The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 25

i BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE July 17, 1977 25 Deaths TAAT Boston (globe NEWS SKCTION 7 PETER ANDERSON Oxhide boat voyage makes a historical point 1 AW SI ir: (UPI photo) Harbor after crossing from Ireland to Newfoundland. for a port By Paul Langner Globe Staff Most people laughed, and some Irish farmers and fishermen blessed themselves when Timothy Severin and his crew set out on May 17, 1976, from Dingle, Ireland, to cross the. Atlantic in a 36-foot boat made of oxhides. But yesterday it was a great day for the Irish as the boat, Brendan, lay alongside the dock at Boston's Lewis Wharf marina and the four crewmen stood by proudly. They had shown that a sixth century Irish monk, St." Brendan, could have sailed across the North Atlantic in a curragh and reached North America as some chroniclers say he did.

Severin does not claim that he has proved that St. Brendan actually did make the voyage, but "it is certainly possible that he did. He reached Greenland certainly, and he may have made it to America." Accordingly, Severin and three crewmen crossed the Atlantic in a curragh, a leather boat like St. Brendan's, in two stages. They arrived in Newfoundland June 28, and considered the point proved.

From there they had the curragh shipped by freighter to Lewis wharf where it arrived Friday afternoon. The legend of St. Brendan and his epic voyage of about six years which seems to have taken him to Florence has not been involved in any real-estate development projects. A native of Chelsea, Florence, is founder and head of the Leonard Silver Manufacturing Co. and Leonard Silver International, both in East Boston.

Information of the proposal was disclosed when representatives of the group approached city and state officials to inquire about the plans for relocating the Northern Avenue bridge. As presently planned by the State Department of Public Works, with input from the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the proposed new bridge CENTER, Page 45 at stake Dispute centers on dotted area of map, MSE CHELSEA rVT0BINBRIDGEf M0RAN TERMINALtzS CHARLEST0WN JS ffc boston Jl A. SOUTH BOSTON WIcf fc tffjV CT WINTHR0P 1 jy 1 imMm isyCwp I)EER "'-Ai pfijjlfe ARMY BASEEEE 1 somewhere in North America, has puzzled scholars for a long time. The late Adm. Samuel Eliot Morison, one of the most respected historians of exploration and a sometime teacher of Severin's had a lot of fun -belittling the claims of those who believed in St.

Brendan's voyage. But Severin is one of those scholars who are reluctant to dismiss the story, expecially after the trip. The story of St. Brendan's voyage was recorded more than two centuries after his death by an Irish monk who -worked from oral traditions and possibly texts now lost. This story, called the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, or the voyage of the Abbot St.

Brendan, was one of first known best-sellers. Every literate person in 10th century Europe seems to have bought a copy and it was translated into English, French, Spanish, Flemish, German, and Italian. Even today 120 manuscripts of the Navigatio exist and they are a mixture of tales of miraculously narrow escapes on the one hand, and accurate descriptions on the other. The descriptions concern icebergs, pack ice, glassy calm seas, and days when the sun did not set at all. The latter part, especially, was dismissed by people who had never been north of polar circle where in the summer the sun indeed never sets.

SEVERIN, Page 40 The cold trail of a killer A month ago, Leslie Spellman, 27, of Hingham was found beaten to death on the edge of the Acadia National Park in Northeast Harbor, Maine. For the past three weeks The Globe has looked into many aspects of the murder and the investigation. State Police say they have no solid leads to her killer. By John F. Cullen and Anson Smith Globe Staff NORTHEAST HARBOR, Maine The summer-like heat could be felt everywhere and the villagers, fewer than 600, were making final preparations for the beginning of the tourist season on the July 4th weekend.

It was Sunday morning, June 19th. It had rained most of the night, but the heavy showers had stopped before 6 a.m. Early morning fog was beginning to burn off. There was a slight breeze swaying the pines along Rte. 198 leading into the center of the village.

On Main street, the weatherworn wooden store fronts looked picturesque in the morning haze. The'green overhanging doors of the fire station' were open. Over a door at the side of the fire station was a small plastic neon sign which read: "Police-Fire." Through the screen door below the sign, 46-year-old Ernest Coombs could be seen seated in an old chair. Coombs, a blond haired man with' a moustache was the civilian police and fire dispatcher on duty that morning. He was alone, sipping coffee and reading the morning paper.

The bank of two-way radio equipment above his head was chattering, but he paid little attention. Coombs knew that the island's policeman that day, Matthew Stewart, was home having coffee, that Sgt. Tyrone Smith was home painting his house and the town's only other policeman, Chief Maitland Murphy, was out of town on vacation. Coombs later recalled that it was like any other Sunday morning in the village: uneventful. A few people were strolling on the sidewalk, just glancing into store windows, while others were walking to church.

Like any other offseason Sunday, the occasional roar of a car engine on Main street would break the tranquil atmosphere that engulfed the small village of Northeast Harbor, a town on Mount Desert Island, 12 miles south of Bar Harbor. The clock on the wall above Coombs's head read: 9:47 a.m. The black telephone on the counter top beside him was ringing. Coombs grabbed the receiver from its cradle and answered the phone politely, "Police department." The man's voice on the other end of the telephone was very excited. Coombs reached for a pencil as he tried MAINE MURDER, Page 34 The St.

Brendan on display in Boston Future Container dock or industry? By Michael Kenney Globe Staff Boston's future as a seaport hangs on a quietly simmering dispute over a few acres of empty waterfront buildings, rusting railroad tracks and rotting piers. The few acres -of land is the old South Boston Naval Annex. Boston's new Economic Development and Industrial Corporation (EDIC) plans to use it for a Marine Industrial Park. Massport wants to use some of it for a deep-water container cargo terminal. Negotiations between EDIC and Massport have bogged down and the dispute will apparently be kicked upstairs to become a minor element in Mayor Kevin H.

White's "Boston Plan." But Boston's shipping interests see a revival of the seaport as a near certainty if the new containerport is built and final stagnation of the port as an equal certainty if it is not. The immediate issue is whether some land can be made available at South Boston for a new containerport, without jeopardizing the job-producing potential of the industrial park. Michael Westgate, the hard-bargaining EDIC executive director, thinks it can be done. But Thomas Moakley, Massport's director of port operations, fears there are too many "ifs" in EDIC's proposals. The groups involved with Boston Harbor which have watched the containerport dispute from outside Boston Harbor Associates, a private monitoring group, and the state's Coastal Zone Management agency' see it as the key issue for the harbor's future.

Boston still ranked just out of the top dozen American ports in annual tonnage, and just out of the top 30 worldwide almost disappeared as a seaport a decade ago. PORT, Page 32 Tie fine art of nothing People like the idea of a vacation more than the vacation itself. They look forward to going away and doing nothing when they get there. But when it is time to do nothing, they can't do it. It is difficult to do nothing well.

Only a few people are born with the ability, people like this fellow I knew a long time ago. Let's call him Bob, for that was his real name. He frequented a barroom that served a special drink for one dollar, a potent drink at a bargain price. It was a barroom with class, and one night Tennessee Williams, playwright, was sitting at the next table. Everyone in the place was straining to overhear a bit of the famous man's conversation.

When Williams was leaving, just as he neared the door, a potted plant over the table he had occupied crashed to the table, an incident of symbolism so stagey that Williams could never use it in a play. It was that night or soon after that Bob had his drink number one hundred, not one of which he had paid for. He liked to run up a bill, and he didn't like to be asked to pay. The owner of the barroom, a friend of Bob's, thought that $100 was a proper point at which to present a bill. Bob was eager to take thjs as an affront.

He did not pay the bftl, and he did not patronize that place again. Bob had a nice touch. He could do nothing without being conspicuous about it. I thought of this the other day when, walking down a road in Maine, I saw a vacationer on the front porch of a rented summer house. He was hunched over an electric typewriter, filling the silence with a metallic clickety-click.

The next morning he was again hunched over the typewriter outside on the porch where everyone could see him. Not content just to work each day of his vacation, he wanted everybody to know he was working. If Bob had rented that summer house in Maine he would have sat on the porch, enjoyed the view and drunk bloody marys or gin and tonics, depending on the time of day. He would be silent for the most part, wave to passersby if necessary but otherwise do nothing. He would never play tennis, fuss with getting a boat into the water, or play golf.

Tennis and golf are just other forms of work, though in victory both games can be pleasurable. But so is victory at the office pleasurable and sometimes easier to obtain. Some people look askance at those who cannot enjoy vacations, those who would rather work than take a vacation. Vacationers do not see themselves, their lips pursed the service line, or their eyes wide with anguish over a missed four-foot putt on the 18th green. The only fully relaxed people at play are children, for only they play games without storecards.

Puritans, and some Germans, understood and enjoyed the concept that work is its own excuse for being. They were not bothered by the proposition that it is as difficult to play well as it is to work hard. The Puritans forbade work on Sunday but made everybody sit in church all day lest they enjoy the day off. Bob would have suffered under the Puritans. The last time I saw him, a long time ago, he asked me to meet him at a reasonably fashionable hotel.

He wanted to borrow some money. An emergency. I lent him the money. Thep he took me to dinner at the hotel dining room. I suggested it was expensive, especially considering his financial problems.

He waved me off, said he would charge everything. He never Repaid me the money he borrowed, and some time later I learned that he didn't 'pay the hotel bill, either. Bob was not concerned with working or with playing. strength was in not paying. He was always on vacation.

And he was a very unhappy man. A different education for business executives Forty nine executives have left their corporate worlds behind for a month. Instead they're reading Kafka and Camus and debating such topics as population growth. It's all part of the Dartmouth Institute, where executives are at the Hanover, N.H., campus to study aspects of life not often taught in management seminars. Page 44.

las i Lb Island 1 CASTLE ISLAND Waterfront hotel-trade center planned TERMINAL the old South Boston Naval Annex. of surplus Penn Central Railroad property on the South Boston side of Fort Point Channel adjacent to Anthony Athanas's Pier Four Restaurant. The group also is reported to have persuaded Athanas to incorporate into the development site a 20-acre tract of land he owns on the water's edge Piers 1 and 2 adjacent to his restaurant. Gaining the Athanas land would give the group an opening onto the waterfront thus making the development package more salable to the New York lending firm whose identity is not known to the Globe at this time. Small-town politics stirs up Wellfleet By William Dorman and Anthony Yudis Special to the Globe A Boston business group, reported having strong backing from a New York investment banking firm, is putting together a multimillion dollar hotel-trade center convention development project for a 68-acre tract in the Fort Point Channel area of Boston.

The local group, according to City Hall sources, is headed by 45-year-old Boston millionaire and silver manufacturer Leonard Florence. The investors have a purchase-and-sales agreement to buy a 48-acre tract Francis, a reddish-haired woman who looks a little like Donna Reed when she smiles, became more and more vexed as she explained what she thought had happened. "My son and another officer were up-for reappointment and they only got six months instead of a year, which is what they usually do. They based it on some reports suggesting substandard performance, just nitpicking stuff. Well, the next day it was all over town general knowledge, you know that they wouldn't get reappointed when the six months was up.

"The other officer had ticketed the son of one of the selectmen for driving to endanger, so they wanted to get rid of him. They couldn't just do one, it wouldn't look good. So, in that my son was involved in the arrest of another of the selectmen's sons a year ago, he fit the bill. When he only got six months, he and the other officer decided to quit. The other five left in protest.

"Fair's fair and this isn't fair." Board of Selectmen Chairman Wilbur Rockwell, a building denied the charge and said the board had hoped the patrolmen would "elevate their records" enough in six months to get full reappointments. "You should realize it's just an accusation," he warned, referring to Francis's side of the story. "I wouldn't want this repeated," he added, lowering his voice, "but Mrs. Francis is related to everybody in this building except for me and the other two selectmen. Shc just got her nose bent on this one, that's all." WELLFLEET Town Clerk Adeline May Francis is the kind of person who usually likes to keep her mouth shut.

Of course, ordinarily there isn't much to shout about on this serene summer resort on Cape Cod, where the air is clean, the people friendly, and the days uneventful. But last week Adeline Francis and a lot of other people in this fishing town that once ruled the New England oyster industry had plenty to shoot their mouths off about. Seven policemen had resigned including Francis's son Joe leaving town residents buzzing over an almost classic small-town political squabble. Small-town politics has been known to do that to people. Police Chief Richard Huntley said the resignations have left the town's patrol force at "less than 50 percent strength.

"We don't have replacements yet, but we're putting people on overtime and have asked others to come on. We're taking applications." i' The seven officers were not available for comment. In small-town politics, everybody knows everybody else; everybody is related to everybody else. There is no way to get away from the appearance of favoritism to family and friends. In a small town like this, everybody is family or friends.

It seems that almost all of them are connected in some way to what is described as the local political machine. WELLFLEET, Page 38.