A working waterfront is loosely defined as critical access to coastal waters for people engaged in commercial and recreational fishing, seafood processing, boat building, aquaculture, and other water-dependent businesses.
The accompanying photograph of the pier on Louds Island pushes that definition a bit, but it was in fact a water-dependent business with a humorous story to go with it.
One morning in 1951, photographer Kosti Ruohomaa received a call from his good friend Andrew Wyeth. The artist was very excited and said, “Jeese Christ, by god by god, we going to get the hearse, boy what a beauty out there on Louds Island, sleek dark and beautiful lines, want to come along, haven’t got much time, see you at Port Clyde in three quarters of an hour!”
Now Kosti was not a morning person, and though he thought he heard Wyeth say “hearse,” he assumed he misheard him and thought he said “nurse.”
With much huffing and puffing, the group managed to get the hearse to the pier and load it onto deck of Percy’s boat…
He responded, “OK Andy, if you are going to pick up a sleek dark nurse off an island, I will be glad to come along. By the way, how long has she been out on this deserted place?”
Andy responded, “You won’t believe it, Kosti, but ever since 1830 and in damn good shape, too!”
You can’t make this stuff up!
Once part of Bristol, Louds Island became an unincorporated territory overseen by the state. Nautical charts called it Muscongus Island, its Wabanaki name, until 1962, when it was then named Louds, reflecting the surname of its first English settler.
It was a thriving fishing and farming community in the early 1900s, with a population of 150, two stores, and scheduled steamboat service. About a mile separates the island from the mainland near Round Pond. Most of the year-round residents left the island in 1962 after the school was closed by the state.
Andy Wyeth was known to explore the many islands off Maine’s Midcoast, observing and sketching. He discovered the hearse in a building near the island’s cemetery, tracked down the owner and bought it for $25.
The challenge was getting the hearse off the island, as there was at the time just this one pier that could only be accessed by a small boat for a couple hours at high tide.
In addition to Ruohomaa, Wyeth recruited a few others to help with his quest. Lobsterman Dick Percy offered the use of his lobster boat to act as the transport carrier. Artist Bill Thon, also of Port Clyde, came to lend a hand, as did Ralph Cline, a sawmill owner and a regular model for Wyeth’s paintings.
With much huffing and puffing, the group managed to get the hearse to the pier and load it onto deck of Percy’s boat where it was then brought to and unloaded in Cushing. There they were met by Wyeth’s wife Betsy with the couple’s brand-new Lincoln Continental to tow the hearse to the Olson Farm, where it was stored for some time before being donated to the Maine State Museum. It resides there today.
While this story and the photos Kosti took to document the occasion were never published in any magazine, they are available to viewed and enjoyed in the Penobscot Marine Museum’s online database, along with 39,000 of his other photographs, contact sheets and ephemera.
The funding for this monumental task was largely provided by Linda Bean and her sister Diana. Sadly, we lost Linda earlier this year before we finished the project. While we have some more money to raise, we want to express our heartfelt thanks to Linda Bean for her support and encouragement. Making this collection available was a real gift to Maine and photography lovers everywhere.
https://penobscotmarinemuseum.org/kosti/
https://penobscotmarinemuseum.org/andrew-wyeth-collects-a-hearse/
Kevin Johnson is photo archivist at the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport.
