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Category: Age of Sail

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Wanna go sailing?

I’ll wager that you won’t find a more interesting brace of workshops anywhere.
The light is ever-changing on the open water.

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know I moved to Maine for the painting. The light, the sea and the granite coast have drawn artists here for 200 years. I was just the latest sucker they snared.

In the early spring of 2016, I wandered into the North End Shipyard and asked if I could paint while they worked. The smell of varnish in the cold morning air brought back memories of equally frigid mornings on Lake Ontario.
Exploring off the American Eagle.
That summer, Captain John Foss asked me to sail with him on the American Eagle. I painted some work I really liked. This October, I went out with them again, bringing watercolors instead of oils. I found that watercolor is perfect for capturing the changing scene from a boat under sail. And it’s less intimidating than oils. Several people tried painting with me.
This trip includes a gam, an open-water raft up of boats. That’s been known to include rowing troubadours.
When we got back to land, Captain Foss and I designed the perfect trip for the artistically-inclined boat lover. Next June, he and his crew will sail us around the coast of Maine on their beautifully-appointed boat, providing berths and all our meals. I will teach you watercolors.
From the galley.
Can you even paint on a moving boat? Heck, yeah, and it’s fascinating. The water, sky and shoreline are constantly changing. We’ve scheduled this workshop for the longest days of the year so that we’ll have plenty of time to paint sunrises and sunsets while at anchor.
What if you prefer your ocean from the shore?

Schoodic is a wild and isolated place, but still accessible from Bangor International Airport.
I offer a workshop at Acadia National Park’s Schoodic Institute every August. This is designed to help the painter find his or her own voice and style. It’s intensive, with morning and afternoon on-site painting sessions and lunch-time demos. Classes are kept small so every student gets the attention they deserve.
All mediums are welcome.
Acadia is famous for its ocean breakers and big granite outcroppings. I’ve ferreted out some very exciting spots to paint, both in and out of the park. By the time your week is done, you’ll be at one with the wind, waves and pounding surf.
Breakers by Carol L. Douglas.
Schoodic offers many other non-painting entertainments for the outdoors enthusiast. There’s biking, mountain climbing, fishing and hiking all in the immediate area. Seabirds, dolphins and grey seals are regularly sighted off the coast here.
Both trips are also all-inclusive, so you don’t have to worry about meals or accommodations. And both are designed so it’s easy to bring your non-painting partner.
The instruction is one-on-one and intensive.
Why am I mentioning this now? Christmas is coming, but that’s not all. If you register before January 1 for either workshop, you get a discount. And I’m willing to wager that you won’t find a more interesting brace of workshops anywhere.
You can learn more about both workshops here.
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Going sailing

Life during the Age of Sail was often “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Safety Check, Carol L. Douglas, courtesy Camden Falls Gallery
I dithered about whether I was going to go sailing this week. My asthma has been kicking up and it seemed unfair to Captain John Foss to have to decide whether to feed me to the fishies.
On Friday night, I went down to the harbor to watch the harvest moon rise. The lobster fleet nodded gently on a whisper of sea air. I found myself able to breathe. If the Captain doesn’t make me do all the work, I should be fine. I’ve got a new inhaler, so off I go.
Breaking Storm, Carol L. Douglas, courtesy Camden Falls Gallery
I’ve painted American Eagle many times. She’s got beautiful lines and has been lovingly restored. She’s a youngster compared to much of the Maine schooner fleet, having been built in 1930 in Gloucester, MA. Because she was originally outfitted with an auxiliary engine, she’s an oddity: the sole survivor of the transition between sail and engine in fishing vessels.
She was called Andrew and Rosalie when she was a working fishing boat. Her schooner rig was removed around 1945 and she was converted to a trawler. She must have been an awful mess with no sails, an elevated pilothouse perched on the quarterdeck, winches, booms and reels for trawling on the forward deck. I could drive down the hill and ask the Captain (who was responsible for her restoration) for a picture. I poked around the internet instead. No luck, but I found this sad story, dated January 12, 1937:
Setting blocks (American Eagle and Heritage), Carol L. Douglas, courtesy Camden Falls Gallery
“A loose knob on the pilot house door of the local auxiliary sch. Andrew and Rosalie, Capt. George Goodwin, spelled death for Albert ‘Boxie’ Blagdon, 38 years, single, native of Newfoundland, at 6 o’clock this morning on Middle Bank, 12 miles southeast of Eastern point, when Blagdon lost his balance and drowned in the sight of his shipmates.  The craft arrived here at 8.30 o’clock this morning, with the flag flying half-mast, to report the affair.  Blagdon had no known local relatives, and lived aboard the ship when in port.
“The vessel left here Sunday, single dory trawling, and had secured 10,000 pounds of groundfish on Middle bank, until the breeze that swept the waters this morning prevented the crew of 15 men from fishing.  Capt. Goodwin decided to come closer into shore for harbor, and wait for the breeze to die down.  He had ordered halfhours tricks at the wheel and Blagdon had just completed his 6 o’clock, being relieved by Edward Armstrong.
Winch (American Eagle), Carol L. Douglas, courtesy Camden Falls Gallery
“Armstrong on taking the wheel, asked Blagdon to hook the door.  The latter did so, and then took hold of the knob of the door to steady himself as he began to walk down the narrow way between the starboard rail and the house.  His foot is believed to have caught on ice on the deck, and as he held more tightly on the knob to keep his feet, the knob pulled out and sent Blagdon hurling over the rail into the icy waters.  The last the crew saw of him was his boots disappearing into the ocean.  He was weighted down with oilskins, heavy underclothes, and heavy leather boots, which coupled with the temperature of the water, probably prevented him from saving himself from drowning. Capt. Goodwin immediately ordered a dory overboard, but an hour’s search failed to reveal where Blagdon had drowned, or any trace of his body.
“The unfortunate man had been one of the vessel’s crew since the middle of last November and was regarded as an able fisherman and a willing worker.  He had followed the sea from his childhood, and came here as a young man to sail out of Gloucester.  The sch. Andrew and Rosalie will leave port again tonight to complete her fishing trip.”
American Eagle in Drydock, Carol L. Douglas, courtesy Camden Falls Gallery
I can sometimes get nostalgic for the Age of Sail, but stories like that remind me that, as with so many other things from our past, the life of a fisherman was often “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
If I fall in, the Captain will probably retrieve me. To do otherwise would result in a mess of paperwork. Either way, my blog goes dark this week. I don’t do that often, but phone service is dicey on Penobscot Bay.

I’ll see you on Friday.
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The greatest maritime photographer

Wallace MacAskill’s images of the Age of Sail became popular as we careened closer to world war.

A Snug Harbor, Wallace MacAskill
My father was a WW2 Army-Air Force Photographer. He kept his service-issue Speed Graphic. I had plenty of time to mess with it as a kid. As a still camera, it was great, but capturing action was hard.
The only photo I’ve found of Wallace R. MacAskill at work shows him holding an even larger reflex camera. With it he took some of the most famous photos of the Age of Sail.
MacAskill was born in 1887 at St. Peters, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. This is a watery place, perched on a narrow strip of land separating the Bras d’Orfrom the Atlantic. MacAskill bought his first small sailboat at age eleven. He taught himself to sail. A year later, a tourist sent him a camera. At that point, he was grounded in the two pursuits that would define his life.
MacAskill left for New York at seventeen to study photography. At that time, Alfred Stieglitz and Pictorialismdominated the New York photography scene. Pictorialism was an atmospheric, painterly style of photography. The artist strove to project emotional content with soft focus, duotone printing, and markings on the negative.
Gray Dawn (Schooner Bluenose), Wallace MacAskill, was influenced by Pictorialism.
By the time MacAskill graduated in 1907, he had thoroughly absorbed this aesthetic.
Returning to Nova Scotia, he opened a studio in his home town, then one in Glace Bay. In 1915, he moved to Halifax to work for WG MacLaughlan, the city’s official military photographer. From there he moved to a job as a printer in a commercial studio.
In 1920, he moved to the Commercial Photo Service, where he met his future wife, fellow photographer Elva Abriel.
Hand-colored prints of The Road Home were popular wedding gifts.
MacAskill was as avid a sailor as he was a photographer. He joined the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron in 1921. At the helm of his yacht Highlander (a WJ Roué design), he won the Prince of Wales Cup from 1932-34 and again in 1938. He was Vice-Commodore of the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron in 1934-35 and Commodore in 1936.
In 1929, MacAskill opened a studio under his own name in Halifax. In 1937, he published his first book, Out of Halifax, which is sadly also now out of print. This established his reputation as an art photographer.
The Bluenose stamp of 1929.
It was MacAskill’s association with Bluenosefor which he is most remembered. This boat, designed by Roué and captained by Angus Walters, was a Canadian icon in the 1930s. MacAskill’s images were used on Canada’s 50-cent stamp of 1929 and the Canadian dime of 1937.
By WW2, Halifax’s shipyards were no longer turning out wooden fishing boats. Instead they were building destroyers for the Royal Canadian Navy, and repairing the thousands of ships damaged in the Battle of the Atlantic. As the world careened into world war, images of quaint fishing villages and schooner races seemed safe and reassuring. MacAskill’s popularity rose with the demise of his subjects.
Bluenose Sailing Away, by Wallace MacAskill
MacAskill died at his home in Ferguson Cove, Nova Scotia, in 1956. His widow sold his negatives and business to a Halifax photographer. His images and film reels were eventually donated to the Public Archives of Nova Scotia. They have almost 5000 of them, and they are tightly controlled. You can view them here.