Captain Frank Swift and the Windjammer Capital
Near Camden, Maine
In nineteen thirty six, a man named Frank Swift had an idea that most maritime observers considered either charming or foolish: he would offer paying passengers the experience of sailing on a working cargo schooner, the old two- and three-masted vessels that had been the workhorses of the Maine coast for a century, and that were mostly rotting at wharves by the time of the Depression.
Swift chartered the schooner Mabel, launched at Milbridge, Maine, in eighteen eighty one, and began offering week-long cruises out of Camden. The price included a bunk, meals, and the genuine experience of a working sailing vessel. Passengers were expected to help rather than simply be carried. By nineteen forty, Swift owned five schooners, and Camden had a new identity.
Today Camden is considered the Windjammer Capital of the World. The Maine Windjammer Association operates nine vessels out of Camden and nearby Rockland from late May through mid-October, offering multi-day cruises through Penobscot Bay, around the Deer Isle archipelago, and up toward the Blue Hill Bay. The oldest vessels in the fleet are more than a century old. The cruises still combine sail handling with island stops and meals cooked below. What Swift started as a Depression-era experiment became one of the defining experiences of the Maine coast.
