At age 14 and alone, Buzz rented a skiff in Boothbay Harbor and got his first taste of salt water. The year was 1931 and the all-day rental cost him only 50 cents. That day in that skiff changed his life.
In his words:
I inspected my first command. Laird stood stiff-legged, with water over his paws. I fixed him a placeto lie down, then bailed out the water and watched the village drift by. I was lost in contentment in a world all my own. There were noises onshore—of gears clashing and children calling, and there was hammering up on a hill—but none of this had a thing to do with me. I was off on the path to the ocean, and when I lay down along the bottom all I could see were the clouds and the clean lined curve of the boards as they swept from bow to stem. We drifted. The wind was laden with salt and pine, and I knew if I just lay still I’d go drifting right out to the ocean.
. . . sign up to the right to get immediate access to this full post,
plus you'll get 10 of our best videos for free.
Get Free Videos& Learn More Join Now!!for Full Access Members Sign In
[email protected] says:
Yes, Maynard, what is it about the wooden vessels of the past that can still change a young man’s life in an afternoon? I remember several such schooners abandoned in Maine’s backwaters, now mostly vanished but, strangely, not forgotten. They reached out to boys like me, called to us with some kind of message we knew we were wanting and not getting. Independence, ingenuity, risk and reward nurtured by God-centric family-community-nation and a uniquely masculine sense of order and discipline are once-valued concepts that come to mind. These ghost-like vessels of a time-just-out-of-reach, call to us from a place of organic Yankee excellence, now at low ebb. But these low-tech wooden vessels, able to be built locally and sailed globally, remain the archetypal images of what it means to be a free man. Archetypes are cast in the timeless stone of the collective unconscious. Their representations, the archetypal image, will continue to change young men’s lives in times to come, as they have in the past. Thank you for helping to keep them in sight!
David Tew says:
Is that you, Lance Lee? ;)
David Tew says:
Sterling Hayden and my wife’s Uncle Charles were best of friends in the thirties when both were youngsters. He had stories about their adventures that were great. For quite a while there were a number of mothballed three masted schooners at anchor in West Boothbay Harbor. Some where in some photo album we’ve got a photo Charlie took from up one of the schooner’s masts. I believe he and Sterling went west together at some point in their twenties, perhaps when Sterling first started acting.
David Tew says:
The schooners at anchor were four-masted and I’ve often wondered what happened to them in the end.
Sean Colby says:
The schooners in Mill Cove rotted away and sank in the harbor. Parts of the vessels were above the high water mark in my youth in the 70s and I did step on the deck of one of them a few times. Some fool flung a sparkler aboard during the fourth of July probably early 80s and she burned. The bones are still visible. Can still see them on google earth.
David Tew says:
The schooners I was referring to (in my first post) were others of that era rafted alongside each other lying to anchors in West Boothbay Harbor, four of them abreast. The ones in Mill Cove are different ones, those described by Hayden and shown in the photos.
David Tew says:
Here’s a photo from the thirities that show (at top) several derelict/mothballed schooners at anchor in West Boothbay Harbor: https://www.mainememory.net/artifact/98554
Bill Page says:
Absolutely wonderful Maynard, – written so beautifully. Much of this story I did not know.
Thank you for your always very interesting and outstanding work. Bill Page
David Tew says:
Hear hear!
carl prestipino says:
What a wonderful, descriptive writer Sterling Hayden was; and I’m looking forward to reading his books. Thanks!
James Arthur says:
Thanks for this Maynard, never read Hayden before, will remedy that sad fact promptly!
Peter Gossell says:
What a great piece. Thanks Maynard, I may have to read Wanderer yet again for the I don’t know how manyeth time. It is one of my treasured books.
Nat Wilson says:
I have watched the remains of the HOUCk settle into the mud over many years. The burned off remains of the other could still be seen at low tide. Some time ago Alice Larkin, a local citizen visited my loft and handed me a oak fid that she had taken off one of these same schooners. I hung it on my wall in the loft
where it still is. Buzz talks in his book about his visits to a sailmaker in the Harbor who’s name eludes me now. His loft was in the old trading post building. When Buzz managed to run off to sea he picked one of the finest Alden schooners ever built, PURITAN. Some fifty years later I had the pleasure to build many sails for her over a ten year, or more period. Thank’s Maynard for presenting his story again.