TED SPURLING Sr. 2001 Islesford Historical Society 1 Little Cranberry Island Islesford, ME 04646 I am Jane Moran Porter and this is November 17, 2001 and I am at Islesford, Maine interviewing Captain Ted Spurling, Sr. Jane: Where and when were you born and who were your parents? Ted: My parents were Clarence Hadlock Spurling and my mother was Serena Winslow Stanley but of coarse she married Dad and then she was a Spurling and I was born up in the house that Ted Jr. lives in now, on November the 18th, 1921. I was born there and grew up there and went to school on the island, all through grade school. Jane: What do you remember of your earliest days as a child and of your school days on Islesford? Ted: Well, the school days were nice on the island, I can remember Marion Spurling was my first school teacher and I can remember back as far as 1924 when Dad used to be skipper on the yacht over to Bar Harbor. I wasn't very old then, I get snatches of it and I can remember the next year, 1925 when Bion Farnsworth's house burned down, that is on the same site that Arthur Lewis Fernald's house is now. In1926, I used to go to the school a lot to visit for a little boy, then in 1927 I started in with Marion Spurling for the first two years. She was my teacher and Francis Stanley and I were classmates in first and second grade and then the next two years, it was Marjorie Bunker, who grew up across the road from me and used to live in the house that Phil Grausman owns now. She was my school teacher in the third and fourth grade, then there was a fellow called George C. Milner, he was my teacher in the fifth, sixth and seventh grade. Then I had a woman from up-country, Verna Whitney, she was a good soul, but we gave her a hard time, teasing mostly,she only came one year. The next and last one I had was Barbara Rice, she was from Great Cranberry, she was a Rice then and later married Clarence Beal. There are a lot of other things I can remember that are humorous, but you won't have enough time here. Jane: What of your school days after Islesford? Ted: I went to Coburn High School in Waterville Coburn Classical Institute, it was a private school and I went through four years and graduated from there with a diploma. I graduated there in 1940. Then the war came and I was home for a while and before the war came, about the time the war started I went to Kingspoint Maritime Academy in Long Island, New York and graduated from there with a diploma and Ensign's commission in the Naval reserve. Later on when I had my third mate's license which was right afterward, then I went to sea for quite a while, all during the war. My last license was a Masters issued in 1947. I have renewed this many times. Jane: Tell us about your career during World War II and after the war. Ted: During World War II, I went as a deck cadet on a voyage out of New York and it was almost a year in duration. From New York down to Brazil in South America, Ascension Island in the South Atlantic, Cape Town, South Africa and into the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Oman, then thePersian Gulf and I had my 21st birthday in a little town called Khorramshahr in Iran, in the Persian Gulf. From there, we went to Sri Lanka, it was Ceilon, then