It’s the height of summer in the Cranberry Isles, with people constantly coming and going. Every week we say hello to someone who has just arrived and goodbye to someone else whose vacation time is over. No bridge connects our islands to the mainland or to each other, so arrivals and departures cross the water, moving along with the waves.
In the case of saying goodbye for the last time, we also look to the sea for comfort. On May 28, Islesford’s oldest resident, Leeman Gilley Ham, passed away at the age of 99. He requested that there be no funeral service. Instead, his family and friends honored him with a memorial flotilla on June 5.
This kind of flotilla is an incredibly moving event. Boats with family members lead the way to their chosen area on the water. The vessels that follow adjust their VHF radios to the same station to hear words spoken in reverence and farewell. In Lee’s flotilla there were 18 boats from the Cranberry Isles and Mount Desert. They headed out through the Gut on an overcast afternoon. From the boat Leeway, Lee’s great grandsons Adam and Henry Olearcek released his ashes and a wreath of flowers. Everyone listened quietly as the final call was made for the fishing vessel Helen H, Lee’s last boat. Karen Fernald Smallwood so clearly captured the feeling of that afternoon in her poem, “Flotilla for Lee,” that I asked her permission to include it here.
Upon water gray as molten silver
A chain of vessels-
Bow to stern to bow to stern.
Clouds above en masse save but for precious breaks
Spilling brilliant gold across endless shades of green on land.
Chain of vessels links boat to boat;
Life to death;
Man to man.
The first time Bruce and I attended a memorial flotilla was in June 1992, in honor of Keith Wedge, a 34-year-old fisherman from Great Cranberry Island. We were among 40 boats participating in the tribute. Since then, we have been to memorial flotillas for John Fisher, Karl Wedge, Norman Sanborn and Lillian Alley. (We both felt a tremendous loss at being out of town at the time of Lee Ham’s flotilla.) Each occasion was incredibly special, marked by the weather on that particular day and our relationship to the person being honored. Three years ago, when Lillian died, the summer was notoriously gray and foggy. Her flotilla took place despite a thick fog that prevented visibility between boats. As the vessels moved through the Eastern Way toward Baker’s Island, a straight row of dots on the radar screen was the only way to see all 20 boats headed out to say goodbye.
My father-in-law, who died seven years ago, and my own father, who died 10 years before that, were both men who enjoyed spending time on the water. Warren Fernald hauled lobster traps well into his 70s and my dad sailed every chance he had. A memorial flotilla would have been a fitting eulogy for either of them, and yet each was specific in his desire to have his ashes buried on Islesford. We said goodbye on land, but the imagery of the nearby water heartened us. At both of the services, we included this poem written by my great grandfather, George Hill Bottome, in the early 1900s.
Eastern Way
Between the islands flowing
The salt tides follow fast,
They follow fast and knowing
They reach the sea at last!
Their rising and their falling
No earthly power can stay,
A voice to them is calling
Along the Eastern Way.
My little boat is rocking
Moored safely near the strand,
The tides cry, yearning, mocking,
It will not understand.
But some day it will listen,
And bear me far away,
To where the sea waves glisten
Beyond the Eastern Way!
On the first anniversary of Warren’s death, his daughter Karen gathered people together to release floating luminaries from the Sand Beach on Islesford. In the days leading up to the June anniversary, a notice at the post office invited everyone to visit Karen and Hugh’s house to make their own luminaries, to honor whomever they wished. She had dipped the bottoms of paper lunch bags in melted paraffin so they would float. Some people cut designs and silhouettes in the tops of the bags, while others colored pictures or wrote notes. After dark, on June 14, everyone lit tea lights inside the bags and set them on the water to be carried away by a gentle breeze and the receding tide. I’m pretty sure most of us were comforted by the sea that night as we watched the flotilla of 100 lights and memories move out on the water and into the fog. We wondered how long they would stay lit, and who might see them coming.