Fellow harbor masters honor Wayne Hamilton at his retirement gathering. From left to right, Travis Otis, Wayne Hamilton, John Church, Kathy Pickering, and Jay Clement of the Army Corp of Engineers.
SEARSPORT – Every boater on the coast of Maine knows Wayne Hamilton as almost every one of them shop at one of his six Hamilton Marine stores. He started selling marine supplies in his garage and with the assistance of his wife Lorraine, built a dynasty. What many do not know is how involved he was with boating on Penobscot Bay.
Like many children on the coast, he played on the beach and that grew into wanting to be out on the water. Wayne explained, “I started like Robinson Crusoe, in a raft. Over in the cove, my father helped us build a raft. It was a big one. We went over to Sears Island with a rowboat and got some old pilings Then we went to the old schooners that were beached over beside the B & A Pier and got some three-inch planks. So, we had telephone pole sized logs and three-inch planks, which were probably 23-feet long. My father didn’t want us to get in trouble, so he took tire chains and put them around a big rock and put a cable on it, so we had a long cable tether. One day at low tide we rolled the rock up on the raft, and with long poles we came around Steamboat Wharf, now Hamilton Wharf, over to this cottage. It was my friend’s grandmother’s, and we threw the rock off and anchored up. We did everything right. We had lifejackets on and an extra anchor with us.”
Wayne was about 10 years old at the time and about this time he made friends with the Blanchard family. “They came over to the raft and Nick Blanchard, who is Andy Blanchard’s father who works for me, came over and we became friends,” added Wayne. “Eventually they invited me to go on their 42-foot Wheeler sportfisherman. The first trip was to Eagle Island. We were actually going to Isle au Haut fishing, but we stopped at Eagle Island because it was foggy. There is a guest mooring there by the lighthouse. So, we went in there and stayed the night and then went down to Isle au Haut fishing. My parents knew Charlie was a good guy and that was Nick’s father. I hung around with the Blanchard’s until I was 18. They were like family. Charlie showed us how to splice and rig moorings and different things like that. He had a dock here that we worked on. Charlie was a workaholic and we became workaholics because we worked right along with him. Nick bought a 14-foot Corson with, I think, a 30 hp outboard on it. I bought a 14-foot Mirrocraft with an 18 hp outboard on it. That was my second boat. My first boat, the Blanchards actually gave me, which was a 12-foot lapstrake yacht tender and my father’s friend gave me a five-hp Johnson and that’s what I started lobstering in.”
Wayne started with 12 traps and like many beginners was challenged by some of the older fishermen. Wayne said, “There was a fisherman from another town who thought he owned the ledge here in Searsport. That was the time of Sissel rope, and he used to run over them. Hunter’s Machine Shop and Rockland Boat in Rockland is where I bought stuff. They had just come out with this new rope called polypropylene and I bought some 3/8-inch black. I wanted a pretty good diameter that would float. The next year I bought a 14-foot aluminum boat with an 18 hp. That year my father and I were out fishing on the other side of the ledge, and he came in and he got tangled up in the rope and it brought the engine to a halt. He pretty much left me alone after that.”
Next, Wayne put a 33-hp outboard on that boat so he could go a little faster. His next boat was a 16-foot Starcraft followed by an 18-foot Starcraft with a 50-hp outboard. Later, he added a 70-hp followed by a 90-hp outboard on that boat. His next boat was a 30-foot wooden boat built in 1948, which he purchased from Frank Hollis in Camden, named WALRUS. She was powered with a Gray Marine Diesel and he and Vern Gray brought her up to Searsport. That winter Wayne hauled her out and rebuilt her. He refastened the boat, replaced a plank on the stern, removed the engine, and overhauled it, rewired, added new steering cables, and relaunched her in 1976. Her name was also changed to CILOWAY II. Twenty years later Wayne had Wesmac of Surry finish out a BHM 36, which became CILOWAY III. She was launched in January 1995. Soon after her launching, she was fitted with heat and pumps.
At the time Wayne still owned the 23-foot Starcraft, NOMAD, which he used as a back-up for running pilots out to the in-coming commercial vessels and his harbor master job for Searsport. He said, “One of the things I did as a harbor master that was a little unusual, I had two 2000 and two 3000 Rule electric pumps hooked up to household outlets on the bulkhead, two on port and two on starboard. “So, I had four outlets and I had four pumps, which were polarize so you did not get it plugged in wrong,” continued Wayne. “I saved a lot of boats with those electric pumps, which could pump 10,000 gallons of water an hour. As long as I could get close enough, I’d just throw those pumps in. Of course, the best pump that you could ever have is scared man with a five-gallon pail, so you always have a five-gallon pail on board.”
Wayne went to Southern Maine Vocational Technical Institute (SMVTI) and studied marine technology from 1967-68. He learned navigation and oceanography. Because Wayne was already working on the water, he helped teach other students knots and splicing. He also worked on the college’s vessel AQUALAB, which had gone through a huge storm when heading south to Florida the previous winter. He said, “She was an old minesweeper, so, we were taking bronze ingots out of the bilge and cutting up railroad track and painting it with red lead and putting that in as a ballast trying to get her certified after the storm. We also were cutting the degaussing wire out with a hacksaw. It was good experience. I had wanted to go to Maine Maritime Academy, but I had fallen in love with Lorraine at that time and they did not allow you to get married at Maine Maritime, so that is why I went to SMVTI. Then I went to the school of hard knocks.”
Wayne began working with the pilots when 16 years old, saying, “The reason I got involved in piloting was Vern Gray. The boat that he was using was a 40-foot Novi. He was scalloping with that, and they only paid $10 a trip. He would come in from down to Cape Rosier or wherever, take off the pilot and have to go back fishing. He didn’t like leaving the fishing grounds. He had a company called Pioneer Paint Company, which was his real job and then he fished on the side. So, what he did was I subcontract under him so to speak. I was doing that in my 14-foot aluminum boat and that is how I met Bill Abbott. He was used to going out to the little tankers up in the river in a rowboat. So, he was game for it. Bill and I have a lot of good experiences. At that time, it was Bill Abbott, Sam Gamage and Dick Moody, then eventually Gill Hall.”
Wayne had a lot of Bill Abbott stories. Wayne added, “I was in high school and we went out to the ship. They had called off school at 6:30 in the morning, northeast blowing snowstorm, I had all kinds of safety equipment I kept in the boat. I had a big army ammo can on either side with emergency stuff in it: life jackets, bailing cans, everything else. Well, it was an offshore wind, and it looked pretty calm, so I didn’t put all of my equipment in, and I even missed the bailing can. We got out there and Bill did not dare leave me and so we headed back in. The boat did not have any windshield on it, just had a little-short deck. We were taking on water. At one point I had enough water in her that we were going to start to take it over the stern. I looked at Bill, he looked at me, and he knew what I wanted to do. I had a 33 hp, but I knew if the motor quit, we had had it. So anyways, I opened her up and pushed the water out over the stern. That only got half of the water out and so we went along a little bit more and as we ran slow we kept taking on more water. I did that one more time and then we got into dock. We went up to my parents’ house, and we had what was called a floor furnace and we sat on the floor furnace and warmed up. I was dressed properly for someone to find me as an ice cake, I had an Air Force parka on, big Eskimo gloves along with a big May West. I saw my life pass by for a minute, but we made it through. Bill and I agreed that we wasn’t ever going to go in another boat unless there was a five-gallon pail in it. If you look on CILOWAY, even today, you will find five-gallon pails under the rail. That was an education, one for the school of hard knocks.”
Bill Abbott was quite a character and there are numerous stories about him as a pilot. Wayne remembered, “Hap Wilson was the pilot boat down to Port Clyde and, in those days, they used CB radios and telephones. Bill was on a tanker, and he told Hap the time to come out and get him. Hap was on the stern of his boat, taking a nap and Bill saw that. He eased the tanker right up beside him and let the horn go. Hap almost jumped overboard.”
The pilots were pushed to get ships into the dock for the long shoreman. “One morning it was blowing southerly and one of the pilots was bringing a ship in,” continued Wayne. “Of course, to save money they weren’t using tugs at that time. Well, the wind caught the ship, and he was going up into Long Cove. He went full speed ahead to get her to cut around. There were old weirs up in there and you could see weir sticks going up in the air. Another time they had a freshet running in the springtime up the river and there is a little ridge off the dock that they didn’t dredge. The ship was sort of touching that ridge, and the tide was going and it slipped off the ridge, and along with the freshet, it broke the lines. The pilot had stayed on board to make sure everything was all right. So, when the ship broke away from the dock, it took the gantries and everything with it. The icebreaker SNOMISH was coming down the river, and the tugboats were over at the paper mill. A tug got a line on, and the pilot was trying to get the ship turned around, but the ship was coming down sideways. SNOMISH tried to help and they finally got her turned around.”
I asked about George Jennings, as I knew he was a pilot who lived over in Northport. Wayne said that he was an independent pilot and one time he could not get off the vessel at Monhegan due to the weather and ended up in France. George wrote a book about his career, “Ships and the Sea for Me,” which has some interesting stories in it.
Wayne worked with the pilots for 53 years no matter what the weather was doing. When he first got CILOWAY III, Bill Abbott needed to go out to a tug and barge, but there was a lot of ice. When the engine temperature climbed Wayne would switch the intake and let the other strainer thaw out. It took him an hour and a half to go two miles.
Back in 1995 the ice was a problem as it stretched all the way down to Rockland. The Coast Guard vessel TACKLE would some up and break ice, but there were times that Wayne went out and used his wake to break it up. Another time Alex Turner of Belfast Boat Yard was worried about his docks due to the eight inches of ice in the harbor. Wayne went over and with his wake was able to break the ice up and watch it go out with the tide.
Another one of Wayne’s jobs was assisting Dan Rich, who was the harbor master for Searsport. Dan Rich was also the fire chief and when he sold his boat, Wayne offered to help. He did this for about four years before Dan retired after 30 years and Wayne took over as harbor master in 1985. Even before he became harbor master, Wayne was working with the Maine Extension Service to start the Maine Harbor Master Association. He said his reasoning for starting it “was to get local control, because if the state controlled it your harbor might not be what you want it to be.” So, that was started in 1985. Conrad Griffin was at the Extension Service at the University of Maine, and he helped them a lot. Their first meeting was down at a hotel across the river from New Meadows Marina. Wayne said, “My main goal was safety and taking care of the people. I had a lot of boats, for one reason or another, which were sinking and those pumps I had on CILOWAY worked out pretty well. After I began enforcing some safety measures for moorings, I didn’t have boats going ashore. I was requiring that we inspect the moorings every year.”
A harbor master’s job is 24/7. When someone is in trouble you answer the call. One time Wayne was on vacation on board CILOWAY III in Stonington. The harbor master there saw him and asked for some help trying to keep an old wooden 46-foot fishing boat from sinking. Wayne tossed his pumps on board and with some other pumps they were able to save her. “I got a call from dispatch one night and it was 12 below zero,” continued Wayne. “They said, ‘We noticed that somebody has got a strobe light out on the water and might be in trouble.’ This was midnight. The Coast Guard had just changed from regular light bulbs to LEDs, so the lights looked different on the buoy out there. I knew that was what they saw, but I never said no, I went no matter what. So, I went out looking, using the radar to make sure nothing was out there. I went all around the buoy and there was nothing. I wasn’t going to make an assumption because you never know. Another time I had a call from Sprague’s about somebody in trouble. I went out to see if they were in trouble, but they didn’t want any help. They looked like they might need help, so I hung around and eventually I towed them in. Come to find out, the boat was stolen and they had stolen a radio from Sprague’s. The police came down and arrested them. That was why they didn’t want any help.”
Some lobster fishermen fished in small boats off Fort Point. Wayne got a call that a fisherman, who was loaded with traps, had capsized and was now in the water. Fortunately, someone heard him screaming for help and the authorities called Wayne for assistance. He said, “Dispatch called me, and I said, “I will go, but it’s probably going to take me half hour to get there.” My boat was rigged up with oxygen, defibrillator, all kinds of first-aid stuff so all I had to do was call an EMT. When I left the shop, I radioed John Stauffer to meet me at the dock. We got out there and it’s starting to get foggy, haze coming in, and I could not see well. I didn’t know where he was, but the Stockton Springs fire department gave us directions and we found him. The boat was right side up at that point and he had one arm and one leg in the boat. He had unhooked the motor and let the motor go to the bottom. However, he couldn’t move. He was kind of frozen to it. We got him off and got him into my boat. We put him down on the deck. His eyes were all white and glazed and I did not like the looks of him. We had the heat on with oxygen going to him. John was taking care of him and his eyes kept getting clearer and clearer. We got him into the dock, and the ambulance took him to the hospital. Two hours later they let him go.”
One time Wayne received a note from the Coast Guard in Southwest Harbor thanking Coast Guard Group Searsport for assisting them.
Four or five years ago Wayne stopped working with the pilots, after they had purchased their own pilot boat. Just a few weeks ago in November Wayne retired as Searsport’s harbor master after 40 years. Travis Otis, who has been assisting Wayne for a number of years, is now the harbor master. Wayne said, “Travis is the only person that is really capable of taking my place. He has got a license, got the boat, he is knowledgeable and he is a good person.”
Wayne is still involved with the harbor master’s association, which meets at Maine Maritime Academy every spring. He will continue teaching the mooring and rigging class, as he has done for a number of years. His commitment to the people who worked out on the water here on the coast of Maine has been second to none.
