By William R. Tower, III (Tim)

Our father bought Barnacle Billy's in 1960 from Leon & Lillian Perkins.  It was called the Brush & Needle then, a shop that sold art supplies, women's clothing and local trinkets including dried starfish and sand dollars. Leon was a striker on our father's 40' harpoon tuna boat, the Isabelle J. when he wasn't fishing out of his own lobster boat in Perkins Cove.  Our father, Billy, used to fish out of Perkins Cove as well during the early to later '40s on the "IJ". Later, our father had the Isabelle J. II built in Bass Harbor by Chummy Rich. This boat was an eastern rig design that he used for seining the herring, mackerel and pogies found in the coastal areas of Maine and New England. After the four of us were born, Meg, two years after me and Court & Cathy two years after Meg, in 1955, Billy & Bunny, our father & mother, decided that there wasn't enough money in fishing to raise such a family. Billy sold the IJ II in 1957 and started working as a salesman for a box company out of Boston, Massachusetts called Rand Whitney owned by the Kraft family. (Robert "Bob" Kraft came to the restaurant to give me his personal condolences after Billy's passing in 2013.) The idea of a restaurant came in 1959, materializing in 1960 when Leon & Lillian sold the building and the land "from the thread of the stream to the high tide mark in Oarweed Cove" to Billy. 

I was nine years old when Barnacle Billy's opened in 1961. At the  time, I started working there bussing tables and lobstering out of my first lobster boat, a 12' skiff. Later, the rest of us, including Meg, Court & Cathy also worked there. Ogunquit was a dry town then. It wasn't until the later '60's that alcohol was introduced. It started as wine & beer. Later, the full bar was initiated.  In 1967, the deck over Perkins Cove was added to the existing building. Still later, one evening, the family and part of the crew came together to invent the Barnacle Billy's rum punch. Our mother's recipe won the evening. The same ingredients and portions are used today...

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