Even at age 80, Capt. George Allen just can’t get away from boats. The Brooklin native is now carving toy boats for children in his Creeping Thyme Gift Shop after spending decades in the Penobscot Bay windjammer trade. His career culminated with building the 52-foot pinky schooner SUMMERTIME with Capt. Bill Brown, virtually in his backyard.
Maybe he is trying to make up for lost time, since he didn’t get into the windjammer trade until he was 40.
Like any Brooklin lad, Allen was always in and out of boats growing up. His father ran a 124-foot powerboat for the New York Yacht Club. The family has been living on the same spot in Brooklin since the King of England awarded them a land grant in 1763. “They gave some people grants just to get rid of them,” Allen said with a laugh.
Allen was working at Cousens boatyard in East Blue Hill when owner Morris Cousens decided to buy the schooner STEPHEN TABER in 1961. Jack Johnson was the skipper and Allen decided to sign on as mate. “It was a late start since I was 40 and pretty green. But the business was pretty hard to get into and it was a good chance. I was paid $85, about the same as I got at the boatyard,” he said.
Being mate is much better than being captain, Allen said. “It was pretty easy to be mate. There were no decisions and no responsibility. If anything went wrong, it was the captain’s fault,” he said. Johnson had sailed aboard five-masted schooners and was an excellent teacher.
After three years on the TABER, Allen went to work in Rockland for the legendary Capt. Frederick Guild and ran the powerboat DIRIGO on fishing cruises. He went back to the TABER, then rebuilt and skippered the RICHARD ROBBINS for seven years. Allen also filled in for the injured Bud Hawkins on the MARY DAY for a summer before he finally went ashore, but worked for Guild for another decade as ship’s carpenter, keeping the VICTORY CHIMES in one piece.
The windjammer fleet, like most occupations, takes all kinds. While many found Guild very hard to get along with, Allen said “he used me good. I learned a lot from him, but he could be hard on his crew. Then I sailed with Orville Young. Everyone liked Young. You couldn’t beat him.”
Eventually, Allen and a few partners wanted their own boat. They found the ROBBINS wasting away in New Jersey and sailed her back to Maine. Like some lobster fishermen, windjammer captains and owners accentuate the negative in their business.
“There is money in the business, don’t kid yourself. It depends on the captain. You could give one man the best boat in the fleet and he could lose money. But you give someone else an old slab and he will make money with it. You’ve got to give the customers a good time.”
No one gave the customers a better time than Allen. His stories are so good that they have been recorded as “Half truths and Whole lies.” Naturally Allen was tapped as master of ceremonies for the captains’ “gam” at the Penobscot Marine Museum earlier this month. Allen got his storytelling training in small town variety shows, long before he went to sea.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The cost for a week’s sail has gone from $125 when Allen started to about $750 today. But the customers are still the same. “For every 200 passengers, maybe one would complain. But that’s not bad. If you were giving dollar bills away, some people would find something to complain about. Maybe 25-40 percent of the customers are repeat business, so they must be doing something right,” he said.
Rockland was chosen over Camden when the ROBBINS was looking for a berth.
“Even in good weather, it was hard to get into Camden harbor. A blind man could get into Rockland harbor, even in the fog. I am not surprised that Rockland has the most schooners now. It is such a big harbor. But everything that has happened has been in spite of Rockland officials, not because of if it. They did everything they could to hurt the waterfront,” Allen said. The harbormaster, he said, wouldn’t even allow the Guild business to put up a Main Street sign to direct people to the wharf.
The best part of the business was sailing on a perfect day with a good crew and a contented group of paying customers, Allen said. The worst part was when it blowing hard enough to strain the rigging. “If a block broke and hit a customer, you would be out of business. It was always a fine line between showing the customers a good time and how far you could go to take a risk. If anyone was hurt or killed, an accident could put the whole fleet out of business.”
The worst time for Allen came when the ROBBINS was not at sea, but anchored in Owls Head harbor. “It was scary. We got hit with a fierce thunderstorm. We had a good, heavy anchor, but we were afraid that it would break loose. The awning broke loose and there was almost continuous lightning. There was a mini-tornado that ripped up trees on the shore near us.”
Looking back, Allen said, the MARY DAY was the limousine of the fleet. Sailing that boat made Allen realize how tough the ROBBINS was to maneuver. “She would sail, but she hated to. We had old sails. We got into the business cheap. The TABER was a good vessel and a good moneymaker. She made money for everyone who sailed her.”
Despite the aging fleet, soaring insurance costs and the dramatic increase in the price of waterfront land, the windjammer business will find a way to survive, Allen said.
Some of the oldest boats, like the SYLVINA BEAL, are in the best shape. But he admitted that it’s a crazy business when an owner will spend $100,000 to rebuild a boat that cost only $10,000 when it was new.
Even when Allen went ashore, he wasn’t done with boats. He and Bill Brown decided to build a boat and chose the historic pinky design. “The pinky had a good name. I always heard my father talk about them. If you are going to build a character boat, then build one as close to a museum boat as you can,” he said The pair got the plans from the Smithsonian Institution, started the project in 1980 and finally finished in 1986. “We didn’t have a schedule so we never got behind,” he said.
The pinky, which originated in Europe in the 1600s, received its name from its uplifted or “pinked” stern. The pink-sterned hull with schooner rig appears to have been used in the New England fishing fleet prior to the American Revolution. These seaworthy vessels became popular for mackerel fishing after the invention of the mackerel jig.
Even after the SUMMERTIME was launched, Allen couldn’t stop building boats. But now they are a lot smaller and meant for bathtubs.
