11/10/2026
In case you missed our November North Haven News "Glimpse in Time Piece..."
North Haven’s Sea Scouts
Sometimes an old photograph opens the door to a story much bigger than the picture itself.
A photograph, found in the North Haven Historical Society archives, shows a group of North Haven boys who were part of the Sea Scouts in the spring of 1957. Standing with the group is State Trooper Millard Nickerson.
I reached out to David Cooper, as I noticed he was one of the boys in the photograph. Both he and Terry Sprague and Kathy Macy helped me confirm everyones identity. According to David Cooper, who was 15 at the time, the photograph was taken in the spring of 1957. He remembers that the boys met at the Legion Hall and that the Sea Scouts were similar to the Boy Scouts, but with an emphasis on boating, seamanship, and activities connected to life on the water. David believes the photograph may have been taken for the press, which would explain why the boys were dressed in their Sunday best.
Sea Scouting was part of a national scouting movement that had been teaching older boys maritime skills for decades. Sea Scout groups were also active in other coastal Maine communities, including Rockland. For an island community like North Haven, the program seemed like a natural fit.
David remembers that the North Haven Sea Scouts were organized in the fall of 1956 by the man then known as Martin Godgart, the island’s new schoolteacher. Godgart taught English, Latin, and French and quickly became involved in many aspects of community life.
At the time, there was little reason for the boys to suspect that their teacher was not who he claimed to be. “Martin Godgart” was actually Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr., a Massachusetts man who had spent much of his adult life assuming other people’s identities and taking jobs for which he lacked the proper credentials.
Demara’s story was already known nationally before he arrived on North Haven, although island residents may not have been familiar with his past. His most notorious impersonation took place during the Korean War, when he assumed the identity of Dr. Joseph Cyr, a real Canadian physician, and joined the Royal Canadian Navy as a surgeon aboard the destroyer HMCS Cayuga.
Demara had never attended medical school. Accounts of his background indicate that his medical experience consisted largely of a short period of training as a Navy medical corpsman, work as a hospital orderly, and extensive self-directed reading.
Yet when wounded Korean soldiers were brought aboard the Cayuga, Demara performed surgery on them. Contemporary reporting in TIME magazine described him performing an emergency amputation and removing a bullet from near a patient’s heart. The real Dr. Cyr eventually learned that his identity was being used after reports of the naval surgeon’s exploits appeared in Canadian newspapers. Demara was exposed and discharged from the Canadian Navy.
The naval surgeon was only one of many identities Demara adopted. According to TIME, he had also presented himself at various times as a monk, professor, teacher, prison official, and other professionals.
In the early 1950s, Demara also worked in a Texas prison under another name. A prisoner eventually recognized him from an earlier LIFE magazine article about his impersonations. Before authorities could apprehend him, Demara left Texas and eventually made his way to North Haven.
In September 1956, Demara arrived on the island using the name Martin Godgart. He had obtained credentials belonging to the real Godgart and used them to secure a Maine teaching certificate. According to the Bangor Daily News, he quickly became involved in school and community life and appeared to be well liked by many of the people who knew him on the island.
David remembers Demara as an engaging person who seemed to have an extraordinary memory. He recalls that the boys would sometimes take a copy of TIME magazine from the school mailbox and bring it to Demara. He would quickly look through the magazine, hand it back, and invite the boys to ask him questions about what he had read. David says Demara never seemed to make a mistake, even when the boys tried to catch him out.
David liked Demara, or at least the person he knew as a young boy. His father, however, was more skeptical. David remembers that his father was suspicious of Demara from the beginning. Something about the new teacher did not “ring right,” his father Sherman said. He was not convinced by the charismatic newcomer.
David also remembers that Demara seemed to enjoy pushing boundaries. On one occasion, he took the group of boys to visit the Maine State Prison. At the time, David saw this as another example of the man’s unusual personality. With nearly seventy years of hindsight, however, David wonders whether Demara was testing how far he could go before someone caught him.
Demara’s time on North Haven came to an end when June and Bill Hopkins helped uncover his true identity. Demara often visited their home, and on more than one occasion, he showed off a photograph of himself clipped from a national magazine, with the caption removed. His behavior further fueled June’s suspicions.
June recognized the image from a 1952 issue of LIFE magazine and discovered that the accompanying article was about Ferdinand Demara, known as “the master impostor.” She devised a plan to obtain “Marty’s” fingerprints from a b**r glass and send them to the Maine State Police.
On February 14, 1957, Maine State Police detectives arrived on North Haven aboard a Coast Guard cutter. They waited near the school until Demara arrived. According to the Bangor Daily News, when he saw the officers, he reportedly asked, “What took you so long to get here?”
The story quickly spread beyond the island. On February 25, 1957, TIME magazine published an account of the arrest, identifying Martin Godgart as Ferdinand W. Demara Jr. and recounting his long history of assumed identities. The article also noted that many North Haven residents at the time were reluctant to believe that the man they knew as their teacher was an impostor.
Demara’s story later became the subject of Robert Crichton’s 1959 book, The Great Impostor, and a 1961 film starring Tony Curtis.
Demara eventually pleaded guilty to obtaining his Maine teaching credentials through false pretenses and received probation. But the legend that grew around him can sometimes overshadow the more complicated reality.
The story of Demara’s time on North Haven has often been told as an extraordinary tale of deception and discovery. Demara was not simply a colorful character and the familiar account may not capture the full experience of those who knew him or the lasting impact of his actions on the people around him.
Nearly seventy years later, when I picked this photograph for the Historical Society’s Annual Appeal letter, I did not know its full history, and neither myself or the boys pictured here could have known that their new teacher’s past would soon become national news
