There’s a trace of the sacred in it — in the light, in the title — plus a hint of the absurd, the faintest whiff of the freewheeling nature of that day at sea.
There are photos that present the buoyancy of that day, but this one captured something else.
George French delivered 20 years worth of stirring images, mostly black-and-white, of pastoral landscapes, but he was also a devoted chronicler of working people.
The shot is all feel-good goofy nostalgia — one part Norman Rockwell, one part Yankee wit.
More than a century later Joanna Colcord’s classic shot of her dad still has more bite than any other image from Maine’s nautical history.