A century ago, thriving port began to wane

Bangor was still a busy port a century ago, although much reduced from those fabled days when you could hop across the Penobscot River from the Queen City to Brewer on the decks of seagoing vessels. Bangoreans still looked to both the woods and the sea for their livelihood. They were as familiar with oceangoing barks and barkentines as they were with riverine bateaux.

The shipping news remained an important column in the newspapers. Consider this report from the Bangor Daily News on Oct. 23, 1907: “Business was fairly good in port on Tuesday. The arrivals included the schooner Chas. Davenport from Philadelphia with coal for the Maine Central, the Pemaquid from Rockland with salt for Alfred Jones’ Sons and the light schooners Maggie Ellen from Hallowell, Chas. W. Alcott from Bath, Atlanta from Rockland, Telmah from Bucksport and the Rosa E. and Henry Chase for bay points.

“Clearances were the Joseph B. Thomas, light from Newport News, Edward H. Blake for Philadelphia with lumber from Sterns Lumber Co.; A.F. Kindberg, New York, Eastern Mfg. Co.; Irene E. Meservey, New York, Eastern Mfg. Co.; Lottie Beard, Port Chester, Sargent Lumber Co.; Rosa Muller, Bridgeport, Sterns Lumber Co.; Sarah A. Blaisdell, Boston, Smith Planing Mill Co.; and the C. Taylor 3rd for Camden.” Old salts no doubt read these dry enumerations of comings and goings eagerly, while a few small boys planned whole careers before the mast based on imagined romance.

When bigger news occurred, such as a shipwreck, the papers provided more space, often on Page 1. One such event a century ago was the mysterious disappearance of the Arthur Sewall, a four-masted steel bark built in 1899 by Arthur Sewall & Co. of Bath. The Sewall had left Philadelphia with a cargo of coal for Seattle in early April. A wreck spotted near Tierra del Fuego was reported to be that of the Sewall, and for a time it was believed the crew had been captured by “cannibals of the fiercest kind,” said the Bangor Daily Commercial on Nov. 1. This account turned out to be false, but the Sewall was never seen again.

Some of these shipwreck stories dragged on for months, if not years, with reports of possible sightings and theories of what might have happened to the vessels and their crews. Maine connections often were reported. Not only was the Arthur Sewall a Maine-built ship, but its captain, Burton Gaffrey, was from Calais, reported the Commercial. Sometimes a Queen City connection was to be had, as when a “Bangor boy” became the center of the Arthur Sewall story for a moment.

“BANGOR BOY ONCE SAILED IN THE SHIP ARTHUR SEWALL” trumpeted a large headline in the Commercial on Nov. 4. “Home Influences Coaxed Harold Eaton Out of the Big Ship That Has Met Disaster.” An adventuresome lad, Harold G. Eaton achieved the rank of second mate sailing on the Sewall for nearly three years, transporting oil and lumber to Shanghai and sugar from Honolulu. He survived a hurricane, saw men fall from the masts and washed overboard and was injured himself during a fierce storm.

He might have shared whatever fate befell the Sewall, but for the interposition of his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Fred G. Eaton, reported the newspaper. Harold would have remained on board “but for the urgent pleadings to come home and take up some other and less hazardous calling.”

So at age 24, while the Sewall’s fate was being pondered, young Eaton was employed safely at Wood & Bishop Co., the famous Bangor stove manufacturer. “[B]esides having good prospects for success in his new calling [he] has the satisfaction of knowing when he ‘turns in’ at night that he won’t be called in the middle of his ‘watch below,’ and that he will find everything shipshape and Bristol fashion in the morning,” wrote the reporter, demonstrating that he was no beginner when it came to nautical terminology.

But how satisfied was young Harold? I was going to end this column by stating that Eaton’s career symbolized the direction that Bangor was taking then – away from both the sea and the woods as the Queen City’s service sector grew to meet the demands of northeastern Maine. But, alas, I looked up his obituary and discovered that the boy’s thirst for adventure had not been satisfied by a clerk’s job in a stove factory.

“Hampden Man Dies When His Ship Is Torpedoed,” read a front-page headline in the Bangor Daily News on July 21, 1942. “Capt. Harold Eaton was Commander of Large Merchantman.” The ship had been attacked by a German submarine 150 miles south of the Bermudas the previous month after returning from the Persian Gulf. About half the crew survived, helped to their rafts and given food and water by the Germans. Capt. Eaton went down with his vessel. His obituary told how he had spent practically his entire adult life at sea, sailing around the world 40 times and making innumerable trips to the Orient, some of them on the square-rigged Arthur Sewall.

The lure of a job with Wood & Bishop apparently didn’t last long. Young Eaton had saltwater in his veins. The seagoing ships eventually deserted Bangor, but at least a few Bangor boys – and men from many other Maine towns and cities – have never deserted the sea.

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net. Thanks to the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath for information on the fate of the Arthur Sewall.