As New Bedford once again pushes for freight ferry service to the Vineyard, at least one man can be relied on to be a hawk-eyed observer. An inveterate letter writer and frequent contributor to the Gazette, W.R. Deeble has kept a close eye on the machinations of the Steamship Authority’s leadership since its inception, as the pendulum of influence has swung from the mainland to the Islands and back again.

“Forget it,” said the nonagenarian on Wednesday at his apartment in Windemere, speaking about renewing service between New Bedford and the Vineyard. “It would be a disaster for the Vineyard.”

When the Whaling City made public its designs on the ferry line again in the 1990s, after a failed run in the 1950s and an unsuccessful push in the 1970s, Mr. Deeble allied himself with the late Nantucket governor Grace Grossman as an ardent opponent of the arrangement.

“As I read the papers an aroma arose from the deal that here comes the New Bedford boat again, but the geography had not changed,” he said.

Since his baptism at Grace Church in 1922, Mr. Deeble has been a defender of the Island way. In a 1948 letter to the editor titled “Let Us Have Done With Ferries!” Mr. Deeble recoiled at the advent of the modern, high-capacity drive-through ferry and, with it, the scourge of the tourist who comes to the Vineyard with one shirt and one five dollar bill and changes neither.

“The great charm of the Vineyard has always been that it is a separated place, that on its shores the wracking tempo of mainland life is slowed to a gentler, more human pace. Yet here, ye gods! is proposed in cold blood the next thing to a bridge!” he wrote that year.

While the menace of a possible bridge to the mainland has not disappeared in his mind, Mr. Deeble has grown kinder to the modern ferry, though he still mocks the luxurious Island Home as “ridiculous looking,” lacking as it is in the nautical elegance of the steamers of his youth.

“I can remember the Naushon of the 1920s which was the queen of the line, it was a very handsome vessel,” he said.

If Mr. Deeble is an authority on Nantucket Sound crossings, it is from navigating the waters himself, though under unusual circumstances. World War II brought him to Liverpool, Normandy and Rouen with the Harborcraft Company (a trip to Japan was forestalled by the unexpected detonation of the atom bomb as he waited for his transport) but it also brought him to East Beach on Chappaquiddick.

“My first training was with the amphibian engineers, so part of our training was to come over from Cape Cod in a landing craft and practice landing and retracting on Vineyard beaches,” he said.

Chappaquiddick provided a topographical double for Normandy in the months leading up to D-Day and Mr. Deeble still recalls negotiating the obstinate 50-foot landing crafts on the same beaches where Edo Potter would wander down to watch the spectacle with her sister.

Mr. Deeble is a product of what he calls the “Panama Canal migration” to the Vineyard, which saw a wave of civil engineers from the project come to the Island seeking a summer escape from the stifling heat and disease of the tropics.

“In the 1920s at one point there were five former governors of the Panama Canal Zone who were residents of the Vineyard which included my grandfather,” he said. “Descendants of those families are still on the Vineyard but I’m about the last of the Harding Branch.”

One of Panama’s most famous sons, Ariz. Senator John McCain, would later come under the tutelage of Mr. Deeble who taught at the Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Va., for 42 years.

“I did teach John McCain a few things about wrestling,” he said laughing. “I guarantee you he’d put up a fight. I found him to be a very intelligent and enjoyable guy to have around. He was intelligent but he was not a dedicated student at that point in his life. He did well enough in class and he paid attention. After he became a senator I observed his career in the senate with great admiration.”

Mr. Deeble has less kind words for the John McCain who ran for president but his strong opinions on national politics — as evinced by the letters in these pages over the years — are matched only by his opinions on the management of the Island’s lifeline. As the Steamship Authority ponders scrapping the humble ferry Governor Mr. Deeble has a characteristically wry take on the boat that the ferry line purchased from the Coast Guard for $1.

“The Vineyard got its money’s worth,” he said.