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By A. LL Higgists As a small boy, and even as a young man, is the “good old days” of East Eden, I had seen many ships of the sailing class, daily pasting in and out of Frenchman's Bay, and there would often be seen small and medium - size freighting and fishing two-masted schooners of the Trenton fishing type among the islands, by the doz ens, as in a day. Often, too, there might be noted, a “gopsgn schooner,’ “hermaphro dite brig or barque’ among them, going for their cargoes of granite at Sullivan or Franklin. The thre four, five and more masted schoon ers did not appear till about 1874. The old time wooden ships of the U. S. Navy which as I remem ber them, were of the ‘‘auxiliary”’ type, as they would be furnished with both sails and steam very of ten rendezvoused among the Por cupine Islands after the Civil War or in the 1870's and 1880's. When a mere child, I had heard father discuss the “full rigged merchant and clipper ships,’ but I had never seen one, and was most anxious to do so. One sum mers day in 1860, while I was out in my father’s mowing field, busily engaged in pulling weeds, piling rocks or perhaps digging angleworm bait for a fishing party (this field is now “Albert Mea dow’') I suddenly looked out on the water, and there was a beauti ful “full rigged ship” before me seeking an anchorage. As the wind was light, every yard of can vas was set, from the skysail to ‘the deck below, and Author W. ‘Clark Russell could and has de picted such a ship as the most ‘beautiful object of any that was ever floated by man. I heard my father say that the “ship was under the British flag, sand the name I never learned, as sshe did not lay in the East Eden ‘Harbor long enough for the crew to “crew up.” Coming up the coast from a southern port, they had been blown off their course, their captain had died, and they had found their way into this sport, to give him a true Christian furial, and not consign his body rto the restless waves, as is so often the ‘case, buried among strangers, with no nearby friends, yet the remains are there deposited, closely be tween two beautiful churches, and in what has always been known as a Christian Community, ever since it was first known as the little hamlet of East Eden, and such a splendid ‘‘last resting place,” I do not think often falls to the lot of master mariners or other sea going men in general, at the end of their last voyage. In these days I expect it might be very hard to find a person who had been around the outer pas sage of Cape Horn in one of those olden time sailing ships, yet we have a man in the Town of Bar Harbor who can say that he has accomplished this wonderful feat four times, going east and west. Mr. Seth H. Hopkins, contractor, as a boy in his ‘teens,’ was taken as a cabin boy in his ship, by his uncle Capt. Peleg Young, in a “square rigger’ which was well known to have dragged her keel many times from the Southern Pacific around ‘Statenland” and up the South and North Atlantic, into Frenchman’s Bay to his home in Salisbury Cove, and his good wife, Mrs. Etta Goodrich Young, nearly always accompanying him. The late Capt. Peleg Young told the writer once that he had “‘doub led the Cape” both East and West 27 times, and ‘‘never lost a man.” At one time Capt. Young discov ered a fire on those bleak and faraway cliffs of “the Horn” and young Master Seth Hopkins was allowed to row in with the crew to investigate, but they found it to be only a camp fire, built by some Fuegians, who were fright ened away on their approach.
Newspaper Details
Bar Harbor Times
Bar Harbor, Maine, US
Fri, Aug 09, 1935
Page 4
Full Page
Clipped by
Truman S.
USA 20 May 2026
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