Over the past year I’ve been sharing pictures I’ve taken over the past 45 years working as a newspaper reporter for the Boothbay Register/Wiscasset Newspaper. The pictures here are of the famed Arctic schooner Bowdoin. Several were taken during an overnight visit the Bowdoin made to Wiscasset in August 1979. As it happened, I was invited aboard and interviewed John S. Nugent III, who was the skipper then, and met the three volunteer crew members. Nugent resided in Camden and it was his fourth year as the Bowdoin’s captain. In those days the Bowdoin’s homeport was Camden harbor, the vessel then being under the ownership of a non-profit group, the Schooner Bowdoin Association. That summer the Bowdoin had made port of calls at Boothbay Harbor, Tenants Harbor, Monhegan and Vinalhaven. She had also sailed to Castine on Penobscot Bay where the crew took part in a reenactment of the Battle of Castine in the waters off historic Fort George. 

The other two pictures were taken a few years later when the Bowdoin was dry docked and under reconstruction at Maine Maritime Museum in Bath. For that story I met Capt. Nugent again who invited me to go inside the hull of Bowdoin to take pictures while he explained what was going on. As you might imagine this project was quite an undertaking and took several years to complete. The work was carried out by Goudy & Stevens Boat Yard of East Boothbay. Capt. Nugent was very accommodating allowing me to board the Bowdoin, not only did I get a good story for the newspaper, I got some pretty good photographs, too. The Bowdoin was double-planked and double-framed. I saw where her bow’s inner hull was reinforced with concrete so if the need arose she could safely break through the ice. 

The Bowdoin’s story has been thoroughly documented over the years. Very briefly she was custom built in 1920-21 in nearby East Boothbay. The two-masted schooner was specifically designed for Arctic exploration for Donald Baxter MacMillan, a graduate of Bowdoin College in Brunswick. It's known for its distinctive spoon-shaped bow and trademark crow’s nest, nicknamed the "ice bucket" on her forward mast. Naming his schooner for his alma mater Bowdoin College, MacMillan made more than two dozen exploratory voyages to Arctic waters visiting both Labrador and Greenland a number of times and logging roughly 300,000 miles at sea.  

Wiscasset has always had a special connection to the Bowdoin. Commander MacMillan chose our deep-water harbor to embark on several of his Arctic expeditions. Those Bowdoin departures were great occasions of celebrations here in Maine’s Prettiest Village. Schools and businesses closed and nearly everyone in town gathered at the waterfront to wish Commander MacMillian and his intrepid crew bon voyage and Godspeed for a safe return. During that 1979 Wiscasset visit I remember Neal Creamer of Edgecomb who was in his 80s telling me he’d been present with his close friend Stan Dodge to see the Bowdoin off on those historic voyages. Stan and his wife Velma Dodge had owned the former Dodge Inn Restaurant on Davis Island where the Water’s Edge Restaurant & Bar is now. Neal was an accomplished photographer and I’m sure he’d taken a number of photographs of the Bowdoin during its early visits to Wiscasset one of which I included in my first book of Wiscasset stories.

Today the schooner Bowdoin is the “Official Vessel of the State of Maine,” and berthed at Castine serving as the flagship of Maine Maritime Academy’s Vessel Operations and Technology program. Every summer the Bowdoin continues plying the waters carrying cadets on voyages along the eastern seaboard. According to the Maine Maritime website the Bowdoin has made three voyages above the Arctic Circle since she came to MMA in 1988 and made trips to Newfoundland, Labrador and regular visits to Nova Scotia.  

You can learn a great deal more about the schooner Bowdoin by viewing a documentary of it online, or visiting the Peary-Macmillan Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College. There are many interesting pictures of the Bowdoin on the Maine Memory Network website including several of the intrepid Wiscasset women who traveled to the Arctic with Commander Macmillan aboard his sister ship the Sachem III during his 1926 voyage. 

Phil Di Vece earned a B.A. in journalism studies from Colorado State University and an M.A. in journalism at the University of South Florida. He is the author of three Wiscasset books and is a frequent news contributor to the Boothbay Register/Wiscasset Newspaper. He resides in Wiscasset. Contact him at pdivece@roadrunner.com