While author Virginia “Dinnie” Thorndike never dreamed of writing books about the sea, the people and boats that ply its waves have lured her for decades.

Although she only arrived in Maine in 1990, the Morrill resident comes from a boating family and spent numerous summers on the waters off Islesboro. She has written four books about the Maine coast and the boats that worked it, the most recent being “On Tugboats – Stories of Work and Life Aboard,” published this year by Down East Books.

The book provides a wealth of information about the design, building and workings of tugboats as well as a number of compelling stories about male and female tugboat captains licensed to guide ships in and out of harbors and through dangerous waters. Some stories are of people who spent decades in the tug business, others are of those who sailed the vessels for a brief time, but found the experience memorable.

The writing is crisp and accessible and the stories are gripping. Some of the stories have a Maine connection, while others focus on the role of tugs on a global scale. After all, the vessels are in use all over the world and play an integral part in moving goods from market to market.

Maritime writer and columnist Hugh Ware called Thorndike’s book the best to date on tugboats.

“Take Farley Mowat’s two classic books about tugs and double the thrill,” Ware said. “‘Dinnie’ Thorndike is a superb conveyor of real stories from those that do and did and she captured their vernacular and accents, then interwove them with hard-nosed looks at tugboating American-style.”

Ware likens Thorndike’s style to that of Pulitzer Prize-winning author John McPhee, and the Morrill author admits there is a resemblance. Like McPhee, she says she loves the thrill of grabbing a subject and covering it from all angles. She thoroughly enjoys the interview process and thrives on delving into the research and detail work needed to bring a story to life.

“You can take any subject matter and make it work if you try,” she said. “It’s all about the people, whatever they’re doing. I think you could write about anything people do and make it fun.”

Thorndike said it was her grandfather Frank C. Paine who introduced the family to Islesboro early last century. Paine was a noted Boston-based boat designer whose most famous vessel was the Gloucester Grand Banks-style schooner called the Gertrude L. Thebaud. The Gertrude L. Thebaud was the only vessel to hold its own against the heralded schooner the Bluenose. In five races, the Thebaud managed to win two, the only ship to fare that well against the legendary Canadian schooner.

“That was something nobody had ever done before,” said Thorndike. “Yachting was in my childhood. My grandfather’s influence was in the family. … My grandmother’s house was full of trophies.”

Thorndike and her husband, Phil Roberts, moved to Maine in 1990 after selling their farm in Vermont. They brought their sailboat with them and soon were cruising the coast, photographing the windjammer fleet.

“The ocean was a big appeal,” she said of her return to Maine. “At first it felt like I was going back to a place where I was. Now it feels like a place where I am.”

She became fascinated with the schooners and began looking into their history. She concluded after researching them that “once you learn about the schooners, you might as well write about them.” That decision led to her first book, “Windjammer Watching on the Coast of Maine,” published in 1992.

Though she describes herself as “basically shy,” Thorndike found it easy to talk to the schooner captains and their mates “because those guys really know and really like to talk about their boats. That’s their business.”

Of all the schooners still sailing Maine waters, the most heralded was the arctic explorer the Bowdoin. Thorndike’s second volume, “The Arctic Schooner Bowdoin,” published in 1995, focused on that vessel and its voyages because “of all the schooners, she was the one to have the most story to tell.”

Thorndike managed to locate a seaman who sailed with the Bowdoin to Labrador in 1934. He provided her with a journal kept by one crewman that proved invaluable to her story. She said the man wrote everything down, recording day-to-day activities onboard.

Thorndike used her same interviewing approach when she spoke with scores of lobster fishermen, boat designers and boat builders for her book “Maine Lobsterboats: Builders and Lobstermen Speak of Their Craft,” published in 1998.

“I just lucked into the right people,” she said. “The people who use them, the people who build them and the people who design them.”

She said taking on the tugboat project was a natural evolution from writing about lobster boats. She said she encountered many colorful and rugged individuals who build and pilot tugs. She said much of her information was obtained “word of mouth” as one person with a good story would point her toward another with a better tale to tell.

“What I’m doing is giving a picture of the industry as a whole, ” she said. “Tugboats do all kinds of different jobs and everybody likes tugboats. You look at all the children’s’ books about tugboats, it’s odd that there are not more adult books about tugboats. … I was really impressed at how welcoming everybody was, everybody said ‘come ride with us.'”

Thorndike’s next project is a book on islands. She said she has already begun her research and is looking forward to delving into the lives and lore of islanders.

“In a sense you could say a tugboat is an island. In a tugboat, you have a small group of random people living in this can,” she said. “Yet, like an island, they all are relying on one another and they all respect each other. Because if it’s not good and it’s not working, you’re not going to stay.”

Walter Griffin can be reached at 338-9546 and bdnfst@earthlink.net.