Everett L. “Red” Boutilier
The archives of a free-lance photographer and journalist from Bremen, Maine whose tireless work ethic produced more than 20,000 negatives and prints with a strong focus on boats and their builders of Midcoast Maine.
Photo: Anna Hoyt
Everett L. “Red” Boutilier was born in 1918. He became an Eagle Scout at the age of 13 and, as a young man, sailed on the Gloucester fishing schooner Elsie and on a three-masted coasting schooner out of Nova Scotia. He was a graduate of Dartmouth College and his working career included serving as a production expediter at Bath Iron Works, a sports editor for The Saratogan in New York, a general news reporter and columnist as well as a photographer for several horse race tracks in New York, Florida, Kentucky and Maine. During the last 40 years of his life, he was a freelance photographer and journalist, and his photographs and stories appeared in the leading boating magazines and newspapers. He was a regular visitor to the many boat yards of Maine’s Midcoast region and it is said that he never missed a launch. He made quite a name for himself as a photographer, and his photos were a regular presence in the Boothbay Register. He died at the age of 85 on February 10, 2003, in Brunswick, Maine.
The Penobscot Marine Museum was able to acquire the Boutilier collection thanks to the help of some very generous supporters who arranged to purchase it from Red’s son. The collection contains more than 15,000 4”x5” negatives. (The final number is still to be determined.) In addition to the negatives there are countless prints and articles (both completed and not.) Another generous donation made possible the first part of the archiving project, which enabled the first 10,000 negatives to be catalogued and scanned.
Additional Reading
Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors
Fishermans’s Voice
Press Herald