Working Waterfront

The shameful history of a ‘notorious’ slave ship captain

[caption id="attachment_35121" align="alignnone" width="700"] A newspaper report on a slave ship arriving in Kittery.[/caption] Maine has a proud history of seafaring captains who braved the open ocean in pursuit of trade and fish. Capt. Frederick Drinkwater is not one of them. Drinkwater, according to research completed and presented by Kate… SEE MORE

Hoa (Flower) Truong, left, and Hoa Le prepare food.

Working Waterfront

Vietnamese street food meets Maine seafood in Brunswick

At Fishermen’s Net Seafood Restaurant & Market in Brunswick, the new owners are infusing the flavors of Vietnam in their cuisine with Bánh Mì, a traditional Vietnamese sandwich. Co-owner Hoa (Flower) Truong, 30, purchased Fishermen’s Net on Forest Avenue in Portland in 2018 with her cousin, Quang Nguyen, 33, who… SEE MORE

The Sedna, a J/46 underway near Gloucester, Mass. Brien delivered the boat from Darien, Conn., to South Freeport in 2020.

Working Waterfront

From here to there— Adventures of a yacht delivery skipper

It’s early October, still hurricane season, and Cam Brien, a professional yacht delivery captain, among other nautical gigs, is sailing a brand new 39-foot sailboat across Frying Pan Shoals, 15 miles off Cape Fear on the North Carolina coast, headed for the Annapolis Boat Show. Brien had flown from his… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Childhood by neighborhoods and houses

On Nov. 14, 1948, Mom, Dad—the man she’d married in Massachusetts four years earlier and who’d just been discharged from the army after a grueling couple of years in Germany—four-year-old me, and my two-year-old brother, moved back to her island home on Vinalhaven. We moved into a second story downtown… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Listening to the landscape

Notes on the Landscape of Home By Susan Hand Shetterly, Down East Books Notes on the Landscape of Home confirms Susan Hand Shetterly’s status as one of Maine’s and this country’s finest environmental writers. Like Terry Tempest Williams, who lives nearby on the Blue Hill peninsula, Shetterly weaves personal life… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Tasty memories from Kirstie’s kitchen

In all likelihood, Kirstie Alley was the only hostess in Dark Harbor who had a container in her kitchen of silicone worms, spiders, centipedes, and creepy crawlers with which she or her cooks could garnish platters of food. We sprinkled them in salads, and they crawled along the edges of… SEE MORE

Grindle Point Lighthouse in the fog. FILE PHOTO: TOM GROENING

Working Waterfront

Holding history: Archiving Islesboro past

Reflections is written by Island Fellows, recent college grads who do community service work on Maine islands and in coastal communities through the Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront. By Olivia Lenfestey Mostly, my days on Islesboro are filled with the kind of intangible busyness distinctive to life on… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Stormy times on the island home front

Two weeks before Christmas I came home from a weekend spent in Cape Elizabeth with two of our grandchildren. The next day, Bruce started to have a bad sore throat and cough. A number of others on the island were sick with the same symptoms. We heard it was bad… SEE MORE

The counter at Calderwood Hall. PHOTO: COURTESY CALDERWOOD HALL

Working Waterfront

North Haven’s Calderwood Hall evolves

It started with an email with the subject line, “This is a crazy idea.” Fortunately, Liz Lovell, the 38-year-old manager of the North Haven Brewing Company, likes crazy. Lovell and brewers Ben Lovell, her brother, and Jesse Davisson will be leasing and operating the first-floor restaurant space of North Haven’s… SEE MORE

The late Capt. David Allen photographed aboard the Sunbeam at Northeast Harbor.

Working Waterfront

Remembering Capt. David Allen

Starting in 1971, Capt. David Allen made thousands of trips visiting islands along the Maine coast, first aboard the Maine Seacoast Mission’s Sunbeam IV and later the Sunbeam V. David and his wife Betty, who joined him aboard the Sunbeam as the steward in 1978, were the personification of the… SEE MORE