The Bennie Beal Story

by Sandra Dinsmore

Bennie Beal’s Stella Ann racing at Jonesport. Fishermen’s Voice photo

Bernard Beal, of Jonesport, known to all as Bennie, is an innovator: it’s part of his competitive spirit. His interests, though diverse, have to do with being on the water. The son and grandson of Beals Island boat-builders, he built, fished, and raced his first lobster boat, the now-famous 28-foot STELLA ANN, when he was 21. In his early 20s, he was the first scuba diver in the Jonesport-Beals area. At 28, he was the first to fish lobster in the Grand Manan Channel just off the Bay of Fundy, noted for having the highest tides in the world.

The intrepid fisherman had a boat made he named PIONEER for himself, and says, “I found those lobsters up in that channel between Maine and Grand Manan. I fished it for quite a few years all alone. It was nice,” Beal recalls. “All day long, you never saw another boat on the water.” The guys from Cutler warned Beal that if he fished the channel he’d never catch anything but crab wrinkles. They said the only place he could catch lobster was right in the rocks. But Beal says when got out in deeper water, there were a lot of lobsters. “There was so much tide,” he said. “They didn’t know how to fish it.” The Grand Manan fishermen also told him he couldn’t fish that channel, but Beal says with satisfaction, “We proved them wrong.” He seems to have spent his life proving people wrong.

At 36 Beal salvaged an old, wooden, fishing peapod he renamed INVALID, “because it was so crippled up.” He fixed it up, started racing it with his son-in-law, and, naturally, being the competitor he is, he started winning. And at 39, Bennie Beal was the first small-boat Maine lobsterman to fish the Continental shelf, 180 to 220 miles offshore.

Today, the 78-year-old STELLA ANN no longer holds the title of “World’s Fastest Lobster Boat” and the 82-year-old Beal no longer fishes quite as hard as he used to, though he’s every bit as competitive.

Bennie Beal and STELLA ANN are inextricably linked. Back in 1953, the then 21-year-old went to his boat-building grandfather, Riley Beal, and told him he wanted a 28-foot lobster boat fast enough to race. His grandfather said he had a model of a 28-footer that he’d make over to suit Beal. At his kitchen table one evening, Riley Beal took his boat shave and sandpaper and honed the model’s bottom until it reached his grandson’s requirements. Beal built the STELLA ANN in the family boat shop, named her for his baby daughter, and started fishing and winning races with her.