“My grandmother grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and read me The Articles of War,” says Charlie Bowen, 82, of the first time he stepped foot on Isle au Haut in 1937.
Beatrice Hamilton Bowen then proceeded to list her 9-year-old grandson’s long list of duties. According to Bowen, his grandmother was one of 11 sisters and two brothers raised in neighboring Duck Harbor.
“She was the disciplinarian,” says Bowen, “While my grandfather was the pussycat.”
Young Charlie Bowen had been sent to Head Harbor, the southern community on Isle au Haut, because his father figured he’d get into too much trouble in Boston during the summer.
He and his friends had been “running around” using public transportation and sneaking into movie theatres without buying tickets. Being sent to a Maine island was his punishment.
Bowen had to stay at the top of the little hill in or near the house in the Head Harbor community. He was not allowed to hike to Thunder Gulch or venture to any shore.
According to his grandmother’s Articles, little Charlie was not even to go to the edge of the harbor in front of their house without special permission-although he once helped his lobster fisherman grandfather pull up his false teeth from the bottom of the ocean with a couple of oars: “He popped them right back in, seawater and all,” says Bowen with a laugh.
“Head Harbor hasn’t changed much. There were just a lot more people then.” According to Bowen, there were six or seven working lobster boats moored in Head Harbor when he was a child. There was a year-round population of several dozen compared to less than 10 today.
Charlie Bowen was born in Rockland in 1928. He and his father moved to Boston when he was around 8 years old. Subsequent Maine island summers had made quite an impression on him, so he moved to Isle au Haut and began fishing out of Head Harbor in 1949 at the age of 21.
“I bought a boat. It had been sunk a couple of times but had a nice little flat-head engine.”
Bowen’s fishing career lasted only two years. Boat prices ranged from 32 to 74 cents per lobster pound, too low to make a good living. “That’s good fishing out there though,” says Bowen of Head Harbor, “If I fished today I’d go offshore.”
Bowen’s Uncle Elmer paid off his bills in exchange for traps and equipment. Bowen, then 23, and his new bride Sally Greenlaw, 24, headed to the mainland.
“We went as far as Portland then ran of money,” remembers Bowen. The young couple settled in the big city, where they raised five children, three boys and two girls. All five are living in Maine, including his youngest daughter on Isle au Haut. Sally Greenlaw Bowen, Charlie’s wife of 55 years, died a few years ago.
Bowen’s career began with “hauling boats and refinishing them.” He then worked for First National Warehouse for fifteen years, then W.H. Nichols. “I started out as a grinder then worked up from there,” Bowen recalls.
The Bowens’s hearts were called to the island the whole time they lived elsewhere. “Sally and I were related to almost everyone on the island,” remembers Charlie. They bought a home in the 1960s for $2,500, where the couple vacationed regularly. They happily returned to that same home in 1993 to retire.
Bowen cites many changes over the years, most notably the numbers of people and public dock access.
Asked why he came to the island after so many years living and working on the mainland, he replies, “It’s peaceful.”
Kate Taylor is a freelance writer who lives on Isle au Haut.