Our Island Communities Almer Dinsmore honored with ferry name

BY JENNIFER HELMAN

LIVING ON an unbridged island like Swan’s Island, I knew the tradition of naming ferries in honor of previous, long-serving captains like our very own Henry Lee and others like Richard Spear and Neal Burgess.

That honor now has been bestowed on a friend— the Ferry Advisory Board voted unanimously to name the new ferry the Almer Dinsmore.

I recently interviewed Dinsmore in his Trenton home. He graduated from Maine Maritime Academy in 1968 and took his first job at sea with American Export Lines, an industry leader at the time.

He loved the work, but it kept him away from his growing family. When he saw an ad for an opening as a Maine ferry captain, he jumped at the chance to work closer to home. In 1978, he started as a relief captain on the Everett Libby on the Swan’s Island run. He fondly remembers his first crew of Steve Harriman, Donnie Staples, and Johnny Martin.

For the next nine years he continued his time at sea with shipping companies as well as relieving ferry captains for Swan’s Island, North Haven, Vinalhaven, and Islesboro. In 1987 he accepted a permanent position as captain of the Libby.

His wife Linda shared that for those first 18 years he spent ten out of 12 months each year away from home. She and the kids would visit him for a few days or he might have a week at home between assignments. So, when he took the permanent position, they were able to enjoy a more traditional lifestyle.

“It was a good life, and we were happy when he didn’t have to go to sea anymore,” Linda said.

Dinsmore recalled one weekend on the North Haven run when all the day’s runs had been cancelled due to winter weather. He was living in crew quarters on the island, and a crew member called saying his mother needed emergency medical help and asked him to risk a trip to Rockland.

They loaded the island’s snowplow and ambulance, then headed out with water washing over the bow doors. Once they reached the mainland, the plow led the way, clearing the ice and snow, getting the ambulance to the hospital.

By then, the weather had improved, so the island’s schoolteacher was able to hitch a ride back in time for school the next morning. The teacher was thrilled not to be stuck on the mainland. Dinsmore wasn’t sure the students were as relieved.

From 1989-90, he held the ferry manager position in Rockland, but quickly found he didn’t care for office life. In the fall of 1990, he returned to the Swan’s Island service and never looked back. In 2013 he retired.

Linda also retired, and they’ve been enjoying making up for lost time.

At several points during the interview, Dinsmore was visibly moved. While reviewing comments on a Facebook post about the naming of the vessel, he was particularly touched. In addition to the many hearty congratulations, a fellow ferry captain said, “He was very good to me … and [I] had the privilege to fill his spot when he retired.”

Other comments demonstrated how captains become a part of the fabric of the islands they serve. One post described him as a “gentleman and a class act” while another said he “really cared about island people.”

The Maine DOT expects the new ferry to launch sometime this fall and it will, at least initially, serve Vinalhaven. Dinsmore and his family hope to attend the dedication ceremony in Rhode Island, where the vessel is being constructed.

BY CARL LITTLE

Every year since 2006 the Maine Seacoast Mission has published The Island Reader, a wide-ranging anthology of poetry, prose, and artwork by residents of Maine’s unbridged islands. And every year the literary/artistic smorgasbord reminds us that islands are special places that people call home. The 2023 edition, no. 17, gets right to the point with this short poem by Arria Carbonneau of Peaks Island: bound to the ocean to the rising of the tides the salt in your nose. in your hair. Home.

drink it up. let it swell inside of you. cleansing.

Island livelihoods inspire a number of poems. Leona Buswell from Swan’s Island offers a rousing evocation of lobstering in her “Way of Life,” which opens: On a cold and windy morning, you want to sleep in late

But the shedders and the day old bait won’t wait So ya pack your lunch and get your gear Kiss your mate just below the ear

LOBSTERING, IT’S A WAY OF LIFE . . . .

In his poem “Would There Be Wood,” Buswell’s fellow Swan’s Islander Weston Parker riffs on the life of a carpenter. “You can talk to the wood,/begging it to fit,” he writes, but it may split under so little pressure, sending a splinter your way to remind you of its delicate feelings.

Capt. Joe Litchfield of Peaks Island shares a short play, The Fisherman’s Wife. One of the characters, Ethan, captain of the F/V Sarah C, vents: “Nearly all the good boats and fishermen have been forced off the waterfront by the condo ownin’ Boston Yuppies. No one cares about the workin’ waterfront guys anymore. No one. Cultural destruction if you ask me.”

Island kids contribute some fun poems. Audrey Barker of Isle au Haut declares, “I am happy and I like cats” while Anica Messer on Matinicus seeks to answer the question, “What is an island family?” She writes, “We all help each other when we need it,/And we all play with each other when we can.”

Several pieces take the form of reminiscences. In her “Maine Memories,” Judith Bowen Horky of Chebeague relates how her father had a boat named The Maygo, “thanks to the temperamental motor hanging off the back.”

Janet Moynihan from Matinicus recounts the creation of a hybrid truck by a lobsterman, “our good engine welded onto his good truck bed.” Both stories underscore the islanders’ ingenuity.

There is gratitude here too. Sarah Goodman Cuetara of Peaks Island offers thanks for, among other things, 50 milkweed seeds, for the soil that covers them, and for “next November’s explosion of nomad ballerinas.”

Pixie Lauer thanks the plants that form her compost pile as she hauls tubs of seaweed mulch gathered at Thrumcap and anticipates leaving Great Cranberry for the winter.

The “Best in Anthology” prize might go to Jane Goodrich’s splendid ode to a pin cushion. The longtime Swan’s Island resident and owner of Saturn Press considers the “faded cloth … sentinel on my dead mother’s dresser, a chaotic catchall defying order, defining haphazardness.” The pins provide a timeline of one woman’s life.

The artwork starts on the cover with a brilliantly comical painting by Tom Kilmartin of Peaks Island showing a seagull sipping Moxie through a straw. There are many photographs, including one of a snowy owl perched on a headstone by Mike Johnson, captain of the Maine Seacoast Mission’s boat, the Sunbeam.

The collection carries a heartfelt dedication to the Mission’s director of island health, Sharon Daley, who recently retired after more than 20 years tending to islanders. Among other accomplishments, Daley started the telehealth program and the outer island eldercare network.

“Sharon is best remembered, however, for the depth of her care and for giving a painless shot,” write the editors.

You can order a copy of the 80-page anthology or read it online at www.seacoastmission.org.

Thos. Moser in Freeport is hosting an exhibition of works by 60 artists featured in Carl and David Little’s forthcoming book Art of Penobscot Bay (Islandport Press). The show runs through January.