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.
This image shows two vessels under construction, the left one almost ready for launching and the right one "in frame." Vessels are typically launched stern first, with the bow high up in the air. Note the many timbers in the foreground, available for building up the frames of the schooner on the right.
Loading a mast through the stern port of a mast ship. A tackle from a yard on the ship takes the weight of the mast and the men control it. Loading takes time as the band attaching the mast to the tackle has to be shifted periodically and the rollers inside and outside the ship adjusted.
From the book, New England Masts and the King's Broad Arrow, by Samuel F. Manning, 1979. Illustrations courtesy of the author and illustrator.
Ships, Barks, and Barkentines had 3 or 4 masts. Brigs and Brigantines had two. Sometimes schooners might have square topsails set on the foremast. But unlike these vessels, such a schooner would have a gaff foresail.
The diagram is from the Nova Scotia Museum Info poster, Sailing Ship Rigs.
A display wall showing a number of builder's half models, used to design ships in the nineteenth century on the Maine coast. The lifts or layers of wood are taken apart and measured, in order to lay out the shape of the vessel and its frames for construction. The display also shows a number of shipbuilding tools, including adzes, caulking hammers, a drawknife, clamps, an auger, and a serving mallet.
Serving mallet, with spools, used in shipbuilding as a rigging tool. The serving is the marline that wraps standing rigging, to protect it from rust and rot. The mallet winds around and around the stay. The marline feeds from the spool and is wrapped tightly around the stay or shroud.
