough to offer to show it to us.
The house has been in Mrs. Post's family the Snow family
since it was built in 1814. The date is known because

250

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

Mrs. Post's great-great-grandmother climbed up on the
framework to watch the naval engagement between
H, M. S. Boxer and U. S. S. Enterprise^ which was fought
near Monhegan in September 1814. Those must have been
anxious times for the people on Metinic. Joshua Thorndike,
who lived on the island at the time of the Revolution, was
visited by the British. "They killed his cow, took his tea-
kettle from the fire and smashed it, and ripped open his
feather bed." Recently the large central chimney had to be
removed because it was unsafe, but the house is still an
attractive and interesting home. I went up into the attic to
look at the old pegged beams. It was a fascinating place.

Hanging from the beams were coils of rope, blocks, bait
bags, and a pair of oars that looked large enough for a
whaleboat. Under a window at one end was a workbench,
and several well-made ship models. A man who liked to

MOVIES AT LOUD S ISLAND 25!

work with tools could spend many happy hours in that
attic.

The run from Metinic Island to Monhegan Island was
brief and uneventful, except that the approach to Mon-
hegan is always in itself something of an event, for
Monhegan stands out from the rank and file of Maine coast
islands. Since the days of the Elizabethan adventurers this
island lying three leagues from the land has been an im-
portant landmark for vessels coming on the coast or bound
along it. It possesses height, beauty, and a romantic past.
Coming into its presence you do not wonder that it has
attracted artists and writers. Its satellite, Manana Island,
which lies close alongside and forms one side of the road-
stead, is much smaller. It is high, bare, and rocky. Its rocks
grow bigger and blacker the closer you get to them, and
when you are in the roadstead they seem to hang over and
dominate the place, not in a protective way, but menacingly.
The weather may have had something to do with this. It
had undergone a change while we were at Metinic. A breeze
had sprung up, and the sky suddenly looked baleful.

We rowed over to Manana from the Monhegan wharf
to see the people at the fog-signal and radio-beacon station
on top of the island. We landed on the skids extending
from the boathouse into the water and walked up the moun-
tain railroad. We met the keeper, F. E. Singer, coming
down with his mother, who was leaving to get the mail
boat. She had been visiting her son and his family and

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

252

was now returning to Orr's Island. Two of the Singer chil-
dren were also coming down to see their grandmother off.
These children have to be rowed back and forth to Mon-

hegan to school, but there were only a few days, they said,
when they couldn't get across. The schoolhouse, which over-
looks the water, has a gold quill pen for a weathervane.

There was plenty of wind on top of the island, but we
didn't stay outside. We went into the house to see Mrs.
Singer. The baby and the cat were asleep. I should have
thought the keeper would have felt the need of sleep, as
the assistant keeper was in the Marine Hospital at Port-
land for a general overhauling, and the keeper had been
having a double dose of work. There is a lot of equipment

MOVIES AT LOUD'S ISLAND 253

to look after at this station, to say nothing of transmitting
radio signals. March is not a particularly foggy month on
the Maine coast, nor is there so much fog at Monhegan as
at many other places, though it averages more than a thou-
sand hours a year.

The keeper took me up to see the old fog bell bolted to a
rock. It was a huge thing with a cracked lip. Cast in 1855,
it has been out of commission for half a century or more*
One of the old keepers during a long spell of fog used to
hire boys to ring it for him. They would ring it for a while
and then quit and tip the bell and tripod over. The keeper
would become very angry, but the boys would soon get
back into his good graces, and the same thing would happen
all over again. Manana now has a horn, and a bell is used
only if the horn is disabled. Above the bell on the highest
part of the island is a reservoir with pipes running to the
houses. Near the chicken coop is the rock on which are
the alleged Norse inscriptions. There is no evidence that the
Norsemen ever visited the Maine coast, and the inscriptions
have never been deciphered. Someone with a sense of humor
must have placed the henhouse near the writings, because
they look like chicken tracks.

An excellent idea of the work of the Mission at Mon-
hegan in winter may be gained from Mr. Sargent's notes
of his visit to the island a month earlier.

"Saturday, February 17, 1940. Mail boat brought me
from Port Clyde to Monhegan, where I got settled at the

254 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

lighthouse home of Mr. and Mrs. Vinal A. Foss, prepared
for children's meeting, went across to Manana, and called
at a number of homes.

"Sunday, February 18. Three services in Monhegan
Community Church chapel. Had attendance as follows : 1 1
at Children's Church, 10 A.M., 19 at Public Worship,
11 A.M., 36 at Evening Service, 7:30 P.M.

"In children's meeting a little boy told this story: 'David
went from house to house praying; so they put him in a
den of lions. The lions roared loudly; but he was not afraid.
He just took a slingshot and killed them all. 5

"Monday, February 19. Day was spent pleasantly on
Monhegan, enjoying society of Foss family and their neigh-
bors at the lighthouse, and calling at thirteen other homes.

"Tuesday, February 20. Forenoon. Heavy snowstorms
kept mail boat from going to Port Clyde, so I remained at
Monhegan. I called at three homes. Now I have called at
32 of the 33 homes that are occupied on Monhegan this
winter. According to Linwood Davis, there are 95 people
on Monhegan now."

As the motion-picture show at Loud's Island was to be
an early one, we left Mr. Sargent at Monhegan and headed
up into Muscongus Bay, where we went first to Round Pond
to pick up Joseph Smith of the staff of Colby College, who
was joining the Sunbeam for a few days to make some col-
ored motion pictures for the Mission, and then we went to
Loud's Island, which lies off the entrance to Round Pond.

MOVIES AT LOUD'S ISLAND 255

The films were to be shown at six-thirty. The reason for
this hour was that the people of Loudsville are among the
earliest risers on the coast. They get up at three or three-
thirty in the morning. By four everybody is up. By nine or
ten the men are back from the fishing grounds. And because
they get up early they go to bed early. Few lights are visible
on Loud's Island late in the evening. A possible explana-
tion of this custom was supplied by Lleweltyn Damon.

"If I am going to be on the water," he said, "I want to
be out early. The weather's better then."

Arthur Poland of Loudsville, who was ship's carpenter
on the Sunbeam during the first voyage, had told me a good
deal about the island. Sixty-three people lived there, he
said, and this figure, I think, included the people on Marsh
Island, which lies next to Loud's Island and forms with it
what is known as Marsh Harbor. He also said that there
were six cows, three dogs, and one horse. One of the many
duties of the horse is to draw the hearse that was procured
for the island by the Mission. The church, which stands
in the middle of the island, contains some material from
the old schoolhouse at Malaga Island. Years ago conditions
became so bad at Malaga, as a result of close intermarriage,
that the state stepped in and removed the whole population.
Alexander MacDonald chartered a schooner, went to
Malaga, and took a lot of material from the school for the
church at Loud's Island.

I am not sure when it was that the weather became ac-

256 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

tively bad that Saturday at Loudsville. As soon as we
anchored in Marsh Harbor, Mr. Bousfield went ashore, but
he returned soon to say that we would have to land the
moving-picture equipment at Prior's Cove at the north end
of the island, because the mud was so bad that a truck
could not get through to the church. From the cove the lone
horse of Loudsville would carry the equipment a mile down
the island to the church. It was not the projector, or the
screen, or the films that bothered us, but the generator,
which weighed a hundred pounds. There is no electricity on
the island, so we had to take the generator, which was
hoisted out of the glory hole and, when we reached the cove,
;was lightered ashore with the other things. When we rowed
in ourselves after supper it was raining and blowing hard.
Halfway to the church we passed the horse coming back.
He was hitched to an old-fashioned, covered-top buggy. By
that time the rain had changed to sleet.

In spite of the storm the vestry of the church was filled,
and the last comers had to sit on the stairs. All but the
very young and the very old were there, a total of more
than forty islanders. The projector was placed on the top
of a sewing machine, and the generator, which on account of
the storm could not be left outside, was placed in the
entry, where it roared like an airplane engine. The oil lamps
were extinguished, with the exception of one hand lamp,
which was turned up to change the reels and then turned
down again. The program consisted of a Mickey Mouse

MOVIES AT LOUD's ISLAND 257

picture, a Hal Roach comedy, an Our Gang film, and a
thrilling horse opera in six reels. They were all silent pic-
tures, and none was either faintly or deeply dyed in techni-
color.

The western picture was a fine, lusty melodrama, and we
cheered the hero and suffered with the heroine. There was
an exciting checker game between the hero and the villain.
The loser was to kill the old father, and the winner was to
get the girl and the gold mine. The islanders, who are all
checker players, concentrated on every move, holding their
breaths when the villain made a smart move and sighing
with relief when the hero jumped three kings. There was
a simplicity and directness about the picture, a shooting of
the things that mattered, which showed that the old reliable
type of entertainment, strong and silent and free from
tricks, still has the power to grip an audience. In it were
some of the best studies of horses I have ever seen. And all
the time it was going on, one of the island dogs wandered
around from person to person to be petted. It was a good
dog, part collie, but very wet. The horses in the picture
stole the show.

The films which the Mission uses come from a film li-
brary in Ohio which is maintained by a retired minister
who specializes in supplying films to organizations like the
Mission. Sea pictures are popular with the Mission audi-
ences, and among those which have been shown are "Cap-
tain January" and "The Wreck of the Hesperus" with a

258 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

happy ending. There are children on some islands well
along in their teens who have never been to a commercial
motion-picture theater. No religion is mixed in with the
films. The Mission in showing them just wants to give the
people a good evening's entertainment.

After the show we left the generator and walked up the
island. Although we picked our way carefully with the aid
of the lantern and flashlights, it was impossible to avoid
slipping on icy rocks and sinking in the mud. It was the
kind of weather in which the witches in Macbeth would

MOVIES AT LOUD's ISLAND 259

have reveled. The gale roared through the trees, and we
found the cove in a turmoil of uproar. The tide was high
and was pushing the skiff back and forth. It was half full
of water and we had to haul it out and tip it on its side to
empty it. The darkness may have affected my sense of pro-
portion, but the waves seemed monstrous, and I could not
see how it was possible for a small boat to get off. But the
superintendent and Joe Smith got away, though for a
minute or two it was touch and go. Not long after they
disappeared in the darkness, I heard Llewellyn Damon
shouting to know where to land; he brought the skiff in to
the place on which I shone the lantern. He did a marvelous
job getting me out and up to the Sunbeam's boarding lad-
der. The Sunbeam had dragged her anchor, so the captain
had run out of the cove to wait for us with engines running.
We started at once for Marsh Harbor, where a berth was
chosen between the two islands, and both anchors were put
out. And there we swung, occasionally jarred by a heavy
sea, from Saturday night until Monday afternoon. The
storm was a genuine northeaster, with snow and sleet
thrown in for good measure the spring blizzard of 1940.
During what appeared to be a lull Sunday morning, Mr.
Bousfield decided he would try to get across the two hun-
dred yards of water which lay between the Sunbeam and
Loud's Island. He did not think anyone would be at church,
but he wanted to go, and Joe Smith went with him. They
got ashore all right, but at noon, when they started back,

260 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

they ran into trouble. Twice the oars were blown out of the
locks, and, rowing as hard as he could, the superintendent
lost ground steadily, missing the Sunbeam by a hundred and
fifty feet. There was a Thermopylae element in the unequal
contest which was exciting, particularly when they passed
astern of us and it looked for a minute or two as if they
would be swept out to sea. But Mr. Bousfield held to it as
the skiff sagged away across the harbor and managed to
bring it in to the lower end of Marsh Island. Here they
went up in the lee of some spruces to rest and warm their
hands. Finally, Joe Smith with a long line towed the boat
along the shore of Marsh Island while Mr. Bousfield rowed.
When well above the Sunbeam they started out once more.
They were better protected here and were able to work
their way out from the shore. As they came down by us,
Llewellyn Damon caught the skiff with the boathook. It
had taken them exactly one hour to get from shore to ship.
Mr. Bousfield said there were a number of people at church,
and he was glad he went.

Monday afternoon the superintendent and the engineer
went ashore to get the generator. They cut down a tree,
lashed the generator to it, and carried the machine down to
the skiff on their shoulders. The seas had lengthened out,
so we headed for Boothbay Harbor. There was heavy surf
all along the shore. The harbor was full of fishing boats
that had taken refuge there.

The next morning we continued to the westward. A girl

MOVIES AT LOUD'S ISLAND 26 1

in a bright red skirt standing against the ancient white
tower of Burnt Island Light at the western entrance to
Boothbay Harbor waved as we passed, as did the two
keepers of the Cuckolds Light off the end of Cape Newagen.
One keeper was on the hurricane deck, the other leaning
out a window. The wash, a day late on account of the
storm, was on the line. We rolled across the mouth of the
Sheepscot River and headed for Seguin, passing our old
friend the No. i Lighted Bell Buoy near the entrance to
the Kennebec River, which- was out of commission the Janu-
ary night we were running this same course to the eastward
and nearly landed us on the Sisters. We had planned to
land at Seguin to visit the lighthouse, but the old sea was
breaking all around it, and we could find no place to get
on the island. Close to, the island looks very high and
barren, with only a few trees and bushes growing in
sheltered places. The following paragraph about an accident
which occurred at Seguin I found by chance in a file of
old newspapers. It is from the Boothbay Register of
February 27, 1885.

"On Thursday of last week, Mr. Henry Day, First As-
sistant Keeper of Seguin Light, was walking around the
island, when he slipped from the top of a cliff and slid over
ice and rocks sixty feet to near the shore. His dog with him
followed and was so severely injured he was killed. The
Third Assistant saw Mr. Day fall, and going across the

262

ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

island got a boat and rowed around to his rescue. He was
severely but not dangerously injured."

Napoleon Bonaparte Fickett is the keeper of Pond Island
Light tvw miles north of Seguin at the mouth of the Kenne-
bec River. A. veteran of the service, he and Mrs. Fickett
have Irvcd. at a number of important lights. At one time
they were at Matiaicus Rock, where, Mrs. Fickett told me,
the wives of the keepers have always cared for the grave
of Keeper Grant's small daughter, who died at the Rock
many years ago. There was no way at the time to bring
the child to the mainland, so she was placed in a natural

tomb under a ledge which was then walled up. Later the
body of a child, probably lost from a sailing vessel, was
washed ashore, and the tomb was opened and the body
placed with that of the keeper's daughter. The identity of
this child was never learned. One of the keeper's children

MOVIES AT LOUD'S ISLAND 263

at Pond Island perished when the lighthouse was swept
away in the great storm of April 16, 1851, which also de-
stroyed the light on Minot's Ledge. Mr. Fickett pointed
out to me the cellar hole and foundation stones of the
house, a little to the northward of the present house. Mrs.
Fickett said there was a cave under Pond Island, the en-
trance to which could be seen on a low run of tide. The
last family at the light could not find their cat when they
came to leave, but Mrs. Fickett could hear it mewing,
apparently underground, and later it appeared. She was
sure it had been in the cave and may have found a hole
leading to it. She had a tourmaline which came from the
cave. In the chasm which almost cuts the island in two are
many garnets. The keeper said that most of the Kennebec
River traffic now consists of tankers and coal vessels.

Across from Pond Island at Popham we called on Cap-
tain Miles Cameron at the Coast Guard Station, and then
walked over to see the Osgoods, who have the Kennebec
River Station, a green light, at the old granite fort opposite
Gilbert Head, where Stephen Etnier's white house high
above the river is a prominent landmark. In the Osgoods 5
parlor is a painting of the light station which Stephen
Etnier made and presented to them in 1935. Mrs. Osgood
has an interesting mineral collection.

Uncle Lyman Oliver, on whom we next called, is eighty-
five years old. He was sitting in a Boston rocker by the
window with his grandfather's wooden spyglass handy. The

264 ANCHOR TO WINDWARD

original owner had burned his name on the side by taking
out the lens and using it as a burning glass. In his younger
days Uncle Lyman used to build boats for the Kennebec
River pilots. He said competition was keen among the
pilots, and they would row as far as Seguin to pick up a
ship.

"What kind of boats did you build for them?" I asked.
"Peapods?"

"No, not peapods," he answered. "Square-enders. Pea-
pods put their noses under."

Everybody at Popham was out gathering driftwood. Vast
quantities of it littered the beaches. A freshet had sent a
lot down the river, and the storm had washed it ashore.
This river driftwood is not so salty as the driftwood at
Metinic, so it doesn't rust the stoves.

We tried Seguin again, but with no better luck than be-
fore, and returned to Boothbay Harbor. The next morning
we picked up Mr. Sargent at Monhegan, went on to Crie-
haven, and then to Rockland. It was a perfect day on the
water, and when we reached Rockland I hated to leave the
Sunbeam.

It was small wonder, I thought, as I drove homeward
along the coast, that such men as Dr. Henry Van Dyke
and Rev. Samuel S. Drury, both of whom served as presi-
dent of the board of the Maine Seacoast Mission, should
have labored for years in behalf of this unique enterprise,
with its continual record of fulfillment and justification.

INDEX

Acadia National Park, 144
Addison, Me., 207
Algonquin, the, 42
Alley, Calvin, 98
Alley, Charles, 232
Alley, Rita, 232
American Coast Pilot, 221
(American) Red Cross, 13; Nursing

Service, 81, 159

American School of the Air, 176
Ames, Mrs. Esther, 81-82
Appleton, Me., 78
Argonauts, the, 47
Audubon, John J., 143

Bagaduce River, 198

Bailey's Island, 48

Bald Porcupine, 245

Bangor, Me., 54, 91

Banks, the, 29, 63

Bar Harbor, Me., 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 30,

120, 123, 149, 165, 212, 213, 245
Bartlett's Island, 228
Bass Harbor Head Light, 98, 211
Bath, Me., 18, 138, 182
Bayard Point, 197
Bay of Fundy, 224
Bed's Island, 206, 207
Bear Island, 152, 212
Beautiful Garden of Prayer, 231
Belfast, Me., 54, 188, 199
Belfast Harbor, 199
Bells, 97 f.; buoy, 97-98; church, 99-

100 ; lighthouse, 98-99
Bethel Mission, 91

Blue Hill Bay, 149, 160, 210, 211, 228
Bodwell, Governor, 59
Bodwell Granite Company, 59
Body Island Light, 131
Boocher's Cave, 103
Boothbay Harbor, 8, 47, 49, 5? 53>

70, 89, 146, 182, 260, 261, 264
Boothbay House, 89

Boothbay Register, 261

Boston, Mass., 3, 24, 61, 99, 120, 217

Bousfield, Dr. Cyril E., 125, 126

Bousfield, Mrs. Cyril E., 127

Bousfield, Neal D., 10, 15, 16, 30, 32,
33, 35, 40, 4i, 93, 95, 102, 104, 107,
109, 113, 115, 119, 125, 128, 130,
138, 146, 149, 152, 156, 157, 160,
167, 175, 184, 191, 192, 193, 195,

198, 201, 202, 208, 212, 2l6, 227,

256, 259, 260
Bracey family, 192-193
Brigham, Rev. John, 202
Brimstone, 183
Brooklin, 59, 210
Brotherhood of the Coast, 236
Brown's Head, 125
Brule-Cote (Burnt Hill), 153
Buchanan, James, 20
Burgess, Abby, 134
Burnham, Clara Louise, 48
Burnt Coat Harbor, 149, 153, 154,

155, 156, 164

Burnt Coat Light, 155, 160, 181
Burnt Island Light, 50, 261
Butter Island, 193

Cadillac Mountain, 9, n, 150

Camden, Me., 52, 54, 65

Camden Hills, 52, 65, 196

Cameron, Captain Miles, 263

Campbell, Charles, 25-28

Cape Elizabeth, 27, 45, 134

Cape Neweegin, 261

Cape Porpoise, 30

Cape Rosier, 203

Cape Small, 48, 134

Cape Split, 217, 232, 235

Captain Mike, see McClure, Captain

Herbert J.

Carr, Captain Herbert, 227
Carver's Harbor, 125
Casco Bay, 43, 47, 181

265

266

INDEX

Castine, Me., 54, 92, 181, 198-202

Castine Harbor, 199, 203

Castner, Me., 20

Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 56,

59

Gather, Willa, 240

Champlain, 67, 153

Charleston, S. C., 40

Chase, Mary Ellen, 211

Chopin, 90

Churches, 162-163

Cinder, 31

Clark, Captain George, 98

Cleveland, Ohio, 93

Colby, 183

Colby Pup, 183

Colcord, Lincoln, 188

Columbia, the, 184

Columbia Rope Company, 121

Corbett family, 223-224, 225

Cornet, Peter, 173

Count Luckner, the Sea Devil, 205

Cranberry Island(s), 98, 152; Great,
144, 163

Crie, Robert, 109

Criehaven, 95, 112, 113, 115-119, 121,
123, 124, 264

Cross Island, 226; Coast Guard Sta-
tion, 227

Crotch Island, 52, 59, 183, 184

Crowley's Island, 229, 237

Cuckolds Lighthouse, 49, 261

Cutler, Me., 218, 223, 224

Cutler Harbor, 223

Dalzell, Me., 177

Damariscotta, Me., 10, 14, 17, 19, 20,

24

Damariscotta River, 22, 24, 30, 100
Damon, Llewellyn, 33, 36, 37, 40, 65-

67, 83, 84, 114, 150, 183, 184, 203,

211, 213, 245, 255, 259, 260
Dark Harbor, 160
David Copperfield, 248
Davis, Linwood, 254
Davis Strait, 50
Day, Henry, 261

Deer Island Thoroughfare, 181, 183
Deer Island Thoroughfare Light, 184,

187
Deer Isle, 52, 59, 76, 183-184, 187,

197, 2O6, 211, 212

Delano, Jane A., 79-81

Delano Red Cross Nursing Service, 80,

81

Devil's Head, 211
Devil's Island, 182
Dice's Head, 198
Dirigo Island, 193-194
Douglas Islands, 215
Douglas, Norman, 104
Dresden, Me., 48
Dumplings, the, 125
Dyer Bay, 215

Eagle Island, 47, 181, 191-19$, 232

Eagle Island Light, 188, 190

East Boothbay, 100

East Lamoine, Me., 41

East Machias, 202

Eastport, Me., 30, 32, 88

Eggemoggin Reach, 196, 203, 206, 210

Egg Rock Light, 245

Ellsworth, Me., 41, 192, 233

Englishman's Bay, 239

Enterprise, the, 203

Ethel M. Taylor, 121

Etnier, Stephen, 263

Fickett, Napoleon Bonaparte, 262 f.

Field, Rachel, 152

Field and Stream, 130

Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 240

Foghorns, 100-101

Ford, Edsel, 67

Foss, Mr. and Mrs. Vinal, 254

Fox Islands, 153, 189

Fox Island Thoroughfare, 125, 153

Franklin Island, 50

Frenchboro, Me., 95, 140, 149, 156,
i6off., 164-166, 169, 171-180, 181,
204

Frenchman's Bay, 214, 215, 244, 245

Fresnal, A. J., 187

Friendship sloop, 12, 14

Frye, Captain Ralph J., 33, 38, 58,
62, 66, 68, 69, 70, 83, 87-88, 125,
129, 137, 149, 157, 184, 196, 197,
210, 211, 215, 233, 244-245

Gannet Rock, 224
Gargantua, 142-143
Georges Island, 50
Gerrish, Frank, 244
Gilbert Head, 263
Gilkey's Harbor, 160

INDEX

267

Gladstone, 14

Gloucester, 20

Godey's Ladies' Book, 182

Good Housekeeping, 130

Gould, John Edgar, 91

Gouldsboro peninsula, 241

Gouldsborough Bay, 215

Grand Manan, 224, 225

Great Deer Isle, 203

Great Gott Island, 152

Great Lakes, 33, 92

Greenland, 42

Green Mountain, n

Grenfell, Dr., 7

Grenfell Mission, 7

Grindel Point, 79

Grindstone Neck, 241

Grindstone Point, 245

Guptill, Rev. Orville J., 12-13, 14, 137

Gut, the, 79, So, 113, 114

Halfway Rock, 47, 48, 134

Hall family, 72-73

Hammond, Aubrey, 214

Hardy, Wilmot, 203

Harington, Sir John, 249

Harrington, Me., 87

Harris, Mr., 89

Harry Marr's shipyard, 17, 19-20

Hartford, Conn., 25, 92

Haskell District, 206

Hat Island, 182

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 54

Head Harbor Island, 12, 175, 229

Herodotus, 229

Hickman, Robert, 63

High Sheriff, 183

Hockamock Head, 181-182

Hodgkins, Deacon Barney, 41-42

Holmes Bay, 202

Hope, 14

Howard, Clarence, 165

Hualco, the, 188

Huckleberry Finn, 71

Hudson Bay, 240, 241

Hurricane Island, 59

Hurricane Sound, 125

Hussey's Sound, 27

Huxley, Aldous, 240

Hyppocampus, the, 199

Indian River, 229, 232, 237
Innocents Abroad, 92, 168

Ironbound Island, 245

Isle au Haut, 53> 55, 67, 163, 190

Isle au Haut Bay, 53

It Came upon a Midnight Clear, 231

Isleboro, 160

Jameson Point, 52

Jericho Bay, 155, 181, 211

Jesus, Saviour, Pilot Me, go

Jewell Island, 47

Johnson, Mrs. Martin, 143

Jonancy, the, 31

Jonesport, Me., 12, 175, 206, 207, 210,

215, 217, 218, 226-234
Jorrocks, 4

Joy to the World, 231
Jwnita, 89
Junk of Pork, 47

Kelley, Edward, 63

Kennebec River, 18, 30, 48, 49, 62,

141, 261, 262, 263, 264
Kickapoo, the, 24, 30, 62
Knox, General, 154
Kyne, Peter B., 21

Ladle, the, 217

Lafayette, 154

Latter-day Saints, 206-207

Leadbetter Narrows, 125

Let the Lower Lights Be Binning, 90,

92-93

Libby Islands Light, 141, 227
Life Is Like a Mountain Railroad,

93-94

Lighthouse keepers, 128-148
Lighthouse Service, 145-148
Lincoln, Abraham, 20
Lindsay, Vachel, 92
Linekin Bay, 100
Little Deer Isle, 133, 196, 197, 198,

203, 206

Little Machias Bay, 222
Little River, 214, 224, 225
Little River Harbor, 223
Little River Light, 214, 222, 224
Long, Charles A. E., 85-86
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 3, 20
Long Island, 160, 164, 169
Long Ledge Buoy, 98
Lord, Phillips, 228
Loud's Island, 24, 27, 30, 33, 192, 246,

254-262

268

INDEX

Loudsville, Me., 100, 255, 256
Lunt, Alphonse, 169
Lunt's Harbor, 160-161

Macauley, Thomas Babington, 4

Macbeth, 258

MacDonald, Rev. Alexander, 11-13,
14, 52, 174, 196, 229, 255

MacDonald, Angus, 11-13

McClure, Captain Herbert J. ("Cap-
tain Mike"), uSi II6 : I20 > I2I >
122

McClure, Mrs. Herbert J., ii5 5 n6,
121, 122

Machias, Me., 30, 211, 220

Machias Bay, 222, 226, 228

Madeline and Flora, the, 63

Maine Seacoast Mission, 5-6, 7, 8-16,
21, 24, 40, 41, 52, So, 95, 119, 120,
123, 124, 126, 128, 130 ff., 149, 159,
165, 173, iQi, 201, 202, 204-209,
212-240, 253-260

Malaga Island, 255

Manana Island, 141, 251, 253, 254

Marjorie Parker, the, 42

Mark Island, 184

Mark Twain, 92, 139, 168

Marr, Harry, 20-21, 23, 24. See Harry
Marr's shipyard.

Marsh Harbor, 255, 256, 259

Marsh Island, 260

Marshall Island, 181

Marshall Point Light, 50

Mary A. f the, 62

Mason's Bay, 231, 233, 238, 239, 240,
241

Master, No Offering, 92

Master, the Tempest is Raging, 90

Matinicus Harbor, 68, 69-72, 82, 112,
113, 114, 115, 118

Matinicus Isle, 62, 64, 67, 68, 72-86,
95, 100, 101, 102, 104, no, in, 122,
123, 144, 169, 247

Matinicus Isle: Its Story and Its Peo-
ple, 85

Matinicus Rock, 68, 117, 134, 138, 186,
262

Matinicus Rock Light, 120

Mechanic, the, 85

Medamothy, 142

Megunticook, 52

Merry Widow Waltz, 89

Metinic Island, 247-251, 264

Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 48, 53, 79,

So, 113

Millay, Kathleen, 79
Millay, Mrs., 78, 79
Millay, Norma, 79
Minot's Ledge, 263
Minturn, 155-156, 163
Mitchell, Peter, 114
Moby Dick, 205
Monhegan Island, 64, 103, 117, 141,

144, 169, 192, 247, 250-254, 264
Mooseabec Bar, 221
Mooseabec Reach, 175, 217, 221, 220,

230, 236

Moose Island, 229
Moose Neck, 232, 236, 237
Morgenthau, Henry, 38
Morning Star, 14

Mount Ararat (Matinicus), 73, 74
Mount Desert Island, 9, u, 30, 41, 98,

144, 150, 151, 152, 160, 162, 163,

179, 211, 228
Mount Desert Rock, 28
Mount Desert Rock Light, 213
Muir, Mrs. Gladys, 173, 177, 204
Munchausen, 52

Murders in the Rue Morgue, The, 132
Muscle Ridge Channel, 51, 246, 247
Muscongus Bay, 24, 30, 50, 100, 247

Nantucket Shoals, 246

Narragaugus Bay, 215

Nash Island Light, 216

Naskeag Harbor, 211

National Geographic, 129

Nautilus Island, 198

No Man's Land (island), 68-69

Northeast Harbor, 13, 95, 150, 151,

210, 211
North Haven, 124, 125, 126, 127, 153

Oakley, Gilbert, 98

Oliver, Uncle Lyman, 263-264

Openshaw's Sailors' Snug Harbor, 233

Orr's Island, 48, 252

Our Director March, 89

Outer Green Island, 47

Owl's Head, 64, 65

Owl's Head Bay, 51

Owl's Head Lighthouse, 51, 127, 168

Pantagruel, 142-143
Paradise Lost, 174

INDEX

269

Parker, Rev. Edwin Pond, 92

Parker, Seth, 228

Paving Quarry, The, 58

Peary, Admiral Robert E., 47, 181

Peasley, Mrs. Alice M. ("Ma"), 21,

134, 169, 221, 229, 241
Peasley, Mat, 21
Pemaquid Light, 50, 99
Pembroke, Me., 18
Penobscot Bay, 46, 52, 53-56, 59, 60,

64, 124, 125, 136, 158, 160, 163, 181,

188, 222, 246
Penobscot River, 53, 54
Petit Manan Light, 215, 217
Philadelphia, Pa., 91
Pigeon Hill Bay, 215
Pleasant Bay, 215
Pleasant River, 237
Plymouth Cordage Co., 121
Poe, Edgar Allan, 58, 88, 132
Poland, Arthur, 33, 37, 41, 50, 51, 255
Poleresczki, Major John, 48
Pond Island, 262-263
Pond Island Light, 141, 262
Popham, 263, 264
Popham Beach, 30
Popplestone, 183
Popular Mechanics, 130
Port Clyde, 254
Port Clyde Harbor, 50, 51
Portland, Me., 3, 24, 25-27, 30, 38,

43-44, 45, 189, 252
Portland Harbor, 42, 70
Portland Head Light, 44
Portland Lightship, 45
Portrait of a Yankee Bookman, 26
Post, Mrs. Ralph, 249-250
Pot, the, 216

Pretty Marsh Harbor, 229
Pring, Martin, 153
Prior's Cove, 256, 257
Prospect Harbor, 215
Pull for the Shore, Sailor, go
Pumpkin Island Light, 196, 206

Quarries and Quarrying, 56-62, 156,

183

Queen Mary, the, 70
Quinn, Uncle Edgar, 193, 195

Rabelais, 142

Racketash, 112

Ragged Ass (Ragged Island), 112

Ragged Island, 48, 68, 76, 112, 114,

118

Ram Island Light, 50
Rand, Miss Ethel L., 133, 198, 203-

209

Reach, the, 125
Reader's Digest, 129
Rebecca Douglas, the, 211
Red Jacket, the, 61
Robinson, Alva, 184-185, 186, 190
Robinson, Mrs. Alva, 186, 190
Robinson, Rachel, 186, 190
Rochambeau, General, 48
Rockland, Me., 24, 30, 51, 52, 53, 54,

60-62, 63, 64, 65, 72, 92, 157, 160,

164, 246, 264

Rockland Courier "Gazette, 137
Rockland Harbor, 51, 62, 64, 70, 168
Rock of Ages, 104
Rockport, Me., 54, 65
Roque Island, 221
Round Pond, 30, 38, 254
Royal Tar, the, 188, 189, 190

Saddleback Ledge, 188

Saddleback Light, 134, 136, 188

St. Croix River, 30

St. Helena, 182

St. John, N. B., 188, 189

St. Pelagie, 154

Sally Prude, 183

Sally's Cove, 197, 198, 203

Santiago, no

Samoset Hotel, 52

Sargent, Rev. Arthur H., 132, 191, 192,

iQ5i 230, 231-240, 247, 253, 254
Sargent, Lennox, 98
Sargentville, 198
Saturday Evening Post, 235
Schoodic Harbor, 215
Schoodic Island, 215
Schoodic Point, 215, 217
Schooner Head, 214
Scott's Landing, 209, 210
Seal Island, 68, 102, 103, 105, 107-

iii, H3

Seal Isknd Light, 225
Seal Rocks, 220

Seguin (island), 38, 138, 261, 262, 264
Seguin Light, 48, 264
Seven Years' War, 4
Shabby Island, 183
Shee, Archer, 188

270

Sheepscot River, 261

Ship's Harbor, 211

Shipstern Island, 215

Silent Night, 231

Singer, F. E., 251-253

Skinner, Captain Isaiah, 199-200

Smith, Joe, 259

Snow, Wilbert, 58, 91, 92, 121

Sparrow Island, 183

South Gouldsboro, 243, 244

Southwest Harbor, 98

Spouting Horns, 152-153

Southey's Life of Nelson, 131

Sprucehead (island), 57> 58, MI
247

Squeaker Guzzle, in

Stars of a Summer Night, 89

Steamboat Disasters, 190

Stonington, Me., 52, 183, 205, 206

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 48

Strachey, Lytton, 249

Sullivan, Maurice, 144

Sunbeam, the, 14, 15, 21, 23, 28, 30,
31, 32-40, 42, 44, 45, 48, 52, 53i 62 >
64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 76, 84, 89, 94>
98, 99, 120, 123-124, 126, 127, 130 ff.,
137 ff., 146, 150 ff., 160, 183, 185,
190 ff., 199 ff., 210-215, 218-219,

222, 227, 228, 242, 245, 259, 260,
264

Sun-Wu Stories, 127
Sutton Island, 152
Swan, Colonel James, 153-153
Swan's Island, 149, 152, 153, 155-170,
I75> 181

Teel, Raymond, 169-170

Teel, Miss Saphronia, 167-169

Tennyson, Alfred, 14

Ten Pound Island, 68, 76

Thomaston, Me., 117

Thompson, Francis, u

Thorndike, Joshua, 250

Throw Out the Life Line, 90, 91-92

TiUson's Wharf, 62

Tiny Tim, 6

Tit Manan, 215

Torry Islands, 210

Triborough Bridge, N. Y., 56

INDEX

Twitchell, Rev. Joseph, 92
Two Bush Island Light, 63, 65

Uffprd, Rev. Edward S., 91, 92
United States Coast Guard Service,

145-148
United States Coast Pilot, 53

Varney, Mrs. Laura J., 80, Si, 123

Verna G., the, 217

Vinal, Harold, 125

Vinalhaven (Island), 59, 124, 125, 153,

217
Vineyard Haven, 246

Waldo, Samuel, 60

Waldoboro, Me., 99

Wallace, Edgar, 58

Warner, Charles Dudley, 92

Wass, Henry, 235, 236

Waterville, Me., 204

Webber Island, 113

Western Way, the, 152

West Gouldsboro, 242, 243, 244

West Quoddy Head Light, 214

Whitehead (Island), 47, 51, 53, 92,

120, 247

Whitehead Light, 247
Whitehead Passage, 45
William IV, 188, 189
Winslow, Homer, 239
Winter Harbor, 241, 242, 243, 244
Wiscasset, Me., 18
Wodehouse P. G., 240
Wooden Ball (island), 68
Wye, Miss Mildred, 165-167, 176-180

York Narrows, 211

Young, Bradford, 104, 105, 106, 107,

108, no

Young, Horace, 74
Young, Judson, 78
Young, Mrs. Judson, 78, 79
Young, Captain Leon Linwood, 82-83
Young, Mrs. Marion, 77, 78
Young, Max, 113, 114, 122
Young family, 72-73, 113
Young house, 77-78
Young, Mrs., 149