As we wound our way along the coast of the north Atlantic in Iceland we came across a boat yard. There was no gate and it was a Saturday and they were not working, so I drove in. Huge modern boats sitting on dry land, steel ships being built, repaired, renewed. Then there in shadow I noticed a handful of old- some very old wood boats in various states of decay and repair. We are over a thousand miles from the kind of trees that it would take to build a boat like this and here it is, on it's side in the breakers yard. Someone hearty souls, men of iron, built it and sailed it here to this island in the middle of the far north Atlantic. The bards sing about iron men and wooden boats, thinking about what it takes for this boat to be here, I know what they mean.
I worked in summer theater for 2 seasons in Brunswick Maine. We use to go on our days off up to Wiscasset Maine(as I had a friend working at the theater who was from this area)as I loved old wooden ships. While in Wiscasset we would go to see the rotting Schooners, the Hesper and the Luther Little. By the 1980's they were quite decayed but still recognizable as four-masted schooners. Locals were trying to raise money to restore them but by that time it was a lost cause.
ReplyDeleteThere is a website someone made to celebrate those last big schooners of Maine....
http://www.hazegray.org/features/schooners/