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LETTERS FROM SEA, 1882—1901
Joanna and Lincoln Colcord's Seafaring Childhood
Parker Bishop Albee, Jr.
Published with the Penobscot Marine Museum
Hardcover, $35
ISBN 0-88448-214-6
8 1/2
x 10 3/8,
192 pages
B&W photographs
Maritime/Maine History
MAINE BOOKS:
America’s Kitchens —NewA Coastal Companion: A Gulf of Maine Almanac, from Canada to Cape Cod —New
In the Shadow of the Eagle: A Tribal Representative in Maine —New
North by Northeast: Wabanaki, Akwesasne Mohawk, and Tuscarora Traditional Arts —New
Partners in Wilderness: Buzz Caverly and Baxter State Park —New
Patriarch of Maine Shipbuilding: The Life and Ships of Gardiner G. Deering—New
Remarkable Americans: The Washburn Family —New
Sharing the Ocean: Stories of Science, Politics, and Ownership from America's Oldest Industry —New
A1 Diner
Antiqueman's Diary
The Camera’s Coast: Historic Images of Ship and Shore in New England
Catboat Era, The
Changing Maine
Confluence: Merrymeeting Bay
Continental Liar from the State of Maine: James G. Blaine
Day's Work, A (Vol. I)
Day's Work, A (Vol. II)
Doryman's Day, A
Down on the Island, Up on the Main
Downeast: A Maritime History of Maine
Eminent Mainers
Fly Rod Crosby
Interrupted Forest, The
Islands of the Mid-Maine Coast, Vol. I
Islands of the Mid-Maine Coast, Vol. II
Islands of the Mid-Maine Coast, Vol. IV
Journalism Matters
Just One More Thing, Doc
Letters from Sea
Life Between the Tides
Little Pine to King Spruce
Maine Hamlet, A
Maine Made Guns & Their Makers
Maine's Visible Black History
Not Your Average Bear
Old Town Canoe, The
On Wilderness
One Man's Meat
Place on Water, A
Rangeley and Its Region, The
Red right Returning
Rediscovering S. P. Rolt Triscott
Same Great Struggle, The
Sea Struck
Shipyard in Maine, A
Snow Squall
That Yankee Cat
Turnaround
Unsettled Future, Unsettled Past
Upriver Passamaquoddy, An
Voyage of Archangell, The
Voyage of Detroit, The
Voyages: A Maine Franco-American Reader
While You're Here, Doc
Wood and Canvas Canoe, The
Worthy of the Sea: K. Aage Nielsen and His Legacy of Yacht Design
- "Richer than any treasure of gold brought up from the ocean bottom, these recently discovered letters are priceless additions to our maritime history. Extraordinarily well written, they are great reading—dandy tales of the sea, more exciting than fiction for their total authenticity." —Walter Cronkite
In June of 1881, on the very night of their wedding in Searsport,
Maine, Captain Lincoln Alden Colcord and his new wife, Jane Sweetser
Colcord, departed for sea to begin a two-year voyage on the bark
CHARLOTTE A. LITTLEFIELD. The voyage would
take them around the world and witness the birth of their daughter
Joanna amid the South Sea Islands and young Lincoln's arrival
during a treacherous winter storm off Cape Horn.
Fifth-generation seafarers, Joanna
and Lincoln Colcord spent their youth at sea aboard their father's
ships. the Colcord's richly detailed journal-letters to family
members ashore, their logbooks, photographs, and later correspondence
give us a splendid window into the life of a seafaring family.
The book's foreword by maritime historian Andrew J. Nesdall,
puts their story in perspective, explaining the rade and customs
during those waning days of working sail at the turn of the century,
yet the letters themselves are surprisingly contemporary as the
family shares its joys and concerns, curiosity about new places,
adventures, and growing pains.
From New York to Yokohama to Valparaiso
to Singapore to Durban to Hong Kong, we share their exhilaration
when things go well yet are ever conscious of the uncertainties
of sea life: illness, the threat of typhoons and dismastings,
wrecks, and financial disaster. Family photographs, including
a wonderful collection of glass plate negatives taken by Joanna
Colcord aboard the STATE OF MAINE in her
late teens, have been augmented by photographs from other sources
to provide a fascinating glimpse of seaboard life, from passing
ships at sea to details in the captain's quarters, a favorite
Chinese cook, harbor scenes, and more.
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