From the Deck: 1938

Hugh Williams and I, aged 22, after a summer in charge of the nautical program at a co-ed summer camp and a year at college, planned a cruising program for boys. Hugh had a quite fast and able 26-foot sloop, Helen G., with no engine but three bunks. I had Dorothy, a handsome 28-foot gaff-headed sloop my father had had built with an eye to safety rather than speed. She had an engine and four bunks. We signed up five boys to teach them how to have a good time on the water in safety. They would learn practical `longshore piloting and navigation, helmsmanship, sail handling, knotting and splicing, small boat handling and whatever came up. We cruised in company and changed crews often from boat to boat. All this for $25 a week apiece.

We left New Harbor about July 1, 1938, bound east. The boys soon adapted to sleeping in bunks, eating our cooking, and sailing our boats. After a week sailing from harbor to harbor, we anchored in Webb Cove on Deer Isle off an old granite quarry inhabited only by an osprey with a nest on top of a tall derrick pole. We explored the quarry without knowing much about what we were looking at, climbed to the highest point we could reach, and came back aboard for dinner.

After dark, a seiner came in to seine up a school of alewives. The crew of the seiner were cheery, friendly fellows. One of our boys asked, “What’s an alewife?” Actually it is a kind of herring that used to run up brooks and coves (a few still do) to spawn. Salted alewives were much used for lobster bait. Many were smoked and eaten by the appreciative and discerning, as they still are. The boy was told, “An alewife is a cross between a bull bitch and a window shutter.” The connections are unclear.

The fishermen set their seine in the dark, the water glowing with the phosphorescence of the disturbed fish. With the seine pulled together, the seiner turned on a searchlight, illuminating sharply the men “drying in” the seine, forcing the fish into a smaller and smaller space. They boiled to the surface of the seine, showing silver sparks in the beam of the searchlight. The hoisting engine in the vessel banged away slowly as the dip net plunged into the seine and faster as it lifted the dip net, flashing with spray and vibrating with fish. The boys watched excitedly while Hugh and I tried to tell them what it was all about. Finally the last fish were dumped out of the seine into a dory, hatches were put on the loaded seiner, the searchlight went out, and the seiner left. As the pounding of the engine faded, we turned in.

The next day was cloudy and windless. The boys had had little exercise, so we decided to walk them to Stonington. It was low water and the flats were squishy. We hauled our peapod to firm ground, mud to the knees. When we got to Stonington, we heard that a yacht had burned in the Thorofare and drifted ashore so we walked down to investigate. There was little to see but two men sitting on the bank over the stony beach. I observed rather sententiously that fire was an ever-present danger and it was well to have a fire extinguisher handy. The smaller of the two men exploded, “Them fire extinguishers! They aren’t worth a pee-hole in the snow!” I was taken flat aback. He continued. I can’t reproduce in type his halting, explosive speech and local accent. “Goin’ down to Isle au Holt with a load of bet [bait]. She back fired and she ig nited. I seed my fire distinguisher and I put it to her. Flames went up higher than ever. I says to myself, `it’s a long way to swim ashore, Naamon, for a fell as can’t swim.’ Then I seed my draw bucket, and I says, `Now by Jesus Christ, I got you’ and I poked her out.” Silence. We were all deeply impressed by the experience we had just shared.

After a bit, I asked about the anchorage at McGlathery Island. He described it as the next place to Heaven: protected on the south by a bar and a weir which abounded in mackerel, clams plentiful for the digging, a spring of good water under a sand bank on the McGlathery side, a clean sloping ledge opposite on Round Island, and good holding ground.

Hugh and I, poring over the chart in the winter, had spotted this cove between Round and McGlathery Island and decided to try it out. Decision confirmed. The weather the next day was little different, but after further exploration of Webb Cove, we set off under power for McGlathery, Helen G. in tow, Captain Williams astern playing insulting notes on his cornet. Early in the afternoonm we anchored between Round and McGlathery Island and found it just as Naamon Hutchinson had said. A small lobster boat with a spray hood lay at anchor, but no one was in sight. All seven of us went ashore. We startled some sheep, which ran off into the woods. Some primal instinct demanded we chase them, but in vain, for we soon got entangled in thick spruce woods threaded by sheep trails with gobs of wool caught in the low branches. We abandoned the chase and followed one of the trails, bent double, for a sheep runs close to the ground. We came out on a gravelly beach. Here sat our acquaintance of yesterday, Naamon Hutchinson, a man whom he introduced as his cousin Pearl, and two cheery young women. A fire smoldered below high water mark and empty lobster shells lay scattered about. We were offered a drink of something red in a glass jug. We declined. Pearl’s lobster boat lay grounded on the beach at water’s edge. As we talked, the coming tide floated the boat and she began to drift off. Captain Hugh volunteered to swim for her. He quickly stripped to his underpants and splashed in, but he didn’t have to get wet much above his waist when he caught up with her and climbed aboard.

Lots of good advice from the shore — “Start her up,” called Pearl. Hugh had not the least idea of how to start her up, but he picked up an oar and paddled energetically. The picnic party by way of encouragement tossed beer cans to him and at him. Between catching some beer cans, dodging others, paddling and springing about the boat in his underpants, he got everyone laughing helplessly. He did get ashore and grounded the boat firmly.

Then the adults among us turned out attention to the beer cans. Pearl, perhaps anxious for distinction on his own, declared he could put his foot behind his head. General denial. But he did it. He actually got his ankle behind his neck. We marveled and applauded. But then he couldn’t get it down. He rolled around in the sand, grunting, struggling and straining. This got us laughing again, but we soon helped him and bent him back into shape.

Then we decided we had all had such a good time that we ought to memorialize the occasion in some significant way. We called an election and unanimously elected Naamon Hutchinson Mayor of McGlathery Island. The meeting adjourned and we made our way back to our boats, laughing all the way.

Roger F. Duncan is co-author of A Cruising Guide to the New England Coast, and author of Maine: A Maritime History, Dorothy Elizabeth and other books.