The Lobster Coast Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier

by Woodard, Colin

• ISBN13: 9780670033249
• ISBN10: 0670033243
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-05-24
• Publisher: Viking Adult

Summary

For more than four hundred years the people of coastal Maine have clung to their rocky, wind-swept lands, resisting outsiders’ attempts to control them while harvesting the astonishing bounty of the Gulf of Maine. Today’s independent, self-sufficient lobstermen belong to the communities imbued with a European sense of ties between land and people, but threatened by the forces of homogenization spreading up the eastern seaboard.In the tradition of William Warner’s Beautiful Swimmers, veteran journalist Colin Woodard traces the history of the rugged fishing communities that dot the coast of Maine and the prized crustacean that has long provided their livelihood. Through forgotten wars and rebellions, and with a deep tradition of resistance to interference by people from away,” Maine’s lobstermen have defended an earlier vision of America while defying the tragedy of the commons”—the notion that people always overexploit their shared property. Instead, these icons of American individualism represent a rare example of true communal values and collaboration through grit, courage, and hard-won wisdom.

Author Biography

Colin Woodard, freelance writer and journalist, has reported from more than thirty foreign countries and six continents. He is a regular contributor to the Christian Science Monitor, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Chronicle of Higher Education and has published work in dozens of publications, including The Miami Herald, Nature Conservancy, E: The Environmental Magazine, and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
The Island	p. 1
Monhegan	p. 3
Proprietors	p. 49
Dawnland	p. 51
The First Frontier	p. 76
Insurrections	p. 116
Boom to Bust	p. 155
Boom to Bust	p. 157
Down and East	p. 193
The New Frontier	p. 233
Triumph of the Commons	p. 235
Brave Old World	p. 279
Notes	p. 319
For Further Reading	p. 361
Index	p. 363
Table of Contents provided by Rittenhouse. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

one Monhegan In winter the Laura B., the mail boat to Monhegan Island, is usually fairly empty. A handful of islanders gather in the small aft cabin, warming themselves by the tiny black stove, while their groceries and shopping bags chill on the deck alongside rows of propane tanks and other large island-bound parcels. Mailbags rest in the starboard cubbyhole, protected from the elements, which can be extremely assertive during the fourteen-mile crossing from the mainland. From November to April, the Laura B. is the only link to the mainland for Monhegan?s sixty year-round residents, making the round-trip journey from the tiny fishing town of Port Clyde only three times a week.But on this last day of November, the Laura B. is packed with people. There are nearly as many people on board as live on the island this time of year, most of them mainlanders on their way out to help friends and family prepare for the most important day of Monhegan?s year. Tomorrow, December 1, is Trap Day, the day Monhegan?s lobstermen begin their unique, winter- only lobster season. At a time of year when most of Maine?s seven thousand lobster- men have hauled up their traps and brought their boats around to secure winter anchorages, Monhegan?s fourteen lobstermen are getting ready to set their traps for the first time since spring. Once the fishermen have set their traps, they?ll continue fishing through the dead of winter, braving ferocious weather and subzero temperatures that often leave their twenty-eight- to forty- foot boats encased in frozen spray. The lobstermen can handle this with the help of a sternman or two, but on Trap Day they need all the help they can get moving their heavy traps down to the town wharf. There are only twenty aging, beat-up pickups on the island, but each lobsterman needs to get a gang of six hundred traps, weighted metal cages weighing forty to fifty pounds apiece, out of their backyard, down the hill, and stacked up on the town wharf where they can be loaded onto the lobster boat. It can?t be done much beforehand because the island?s 8,400 traps can?t fit on the granite wharf. Even if they did fit, they?d make offloading the Laura B. next to impossible. So, just before Trap Day, the entire village and dozens of mainlanders turn out to move the traps in the maritime equivalent of a barn-raising ceremony. I?m on my way out to help Zoe Zanidakis, the island?s only female lobster boat captain and onetime proprietor of the Monhegan House, one of the island?s three summer inns. But there?s a problem. About two months ago, Zoe quit answering her phone. She stopped picking up her cell phone and left e-mail and answering machine messages unreturned. It was as if Zoe had dropped off the face of the earth. After failing to track her down through several mutual acquaintances? nobody seemed to know where she was?I decided to board Laura B. as planned and track her down on the island. After all, no Monhegan lobsterman would ever miss Trap Day, least of all a ninth-generation islander like Zoe. Monhegan lobstermen make or break their season in the first few weeks of December, harvesting lobsters in an area that has not been fished in six months. But Trap Day has a ritualistic importance that transcends dollars and cents. ?It?s like cleaning the slate,? one islander explained to me. ?We all come together to get the boats ready and any of the crap and hard feelings that have accumulated in the community are wiped away.? As we pass Allen Island and begin the final, seven-mile open ocean crossing, I?m certain Zoe is out there on the gray, humplike shape looming on the horizon. It?s a mild day for Maine in early winter?forty-five degrees and almost sunny, with still air and gently swelling seas?so many of the passengers spread out on deck, lounging amid the luggage, propane, and building supplies. I join them, and halfway up the port rail I find Billy Payne, who runs one of the