CASTINE, Maine—Master and educator, Emma Hathaway, has accepted the position of Bowdoin Captain at Maine Maritime Academy. Hathaway has had ties to midcoast Maine since she was a teen. She fell in love with sailing at the age of14 while on a three-day sail out of Rockport on the schooner Timberwind. For the next two summers, she worked on the vessel as an assistant cook, and over the following 15 years, she would serve as a crew member on the Pride of Baltimore II, Spirit of Massachusetts and Niagara.
More recently, Hathaway captained the Seaward out of San Francisco Bay and the Unicorn, sailing from Connecticut through the Saint Lawrence Seaway to the Great Lakes; she has worked as a trainer, mentor and teacher on ocean classroom vessels (Seaward, Harvey Gamage, and Lynx); and has taught US Sailing curriculum at the Olympic Circle Sailing Club in San Francisco Bay. Between 2013 and 2015, she was captain of Makani Olu, a 96-foot, three-masted staysail schooner, the centerpiece of the Kailana Program, an ocean-oriented experiential treatment and education program based in the Hawaiian Islands.
“I am very excited to be part of the next phase of Bowdoin’s sail training history,” said Hathaway. “This is the perfect job for me, combining education with sailing.”
The schooner Bowdoin enjoys a long history of seafaring education and Arctic exploration. Commissioned by explorer Donald B. MacMillan to facilitate his work in the high northern latitudes, Bowdoin has made 28 trips to the Arctic, 25 of them before 1954 under the command of MacMillan. After MacMillan’s retirement the boat belonged to the Schooner Bowdoin Association until 1988 when Maine Maritime Academy purchased the vessel for the purpose of training students. It was at this time that Bowdoin became the Official Vessel of the State of Maine and was designated a National Historic Landmark.
The Bowdoin Centennial Campaign—a fundraising effort to keep the vessel exploring, sailing and training for another 100 years—will fund a renovation underway at Lyman-Morse at Wayfarer Marine in Camden. The project includes the replacement of her 30-year-old deck, stanchions and ceiling timbers, along with several systems upgrades: an engine rebuild, increasing the tank capacities for fuel, fresh water and wastewater, a new refrigeration system, electrical system and generator.
The campaign recently surpassed $1,000,000 in receipts and pledges, including these substantial gifts: a $20,000 grant from the Morton-Kelly Charitable Trust; a $10,000 grant from the Fisher Charitable Foundation; $100,000 from the boat Silent Maid; and a $25,000 1:1 matching gift for the endowment from a 1993 MMA Graduate. The campaign’s aim is to both fund the deck restoration and systems upgrades, and to strengthen the ship’s endowment in order to protect and preserve her in perpetuity.
“Bowdoin is the flagship of our sail training program, so we are pleased to be making excellent progress with the renovation project,” said Dana Willis, Marine Operations Manager. “Welcoming Emma as captain is another step toward Bowdoin’s very bright future.”
The public can follow the deck restoration project and other news of the schooner Bowdoin at mainemaritime.edu/support-mma/category/bowdoin-deck-restoration or on facebook at Arctic Schooner Bowdoin. For more information about the Bowdoin Centennial Campaign, please contact Kay Hightower at 207-326-8932 or kay.hightower@mma.edu.
Maine Maritime Academy is a co-educational, public college on the coast of Maine offering 18 degree programs in engineering, management, science, and transportation. The college serves approximately 950 undergraduate and graduate students in career-oriented programs of study. Year over year, the job placement rate for MMA graduates is in excess of 90 percent within 90 days of graduation. In 2014 and 2015, MONEY magazine ranked Maine Maritime Academy the #1 Public College in America on their Best Colleges list.
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