Virginia "Ginny" Oliver was a lobster-boat skipper from coastal Maine and one of the state's most celebrated lobsterwomen. She died on January 21st 2026, aged 105.
Oliver first went out on the water with her father, who sold lobsters and had a general store in the Muscle Ridge Islands, when she was eight years old. She grew up living on the mainland with her aunts and grandfather in Rockland during the school week. Female lobstermen were unheard of at the time.
Oliver married and had four children. When the youngest was nine she returned to paid work, spending 19 years at a printing press in Rockland. She eventually quit to go lobstering with her husband Bill, reasoning that she would not have to work half as hard and could be her own boss.
Bill was her fishing partner for 60 years. After he died, her son Max took his place. They kept their boat, the Virginia, named by her late husband, at Spruce Head. She had 200 traps; Max had another 200. Three days a week she would wake at 2.45am for the drive to the harbour, setting out at daybreak.
Oliver skippered her own boat until a fall when she was 103 confined her to the mainland -- 95 years after she first put to sea with her father. She was known for always going out in earrings and lipstick.
Oliver worked in relative obscurity until a local filmmaker persuaded her to appear in a documentary called "Conversations with the Lobster Lady" when she was 99. Television networks and feature writers soon followed, and a local poet and author wrote a children's book about her life. Her children, then aged 74, 76, 78 and 81, still came for supper every Saturday night.
Sources: The Economist, February 14th 2026
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