I turned left at this website and wouldn't you know it, a topic I actually know something about! Well, truth be told, Sch. Bowdoin is an old friend and a part of the story is tied up in Song For Gale, Zeb, Belle Is There Music Tonight, Selling the Isabel, and others I've written. I worked on the Bowdoin, and knew about her as a student at Bowdoin College--yes in Maine, yes the one Peary and MacMillan and Joshua Chamberlain went to (theres a great Artic museum there called the Peary-MacMillan Artic Museum) I spent many hours hanging out in when I should have been studying. I worked on the Bowdoin a number of years after MacMillan died just after she was brought from Mystic Seaport to Maine for partial restoration and a stint in the schooner passenger trade. I wrote the song a number of years later, around the time she was changing from one temporary owner to the next, and on the day she broke off a mooring, and ran aground. The song traveled around for some time too, Gordon Bok actually recorded it before I did, but over the years I've heared of it being used in soundtracks, at funerals, even after soccer games that were lost. And I did intend it to be a song about renewal, which is what finally happened when Mrs. Miriam MacMillan and Dr. Ed Morse spearheaded an effort to develop an Association, and began fundraising efforts to finish the restoration. Owe that masterful work to a great shipwright,a great man, and loving father, John Nugent who single-handedly restored the vessel like he started (out of love, and for hardly any pay.

Anyway, National Geographic had me record the song for its parallel effort to raise funds and get the vessel on the list of National Landmarks. Now, last I checked, she is an official part of the fleet at Maine Maritime Academy. Nothing stays easy, and I know it wouldn't hurt for people to let the Academy know how important traditional sailing skills are to the legacy of the Merchant Marine.

Gale Huntington was the husband of Zeb Tilton's great niece, Mildred, and I had written a song about Zeb, and wanted to be sure it was ok to Mil and Gale so headed over to Martha's Vinyard to play it for them. Gale, was already considered the Island's resident historian, a great fiddler, and collector of songs of whalemen, songs of William Litton, and many others. Gale said, "Good song, and accurate..." so that's how the friendship with Gale started. "Belle" "Get Her Into Shore", "The Wreck of the Bay Rupert" all come from endless conversations and a life-long friendship with Gale and Mil.

All this stuff is also recorded on my only CD thusfar,"Worth All the Telling" (Folk Legacy), but I'm working on the 150 or so other songs.

There's also a song "The Perfect Fields of Fredericksburg on that CD about a Civil War battle, I'm convinced I wouldn't have written had I not also been hanging around Chamberlain's collected writings back at Bowdoin. Its a very....very....small world.

Thank you for letting me know that the folk process has continued in Ireland. I am very glad to learn that others still sing my music. That, as you might guess, is the only real reason one should ever really write folk songs.

LK