A Visit to Cross Island B y To m C a b ot J r .
Shortly after receiving the MITA Trail Guide in the mail a couple of years ago, Tom Cabot Jr. wrote to tell us some of the fascinating history behind Cross Island near Machias, most of which was bought by his father in 1941. We are reprinting the letter, with Tom’s permission, both to share this interesting tale with members and to highlight the role of caring landowners in maintaining public access on the coast of Maine. (Butter Island in Penobscot Bay is also owned by the Cabot family and available for member use.) We are deeply indebted to the Cabots for their long legacy of commitment to the Maine Island Trail, MITA, and the stewardship of Maine’s wild islands. In 1941, just a few days before Pearl Harbor, my father Tom Cabot bought almost all of Cross Island. The price was very low because the only value of a Maine island in those days was stumpage for the lumber. Cross had just been lumbered – in the summer, the trees were cut and limbed, and in winter the logs were skidded down to the water’s edge. This island still looked fine from a ship because the periphery was not lumbered due to the steep shorelines and the branches growing nearer to the ground on the outer sides, which made the lumber less valuable and not worth the trouble to cut. As a family, we had cruised around Cross Island many times on the family yawl Avelinda. Years later, Dad decided to name the woodlands the “Avelinda Forest” and to post protective No Trespassing signs all around it. Not long after the purchase of Cross Island, Dad and I boarded the night train from Boston and slept as it chugged along the Maine coast. We brought with us two duffles of clothes with food and bedding, plus three large canvas bags containing the knocked-down twoseater German faltboat we had brought back from a summer of sport travels in Europe in 1936. 14
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Early Saturday morning, in the train For warmth and cooking, we moved yards beyond Machias, we scrambled into it an old black stove, which we off the train and dragged our bags to connected to the chimney with some beneath an old pier on the Machias old coffee cans. There was ample River. There we proceeded to reassemble driftwood to fire it up. the faltboat, complete with its Nazi On the eastern end of Cross Island was pennant in the bow. As we were about the original Coast Guard station which to launch it, two policemen showed up at that time was fully intact, with its iron with drawn guns. It took rails running through Dad a lot of explaining to large doors down to It took Dad a lot convince them that we the cove to launch the were not German spies of explaining to heavy man-propelled just disembarking from a convince them life boats into the surf. German U-boat. But about ten years that we were not earlier, the Coast Guard German spies just Taking Stock of had switched to enginethe Island disembarking powered lifeboats and It took us many long hours from a U-boat. had built a newer house to paddle against the wind and pier in the straits down the Machias River and around to the northeast. We found that across Machias Bay where the waves the new facility was occupied by armed created considerable surf from a recent Coast Guard chaps who were patrolling storm. We saw no humans – only seagulls. the outer edges of Cross, searching for Tired and hungry, we arrived in the German submarines. lee of the long northerly spit of Cross The westernmost tip of Cross was owned Island, where there was an old, longby someone else and had no structure on deserted and very lonely farm house. it. Dad later purchased this as well. Dad’s Since Dad was the new owner, he original purchase included not only a had no qualms about breaking in. number of small nearby islands, but also We cleaned up an otherwise empty a large tract of land on the mainland downstairs room that still had glass in across from the Coast Guard station. most of its windows.
Thomas D. Cabot on Cross Island’s outer shore in 1945. Reprinted from: Avelinda: The Legacy of a Yankee Yachtsman by Thomas D. Cabot. Island Institute, Rockland, ME 1991.