The Bunkers of Cranberry Isle For more than two centuries a Maine family has wrested a living from the sea off Mt. Desert. By Gunnar Hansen Like their forebears who came to Cranberry in the eighteenth I SLAND folks are a breed apart. boatbuilder for half a century, now "The mosquitoes came back," Wilfred Fiercely proud of their roots, lives at Southwest Harbor. says, "but the cranberries didn't." confident in their special terrestrial Fishermen, seamen, boatbuilders, Unlike Mt. Desert, which is niche, they carry out their daily tasks the brothers are descendants of connected by bridge to the mainland, far from the confusion and sprawl of Benjamin Bunker who settled on the Cranberry, accessible only by water, the mainland, grateful for the island in 1762, fourteen years before must have all its supplies carried by surrounding water that defines their the American Revolution. Wilfred says boat. That carrying is done by Beal & home turf. Their memories are those of of this ancestor, "For all I know, he Bunker, an enterprise Wilfred started their neighbors: shared recollections of might have been chased out of Scotland with a partner who has since left the times past. Often, they have forebears for stealing sheep. I haven't looked too business. Six mornings a week at 8:30, in common, too. To off-islanders, the close at the family history. Afraid of the boat leaves Cranberry on its first routine of bringing supplies from the what I might find." run to Northeast Harbor. By 9:15, main, and of doing without many At one time, some 400 people lived Wilfred has delivered island mail to modern-day conveniences ("affecta- year round on the Cranberries; now the post office there, has picked up tions" islanders often call them), may only seventy call Great Cranberry supplies, and is back on the island at seem a hardship. To island people, the home, their modest houses located 11:00, free - at least in the winter bother is only natural. Besides, if a mostly on the main road, nicknamed months - to do other chores until the ferry weren't a part of island life, Route One. that runs through the afternoon run at 3:00. Wilfred Bunker would have to find center of the island. Barely a mile at its Cranberry has one of the few private another job. widest and just over two miles long, ferry services left in Maine, "but Friendly and easygoing, he stands at Cranberry (sometimes called Big without a mail contract I couldn't meet the helm of the forty-four-foot Sea Cranberry) is now almost entirely expenses," Wilfred declares. That Queen, one of the boats that provide wooded. But the Bunker brothers contract, however, commits him to transportation and mail service to the remember when much of the island's making a crossing in all kinds of Great Cranberry Isles, off Mt. Desert. 900 acres was open land, with good weather. "I've missed only three days At fifty-nine, Wilfred has been hayfields and productive gardens, and in forty-one years." In foul weather. he running this service to the islands for when the inhabitants were less refuses too carry passengers, knowing four decades. Like his brother Tud, a dependent on the mainland. They also all to well the hazards of making a run former fisherman and a boat captain remember when the island, noted for when sixty- or seventy-mile-an-hour for fifty-three years, Wilfred has lived its fine cranberries - high bush, low winds are blowing. on Great Cranberry all his life except bush, and heath berries - was drained In addition to the Sea Queen (sixty- for two years in the merchant marine. off in the 1920s in a futile effort to kill seven passengers), Wilfred runs the A third brother, Raymond, a off a thriving population of mosquitoes. Island Queen (forty-nine passengers) 48 Photographs by David Westphal