Inspirations can be widely shared or private. We’ve all enjoyed being inspired by a chance encounter with someone who becomes a dear friend or reacquainting ourselves with an old friend presumably lost. Some are inspired by the myriad forms of performance and visual arts; others find inspiration in playing or spectating sports. Some are elated with breezy, warm, sunny days while others find gray, quiet days stir something in them. I belong to a small, elite group that drew inspiration for many years—in some cases many decades—from a 1906 oyster boat called Flora of Essex. Reports differ as to whether she was 53, 55, or 60 ft. long from stem to stern, but all agreed every pound of her 50 tons was magnificent.
Flora had been a working oyster boat until she was retired to a ship graveyard in Massachusetts. Half-submerged, she was purchased in 1967 by C. Stuart (“Stu”) Ingersoll of Essex, CT, a banjo player who turned it into a party boat. Together, man and boat became a legend up and down the Connecticut river and shoreline, all the way up to Boston and across to Long Island.
The best way to visualize Stu is as a cross between Winston Churchill and W.C. Fields, though he was less gruff than the Prime Minister and not as funny as the comedian; the main source of humor when you were around him was how seriously he took everything. A bulldog of a man (an apropos description; he
