CRANBERRY ISLES — Wilfred Bunker, a much-loved son of Great Cranberry Island whose entrepreneurial activities provided vital services to other islanders, passed away at the age of 92 on Dec. 29.

Wilfred Bunker came from a family that was among the original settlers on both Mount Desert Island and the Cranberry Isles, going back more than two centuries. He was raised on Great Cranberry Island with four brothers and a sister.

In 1950, Bunker and Clarence Beal formed a partnership to provide commuter, mail and freight services to the Cranberry Isles from Southwest Harbor.

Beal and Bunker, Inc. grew over the next 60 years and today thrives as the only business that provides this service through the year, although mainland operation shifted in 1972 to Northeast Harbor.

Wilfred’s son, David, now heads up the business. David also grew up on Great Cranberry. Two of David’s own children have taken their places in the business: Capt. David James Bunker runs the company’s ferry, the Sea Queen and is the company’s vice president. Justin Stanley Bunker serves as deckhand.

David Bunker remembers his father’s ties to the island: “He was well-known, well-liked, a community person who helped everybody who needed any kind of help. He would stop and talk with everyone. He was a big influence on the town of Cranberry Isles over the years.”

The family’s heritage as seafarers, boat builders and fishermen on the Cranberry Isles goes back “forever — some of the first people to populate the islands,” David said.

Wilfred was never long away from the ocean. After high school, he started working with his cousin, Edgar Bunker, delivering mail and providing passenger service to the islands. He served as a merchant mariner during World War II. 

“He and Clarence had an idea to build a dock and form a business, and they did,” David said. “And it kept growing. Clarence was a lobsterman and had a lobster boat. He used the lobster boat for doing charters and fishing parties in the summer, and lobstered during the winter. My father had a boat and started running the mailboat. And it just grew.”

Beal and Bunker filled a needed niche for the Cranberry Isles, whose two inhabited islands have a combined year-round population of just over 100, but a summer influx of seasonal residents and tourists in the many hundreds. Before Beal and Bunker, residents made do with smaller boats.

On Great Cranberry, Clarence Beal had a boatbuilding enterprise going with another island resident, Eugene “Red” MacAllister. Beal and MacAllister built Beal and Bunker’s original mailboat, Island Queen, which took 49 people.

“They started out small,” David recalled. “When they built the Island Queen, people said, ‘What are you going to do with a boat that size? You’ll never fill it.’ Then, of course, we did.”

As the crowds grew, Beal and Bunker commissioned construction of bigger boats. In 1966, the partners built the ferry service’s second boat, the Sea Princess (and subsequently produced a number of boats based on the Sea Princess design). The Sea Princess can hold 75 passengers.

The Island Queen and the Sea Princess were later sold in favor of newer vessels but both have remained in local waters. The Island Queen is now part of the Cranberry Cove Boating fleet and serves as a seasonal ferry to the Cranberries from Southwest Harbor and Manset. The Sea Princess runs sightseeing trips out of Northeast Harbor.

In the meantime, one of Wilfred’s brothers, Raymond, had partnered with Ralph Ellis to form what became the famed boatbuilding company, Bunker and Ellis, in Manset. In 1972, Bunker and Ellis, with Clarence Beal helping, built Beal and Bunker’s next boat, the Sea Queen.

In 1983, Robert “Chummy” Rich, who ran his shop not far away in the coastal village of Bernard, was commissioned to build Beal and Bunker’s Double B as a backup for the mailboat and for charter service.

That year, maritime writer Arthur Layton Jr. wrote for a local newspaper about the Double B’s launching “Mrs. Wilfred Bunker cracked open a bottle of champagne across the stem of the Double B yesterday inside the boat shed of Bass Harbor Boat Corp. in Bernard and the 38-footer that many considered too finely crafted for an excursion vessel slid down the ways with precision into the waters of Bass Harbor.”

Layton quoted Wilfred Bunker: “It’s a fine boat, a very fine boat. I’m satisfied with it. Chum Rich put a lot of extra touches into it that you ordinarily wouldn’t get. He can be proud of it and I can take pride in it.”

In explaining the name “Double B,” Wilfred quipped, “Bass Harbor Boat built it. Bar Harbor Banking and Trust financed it, and if we pay for it, Beal and Bunker will own it, so it doesn’t matter who has title to it, it’s still Double B.”

A fifth boat, the Cap’n B, was built in 1991.

Wilfred was busy with civic activities as well. He was one of the founding members of the Cranberry Isles Volunteer Fire Department, served as chairman of the board of selectmen for many years, served on the school board committee for 25 years and was a member of the Rockbound Grange on Islesford, the Trenton Grange and the Mount Desert Island Lions Club.

According to the February newsletter of the Great Cranberry Island Historical Society, which is dedicated to the captain, Wilfred once proposed building a bridge between Islesford and Cranberry.

He operated the “movie boat” to the old Park Theatre in Southwest Harbor in the summer, carrying large crowds in often black, pea-soupd fog.

When lobstermen Roland Sprague and Fred Fernald of Islesford were found frozen to death in their boat after a March, 1959 gale, he and Elmer Spurling and several other islanders risked their own safety to bring back the bodies, which were found near the boat on the beach in Blue Hill Bay.

Clarence Beal died in 1990. Wilfred remained active in the business until his death, even after he moved off the island, first to Northeast Harbor and then to Trenton. He didn’t let his captain’s license lapse until he was well over 80 and, before that, he occasionally still ran the boat.

“Over the past few years, he’d drive to Northeast Harbor to make sure we were OK running the boat,” David said. He would ask if there were any errands he could run for us. “The last few years, he didn’t drive,” but Louise, his third wife, would drive him. “They would still show up in the morning,” he remembered.

Services will be held in the summer on Cranberry Island. Contributions in Wilfred’s memory may be made to Cranberry Isle Volunteer Fire Department.