CHOWDER CRACKERS ALERT

Nabisco’s Crown Pilot crackers seem to be in danger once more. Mainers who love to crush the oblong crackers into their chowder may have to rush to the defense again, as they did 11 years ago.

Sandra Oliver sounded an alert to this new threat in the April issue of the free newspaper Working Waterfront/Inter-Island News. She included a history of the locally famous cracker and an account of the successful campaign in 1997.

Ms. Oliver got onto the latest twist to the Crown Pilot saga a few months ago when a food writer for a national magazine interviewed her about how to make a real chowder. She described the “hardtack tradition,” how you layer Crown Pilots in with the fish and potatoes.

The magazine writer called Nabisco and asked how to obtain the crackers. Ms. Oliver went on: “The Nabisco person called back, pleading with the food writer not to mention the cracker saying that they really did not want to promote the cracker at all. The writer called me up. ‘Those villains at Nabisco want to do that cracker in,’ she said.”

Ms. Oliver says Nabisco acquired the cracker recipe from a small bakery in Newburyport, Mass., which had started making the crackers for seafarers in 1792. Nabisco dropped Crown Pilot in 1996 along with 400 other products and Donna Damon of Chebeague Island broke the story in Working Waterfront. Outraged customers began complaining to the company. The campaign spread throughout New England and soon involved Maine humorist Tim Sample and CBS radio’s Charles Osgood.

Nabisco saw that it could get some good publicity out of the flap. It started production again, shipped cases of Crown Pilots by ferryboat from Boston to Portland where they were unloaded at DeMillo’s floating restaurant with plenty of television coverage, served chowder to a crowd, handed out free samples, and gave $1,000 checks to some coastal historical societies.

Since then, Kraft Foods has acquired Nabisco. Kraft spokesperson Laurie Guzzinati says she may be the one who talked with the magazine food writer. But she explains the conversation somewhat differently. She describes Crown Pilot crackers as a “very regional small product within our portfolio.”

But Ms. Guzzinati won’t say how long Crown Pilots will be manufactured or how its sales are doing. Kraft’s Web site includes hundreds of recipes but makes no mention of Crown Pilots.

If that sounds ominous, the thing to do is eat a lot of Crown Pilots, teach your kids to eat them, and nag the groceries and supermarkets to keep stocking them.

If all else fails, we may have to crank up another big campaign like the one 11 years ago.