Summerguide 2016 | view this story as a .pdf

Portland’s busiest season gets underway. Nautical news from past and present.

From Staff & Wire Reports

Summer in Maine is the perfect time to test your sea legs and admire the beautiful coastline from the ocean. Here’s what you need to know about this year’s visiting ships.

Ghost Ships

The tallest ship of them is coming to Portland this summer–just not by water. Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition will be at Portland Science Center from June 18 until mid-September, ready to transport visitors back 104 years to the greatest maritime tragedy of our age.

The story of the “unsinkable ship” is well known, but you may not have realized the Titanic also had Maine connections. A number of Acadia’s illustrious summer rusticators were among the passengers on the fateful maiden voyage.

A prominent member of the Astor clan, John Jacob IV, was traveling back from honeymoon with his pregnant 19-year-old bride, Madeleine, when fate intervened. Madeleine was rescued, but her new husband perished at sea. Devastated, Madeleine refused to talk of the tragedy for many years. She continued to visit La Selva, Astor’s cottage in Bar Harbor, during the following summers with her sister and son, John “Jakey” Astor VI. In 1916, Mrs. Astor renounced her $5 million widow’s trust ($103 million in today’s money) to marry banker William Dick, a childhood friend.

With his wife and daughter, Cushing Island resident Charles Melville Hays was also aboard the ship. During the disaster, Hays was quick to get his family into the limited lifeboats. Mac Smith, author of Mainers on the Titanic [2015], reports that his daughter, Orian Hays, “was so sure they would see [her father] again, we didn’t even kiss goodbye.” Many hours later, she offered up her straw hat to set alight and catch the attention of the rescue boat RMS Carpathia. The Hays family still owns and visits their residence on Cushing Island to this day.

A Brunswick local and Bowdoin graduate, Richard White Jr., boarded for the maiden voyage with his father, as a reward for finishing his studies early. No trace of them was found.

Cruise to Nova Scotia

Meow. I’m back (though I’m a different vessel). In current maritime news, the ferry connection between Portland and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia will be significantly speedier from June 15 onwards. Bay Ferries Ltd. plans to re-introduce a high-speed catamaran service that will allow passengers to make the crossing in just 5.5 hours. The new ferry, like her forebear named The Cat, can carry 750 passengers and 280 cars on her decks. She will replace the Nova Star service, which took nearly twice as long and saw disappointing sales during its two years of service.

Only time will tell if The Cat (one of two ships from the bankrupt Hawaii Superferries which were in turn sold to the U.S. Navy, which is leasing one to Bay Ferries and preparing the other for military service, according to Boston.com) will get the cream of Maine’s tourist trade, but with over 100,000 cruise ship visitors expected in Portland, there’s no doubt the city’s streets and waterways will be swarming this summer.

Local Sailing Adventures

After the success of last summer’s festival, Tall Ships Portland is turning its attention toward getting Maine students on the high seas this summer. In partnership with Northeast Maritime Institute, Tall Ships will offer sailing courses for students, aged between 13 to 18, aboard the traditionally crafted brigantine Fritha. She’ll will make eight separate five-day voyages over the summer break, taking groups of students across the Gulf of Maine under the power of sail.

Also visiting Portland this summer are some of last year’s favorite Tall Ships. The schooner Bowdoin, flagship of the Maine Maritime Academy, was built by the Hodgdon Brothers of East Boothbay in 1921 to survey Arctic waters. That means her timbers were built to stand up to the kind of scrapes that took down the Titanic.

Bagheera sailed in the Bermuda Race shortly after being built in 1924, and went on to a long racing career, winning the Chicago-Mackinac Race. Wendameen (1912) hosted such guests as Katherine Anne Porter and playwright Eugene O’Neill. She was sold off and left to rot during the Depression, until rescued by Captain Neal Parker,  who found her in a mudbank in the 1980s and had her restored from the keel up.