SEARSPORT – While working in the library at the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport I was introduced to Robert Quinn, a resident of Camden and Eagle Island for more than eight decades. Like many of our older residents he had lived at a time that for most has either been forgotten or never known. Fortunately, he was more than willing to sit down and tell me what life was like for him on Penobscot Bay.
The first Quinn on Eagle Island was Samuel, who was married to Lucy Carver, arrived there after the War of 1812. Bob added, “I think that mostly means he walked to Canada and back.” They had 13 children and it is interesting to note that Samuel did not buy the island until 1844. He purchased it from John C. Gray for $1,500. John came to own the island in the 1820s when he obtained it from his father, William, a Boston merchant. John had sold one six-acre lot on the northeast corner to the United States government for a lighthouse in 1837 and two years later the lighthouse was functional.
When Samuel arrived on the island their main occupation was farming, both vegetable and sheep, with some fishing.
Butter Island is just above Eagle Island and in the late 1700s was owned by John Lee of Castine. This was also operated as a farm. William Gray was the next owner, who in turn sold it the Witherspoon family in the mid-1800s. John Witherspoon was the first family settler on the island and the family records say that he obtained the island from General Knox, who he was working for. The family continued operating a farm there, but later on would house vacationing tourist. Bob continued, “The Witherspoons lived there for 100 years. When the family left Butter Island, they moved to Sea Street in Camden just three houses from where my father moved to.”
Bob’s father was Erland who was born in Penobscot in 1901 and lived on Eagle Island until he moved to Camden on 4 December 1941. Most anyone that had been around Camden, a number of years ago, would know Cappy’s Chowder House, which was right in the center of town. This was Erland’s nickname and the Chowder House was named for him. Bob said, “My father worked with his parents. What they did was a spinoff from what they did on Butter Island. They did farm with sheep, but they also started a rusticator business for the summer people. He built a wharf and arranged to have the steamships stop there in the early 1900s. For us, our family picked up the overflow from Butter. Those people came for the summer, not just a week or two. You could get on a steamship in Boston and you’d be in Rockland in the morning. The people would then arrive on Butter Island with their steamer trunks and things.”
When asked where the town was located Bob quickly stated they never had a town per say. There is not a town office, but there is a Post Office. When the lighthouse was constructed, it added an additional family, which meant more students in the school. Bob praised the Maine Seacoast Mission for their help in building a new school around 1900 and their frequent stops to assist the islanders.
Bob was born on the 13th day of July in 1938. What he remembers of his early life on the island consisted mostly of farming. The summer rusticators had slowly disappeared with the small steamers and Bob said that this trade was mostly associated with his father’s generation. Several of the summer people talked his grandfather into selling some of his property to them for summer homes. Andy Gove of Stonington was a resident of Eagle Island when he was growing up. He was Bob’s brother’s age and even went to school there, before going to school at Stonington. However, when Bob’s father moved off the island they went to school in Camden and their father worked at the shipyard during World War II. Bob knew that his father would take the newly built vessels out on sea trials, but did not remember what else he did at the yard. Erland’s brother Lou had moved to the mainland before Erland and was on the building crew at the shipyard in Camden. Erland lived on Sea Street right above the yard and Lou lived over on the west side of the harbor. The family lived there on Sea Street even after the war, but would return to the island for the summers.
Erland had a typical Maine lobster boat called the CURIO, which was about 36-feet and built to the westward. Bob thought she might have come from Friendship.
Bob graduated from high school in 1956 and added, “When I graduated from high school and I got my diploma I walked right down to the public landing on the other side of the harbor and got aboard a herring pumper, BOBAIR. She was owned by my father’s cousin, Clarence Howard, he also lived in Camden at that time.”
They fished for herring scales around Penobscot Bay. With a six or eight-inch hose they would pump out the herring from stop twine set or a weir. We used to pump fish for Edgar Post of Spruce Head. My father’s younger brother was running one of the boats, Carl Bonnie Quinn, but he always went by just Bonnie Quinn. He had a knack for writing poems. He wrote a few songs and I did record those a few years ago.”
Bob’s time on the pumper was interrupted by Uncle Sam, when he was drafted into the U. S. Army in 1961. He said, “I joined with both feet braced and pushing back hard, but that didn’t matter. I went to basic in Fort Dix, New Jersey and they offered me, when you are young, foolish you don’t know anything so you believe stuff. They said you take these tests if you get good scores you could go to school in Fort Gordon, Georgia for radio and radar repair. If you want to sign up for that you’ll guarantee that school but you got to re-enlist for another year. I did that and the reason was radio telephones had just come on and then radar was all of the sudden on these carriers. If something happened, you blew a fuse or a tube, there was only two places to go to get it repaired, Portland or Bar Harbor. I thought I might be able to do something with that when I got out. When I got there guess what? ‘Oh, that is all filled up. Take this radio operator school.’ I graduated for that and the other thing they had me put up antennas.”
After graduating he had a choice as to where he wanted to go, and he picked Alaska. They gave him a ticket to Seattle, and that is where he ended up for several months changing tires on pickup trucks. Then he got new order and thought now he was going to Alaska, no, he ended up in Darmstadt, Germany. He was working in a radio relay company. He added, “We did communications for an artillery company down in a valley. We would go to a hill someplace, set your antennas up and point them towards the tanks in the valley. The other one we point towards headquarters in Berlin and that was it. I got out of there as quick as I could because they never gave me what I signed that extra year for. I filed papers for a hardship discharge and it came through approved. I had a ticket to Bremerhaven, back on the ship and then home. I went in December and it was April before I got home so they nipped for a few extra months.”
The same year Bob got out of the service he got married to Helene at Christmas. Bob added, “She grew up on a dairy farm in Warren, but she is a niece to Clarence Howard.”
Upon his return he went right back scaling. This time he was with his father, who was the captain on HIPPOCAMPUS. She was built as a yacht for the Porter family of Great Spruce Head. During the first world war she was taken over by the government and following the war was returned to the Porter family. Of course, she had been altered for military use, but had not been changed her back. One of the changes was adding cement to the bilge to stop her from rolling, however this changed made her slow. The Porters did not like that so they ordered a new and larger HIPPOCAMPUS, which was operated by Erland for a time. Bob added, “When she was ready my father and Mr. Porter went to Connecticut to get her. Mr. Porter bought brand new charts for the whole length of their trip. They plotted their course and start out. They headed up Long Island Sound and they get to the end of the chart and Mr. Porter rolled it up and threw it overboard. He said, ‘We ain’t going back, we don’t need that anymore.’ In World War II she was here in Camden. Up in the head of the harbor there used to be three big red sheds and he had her hauled into the eastern most shed. My father still worked on her in the spring, rolled up the canvas and do the varnish and everything else. Never really cared for the smell of varnish. That is what it takes me back to. They were taking her to Florida and I have got some picture albums of those trips.
HIPPOCAMPUS (II) was sold by the Porters to Frank Sawyer in the 1950s and Erland remained her captain for several years.
Bob spent a couple of seasons on HIPPOCAMPUS, running her for her new owner Bud Fowler. This did not last long, maybe a couple of years. Bob continued, “After that I stayed around Stonington and I went stop twining with some of the Robbins family, Bri (Brian), his brother Steve, old man Steve and James his older brother had a seining outfit and I went with them. Old Steve had a Dodge pickup truck maybe late 40s or 50s and the back corners of the cab the windows were rounded. Steve had given up on the truck and she was out in the field down by Clam City. Jeff got his eye on that truck and hounded old Steve long enough that he sold him the truck. When he started cleaning it out, all that stuff that was up there on the dashboard, he found this big pocketknife. Somebody had given it to him as a Christmas present or something like that. Jeff took the knife back down to Clam City where Steve lived and gave the knife back to him, that brought him a lot of points. All of the sudden he wasn’t just one of these hippie kids from off someplace.”
The Robbins were fishing out a boat named FIREBALL. They also had an old Novi boat, which they kept their twine on, and she was named FIREBALL II. They would move her to a cove they were fishing in and stay on board.
Bob explained this type of fishing, saying, “Probably late March you’d get a dory painted, more than one usually, and you’d pick coves that you were going to tend. Then you’d put out a couple of bridles and anchors and leave that dory there. That was a mark claiming you were fishing that cove. It was the honor system, I guess. You might go there and somebody else already had a dory in it then you’d go to another one. Then you’d wait for the fish to get in and you would shut the whole cove off. We would anchor the seiner, that was that old wooden Novi boat they’d patched up and we kept the purse seine in it, some running twine and the rest of it would be in the dories. You’d go aboard late in the afternoon and crawl in the bunk and sleep until it got dark. Then you’d get out to go around the cove with a feeling stick. They are made so they cut through the water and you’d just reach out to the head of the boat and pull it back through the water. If there was fish, you could feel them on the stick. If you get one or two, it’s not very good, but if you get more than that, then the fish are pretty dense. I went with old man Steve and I would sit in the stern and row and he’d sit in the bow and pull. You could take a flashlight and start right beside the boat, turn that light on and drive the fish right out of the water. Then you’d go back and get your dories and take the twine ashore and tie it around a tree or something. We had outboard boat to tow the twine out and I’d be in there heaving the twine keeping your cork line and lead line separate. You’d go all the way across the cove and hopefully you had twine enough to do it. That was all night work. You’d put your pocket on and tie onto the cork line and start your twine out. If this is going across the cove then you run off and depending on how many fathoms of twine you had you’d run out for a ways and anchor it We used kegs then, but probably if there is anybody doing it now, you’d have one of them inflatable balloons. This held your corner and then you would go across another anchor off and then back to your running twine and lace that on. When it starts to come daylight, those fish want to back off and they will start to come out and of course they come to the twine and then they’ll just go along it trying to find a way to get out. With the Robbins’ outfit you’d pick your place where you’d have your pocket. Then you’d get the graveyard gear which is ballacky rocks. They’ll be round or oblong, smooth not jagged, and you drill a hole in them and put a piece of line in and drive a wedge in there to swell up behind it. You take two of those rocks and on either side where your two cork lines are laced together your pocket is going off and you’d straddle those rocks over your twine there and that will sink the floats cork line down and then fish come along they’d be over the top of the corks and they’ll turn and keep going offshore in deeper water. They’ll run out into the pocket you’ve put out. If you are real lucky you might have more fish than the pocket will hold. Then you’d haul that cork line you’d take those rocks off and you’ve got the fish in the pocket. Then the boat comes and drag the pocket up to where you get them with the pump.”
Another boat that Bob remembers was the 65-foot BURL, which was a former government boat. She was owned by Clarence Howard, who also had BOBAIR and HIPPOCAMPUS. She was purchased on the Louisiana/Texas border. Clarence did not want to make the trip down to get her so Erland went along with two other crewmembers. He headed across the Gulf of Mexico to Florida and wondered why go around when there is a canal. Now the canal was supposed to be six feet deep, but his father said it was more like 5½. He wrote in the log about kicking out a lot of mud from her stern. He finally got to the other side and hauled out and said, ‘It looked like we’d left about 6 inches of keel in Florida.”
Bob ended his fishing career with the Robbins.
The discussion turned to the boatbuilding that took place on the island. Bob said, “My father and his brother Bonnie and Clarence Howard were the boatbuilders on the island. FELIX was built by my uncle Bonnie in the boat house at Eagle Island. She was a speed boat and was named for the cartoon character. They may have built only four or five boats. LITTLE ELVA, well see ELVA was that was Clarence Howard’s mother. She was built in the late 1800s. PRISCILLA JEAN was built by Clarence Howard and Sim Davis. That is the biggest boat they built in the shop over there to Eagle. She was a 42′ powerboat. RARE AVIS was built in one of the ells of the farmhouse that sat on top of the island and then they moved her down towards the west end.”
Bob’s first boat was NERAID, which he purchased from Cecil Lunt of Frenchboro. He thought she had been built on Vinalhaven in the 1930s. Bob added that Rupert Howard, who was caretaker of Great Spruce Head, had the boat built about 1937 or ’38. He said, “When I came home from the service in the 60s, she was an old boat then. She was a nice boat. She’d got to windward and never wet the windows.”
Bob’s next boat was TM1, named for his daughter Tina Marie, and was built by one of the Polands. His present boat is a Stanley 36, named TM2, was built in the 1970s. He met Lyford Stanley, who was building a 36-foot wooden boat and this was the one that became the plug for the fiberglass mould.
After fishing Bob became caretaker of Bear Island for the Fuller family and after almost 20 years, he retired from that too. He now lives in Camden in the same house they moved to in 1941.
For those wanting to know more Bob suggested the book “A Family Island in Penobscot Bay, The Story of Eagle Island,” by John Enk. There is also some great information in the book “Islands of The Mid-Maine Coast: Blue Hill and Penobscot Bays,” by Charles B. McLane.
