One surprising fact about island life is that there are generally boats involved. I know as much about them as you could fit in a bathtub tugboat toy, but you pick up a few things by hanging around.

One joke I’ve heard out here is about the tourist who looks at the lobster fleet moored in the harbor and asks, “Say, how’d they get all their boats pointing the same direction?” Well, I’m a pretty fast learner—I knew just enough not to say, “Hey, that is pretty weird. What’s up with that?”

It only took me a few minutes of reflection to decide it was probably something to do with the winds or tides or seagull poop or whatever. I refuse to ask anyone after hearing that joke.

So, within recent(ish) memory, the Swan’s Island fishing fleet has changed. Man- and wind-powered vessels are pretty much gone, sloops and seiners and draggers (I hope those are all real things) are pretty much gone, and now we’ve got a uniform bunch of motor-powered lobster boats in the harbor. They might be different to the trained eye—all I can do is distinguish the one painted blue from the other with the funny name.

Part of the change started with the arrival of the Colemans in 1957. Bill and Billie (William and Mildred) began to spend their summers here and became a part of the community. The Colemans were the first to bring fiberglass to Swan’s Island.

Bill explained, “When we arrived, all of the boats were wooden boats. We had started a company to weave fiberglass fabrics”¦ I always had quite a bit of our products here and I thought some of these fishermen would want some of these products for their boats.

“I was absolutely wrong. They wanted it, but they wanted it to fix their rusting out pickup trucks. Some years later they began to get fiberglass boats,” he said.

At the time the island was chock full of disintegrating cars held together by luck, haywire and repairman Georgie Tainter. Word spread about the fiberglass and Bill found himself in great demand.

“I’m on vacation,” he laughed. “I’m getting’ sick of this!”

The Colemans spread the word—anyone who wanted their car fixed could bring it over the following Wednesday, to get it all over with. Bill remembers it well:

“Five-thirty, Billie looked out the window and said, ‘Have you seen what’s going on out here?’ We looked out and there were the trucks lined up from Dick Reynold’s house all the way up past the store, waiting. So we got out and went to work on all of ’em.”

The day passed, then night. They strung lights up on the tree out front, “So they could see to do it,” Billie said. “It was really funny.”

Dick Holmes, part of the ferry crew, said his marriage was saved. The fiberglass kept his wife’s feet dry when he drove his truck through puddles.

The Colemans also built a distinctive fiberglass-molded cabin in the early 1960s. Its strength was tested over its first winter; local kids threw rocks on the roof to see if it would break. The island must have decided it was safe, since the fishing fleet began to convert.

Billie told me, “The first fellow that had a fiberglass lobster boat was Sheldon Carlson. And that was a successful boat. He fished it for many, many, many years. All the rest of his life he used that boat.”

As it turns out, it’s still being fished today by Les Ranquist’s daughters. The Colemans were delighted to hear that.

“Well, there was a time 20 years ago,” Bill remembered, “that would make it, let’s see”¦middle ’80s and early ’90s, when probably two-thirds of the fiberglass boats in this harbor were made out of our fiberglass. Then shortly after that we sold the company and I retired. So after that they weren’t made out of our glass anymore.”

But the “glass” boats remain. Maybe someday the historical society will look back wistfully at photos of fiberglass boats.

Kaitlin Webber is an Island Fellow on Swan’s Island through AmeriCorps and the Island Institute.