Working The Bay: An Extractive Economy and an Industrial Economy

Handline fishing reel and line

Like many developing economies, Penobscot Bay began its growth as an extractive economy,  harvesting and exporting resources with little or no processing. In the seventeenth century, the primary extractive activity was fishing. Island fishing communities, close to the fishing grounds, developed on Monhegan, Matinicus, Isle au Haut, Deer Isle, and Vinalhaven.

Cross-cut saw

In 1609, Henry Hudson used a Penobscot Bay white pine for a mast for his ship, Half Moon, on his way toward finding what is now the Hudson River. It was a modest beginning to what became Penobscot Bay’s major 19th century extractive industry: cutting and shipping trees.

An industrial economy processes natural resources with machinery (requiring capital) and labor. Although sawing lumber, cutting granite, and making lime did require capital for intensive natural resource processing, the end results were not finished products. In Maine, only a few segments produced finished goods: shipbuilding, woolen mills and engine factories at Camden, canneries all around the Bay, and, later, paper mills in Bucksport and Brewer.