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| On the Rocks at Monhegan 2021 watercolor by Gregory E. Larson |
Monhegan Island - A World All Its Own
travel memoir
by Gregory E. Larson
It was a dreary, gray
soup of fog off the coast of Maine when the D.T. Sheridan met its demise on
November 7, 1948. The diesel-powered tugboat was hauling two barges of coal
from Norfolk, Virginia, to Bangor, Maine. It struck the south, rocky shore of
Monhegan Island, even though there was a working lighthouse at the top of the
island, which is about a mile from the south shoreline. This was not a tragedy
of Edmund Fitzgerald proportions. The outcome was better than most would think.
A nearby seaman heard the crash, rescued the crew from the frigid waters, and
got them to solid ground. Not sure what happened to the coal barges. Who knows,
they might be floating somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle.
The tugboat remained in pieces
on the shore of Monhegan, until a storm in 1970 (probably during high tide)
pushed a portion of the bow and hull up onto the rocks where it remains to rust
and decay, and is visited by artists and the curious who happen to be on the
island.
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| View of Monhegan Village from the overlook at the lighthouse photo by the author |
There are sixty-four permanent
residents on Monhegan Island, but I can only imagine the winters create a cold,
bleak existence. In the warm summer months, the population increases tenfold.
Artists, writers, and naturalists mix with tourists and wedding parties and
they fill the little village to overflowing. The one-hour ferry ride from the
Maine coast does a brisk business all summer long. It seems like a hobbit-land
with a small village, lobster boats, evergreen forests, and granite cliffs with
gulls swirling above the crashing waves. It would make a great setting for a
whodunnit novel, and since the island is full of writers and artists, I’m sure
there have been numerous stories about the quaint island where strange things
can happen.
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| Forboding cliffs on the east side of Monhegan Island photo by author |
On a summer trip to
Monhegan in 2019, I was able to attempt to do some plein-air watercolor
painting. ‘Attempt’ is the key word. I learned that I paint much better in a
studio, so I took numerous photos while on the island and have completed
watercolors of the D.T. Sheridan on the rocks and of the Monhegan Lighthouse.
The sun, wind, and circumstances beyond my control all conspired to make
outdoor watercolor painting a difficult and harrowing task. One morning, after
several of us set up our easels on a beach, a crabby lobster-boat fisherman backed
his pick-up truck towards my easel, then yelled, “You’re gonna have to move.”
Three of us quickly gathered our things but felt dislodged in mind, body, and
spirit. After backing his truck over our vantage points, the crabby guy got out
and walked back towards the buildings on the shore. In another instance, I was
on the lawn of the B&B where our instructor was staying, and I was deep
into painting the ferry dock and the boats in the harbor when the proprietor
hurried out the front door and yelled, “My mowing guy says he is going to be
here in thirty minutes, so you’ll have to wrap up what you’re doing soon.” Oh, the
travails of a plein-air artist.
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| Monhegan Lighthouse 2019 watercolor by Gregory E. Larson |
If you walk south through the village, past the church, you’ll eventually end up at Lobster Cove, which has a pungent, fishy odor during low tide. Past the marshes and up on the rocks above the south shore is where you’ll find the rusting pieces of the D.T. Sheridan. I’m sure the gulls have been feasting along the shore for centuries and they’ll always be there. The view is timeless. Out towards the horizon, amongst the colorful, wooden buoys, you’ll see the lobster boats with the men working their traps in the brisk winds on the open sea . . . unless it is foggy, and who knows what can happen then.
Information Resource: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/d-t-sheridan-shipwreck
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| Monhegan Village near the ferry dock. photo by the author |
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