Page 22. MAINE COASTAL NEWS April 2017
8 February 1912 Schooner THURLOW in Trouble
HISTORY FROM THE PAST - Bangor Daily Commercial - Early 1900s Liverpool, February 18. The British
The THURLOW was the last schooner
Last Vessel to Leave Bangor Anchored Off Handkerchief Lightship Leaking Badly – Help Sent.
The schooner LEORA M. THURLOW,
which left Bangor for New York, December 19, with a cargo of lumber from the Stearns Lumber Co., was sighted by the steamer CHIPPEWA anchored by Nantucket sound, four miles of Handkerchief shoals lightship leaking badly Wednesday night. The CHIPPEWA according to an Associated Press dispatch, received by the Commercial Thursday, brought the news into Boston. Wireless despatches were sent out from
the Charleston navy yard Thursday morning to the Revenue Cutter GRESHAM, which was at Woods Hole, Wednesday, giving her the exact location of the THURLOW and ordering the cutter to go to her aid and tow her in to Vineyard Haven. It was expected that the cutter would reach the THURLOW by noon.
to leave Bangor before the harbor closed for the winter. She dropped down the river December 19, and the port was closed by the ice just ten days later. It took her up to last week to get as far as Gloucester. She left there to continue her voyage down the coast last Saturday.
19 February 1912 Capt. and Mrs. T. A. Fickett of Ship ERNE Missing
Vessel was Wrecked February 3 During Terrible Hurricane in Latitude 40 North – Capt. and Wife and Two Others Take to Life Boat
The following Associated Press
dispatch from Liverpool given an account of the wreck February 5, of the ship ERNE of which Capt. T. A. Fickett of Hampden is master and whom, with his wife, the mate and a Mr. Hay of Portland, a passenger on the ship, it is feared, is lost, together with six of the crew:
Continued from Page 7.
he is done making changes. “This current project is a hard investment to recapture in terms of measured revenues. The next goal here at the Eliot yard, will be another one that is hard to measure a payback on. I want to re-engineering our waterfront structure down there. I have a big commercial pier that goes out to a string of fl oats and it is about 14 inches too narrow for the Travelift. I would like to create a Travelift well. It would increase our capabilities down here to handle a lot more boats. It would give us a bigger capacity, 55 tons. Again, I can’t say when, but you never say last project. If there is one other thing that I would do down here it would be to build another rub structure that could house the Travelift and be used as a work bay for the commercial guys.”
Tom has traveled a very interesting path
steamer CUBAN, which arrived here Sunday night from New Orleans, brought into port nine of the crew of the British ship ERNE, which was wrecked in a heavy storm at sea. The ERNE was bound from Boston, February 1, for Buenos Ayres. The CUBAN passed her on February 8, in latitude 40 north, longitude 70 west, and rescued those of the crew who had managed to keep alive. Six of the crew were drowned, while the master of the ERNE, Captain Fickett, his wife, the second mate and a passenger are missing. Only the cargo was keeping the wreck afl oat. The survivors of the ERNE tell a
terrible story of a hurricane on February 3, which carried away the ship’s deck cargo and rigging. The gale raged until February 5, when Captain Fickett’s wife was badly injured by a heavy sea. Later in the day the crew found that the captain and his wife, the second offi cer and a passenger were missing, having apparently
on his way to becoming a boat yard owner. He grew up on the shores of Lake Erie on the west side of Cleveland, Ohio. When asked how he got into the boating business, he added, “It goes back to really when I was 16 and the advice from my older brother. My older brother raced cars when he had free time. When I was 12 years old the fi rst thing I started doing was shovel driveways and cut lawns, to save up for that car I wanted when I turned 16. I knew exactly what I wanted, a 1968 Rally Sport Camaro. We all end up in life as a function of the decisions that we make, some good, some bad. Where I am today is a result of a bad decision. Since I was 12, I would start driving my mother’s car when she didn’t know, every time a lit- tle further. When I turned 16, and I got my
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license, I didn’t quite have the account to buy that Camaro. My brother saw me racing around in my mother’s four-cylinder Ford and he said Dad won’t mind if you drive fast Tom, but he sure as hell will if you get caught. So a month after I got my license, I’m in my mom’s four-cylinder Ford, and what is the fi rst thing a 16-year-old does when he sees blue lights in the rearview? He takes that good advice from his older brother and puts the pedal to the metal right? Over the course of two towns on the west side of Cleveland and I was pretty good at driving. I fi shtailed and weaved my way through a neighborhood and found a driveway that went around the back of a house, snuck in there and laid low in the seat and waited and hoped nobody was at that house and came outside. I waited as long as a 16-year- old could which is about nine minutes and I fi gured they were two towns over by the time I was backing out and at the fi rst set of four way stops boom, two squad cars. My fi rst experience with the police was hands on the hood and being frisked and I was so nervous that when I gave him my license I gave them the wrong one. It said I was 23 years old and my name wasn’t Tom Allen. So not my proudest moment and not my father’s proudest moment either. Taking a license away from a 16-year-old kid for two years was an eternity. So what was I going to do? I bought an old boat with a big block Chevy V-8 in it. That boat and I were inseparable and it didn’t always run. I was always messing around on it.” She was a 19-foot Baja with a 454 Cor-
left the ship in the only lifeboat which had not been carried away. For three days the crew had neither food nor water. Some of the men became deranged by their suff erings and jumped into the sea. The others (?) in the forecastle or lashed themselves to the rigging. The CUBAN sighted the wrecked vessel on the morning of February 8. With much diffi culty a boat was run alongside and the nine survivors were taken on the steamer. The offi cers of the CUBAN are of the opinion that it was impossible for the lifeboat of the ERNE to remain afl oat long in the seas which were running mountain high.
Capt. Temple A. Fickett is a cousin
of Oscar A. Fickett, the well-known marketman in West Market Square and is well-known here. He owns a farm on the back road in Hampden, just outside the city limits and for a number of years has spent his semi-annual vacations there. For three weeks just before sailing on his last trip out of Boston, February 1 with Mrs. Fickett
K P Y Y M C
“Before I even found her house I drove straight to the rocky coast and ended up in Hampton. I fell in love with this place. In 1988 I graduated, drove my old Jeep out here moved into my sister’s attic until I could fi nd a job. I started to talk to some fi shermen and decided if I couldn’t fi nd a job I was going to be a stern mate on a lobster boat.” Finally Tom talked his way into a
fi nance company, doing commercial real estate fi nance. Tom responded, “I continued my trek to learn as much as I could and that got me into the banking industry and I was there for 18 years when I fi nally realized do I really want to be a banker? I realized if I didn’t get out I would be a banker all my life and I knew that’s not what I wanted to be. I resigned and I didn’t know what I was doing, where I was going at the time, I just knew that if I didn’t pull myself out completely I wouldn’t be able to fi gure it out. I gave my- self six months to fi gure it out, that is when I realized that the boat yard up the street from where I happen to keep my boat was having a hard time and it looked like they were going under. I started to dig a little further and I did learn how to talk to banks and how to put a business plan together. So I went to a local bank that I was familiar with and said I have this crazy idea do you want to back me on it? That is how I bought Kittery Point Yacht Yard.” Tom says that he was delayed 20 years,
vette engine. “I couldn’t hold the girlfriend for probably more than two months because if anybody wanted to see me they had to come see me on my boat. I had a lot of fun with that boat and that is what got me into boating. I then went through a life-changing event a year later. You get used to a home, mom and dad, and I lost my parents a week apart when I was 17. When that gets taken away you have kind of an oh shit moment and you realize I have got a choice to make, this can either put me in a hole and I can get on the wrong track or I can fi gure out how the world works real quick. Fortunately, my parents had enough in an account for me to take care of the better part of a four-year education and I did. I went as far away as I could and when I went to school I was a pretty serious student.” Tom went to school in Denver, Colora-
do and studied business. While at school he came to New Hampshire for the fi rst time in 1987 to visit his sister in Rye. He added,
but his background is a major asset. Also, as he will tell you, he appreciates it more because of what he was doing previously. What he has enjoyed is the people. “It is great working with the talented people and meeting the people from all walks of life. Boats are a very passionate thing. I didn’t realize how personal a boat is, I thought it was just personal to me.” Tom’s boat was built by Peter Kass
at John’s Bay Boat Company in 1991. He purchased her in 1997 and named her after his wife and daughter. She came with a 3116 Caterpillar diesel, but this has been replaced a 430-hp Cummins. “She is my sweetheart, but I’m lucky if I get to put much more than 100 hours on her a season.” Kittery Point Yacht Yard has become
one of the premier yards on the coast of Maine and was just announced the 2017 Boat Yard of the Year by the American Boat- builders and Repairers Association. Tom has a passion for boats and one can easily see this in how he and his crew takes care of them for their customers. One can bet that this tradition will carry on for a long time to come.
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