Emilie Waters Harris
DOUBLE EAGLE was built in 1929 in East Machias, Maine, as a sardine carrier for the North Lubec Manufacturing & Canning Company. She is one of the last survivors of dozens of such boats, and a rare one to have another life in commercial fishing: Jonathan Waters bought her for his oystering operation out of Stony Creek, Connecticut.
It was one of those phone calls that you never forget. My wife and I were on a late-summer cruise in our schooner, SARAH ABBOT, anchored at Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. I remember a day of soft sunshine and light wind, perfect for reading in the cockpit, when my phone chimed. The screen announced a call from a fellow workboat addict, the oysterman, artist, and boatbuilder Jonathan “Johnny” Waters. He was already laughing when I answered.
“This might be one of the craziest things I have ever done,” he chuckled. “I bought the damned thing.”
By “damned thing,” I knew he meant the last working Maine sardine carrier, DOUBLE EAGLE. His daughter, Emilie, had told me that her dad was on the Maine coast, helping to paint the bottom of a beast of a boat and “crushing hard on it.”