As production of this issue was coming to completion, the satirical media outlet The Onion re-posted one of their 2024 headlines to a major social-media platform. It reads: “Nation Demands More Jobs Where You Steer Ship With Big Wooden Wheel.” It was accompanied by a salty-looking, clean-shaven gent wearing a striped shirt and holding a spoked wooden wheel in his hands. I thought that was funny, and a fun coincidence, so I texted it to Noah Barnes, captain of the schooner STEPHEN TABER. His rise to a luminous career in a wooden vessel is recounted by Sarah Devlin beginning on page 22.
Alison Langley
Capt. Noah Barnes, at the big iron wheel of the schooner STEPHEN TABER.
Noah, as Sarah describes, grew up sailing in his parents’ windjammer, the STEPHEN TABER, out of Midcoast Maine. As a young man, he made a brief tack to New York City to dabble in a communications career in technology, before returning home to assume the family business.
The Barnes’s schooner, the TABER, was and is part of The Maine Windjammer Association, a tight collective of independent owner-operators of traditional sailing vessels—nearly all schooners—who collaborate on marketing efforts and maintain high standards for the fleet. Each one of these owner-operators makes their living steering a ship with a big wheel made of wood or cast steel or iron.