Castine

from Dave

Castine is an interesting place. It’s the second oldest European settlement in the US founded in either 1611 or 1612 depending upon which hysterical marker you want to believe. It has been taken, held, fought over and fortified by the Dutch, the French the British and the Americans ever since.

The Brits took it in 1779 and held on to it in 1779 until 1784 (three years after the Revolutionary War ended if memory serves). They took it back again in 1813 and hung on to it until 1814. The Americans tried to take it back in ’79, but dithered around until the Brits stomped them. If they’d pressed home their initial assault, the British general holding the place thought he’d have lost it. Paul Revere was these but is not much admired by the locals. (He may be popular in Boston, but this is Maine.)

We got up here on Saturday and spent Sunday touring the place. (Kathy whimpers “Five and a half hours of history!) In late afternoon, we noticed the Schooner Bowdoin tied up on the town dock and went over to rubberneck. Since they were provisioning and since we helped them hump the groceries down to the boat, the kindly gave us a tour of the vessel.

The Bowdoin was built in 1924 as an arctic explorer. She’s been across the Arctic Circle 26 times and hopes to find sponsorship for a 27th trip in a year or so. She’s well remembered all up and down the Labrador and in Hudson Bay by the Inuit residents there. It was a joy to see the fine old lady in such good shape since she was acquired by the Maine Maritime Academy and is being used to train future sailing ship captains. Gordon Bok wrote a fine song about her which still chokes me up when I hear it.

We set off for Buck’s Harbor on Monday and promptly came scurrying back with the high water alarm howling. Seems we’d blown an engine hose and were pumping water into the boat. The bilge pump was keeping ahead of it, but this isn’t a thing you want to sail with so we pulled into Eaton’s boatyard and a salty old gentlemen named Burkey soon found the problem. By the time it was fixed, it was too late to sail and besides, Tuesday was July 4th and Casting has a fireworks display, so we made arrangements to stay for that.

On Tuesday morning just as we were getting ready to move another jump up river to the Castine Yacht Club, an older gentleman came over and said that he used to own an Allied Seawind that looked like ours. He said his was hull #155. We told him that this WAS hull #155 and had him come come aboard and sign the logbook His name is Paul McMahon and we have his name on one of our old mainsails.

About 4:00 PM, we were sitting on Yacht Club mooring, and suddenly up the river came the Schooner Steven B. Tabor. Then out of the mist came the Victory Chimes followed by the Angelique, the Heritage, the Louis B. French, the American Eagle, the Isaac Evans, the Bowdoin and several others I didn’t recognize. There were an even dozen in all the they all rafted up in Smith’s Cove across the river to have dinner and enjoy the fireworks display set for that evening. About 8:00, the schooners unlimbered their deck gins and began firing on the town and some folks in town began returning fire with cannon of their own. In the mist, it was all very reminiscent of the 1779 battle to retake the town from the British with the American fleet pounding the British position above the town the and Brits returning fire.

About 9:00 the fireworks began and with the low ceiling, it was unlike anything I have ever seen. You’d hear a “whump” as something went up and then the clould would light up in green or blue or orange. All in all, a great time was had by all.

We Left Castine about 11:00 the next morning and sailed out into a white wall--fog.