PEDDOCKS ISLAND - Tugboat captain Michael McDevitt, 63, grew up here without electricity, drinking water, flush toilets and telephone service. It is only a quarter-mile across Hull Gut from the mainland, but it is a long journey back across the sands of time.
The McDevitts have lived on this 210-acre island, now part of the Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park, for the last 65 years. At least half of that time, a McDevitt has been the island’s caretaker. McDevitt and his brother Edward III are the last islanders living year-round on Peddocks.
And they are fighting to save their late sister’s cottage from being destroyed.
The state has controlled the island since 1970, a time when many more people had year-round homes. An agreement reached in 1993 allowed everyone to keep their homes for the rest of their lives, and then the state would take ownership.
After Crissy McDevitt’s death last May, the Department of Conservation and Recreation said the cottage must be vacated. But the McDevitt brothers would like to save it, if only to preserve a long-ago way of life.
“Me and my brother stay here. … We’re maintaining this house as a family home and sort of a historic artifact place,” he says. “It should definitely be a museum someday.”
A sadness seeps into McDevitt’s voice, which cracks as he discusses his battle with the state.
“It kills me they’ve given me four eviction notices. It hurts after all that we’ve done for these people. We’ve saved lives, we’ve protected this island. … It hurts so much I could cry right now,” says McDevitt.
Aboard his tug “Acushnet,” McDevitt steers out of Hull’s Pemberton Pier, his trusty dog, Gunwale, at his side, toward Cottage 44 on the Boston side of the island.
His parents raised four children here, crossing the turbulent gut in an open skiff to get them to school. sometimes four times a day. All the kids - two boys and two girls - became tugboat captains.
“We learned to respect the sea,” says McDevitt, who owns a Hull marine towing company and spent much of last winter breaking ice. He also maintains a Houghs Neck home, but says that either he or his brother live on island to protect it.
Puffing on a Lunatic cigar so thick that he adds a ring of electrical tape around the bottom of it so it doesn’t fall apart, McDevitt doesn’t look at a chart or radar.
He knows where every rock is by heart. The family built their cottages on Peddocks Island from materials that washed ashore. Boston is visible, just eight miles away, but for them, it was little more than a distant night light. The island, the kids liked to say, was their playmate.
Their mom, Judy McDevitt, became a media star. She was the first licensed female tugboat captain in the Northeast. News articles always mentioned her skills at sea and her natural beauty.
She smoked cigars, trapped and cooked muskrats to eat, and then crafted their pelts into hats. She had a shotgun that she used while perched on a rooftop to protect their chickens from a hungry raccoon. She painted and also won a Boston Globe photography contest award.
McDevitt’s dad, Edward X. McDevitt, was Peddock Island’s first caretaker until 1986, when he became Hull’s harbormaster. Michael succeeded him as caretaker. His dad is believed to have written the first training curriculum for US harbormasters at Mass Maritime Academy.
The McDevitts rescued scores of people over the years and protected the island from vandalism and fire. McDevitt says they have a great relationship with the park rangers, who arrive for the public seasonal camping season.
“We put out beach fires all the time. We’re always cleaning up the rubbish, the debris. We guide people that are lost. We’re like stewards of this end of the island.” he says.
Last fall, McDevitt says, a boater fell overboard and swam to shore. He broke into several summer cottages and tried to light the stoves. “He was freezing to death, but he saw the light out on down at this house because my brother was here. My brother wrapped him up with blankets and got him next to the wood stove.”
McDevitt summoned the Coast Guard. “We wrapped the guy up and got him off the island, saved his life.”
He later returned the blankets and gave $100 to the McDevitt brothers and each cottage he broke into. “Just his appreciation for us saving him. And that’s what these houses are for, in a way, is to help people too.”
The island is rich in history.
It was home to Native Americans and later a thriving Portuguese fishing community.
Its historic ruins include Fort Andrews, which opened in 1904 to protect Boston Harbor until the end of World War II.
It housed Italian prisoners of war in World War II, before it was decommissioned in 1946. The McDevitt kids know all the stories.
“There was an Italian prisoner in the fort who yearned for his wife. Every full moon he would play the piano in the barracks. One night he went missing … they found him wrapped around a submarine net in Hull Gut.”
The stories keep rolling in like the tide.
“One day dad had to work in the boat, my mom had (baby) Judy in a little papoose when she heard a racket in one of the buildings (at Fort Andrews). She came across five punks destroying everything.”
“Stop what you’re doing now,” ordered Judy McDevitt. The men just laughed at her. “What are you going to do about it?” said one of them waving a bottle of whiskey around.
She pulled out a gun and fired. The .22-caliber bullet blew the bottle right out of his hand,” says McDevitt.
Cottage 44 first was Judy’s home. It’s decorated with her artwork, along with hidden island treasures, including military medals, wooden bocci balls used by Italian POWs, and a sterling silver 1910 Boston Fort foot ball (sic) trophy complete with the deflated leather football. WWI-era mortar shells are doorstoppers.
Outside is a chicken coop, an artist studio, and a jury-rigged collection of solar panels and cisterns. The solar was installed by Judy, 30 years ago. “We just maintain the batteries and it’s still working to this day.”
The water is pumped through a cistern filter system but they still import drinking water from the mainland.
Little Crissy, as she was called, also smoked cigars and brewed her own beer and wine here. She cut her own firewood, fished, lobstered, and made her own jellies.
“She was very crafty, just an all-around hottie, tough island lady,” says McDevitt.
McDevitt has a certified letter from his mom to the state from 1991 that names all four children as permittees. His sister wanted the cottage to remain in the family too.
“Her last words to me were ‘Michael, keep the house and don’t let nothing happen to it.’ And I’m honoring her wishes.”
He does not want a long battle.
“We just don’t want lawyers involved. It’s a never-ending circle of lawyers. And then you get the politicians involved and usually it doesn’t go anywhere,” he says. “They got 40 hours a week to fight, (but) we have to work every day.”
DCR’s policy has historically limited the transfer of permits to spouses. The permit terminates upon the death of the 1990 owner-of-record. McDevitt still holds a permit for cottage 47, which is his.
Last Tuesday, the sun rose above the island in a spectacular palette of magentas, reds, and blues. Then it snowed and rained. Later, a partial rainbow appeared toward Boston and was swallowed by the sea.
Then, as if on cue, an email arrived from a DCR spokesperson that seemed to soothe McDevitt’s soul.
“We offer our sincere condolences to Mr. McDevitt on the passing of his sister, a longtime fixture of Peddocks Island. We are grateful to the McDevitt Family for their decades of stewardship of the Island. DCR will work with Mr. McDevitt on a path forward.”
Stan Grossfeld can be reached at stanley.grossfeld@globe.com.