BAR HARBOR—Back in 1990, the pilings at Ells’ Pier were filled with yellow ribbons. They blew in the breeze and were eventually bleached white by the sun. Those ribbons were there for Raymond Hodgkins, who went missing in June of that year.
He was overdue on June 18, a Monday. His life raft was found unopened and adrift as was a hatch cover. But the Bar Harbor fisherman was not.
Everyone searched for him, his brother, Lawrence, his regular stern man James “Howdy” Houghton, his friends, family, fishing crews, and the U.S. Coast Guard.
Hodgkins was 44, married to Sherry Nickander nee Barns, he had a son, Joshua, and two stepchildren. His ancestors had fished, too. Bud, his dad, took him out as soon as he could.
Making the search harder, the visibility was terrible for days; the fog was that pea soup kind where it’s hard to see your own hand sometimes. The fog didn’t stop the community members from looking for one of their own, someone who was considered one of the best fishermen on the island. Earl Brechlin reported for the Ellsworth American, at the time, that Perley Fogg, the “Surf King’s” skipper “spent nearly three days combing the bottom in 300 feet of water where the “Joshua’s Delight” might have gone down.
The only debris recovered were a tattered yellow rain slicker and a baseball cap. Hodgkins reportedly never wore a cap. Barnacles and other growth on the jacket indicated that it had been submerged for at least six months.
” Dale Torrey of Wi.
