11 minute read
"The Far Away Island"
27
by Theodore C. Wyman
JUST AS THE Galapagos Islands are called by many names, The Enchanted Isles, The Ends Of The Earth, and others, so too there are many names for the island of Nantucket. Among them are The Far Away Island and The Little Grey Lady Of The Sea. There have been many stories written about Nantucket and a great deal about the history of the island, so I shall not add to that. What I shall do is to write of the island as I knew it when I went there for two weeks and a decade passed before a war broke me loose from my moorings. Perhaps what I write will help to answer a question that is often asked about what there is to do on the island during the winter months.
One of the first times I saw the island was when I was aboard the schoolship Nantucket of the Massachusetts Nautical School at the end of a summer cruise. The ship was a three masted barkentine that had been a naval ship in the China Squadron and had been named the Ranger when she became a schoolship. Then her name was changed to Nantucket in September of 1919, at which time the town of Nantucket presented her with a new ship's bell. She ended her career as the Emery Rice of the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, Long Island, where she served for fifteen years as a museum ship before being sold to be broken up for scrap metal at the age of seventy-eight years.
There was one more time when I saw the island of Nantucket before I went there to drop my anchor. That was at the end of a summer's work in Woods Hole when I went to the island for a few days before going to New York to look for a ship. A ship that might be going any place in the world and that happened to be going to San Francisco. What was of interest to me at the time was that I had started to read a story that last evening in Nantucket and the story was about San Francisco. So I went ashore and finished the story during the time I lived there. And all during that time, even though the island of Nantucket had touched me but lightly and I did not realize it, the island was there waiting for me to return.
When I did return to the island, it was to finish some summer work for the New England Steamship Company and I felt as though I was
28 HISTORIC NANTUCKET
coming home as I did when I stepped ashore in San Francisco. There were a few years of summer work with the steamship company and six years of full time work as well as other work on the island during those first years. There were also two voyages to make, one to the Galapagos Islands on the schooner Blue Dolphin and the other to Florida on the yacht Tropic Bird. And there was always the island to come back to. The island that one could grow to love, especially during the Fall and Winter and in the Spring.
Perhaps it was the winter months that we enjoyed most as there was time then for many things aside from work. There were Sunday morning breakfasts in 'Sconset looking out over the ocean and what I called our Cotter's Saturday Nights. Nights when friends would be in for supper and each one would be working at something during the evening while we took turns reading aloud from Dickens and other old favorites. The work might range from square-knot work and wood carving to drawing and the dining room table often served as a shipyard for some ship model under construction.
Then there were the evenings when friends would come for supper and we would run off motion pictures that I had taken or that someone had brought with them. They might be pictures in color of the moors in the Fall and the colors on the island are especially beautiful. Not as brilliant as on the mainland, yet with a distinctive charm of their own and in them are many lovely greys not seen elsewhere. The moors in the Fall are a breath taking tapestry of soft greens and browns with a few brilliant patches of red from the huckleberry bushes and every time that I see them it does not seem possible that they can be as lovely as they are. There was time in the Fall to roam over them and for a few beach picnics and we always knew where to find mayflowers in the Spring. Even the winter storms could be enjoyed when the surf and wild seas only emphasized the miles of water between us and the problems of the mainland.
Aside from the two voyages, it was from Nantucket that I went on so many pleasant vacations after the rush of summer work. Trips to the Smokey Mountains, to Quebec and to the World's Fair in San Francisco and there was always the island to come back to for the winter months when there was never time enough for all the things that waited to be done. There was an Eskimo kayak to be built one winter and a sailboat for which I drew the plans and a model of it to make another winter. Then there was the model of a clipper ship that was well underway before it had to wait for the end of the war to be finished.
Those were the years, too, when we would send to Florida for baskets of fruit to be divided between families and to Fortnum and Mason in New
"THE FAR AWAY ISLAND"
29
York for special delicacies to vary the winter diet. And yet all the delicacies, however delightful, could never surpass the home baked beans. Beans that would last with careful rationing so that there would be a few for breakfast until Thursday morning and then there would be the long wait through Friday until we could have more of them on Saturday. There were fish and scallops right out of the water as well as clams that we could dig and beachplum and wild grape jelly from the beachplums and wild grapes that we picked.
It might seem that those were the wasted years for me in that all the experience I gained from the work there would be of no particular value to me later, yet they were years expecially rich in friendships. They were the depression years when plans could be made, but could not be carried out and when just to make a living was an accomplishment in itself. I do not know what it is that makes any certain place reach out and hold one, yet I do know that there are places that have an individual character of their own that can appeal to a person. Nantucket had that appeal to me and held me a willing prisoner.
That appeal probably came in part from many things associated with the life we lived there and among the things I recall with pleasure are the time I became a ship owner and when I became a member of the Wharf Rat Club. There was at that time an old schooner named the Alice Wentworth that carried freight between the mainland and the islands and her skipper and owner, Captain Zeb Tilton, was about to lose her when he could not pay for shipyard repairs. So a corporation was formed on the Vineyard and shares were bought by people there and on Nantucket so that money could be raised to keep old Captain Zeb Tilton from losing his ship.
There was no idea in the minds of those who purchased the shares that they were making a financial investment. It was just a chance to help someone whom they admired and to keep alive a chapter in a seafaring tradition that would be a sad loss if it could not continue. And yet the rewards to the shareholders were all out of proportion to the small investment each one made. They had a chance to follow in the footsteps of their ancestors and become ship owners and the few annual meetings aboard the schooner were treasures beyond price. They did receive a dividend of a dollar a share in 1939, but their certificates of capital stock will represent a legacy of priceless sentimental value.
Captain Zeb's address now is Fiddler's Green and he went there in 1952 at the age of eighty-five. And so, even though I never sailed on the Alice Wentworth, she became one of the ships in my life when I became a shareholder in her.
30
HISTORIC NANTUCKET
There are some things in life that one values highly and one of those things to me is membership in the Wharf Rat Club of Nantucket of which I became a member on 12 July, 1947, after I had returned from the war that broke me loose from my moorings on the island. I value it highly because of the friendship I have had with its members, people in all walks of life and all individuals in their own right. Many of them were well known in their professions and many had no claim to world renown, yet there seemed to be a common denominator that drew them to-gether and all had something of value to give in the association of kindred spirits.
I do not know much of the early founding of the club other than it just sort of came into being among a group of friends, some of whom lived on Old North Wharf, who used to gather in the ship chandler's store of "Perry and Coffin", or on the dock in front of it to sit in the sun and shoot the breeze. Now it is a club to which a great many people would like to belong, but to which few have a chance to join. Membership is by invitation if there is a vacancy and if the club members would like to have you belong.
Perhaps the club would seem strange in comparison to most clubs as there is no constitution, by-laws, dues or membership fees and the board of directors is known only to themselves. There is a club motto, "No reserved seats for the mighty", and a club flag. The flag is a pennant displaying a triangular blue field upon which is super-imposed a white rat, rampant, smoking a church warden pipe and with one star for members and three for the commodore. That flag has flown in many parts of the world. It has flown over the South Pole and the schooner Bowdoin has taken it to the Arctic. It has flown over a coronation parade in London and I saw it at the masthead of an atomic submarine as she slid down the ways. Those flags have been brought back to the club and are there along with quarter boards from old sailing ships and various items brought back from all over the world.
Then there was the time in the summer of 1971 when it flew in the dining room of QE 2 on a passage from England to America. It was the Fourth of July and I had considered going up on the bridge and reading the Declaration of Independence to the men on watch, but I was afraid they might get mad and sail back to England. But it was still the Fourth of July and it seemed as though something should be done about it, so I had my Wharf Rat flag hung in the dining room during lunch, and it did not seem out of place aboard a transatlantic liner.
Herb Coffin was Commodore when I joined the club and his father, Captain Charles G. Coffin, was Commodore from the origin of the club
"THE FAR AWAY ISLAND"
31
until his death in 1932. Then Herb cued and since then there have been five commodores, Herbert L. Brown in 1957, Marcus L. Ramsdell in 1959, Arthur McCleave in 1962, Bunt Mackay in 1964 and Captain Pete Grant became Commodore in 1971. Many of the older members have slipped their moorings and sailed away.
And so, to go back a few years, there came the war and I returned to the island for a part of my leave after five experiences in wartime oversea invasions. There had been no gray in my hair when I left and now it was all gray. Although I was not fully aware of it at the time, I was more or less of a complete wreck and could not sleep at night. The first real sleep I had was when I crossed the island one day and stretched out in the sun on one of the beaches, a beach so different from the war torn beaches we had left behind us. I had come back to touch home base and to draw strength from the island that had sheltered me.
The island is like the inscription on an old sundial, "TIME WAS. . . TIME IS. . . .TIME IS TO BE." It was there before the memory of man, is there now and will be there for ages to come. Just as men look to the hills from whence cometh their strength, so too can they look out over the waters to the Far Away Island for another source of strength when it is needed.
"A Lane So Little Known. " Henry S. Wyer's photo of a winter landscape early in this century.
