The schooner Georgia Gilkey was build in Searsport in 1890 by W. R. Gilkey. She was 158 feet long, with a registered tonnage of 641 tons. She was named for Georgia P. Sawyer Gilkey, wife of Captain Gilkey and mother of Georgia Gilkey, who grew up to marry Phineas Banning Blanchard.
Schooner with crew at work bailing mackerel from the purse-seine.
This image is from G. Brown Goode's The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States, 1884-1887, Section V, Plate 64. This book can be found online at NOAA.
Herring pinky schooner bound for the fishing grounds; nets hanging over bowsprit and stern; net dories on deck. This vessel could have been carrying gear for a weir, but more likely this gear is for stop seining a cove (closing off a cove trapping a school of herring inside.)
This image is from G. Brown Goode's The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States, 1884-1887, Section V, Plate 117. This book can be found online at NOAA
This view of the three-masted schooner Susan N. Pickering shows the vessel on the marine railway, hauled out for maintenance. Belfast's Cottrell yard built the Pickering in 1882, and that is where she is hauled. She was registered to Deer Isle, measured 319 tons, 135' long, and owned by the Pickering family.
The schooner Mabel was the first vessel in the Camden windjammer fleet. Captain Frank Swift had the idea that he could keep schooner sailing alive by taking passengers. He chartered Mabel in 1936 from Captain William Sherwood of Deer Isle who went as captain, with his wife as cook. The first passengers were three ladies from Boston. Mabel had been built in 1881 in Milbridge, Maine, and was working hauling pulp wood and other general cargo around Penobscot Bay. Here, the schooner is hauled out in Deer Isle for maintenance.
Using a conveyor, ice blocks were moved from the ice house to the schooner. In the schooner, the ice was often insulated with sawdust or hay, to keep it from melting quickly.
