By most accounts, Bob Damrell is a sweetheart. His cheerful demeanor and boyish smile are disarming. But the blue fish tail peeking out from the sleeve of his conservative navy blue crew-neck makes you stop and look again.  There’s a large tattoo of a shark swimming around his right arm. It’s rumored that he once caught a 32-foot shark, but if he did he’s not saying. He does admit to a lot of other stories about his life on the high seas though, and if they’re all to be believed, it’s been a full one. His love of the ocean began in 1954 when his parents bought a house on the tip of Southport Island. Damrell was 9 and “full of what makes 9-year-olds difficult.” His father bought him a skiff built by Osbourne Brewer of Southport. “It was an overpowered monster with an 18 horsepower motor. I did not endear myself to the residents of Cozy Harbor,” he said. “I was rather low on the popularity list of Gus Pratt, the de-facto harbormaster.” Three summers later Damrell decided he needed a job. And it would have to involve a boat and the ocean. It isn’t easy for a summer kid “from away” to secure a position on one of the fishing boats in Boothbay Harbor. Unless you’re Bob Damrell. Capt. Pat Elderkin saw potential and hired him onto his fishing boat, the Charlotte C.  “My first job was captain of the head,” Damrell said. “Shipping out with Capt. Elderkin on the Charlotte C was what I needed at 12 years old. Both he and Capt. Bert Rowe of the Sea Hag told me to eat some humble pie and heave around.” Damrell quickly graduated to baiting hooks and cleaning fish. “It wasn’t unusual to catch in excess of 1,000 pounds a day, mostly cod, back then,” he said. He worked hard all day, but after they got back to port, hosed down the boat and cleaned up, “the fun began.” He said he couldn’t go into detail about what that fun entailed, but his smile said it all. Despite his father’s hope that he would attend Northeastern University, by the time he was 18 Damrell had developed a hopeless romance with the sea, and knew that his future was going to be somehow connected to it. “I was smitten by sea stories rattled off by Bert Rowe. He was the last of a dying breed of American Merchant Marine seamen.”  Damrell “stumbled through Maine Maritime Academy,” graduating with Capt. Ben Lewis’ son Terry Lewis in 1968. “Life was great back then. We would ship out of the port of New York, living the high life on the upper East Side until the money ran out and the girls got sick of our sea stories. Then it was back to the union hall to look for a ship – hopefully going to a romantic port and crewed by a good bunch.”  In 1972 he got a call from Bob Hinckley of Hinckley Yachts. He needed a Hinckley 48 delivered to Saint Tropez, on the French Riviera. Saint Tropez has been dubbed the playground of jet setters, fashion models and millionaires, and when he was offered the position of captain, Damrell didn’t hesitate. He knew he’d need a crew of three to help with the delivery, which would require four-hour watches 24/7. So he did what any sea captain looking for deckhands would do in Boothbay Harbor in 1972: he went to the Thistle. He enlisted Bruce Witt, Terry Lewis and Jim Balano on the spot. It was a memorable trip for the four friends. From Bermuda they headed to the Azores, a group of nine volcanic islands in the North Atlantic 972 miles west of Portugal, then on to Gibraltar and Mallorca, and finally St. Tropez. “Every day at noon Bob would take a sun sighting through his sextant to obtain our current latitude. After 15 days out of sight of land in a fairly thick fog we came into view of the westernmost Island of the Azores. He was right on target,” Witt remembers. Damrell met his wife in 1981 when he went to Holland looking to buy a sailboat. “The best thing that happened in my seagoing career was meeting my wife, Marijke.” he said. They dated long-distance for two years, and then she came here and they were married at the Southport Yacht Club. They have two daughters.
During his 34-year career as a merchant marine, Damrell has seen more ports than he can count. While on a stint on the Maersk Arizona off the coast of Somalia, he had “unnerving close encounters” with pirates. “All on board were quite concerned about the threat of being grabbed by a band of these scoundrels,” he said.  “We held ‘pirate drills’ often, and it was my job to stop-watch the time it took to get all 22 of us into a lockdown area.” The pirates were known to attack ships between 5 and 7 a.m. when most aboard were sleeping.  At that time international maritime protocol and law prevented merchant ships from arming themselves. “Our ship was low and slow making her an easy prey for the hopped up Somali pirates. Now,” said Damrell, “most ships are carrying armed guards while transiting the Gulf of Aden.” When he retired a year ago, Damrell held an unlimited Master license. He says it’s not the same being in the merchant marine now. Too much paperwork and computer technology, too little adventure.  He says that in his retirement he should be scraping and painting his 1800s house in Georgetown.  But he prefers “looking for bluefish and stripers, and taking some cruises Downeast in the old Dyer 29” with Marijke. Listening to his stories, you wonder about the ones he doesn’t tell. Like the shark that may or may not have gotten away, it seems this seafaring man must have a lot more fish tales he could tell. But if he does, he’s not saying. “Fishing in Boothbay Harbor, the Merchant Marines in the ‘60s and ‘70s when ships were still calling at exotic ports and spending a week or two alongside the dock...it was fun back in those days. The good old days were really good.”