Awoke to bright sunshine and cloudless skies, the first sunny day in 5 days. So far this place has been as bad as Seattle for having Cloudy weather!  We are loving the cool, crisp weather however and we have not had any rain, only clouds. The locals have told us they have had a lousy spring so far.  Sound familiar?

Our stop today is another of those lovely seaports of Maine-Camden. The population is also around 5,000 and the town is famous for ship building in past centuries. The harbor is larger and more protected than Bar Harbor and the sloping landscape was more conducive to building schooners on shore, then simply sliding them into the water. There are several three masted schooners still in service (for tourist sailings) here in the harbor and they provided a beautiful background as we were motored into the dock area with our ship’s tender once again. The Constellation is too big for the docks here.

We along with 27 other passengers went on a morning walking tour of the town with a local resident, Sam Ladley. Again it was 1.5 marvelously spent hours hearing stories about the shipbuilding industry of the 1800s that thrived here, the stories of sea captains who lived here and sailed from this port, the houses they built here, and the architecture of those houses. Sea captains were some of the first millionaires in the USA as a result of the seafaring career and the houses they built reflected that. One intriguing story told was that when the captain left for his 2-5 year voyage he would leave a silver dollar on the fireplace mantle. Each sailing ship flew on its top mast a pennant identifying who the captain was. Children playing in the yard kept an eye on the open sea and when they saw a ship returning and identified who it was would run to the captains’ home to alert the wife that her husband was returning. In return he/she would be given the silver dollar. Sometimes, however, the captain dies at sea and his pennant was flown on the lower masthead to indicate he was no longer alive (that is where the term “half mast”came from). The child would still run to the house but only say the ship was returning to prepare the wife for the bad news it brought. The child still was given the dollar.

We saw and learned about the park built by Olmsted (designer of Central Park) on the harbor’s shoreline and the new modern library built under the park rather than to add a new modern building.

Sam pointed out a local unpainted shingled home and explained that many people from Scotland settled in the Camden area. Being frugal they felt that using shingles allowed them to avoid having to paint the home, simply allowing Mother Nature to weather the shingles over time. Also they painted the doors and trim the same color as that of their boat. Why buy two different cans of paint?

We also learned that what people call a “widows walk” (that balcony around a chimney on the roof of a home) is not what it was for. It was really a platform for a person (usually the woman as the men were at sea) who often had to douse a chimney fire with a bucket of sand. Climbing a ladder with a bucket of sand and standing on a pitched roof in winter was treacherous so a stable platform made a lot of sense.

The dominant home style of the area was federalist-simple fronts, long homes, often with three sides with nice siding and a hidden side using cheaper materials to save money.

Sam told us about the boat building in the area, which was one of the dominant industries of the 19th century. This area built most of the sailing cargo (2-4 masted schooners) ships of the era. It was amazing to see pictures of the massive ships and how they were built.

After lunch we took the lobster boat tour which included a ride on a real lobster boat. A young couple run this small business and they taught us about lobsters, how they are caught and the rules associated with lobstering in this area. The husband captained the boat and his wife showed us how to tell male from female lobsters, and how to measure if they were of legal style. She answered questions about how many traps you can use, how many you can keep per day, etc. Recreational lobster fisherman can have up to 6 traps per person and there is no limit to how many lobster  you can keep. Surprisingly, the  lobster population is  growing as the cod population (which tended to eat the lobster eggs) is way down.

In the 1900s only poor people ate lobster. They even fed them to prisoners in jail. Farmers loaded them in wagons and used them as fertilizer in their farm fields. Hard to believe, isn’t it!

We pulled up two different lobster traps. There was a small female in one, which they threw back. The second trap had a keepable male. They also had a live tank on board  which held a large clam, a mollusk two different types of local crabs and a really weird tiny spider crab that looked like a tarantula. She passed them all around for us to view.

We made it back to the ship to go to Afternoon tea for the first time. We were curious what snack they might be serving with the tea.

Then it was the usual routine we have become accustomed to: cocktails, dinner and some entertainment. The ship uses local entertainment and tonight we had a singer/guitarist who sounded a lot like James Taylor. By 9:30 the ship’s lounges clear out and the ship becomes quiet- – except for me who sits alone in the lounge (where the wireless signal works) finishing this blog entry. Good night!