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The sight of the approaching Sunbeam, the Maine Seacoast Mission’s longtime service vessel, is always a welcome one for residents of Maine’s island communities — especially on a frigid winter’s day, just before Christmas.
For more than a century, during the holiday season the Sunbeam has visited islands and coastal communities throughout Maine, from Monhegan to the Cranberry Isles and even, at one point, as far south as Casco Bay. The 74-foot steel-hulled boat comes loaded with supplies, presents and holiday cheer, for families and folks in need.
Maine Seacoast Mission was founded in 1905 by brothers Alexander and Angus MacDonald, with its first boat, the sloop Hope, sailing that year to 64 communities along Maine’s coast. By 1912, the mission had upgraded to its first Sunbeam, a boat better suited to winter conditions. The organization is currently on its fifth Sunbeam, launched in 1995 and fully retrofitted in 2019.
The organization provides needed support to coastal communities year-round, including medical services, food assistance, educational programming and community events like pizza parties on board the ship and dockside concerts.
But its work during the holidays is perhaps its most visible and well-known program, beginning just three years after Maine Seacoast Mission’s founding and quickly becoming a beloved tradition in coastal Maine.
In those early days, community organizations across eastern Maine would have gift drives, sewing clothing and blankets, making candy and collecting items from local businesses. In its first decades, a visit from the Sunbeam was often the only chance some island residents would have to get a Christmas present — as well as many other vital necessities.
“[The Sunbeam] is at their service as an ocean-going ambulance, or to carry coal, cars, emergency supplies and mail throughout the year,” the Bangor Daily News wrote in a 1948 story. “She breaks out frozen harbors for fleets of lobster boats locked in the ice, and she brings books, toys, oranges and cod liver oil tablets for the children… Many a future fisherman’s first boat ride is aboard the Sunbeam, from the hospital to his home. At the time of a death, she may bring the casket and body back for burial in a mainland cemetery.”
Before the 1960s, when its mission became more focused on Down East Maine, the organization traveled all over the Maine coast, from Kittery to Eastport. The gift list in those days could swell to up to 3,000 families each year, with volunteers attempting to personalize the selection for each family, taking into account their size, mix of genders and individual needs.
And in a tradition stretching back to the program’s founding in 1908, all presents are wrapped in white parchment paper and tied up with red string. It’s a simple, old-fashioned way of honoring the first people from the mission to take to the sea in order to bring a little joy to folks on far-flung islands.
As the mission’s focus has shifted to the eastern parts of the state, the Christmas program has changed to include not just islanders, but also residents of a number of mainland communities in towns between Machias and Mount Desert Island. It also serves people living in nursing homes, prisoners and elder folks living alone. And if the Sunbeam itself can’t make a visit, gifts are delivered via local mail boats, as happened this year with islands like Monhegan and Vinalhaven.
Life in many ways is very different for islanders today compared to a century ago, when things like electricity and telephones were still rare, the internet didn’t exist, lighthouses were still actively staffed and many bridges and ferry systems weren’t yet constructed. And yet, the hardy souls that choose to live on Maine’s islands still consider a ship like the Sunbeam a lifeline — and a welcome gift during the holiday season.
