Festival ahoy! Bowdoin sails into Bangor to celebrate maritime history

ABOARD THE BOWDOIN – The sails were hoisted just outside Castine Harbor. “All together: Heave!” called out Chief Mate Billy Sabatini. Up, up, up the mainsail rose, and the schooner Bowdoin began her cruise Thursday from the small Revolutionary-era village to Bangor.

As a training vessel for Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, the Bowdoin typically makes excursions northward. Earlier this week, she returned from Nova Scotia where, in colder climates, her ice-breaking capabilities were employed by the renowned skipper and explorer Admiral Donald MacMillan.

This weekend, the 88-foot gaff-rigged schooner will be docked at the Bangor Waterfront as part of a celebration of Maine’s maritime history at the 66th National Folk Festival. Festival-goers will be permitted onboard to learn about the ship’s history and the academy and to make donations to a scholarship fund and the craft’s upkeep.

The Bowdoin hasn’t been in Bangor since 1989, just a little over 100 years after Bangor was the lumber capital of the world and one of New England’s busiest shipping ports.

While the journey from Castine to Bangor on the Penobscot River is both prehistoric and historic – American Indians used it as a thoroughfare by canoe, and American revolutionaries, including Paul Revere, scuttled their ships along its shores during the Penobscot Expedition in 1779 – the Bowdoin made another kind of history on Thursday.

“This is absolutely the first time a ship has been a part of the National Folk Festival,” said Joe Wilson, executive director of the National Council for the Traditional Arts, which produces the event. “I love having a big ship in town for the National Folk Festival. We’ve never done anything like this, and I’m excited by its presence on the river.”

The Bowdoin reached the mouth of the Penobscot, near Fort Point in Stockton Springs, swiftly through choppy waters. Once out of the bay, the winds calmed, and Captain John Worth ordered the sails lowered. At a peaceful pace – between six and seven knots using the engine – the ship moved regally onward, along the towns and coves, the summer homes and speedboats.

“The Penobscot is said to be like the Rhine in Europe – with all the twists and turns and the beauty of the trees,” said Jon Johansen, a guest on the ship and editor at Maine Coastal News.

As the water rhythmically clapped against the boat, Bill Abbott, a former river pilot from Belfast, offered another version of the waterway, one that had more to do with commerce and moxie. At 81, he has made the trip from Fort Point to Bangor more than 2,000 times. One year, he made the trip 140 times. He spent Thursday’s voyage regaling the crew and others onboard with tales from river life, including overnights in Bangor where he saw women wrestlers at the old City Hall and the great winter of 1934, when you could drive from Belfast to Castine on the ice covering the bay.

Where others saw stacks of wood on the riverbanks, Abbott saw leftover cribbing for old icehouses. Where others saw piles of rocks, he saw a series of docks. Outside Bucksport, Abbott pointed to the shoreline. “That’s the old ferry house,” he said. “It used to have a bell, and someone told me it was still there.” Hoping to spot it, he scanned the shore.

That’s where Worth, who has been the ship’s captain for nearly two years, shot off a 12-gauge salute cannon as the Bowdoin motored past Fort Knox. Visitors at the historic fort stopped at the sound of the loud blast – a blank fired into the air. Worth smiled.

“I find this to be the most beautiful waterway, no matter what you’re doing on it,” he said. “I look at it historically, and that’s what is so enticing – the tall ships built here, the Penobscot Expedition, the men who know the river like Captain Abbott. But I also think of it as a great marine highway. The Penobscot River is what makes us different from some town in Iowa.”

Worth, who used to captain one of Maine’s historic windjammers, has sailed the waters of Maine for many years. But Sabatini, who is 22, is just starting his career as a seaman.

“This is really cool,” said Sabatini, a student at MMA who has been sailing since he was in his teens. “To come up this river really means something to me because of all the working schooners that used to come up this river. I definitely feel a connection to history. But I feel connected to the elements, too. The feeling of using nature to propel yourself where you want to go is so much more invigorating than pushing a button.”

The only button pushed yesterday was the horn, which Worth used to salute towns and Abbott’s old haunts along the way. Shortly after the horn sounded in Winterport, two bald eagles, one with an eel in its talons, flew overhead in a rich blue sky.

“It’s a diamond day,” said Worth, as the sun blazed off the water.

It’s a diamond history, too, of Maine waterways and boating industries, aspects of the state’s cultural history that organizers of the Folk Festival have featured this year in boat-building, sail-making and canoe-making demonstrations. Several craftsmen from the boat-building industry will be on hand, including Ralph Stanley, a National Heritage Fellow from Southwest Harbor, who will moor his boat Seven Sisters in Bangor over the weekend.

“This is important to our regional culture,” said Pauleena MacDougall, associate director of the University of Maine Folklife Center and director of the festival’s folk and traditional arts displays. “Boat building is a natural here with the woods and water. But from the beginning of time, Maine has been an area for fishing. And there were always marine enterprises here. At the festival, people can see how inventive and creative these boat builders are, but they can also see the artistic skills involved in the process.”

Back on the Bowdoin, it may have been less art than craft – or craftiness – when Abbott looked up skeptically at the 66-foot mast as the ship approached Veterans Memorial Bridge, the most southerly of three bridges that span Bangor and Brewer. She had been on the water for five hours since leaving Castine.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know,” he said, pretending to calculate by eye if the mast would fit under the bridge. Both Worth and Sabatini gazed skyward, their eyes tightening with sudden doubt. They had, of course, verified that the ship would fit below the bridge, but they hadn’t counted on Abbott’s authoritative tone. Their momentary panic was a sign of the respect each holds for the experience of their elder.

The Bowdoin slipped easily beneath the bridge, and Worth looked at Abbott, who smiled. It was the mischievous grin of a feisty old salt, the likes of whom have made the same journey for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.