Captain Abel Douglass

Abel Douglass was born on Isle au Haut, Maine as part of a seafaring maritime family. Family history states that their origin in Scotland was also connected with maritime seafaring. Spurred by American desires of westward expansion, and searching for opportunity in the California Gold Rush, like many Americans in the mid-19th century, the family traveled to San Francisco, California on the California Packet in 1850. The Douglas family and several dozen other families in Maine contributed to the construction of the California Packet, and under the direction of Captain Kimball they all sailed together to California, where the ship … Continue reading Captain Abel Douglass

Not only a Coffeehouse, Starbuck in Popular Media

Certainly we all know the worldwide chain of coffeehouses known as Starbucks. But do we know how they got their name? The website and other sites suggest that the name was chosen from the book Moby Dick by Herman Melville (1851). In the book, Starbuck is the chief mate to the Whaling ship Pequod. The work of fiction is based on whaler’s accounts of the 19th century, and re-imagines the story of a whaler into an Odysseus like tale of the journey of the hero. The Odyssey follows a ship in the Mediterranean for 20 years as they seek to … Continue reading Not only a Coffeehouse, Starbuck in Popular Media