July 6th A new memorial in Boothbay Harbor darn it.

As I was entering the town of Boothbay Harbor, I quickly noticed a new bronze memorial, which turned out to be a fisherman's memorial-  Couldn't stop though, so I'll have to go back one day and get it listed.  

The bronze casting of a full-size traditional Maine fisherman’s dory that sits on a granite slab overlooking Boothbay Harbor is one of the most striking visual images I’ve ever run across. Dories of this style have been in continuous use on the Maine coast pretty much since there’s been a Maine coast. The “shipped oars” on the memorial convey a simple, sobering message: This dory is empty. The fisherman is gone.

If you take the time to pull into the modest parking area next to the memorial located on the east side of Boothbay Harbor directly in front of Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church, you can read the plaque listing the names of local fishermen lost at sea. There are dates beside each name and a brief description of the circumstances surrounding the tragedy: “. . . lost in a gale off Monhegan Island.” “. . . . never returned. . . .” Powerful stuff. The dates stretch back to the 1800s. The names are the same ones you’d find in the current local phone directory. If you’re a local you’ll have known at least one or two of these folks.

The memorial project was a group effort by local fishermen and craftsmen. The dory was designed by Malcolm Brewer and built by legendary boat builder “Sonny” Hodgdon. It seems interesting and somehow appropriate that the process of creating the bronze casting involved the total destruction of a newly constructed dory via a modified “lost wax” process. Like the fishermen, the original dory was lost forever in the process of making the memorial. The casting was done by John Tourtilotte at J. F. Hodgkins Foundry in Gardiner, Maine, and it was dedicated on October 16, 1983.

When I stopped to visit recently I looked up a few folks who were involved in the original Fisherman’s Memorial project and discovered something curious. Nobody actually wanted to talk much about it. Well, that’s not quite true. People were happy to discuss the memorial itself and the manner in which it was created. But, nobody had any interest in talking about those fishermen lost at sea. When I brought up a particular individual or incident everybody just clouded over, clammed up, and changed the subject. This seemed odd at first. Then I realized that, in a way, that’s the whole point of the memorial. This one image, the timeless bronze dory with the eternally missing fisherman, expresses something everybody in this seaside village knows and nobody wants to talk about. This simple image expresses a powerful truth about life in a fishing community that a thousand words couldn’t begin to explain.