Join Friends of Merrymeeting Bay (FOMB) on Wednesday, December 14th at 7pm for the 3rd presentation of their 15th annual Winter Speaker Series. This program, “George Washington’s Secret Navy”, features prize winning author James Nelson. The regularly scheduled program on Colonel John Allen has been cancelled due to logistical problems.
 
George Washington was a farmer, not a sailor, and he knew little about the importance of naval power at the outset of the American Revolution. But, after years of fighting he finally came to understand while he could fight forever and never lose, without sea power he would never win. In 1775, Washington secretly authorized the formation of a fleet of small coastal schooners to take our battle to the world’s mightiest navy. Multiple award winning author James L. Nelson talks about Washington's development as a naval strategist and the shining moment when America had control of the sea and won the Revolution.

Jim Nelson was born and raised in Lewiston, Maine. He graduated from UCLA with a degree in motion picture/television production but, finding that despite the California sun, it was a damp, drizzly November in his soul, Jim took the cure Melville recommended and decided to sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. For six years he worked on board traditional sailing ships before realizing it would be easier to write about sailing rather than actually doing it.

Jim is the author of sixteen works of maritime fiction and history. His novel Glory in the Name was the winner or the American Library Association/William Young Boyd Award for Best Military Fiction and his nonfiction George Washington's Secret Navy won the Naval Order’s Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval History. He has appeared on the Discovery Channel, History Channel and BookTV. He currently lives in Harpswell with his former shipmate, now wife Lisa and their four children.

The FOMB Winter Speaker Series takes place monthly from October-May on the second Tuesday or Wednesday. The series, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by Friends of Merrymeeting Bay with support and valuable door prizes from Patagonia Outlet in Freeport. The next FOMB presentation on January 11th at Bowdoin College’s Cram Alumni House entitled: “Notes on a Lost Flute” will feature eco-historian, linguist, author and activist Kerry Hardy and will be combined with the FOMB annual meeting and potluck supper beginning at 6pm.

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