Sail loft in Thomaston. With thousands of sailing vessels to be outfitted in Penobscot Bay over the course of the nineteenth century, sailmaking was an important and popular trade. Note the tools used by a sailmaker in the end of the bench. Sail lofts needed much open floor space. One loft had a suspended wood stove in order to heat the space without losing continuous floor space.
When the Penobscot Marine Museum was founded in 1936, the town of Searsport gave the museum its original Town Hall building, built in 1845. It was the museum's only building until the museum purchased the Merithew House, in 1950.
The peavey is used to push and roll logs, both on land and in the water, during log drives. The peavey was invented in 1857 by Joseph Peavey, when he came up with this tool to help break out a logjam on the Penobscot River.
