Of Boats and Men
This past December I went to Marblehead, Massachusetts to photograph the First Harbor Christmas boat. This is a thing I do now-drive to a place I read or heard about to try and get a specific photograph of something usually slightly quirky or charmingly odd in that “love it like a local!” way. I think of it as photo FOMO, which I noticed acutely when we were in pandemic lockdown and I was still seeing gorgeous spring photos of Boston in full bloom. I’m not sure which pained me more-missing out on one of my favorite seasons in the city or that most of the images I saw had gorgeously unobstructed views free of cars and people and loitering buses.
Marblehead is a coastal town slightly larger than a toddler’s shoe. Its resume includes birthplace of the American Navy and Marblehead Men’s Softball League, the oldest and longest standing softball league in the world. Sports and war-it really doesn’t get more American than that.
The First Harbor Company is a family-owned business and “home of the New England Rope Wreath.” Kansas City has barbecue, Marblehead has (checks notes) rope. That tracks. This was the first I had ever heard of this particular craft or that New England had “called it.” Still, living here my entire life, I’m always happy that this old, scrappy group of states can still surprise me.
Every December First Harbor owners Samantha and Tom Peach (because of course that’s their real last name!) decorate a small Christmas tree set inside an adorable, charming little boat and set it adrift into an area called Little Harbor. They began this tradition around 2014 as one of those things that only families in a Laura Ingalls Wilder would do. One year the Peaches added an even smaller tree in an even more darling boat named “Blossom” after their daughter and Pixar optioned this situation on the spot.
Among seacoast communities, the decorated-tree-in-boat is not novel. Whether in towns like Marblehead or on the islands like Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, people find ways to put their own shoreline, beach culture spin on every season: sand dollar and seashell wreathes; holiday lights tangled in lobster traps; buoys and pumpkins; decorative lighthouses plunked down in someone’s front yard wrapped in Fourth of July bunting. Basically if you can hot glue some seaweed and beach glass to a rusty anchor, you’ve pretty much done your part.
But the First Harbor boat is different. Maybe it has as much to do with the lovely, unfussy homespun nature of the tree and the boat as it does with the story behind it: a family creating something purely for joy and fun that also happens to bring a lot of pleasure to others. I could see from looking at other peoples’ images that the boat was more than just folksy-artsy; it was special and that is a mystique more addictive than sugar, meth, and caffeine combined (Please do not combine those things).
I had surprisingly very little to go on to find this boat. My biggest mistake was assuming that it was moored somewhere equivalent to the center of town—a well-known harbor walking or ocean gazing spot. If I was going to go through all the trouble of creating this kind of display, I would definitely want it to live in prime viewing real estate. That’s also another way of saying I wouldn’t want it some place where people would be slowing down outside my house every five minutes to gawk and dawdle. This isn’t Savannah. Sweet tea will not be served.
I discovered that Little Harbor is actually more of a cove. The misnaming and misrepresenting of landmarks and other types of geography is a well-documented New England sport. One of the main bridges in Boston that crosses over the Charles River is officially designated the Longfellow Bridge, but commonly called West Boston Bridge after its original name and often also referred to as the Salt-and-Pepper Bridge (that’s pronounced “pepppaaahhh”) after the unique architectural design of its central towers. Good luck. May the odds be ever in your favor.
I also discovered that the harbor-cove is not so much out in the open, visible by the road that roughly jogs along the coastline, as it is hidden down a narrow access street easily mistaken (by me) for someone’s driveway. I passed by it twice before it dawned on me to turn down the one path I had actually avoided for fear of trespassing on someone’s private property. The short street empties out into a semi-circle with a couple of industrial buildings belonging to a lobster company on one side, a low bluff with a few houses overlooking the water on the other. A small parking lot sloped downward to a sandy, rock-strewn beach at the lip of the cove.
I walked down the slope as far as I could without standing in the water. The First Harbor boat was moored maybe 50 yards or more from the shore, undulating on the choppy surf. It was a brisk December morning, the light already high and harsh. I stood there watching the boat fishtail. Even if it steadied, I could already tell my lens wasn’t long enough. I thought, what would Dorothea Lange do? She’d get back in her truck and wait a few hours for the surf to calm down. She also would have the good lens. Scratch all of that-she’d be too busy changing the course of history documenting the conditions of migrant crop workers in California to go skulking around after a decorative boat with a tree in it.
Still, I was here, I had bothered, hadn’t I? Didn’t that count for anything? I took a few shots in the slim chance that one might turn out, as if in those exact moments a giant wave would send the boat careening toward me and the light would mellow just enough and the water would suddenly turn as smooth as a piece of porcelain. The disappointing nature of reality makes magical thinkers of us all.
Later I went back through Instagram and looked at the beautiful images of the boat from other photographers*. Good for you, I thought, even while they silently taunted me. I could go back. I could try for a calmer day, a cloudy day, a different time of day. I could hire a local to row me out to the damn thing. I could make it my own new annual tradition—chasing after this particular shot and becoming the photographer who gets it.
*New England-based photographer Mark Katz has become the unofficial photographer of the First Harbor boat. His work is absolutely stunning. Visit his entire gallery of Marblehead and beyond HERE.
I had no idea photography was so passively competitive! :D
You have a really witty way of turning a phrase. So good!