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Historians say it was not uncommon for captains to bring their families along.

By BETH QUIMBY, Staff Writer July 1, 2007

Maine-built wooden sailing ships not only carried cargo around the globe, they served as home for a number of Maine families.

Many of the Down Easter cargo ships produced in Maine in the second half of the 19th century were captained by Maine ship masters from Searsport, Yarmouth and Bath, who brought their entire families on board for years at a time as they sailed the oceans.

It is a way of life that has vanished, and so many people today have a mistaken view that families and a seafaring life did not mix, say maritime historians.

"It is surprising to many," said Parker Bishop Albee Jr., a University of Southern Maine history professor and author of "Letters from Sea 1882-1901: Joanna and Lincoln Colcord's Seafaring Childhood," published by Tilsbury House in Gardiner.

This book is one of several that chronicle the lives of Maine women and children who went to sea. Through memoirs, letters and photographs, the book tells the tale of the Colcords' childhood largely spent on the sailing boats captained by their father, Lincoln, until his death in 1913. Their mother, Jane, was also raised on a ship.

It was not uncommon for captains to go to sea with family.

"Think of long-distance husband and wife truck drivers" as a modern day analogy, said Ben Fuller, curator of the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, which holds many of the Colcord family letters and photographs of their voyages.

Only 30 of the 1,000 ship captains' logs maintained by the Mystic Seaport museum in Connecticut make note of wives on board, said Wendy Schnur, reference manager at the museum's library. But she found an 1889 New York Times article that estimated that by the mid-1800s one in four sea captains took their wives along.

The Colcord children were fifth-generation seafarers out of Searsport and spent their younger years visiting ports up and down the Americas, Africa and Asia on ships loaded with lumber, case oil and nitrate.

Both Lincoln and Joanna were born at sea. Lincoln was born with no midwife or doctor present during a storm as the ship rounded Cape Horn. Life on board was not always easy, which was made clear by Jane Colcord's letters to her children, when they occasionally skipped a voyage to attend to their studies. Her letters were filled with yearning for home.

Seafaring families would gather when they could to ease the homesickness, Albee said.

"A port like Hong Kong would become a home away from home where families from Maine would gather," said Albee.

The Colcords' childhood at sea came as the era of wind-powered wooden cargo ships wound down. As these ships were replaced by ships built from iron and powered by steam, captains' families disappeared from ship decks. Captains were away from home and separated from family for shorter periods.

The Colcords eventually left the sea, at the urging of their parents. They attended the University of Maine. Lincoln became a writer, father of two children and a driving force behind the creation of the Penobscot Marine Museum. Joanna became a social worker.

Growing up on a trading ship was unconventional, said Nathan Lipfert, curator of the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, and could make it difficult for those who had the experience to make their way in conventional life.

He said sea captains' children, who grew up watching their fathers issuing orders at sea, had a reputation for being outspoken and forceful. "It kind of ruins you for anything else. People would say about captain's children that the only person they can marry is another child of a captain," said Lipfert.

That may explain why Joanna Colcord did not marry until she was well into her 60s.