BAR HARBOR—Back in 1990, the pilings at Ells’ Pier were filled with yellow ribbons. They blew in the breeze and were eventually bleached white by the sun.
Those ribbons were there for Raymond Hodgkins, who went missing in June of that year. He was overdue on June 18, a Monday. His life raft was found unopened and adrift as was a hatch cover. But the Bar Harbor fisherman was not.
Everyone searched for him, his brother, Lawrence, his regular stern man James “Howdy” Houghton, his friends, family, fishing crews, and the U.S. Coast Guard. Hodgkins was 44, married to Sherry Nickander nee Barns, he had a son, Joshua, and two stepchildren. His ancestors had fished, too. Bud, his dad, took him out as soon as he could.
Making the search harder, the visibility was terrible for days; the fog was that pea soup kind where it’s hard to see your own hand sometimes. The fog didn’t stop the community members from looking for one of their own, someone who was considered one of the best fishermen on the island.
Earl Brechlin reported for the Ellsworth American, at the time, that Perley Fogg, the “Surf King’s” skipper “spent nearly three days combing the bottom in 300 feet of water where the “Joshua’s Delight” might have gone down. The only debris recovered were a tattered yellow rain slicker and a baseball cap. Hodgkins reportedly never wore a cap. Barnacles and other growth on the jacket indicated that it had been submerged for at least six months.”
Dale Torrey of Winter Harbor said at the time, “It’s a damn shame.”
Torrey’s sentence was both a poignant, painful truth and an understatement.
Thirty years later, Joshua Hodgkins had a social media post about the heartbreak of losing his dad.
“He was a great dad, very generous, compassionate, witty, and sharp as a tack. He had the gift of knowing the tides and was a seafaring man through and through. He will always be missed and beloved in our hearts,” Hodgkins wrote in 2020. That hasn’t changed.
In that same July 5, 1990 issue of the Ellsworth American, Brechlin wrote a companion story about laws concerning fishing safety. Story after story of close calls create a litany of loss and almost loss. The Harbor Committee members on Monday shared some of their own, too, beginning with tales of near misses, close calls, and bad times on the sea.
It’s 34 years later, and Raymond’s son has grown up now and has had beautiful children of his own. Raymond has grandchildren who scamper along the same island that he did, going to school, making friends, loving their family, living near the sea.
Back in 2017, Jeff Dobbs posted a seven- minute video he’d shot back in 1987 of Raymond and Margaret O’Neil filming an ad for Maggie’s restaurant. The film shows all the bloopers. Raymond wears a white shirt and a smile, casually confident, a solid presence through all the takes. The camera loved him.
In the video, Margaret hurries down the gangplank. Raymond waits for her, take after take, blooper after blooper.
“Raymond! Hey!” she calls. “What do you got today?”
“Fresh fish, Margaret. What do you want?” he answers and then hauls a bucket of sole onto the wharf in front of her.
Margaret laughs. Jeff laughs. Raymond laughs. There was a joy to the entire video just like many people remember a lot of joy in Raymond. Joy and competency and smarts and love.
There could be a lot of plaques out there on Bar Harbor’s pier and piers throughout Mount Desert Island. A lot of people have been lost. And even more people have been almost lost.
Herbert Damon was lost in 1989 when the “Jennifer,” out of Northeast Harbor, returned from the Marshall Island area. In 1991, “Risky Business,” a scalloper and her crew of Lawrence Robbins, Benjamin Day, and Norman Closson were presumed lost during dragging. Also, in 1991, just two weeks before the “Risky Business” was lost, the “Miss Ann,” another scallop dragger heading from Eastport to Stockton Springs went missing. That dragger had three men on it as well, Alfred Hall, Thomas Hall (Alfred’s son), and Shawn Perkins. There are even more from recreational boats, swimming accidents, other commercial vessels, and some who were swept out to sea.
Whatever happened to Raymond’s stern dragger, “Joshua’s Delight,” likely somewhere 14-18 miles off Schoodic Point, he was lost, and he didn’t return. The last person he spoke to that day was another fisherman at 1 p.m. He told him that he was heading home, back to Bar Harbor. But the “Delight” was loaded with 4,000 pounds of fish, and the winds were from the southwest and gusty. Raymond didn’t make it.
Harbormaster Chris Wharff said he’d like to see more plaques on Bar Harbor’s pier. There’s a history here, and it’s a history that he and the Harbor Committee members don’t want to see forgotten. On Monday, the committee unanimously approved the placement of a proposed plaque remembering Raymond.
The people lost to sea, lost to a way of life, were fathers, loved ones, friends, children. They are the people who made families and made a community what it was and what it is and what it will be. Their lives, like all of ours, deserve to be remembered.
