Saving the Bowdoin

Maine’s official sailing vessel, the schooner Bowdoin, suddenly faces an uncertain future. Word is circulating in and around Castine that the Maine Maritime Academy has decided to get rid of the fine historic vessel, a veteran Arctic research ship and for 11 years a training ship for the academy.

Not true, says the academy president, Leonard H. Tyler. At least, not quite true and not true just yet.

The fact of the matter, he says, is that present financing of the Bowdoin is unsatisfactory and rosy hopes of a $3 million endowment seem to have evaporated, at least for the present. A wealthy donor, who has pledged $500,000 of his own funds, has failed to persuade the five associates whom he hoped would make up the $3 million total, says Tyler.

A statement circulated by “Friends of the Schooner Bowdoin” says that Tyler has told the captain of a plan to cease operation of the vessel at the close of this season. “Effective this November, the vessel’s regular crew would be dismissed, to be replaced in the spring by a part-time shipkeeper who would ready the vessel for display as a stationary exhibit at an undetermined location.”

Tyler says he merely spoke of the plan as one possibility. He says the matter is still under discussion and he hopes to issue a public statement by mid-October on the future of the ship. A special committee of the board of trustees has complained that the “commercial function” of the Bowdoin – paid charter cruises for much of the summer – outweighs its academic use.

True enough, says Andy Chase, former skipper of the Bowdoin and now a member of the academy faculty, but he blames the situation on an academy policy decision that the vessel must offset most of its expenses. After three years as almost entirely a training ship, it gradually became a charter vessel, so that only a few weekends in the fall were available for student use: “The requirements placed on the vessel by administrative decisions guarantee that commercial options will take precedence over educational opportunities.”

Chase objects, also, to the trustees’ plan for a quick change: “An endowment certainly is the answer. However, to expect endowment donors to be drawn in to fund a vessel that has been idled by lack of institutional support is going to be very difficult.” He says at least a year should be allowed for raising an endowment.

In the meantime, Friends of the Schooner Bowdoin object to the trustees plan to lay off the crew and rely on hired maintenance: “Designed to survive an arctic winter, Bowdoin is among the strongest wooden vessels ever built. However, no ship can resist the slow deterioration of disuse, a force that has nearly been this vessel’s undoing at least twice in her history.”

Cost-effectiveness is one thing. Keeping the Bowdoin in operation as a symbol of Maine’s heritage and as a training facility for the Academy may be something else. Let’s hope both aims can be accomplished.