Ed Coffin

The 74-foot ex-passenger ferry May Field, built in Brewer in 1875, came to grief twenty years later on the Hart Island’s ledges,

Matinicus in 1900 was all about fishing, as evidenced by the lobster traps piled on the wharf and the grounded-out dories loaded with herring. Fishing still prevails, but the boats sure have changed. Matinicus Island , ME Catalog Number LB2013.21.431

A group embarks in a couple of lapstrake peapods, aka “double enders”, from Matinicus about 1905 for a clambake on nearby Wheaton Island.

One possible description of this scene is that Belfast’s fancy rental fleet of rowboats and small sailboats, and their owners/skippers, await customers. Another is

The boom times of World War I still prevailed when the 192’ four-masted schooner Freeman was launched in the spring of 1919 from the old Cobb-Butler yard

Capt. Charles A Colcord of Searsport, master of four-masted schooner D.H. Rivers of Thomaston, is having his hair cut atop the vessel’s deckload of lumber while the first mate awaits his turn. Catalog Number LB2013.21.412

A scow sloop loaded with firewood sails up the St. George River where she’ll unload at one of Thomaston’s lime kilns.

It’s launching day at East Boothbay’s W.I. Adams yard for the 202-foot, 1,114-ton four-masted schooner Eleanor F. Bartram in 1903.

Launched from Rockland’s Cobb-Butler & Co. shipyard in 1906, the 80-foot steamer MAY ARCHER ran summers from Thomaston to Monhegan

Carlton, Norwood & Co. built the magnificent four-masted bark FREDERICK BILLINGS at Rockport in 1885, and Capt. Isaac W. Sherman,

Lime kilns and shipyards stood cheek-by-jowl along the Thomaston waterfront in 1869. The Watts Shipyard was one of the busiest

Her sails are up and drawing, but the ancient (1805) schooner Polly is going nowhere. She’s hard aground, and the tide is dropping fast

Waving good-bye to departing dandies, the finely dressed lady and her yachting friends mark the beginning, in 1902, of Camden’s transition from an industry-based waterfront to one of recreation.

This is what Stockton Harbor looked like in 1906, with three long new loading wharves jutting out from Cape Jellison’s western shore and fed by Bangor & Aroostoock’s rail lines.

In the 1870s and ‘80s, Rockland was all about wood, the great bulk of it brought in by water to fuel the city’s lime kilns.

Limerock quarried at Rockland was once piled in wagons and hauled by horses and donkeys up the steep slopes. Later on, steam power replaced animals. Rockland, ME Catalog Number LB2013.21.365