By Matt Wheeler, Digital Collections Curator

Wooden boat building would have been a redundant phrase a couple of hundred years ago; this fantastically broad range of construction techniques has evolved along with humanity over the last 10,000 or more years. Ages before fiberglass and steel became the dominant materials for boat hulls, people were fashioning frames out of woody plant parts, and skinning them over with more woody plant parts. Human beings have come to value the profound usefulness, skill, and beauty of precisely crafting and fitting parts from a substance whose living grain characteristics are persistent and willful even after the wood they were derived from is no longer living, as it continues to cure.

By Cipperly Good, Richard Saltonstall Jr. Curator of Maritime History

As mentioned in our October email newsletter, Penobscot Marine Museum staff is visiting former sardine cannery communities to hear from the workers and community members about what life has been like since the canneries closed. We visited Lubec in mid-November for our first session and posed a series of questions, prompting insightful responses from participants. The information and responses that we receive at these listening sessions will be incorporated into our upcoming Sardineland exhibit. Below are the questions that we posed with responses. In the interest of allowing people to speak freely, the quotes are anonymous unless we received consent to use their names.

Enjoy a 20% discount on photographic prints as the holiday season approaches with coupon code PRINTSALE20. Offer valid through 12/19/2024. Due to holiday shipping times, delivery not guaranteed on orders placed after 12/10/2024. For help with ordering, contact us at 207-548-2529 or [email protected].