It’s taken nearly three decades but the missing historic Curtis Island Lighthouse fog bell has been found – 70 miles away on Deer Isle.
The Camden Harbor bell warned mariners from 1896 until 1970.
Three years later the town took ownership from the Coast Guard of Curtis Island Light.
But the bell was missing.
Nearly 30 years later, Coast Guard officials presented the town with the bell, dedicated on Memorial Day weekend 2000 to honor the men and women who had served on the Curtis Island Light Station.
But there was only one problem – it wasn’t the original bell.
Those who knew knew. Those who didn’t didn’t…
So behind the scenes, members of the Curtis Island Foundation quietly went to work.
“Knowing that the fog bell sitting on the Town Landing was not the original Curtis Island fog bell, the foundation began a search for the bell that had served the Island from 1896 to 1970,” says Pat Skaling of Camden.
Three years ago the foundation persuaded a local newspaper to run a story on the missing bell, publicity the group hoped would generate interest in finding the original bell.
It was eventually found – but it was 70 miles away, on Deer Isle, on the grounds of the Deer Isle/Stonington Historical Society.
Now how to get it back.
The Curtis Island people talked to the Deer Isle people and the Deer Isle people were charitable enough to agree to swap bells.
But then there was another problem.
The bell on the Camden Town Landing was on perpetual loan from the Coast Guard so the town didn’t really own it and as a result couldn’t swap it with Deer Isle’s Curtis Light bell.
Curtis Island people asked the Coast Guard if the agency could initiate paperwork to change the perpetual loan to ownership.
The Coast Guard said no, it’s too complicated.
So the Curtis Island people asked the Deer Isle people if they would be willing to still swap lighthouse bells, realizing the one that the Deer Isle people would be getting was really on a permanent loan and nothing they ever could claim as their own.
The Deer Isle people took it under advisement and after much discussion notified the Curtis Island people that they would be returning the Curtis Island bell to Camden and won’t require anything in return – no bell, no nothing.
Those Deer Isle folks – they’re good people.
The original Curtis Light bell will be coming home this summer.
(A shout-out to Skaling, an avid Camden historian who wrote the original version of this piece in the Pen Bay Pilot, linked here.)
