Very probably he was the Society’s President for more terms than any other officer. Captain Andrew Scott, who joined the Society just before Captain Preble, wrote of him later to Portland’s nineteenth-century historian, William Goold.
"...[He] was an antiquarian, full of old tales and most interesting conversa- tion, especially with the young."
Apparently in its early years the Society did not have a permanent home. In 1799 it held one of its quarterly meetings at "Mrs. Ann Heyliger's house," in 1803 at Abraham Beeman’s Hall on Fore Street, in 1816 at the United Marine and Fire Insurance Company offices and the following year at the Cumberland Insurance Company on Fore Street.
Just at the end of the century there was one incident which brought a good deal of cheer to Portland, though it might just as easily have ended tragically. Just before Christmas 1797, the ship Grand Turk limped into Portland, with Captain Thorlo as pilot, after a ghastly nine-month voyage back from China during which five of her crew had died. The rest were all suffering from scurvy. Captain Barnard Magee obtained a new crew and fresh provisions and waited for a fair slant of wind to head up to Boston, but that wind never came. Just after New Year’s, while her officers were ashore at a dance, news came that the Grand Turk’s anchor cables had been cut by harbor ice and she was headed for the ledge near Cushing’s Point in Cape Elizabeth. Though it was a miserable, snowy night, Portlanders turned out to try to rescue the vessel, but to no avail, though no lives were lost. The next morning, however, the Cape Elizabeth shore was strewn with tea and silk, washed out of the holes in her hull, and for years afterward local residents, who had been quick to salvage the flotsam, enjoyed some unexpected luxuries.
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