| The Wreck of the Tenny Belle
Gordon Lightfoot sings about the Wreck of the Edmund
Fitzgerald; Schooner Fare, my favorite folk group, sings of the Wreck of
the Mary Ellen Carter; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote about The Wreck
of the Hesperus. Sit down and listen while I relate The Wreck of the Tenny
Belle.
William Bucknam Hinds was an 8-year old boy. He was
killed by a runaway milk truck in 1925. His parents manufactured and distributed
Hinds Honey and Almond Cream, a nationally known beauty aid of the era.
After the death of their child, the Hinds family wanted to do something
for the youth of Southern Maine. They decided to donate funds for
the purchase of 125 acres of lakefront property to the newly-formed Cumberland
County Council (predecessor of the Pine Tree Council) of the adolescent
Boy Scouts of America. Thus came into being Camp Hinds.
The camp itself hasn’t changed much in 70+ years. Campsites
have been added; cabins have been moved or demolished; improvements have
been made. But, the plan of the camp still revolves around the Triangle,
the central physical area of the facility. Landmarks such as the Blockhouse,
the Rec Hall, the Council Ring, the Dining Hall, and Harvard (the only
public flush toilets in the camp) can still be found at various points
along the Triangle. The New Health Lodge, built in memory of Dr. John Konecki,
one of camp’s early scouts, and father of Tom Konecki, one of my compatriots,
can now be found within the boundaries of the Triangle.
One of the most interesting features of the camp is
that it is divided by the Tenny River. This 2 mile long body of water connects
Panther Pond with Crescent Lake. There is no current to speak of, and its
meandering curves provide ample boating space for hundreds of boys each
summer. The “other side” has seen the most development in recent years.
New campsites like Siple, Brownsea, Bailey, and Maguire (named for my very
own Scoutmaster and long time Camp staff member Frank Maguire) have sprouted
in the past 15 years. But, when I was a Scout, attending camp for my very
first time, there was only one campsite on the “other side” -- Tenny Campsite.
Tenny Campsite was unique. Instead of huge 4 main tents, Tenny had two-man
Adirondack lean-to cabins. These were situated in a long, meandering row
facing Panther Pond. Tenny had its own Rec hall and leaders’ cabin. At
one time, this was the Senior Scout campsite, but, by 1963, it had become
just one of the regular sites for troops to camp at for a week or two during
the long Maine summer.
There was only one way for the Scouts of Tenny Campsite
to get to places like the Dining Hall, the Waterfront, the Trading Post
-- the Tenny Belle. The Tenny Belle was a raft built on six 55-gallon drums.
It was propelled by a rope-pulley system -- a scout would stand on the
raft with one or two of his buddies and pull, hand over hand, the Tenny
Belle across the river. It was absolutely THE neatest thing at camp. Some
kids loved the waterfront; others spent hours at the Nature Lodge or the
Rifle Range. Me? I spent most of my first week traveling back and forth
across the Tenny River on the Tenny Belle. It was the thing that made camp
unique in my 12 year old mind. Camp had a Dining Hall; School had a cafeteria.
Camp had a Waterfront; Fort Williams had a pool for swimming lessons. Camp
had a Trading Post; my neighborhood had Millie’s store. Camp had a Health
Lodge; my mother was the neighborhood nurse. But no other place on earth
had a Tenny Belle.
Getting on the Tenny Belle was not an easy task. From
the Dining Hall side, the ground sloped toward the river. Scouts doing
their good turns had built “steps” into the bank making the descent easier.
But, the Tenny side was something else. There was no easy slope, only a
difficult bank. Scouts over the years had tried to carve steps into the
reluctant Maine soil, but the approach resembled more a ladder than a stairway.
The Tenny boys always had an audience at breakfast and lunch times to see
who would make it and who would not. The Tenny Belle had a capacity of
SIX BOYS. There usually were more than six, of course, but that was part
of the fun -- to see what would happen if there were more than SIX BOYS
on the Tenny belle as she made her way across the river. Since being late
for a meal was THE cardinal sin of camp, occasionally someone would cut
the lines to the Tenny Belle, effectively stranding anyone on the other
side.
Troop 22, Holy Cross Church, South Portland, Maine,
always spent two weeks at Camp Hinds. Many other troops only spent one
week, so Sundays were very busy days. Several groups were leaving, while
new groups were coming to take their places. And that meant parents. Not
only parents, but aunts and uncles and grandmothers and grandfathers and
sisters and brothers and cousins several times removed. My parents weren’t
coming, so I just wandered around camp, dressed in my full scout uniform.
My journey took me to the shores of the Tenny River and the Tenny Belle.
It seemed as though there were hundreds of people who wanted to ferry themselves
across the river on the Tenny Belle. I sat on the top step of the path
from the Dining Hall and watched in amazement as adults and boys crowded
onto the Tenny Belle. The first few trips back and forth I counted FOURTEEN
people; on one trip I counted SIXTEEN, but ten of them were small boys.
The Tenny Belle seemed to ride low in the water, but everyone was laughing
and having a great time.
I can’t be sure -- it has been more than 30 years --
but it seemed that, after the group of SIXTEEN, each trip across the river
included one more passenger than the previous trip. I watched in horror
as the number climbed to TWENTY-TWO passengers. With the surety of hindsight,
I realize that as long as the weight was distributed the Tenny Belle would
do her job. A large family passed by me on their way to the Tenny Belle.
I knew from its size that they wouldn’t all be able to go across at once.
But, in true Yankee spirit, they tried. They forgot about distributing
the weight. BANG! BANG! BANG! Three floats on the port side exploded out.
With no flotation on that side of the raft, the Tenny Belle pivoted on
its axis, sending an entire family into the leech-infested waters of the
Tenny River. The noise was horrendous, and the camp brass scurried to the
river to see what was going on. A horrible sight greeted them: mothers
and fathers in their Sunday best were clambering up the banks of the Tenny
River with swamp grass in their hair and river water in their shoes and
their sons squatted in the shallow water in their brand-new uniforms from
Benoit’s. The Tenny Belle lay helpless on its side in the middle of the
river, a victim of overcrowding.
The Boy Scouts have always been conscious of their
image, and the prospect of lawsuits over a piece of transportation history
did not thrill those who made the decisions. At the end 1965 camp season,
the Tenny Belle was laid to rest. A new green wooden footbridge wide enough
for three boys walking abreast and capable of supporting whole patrols
of mothers and fathers was erected before the following season. Her nameplate
enshrined on a rafter in the rec hall along with some memories and a couple
of faded photographs is all that remains of the Tenny Belle.
~ Bill Wiles
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