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Ships & Shipbuilding:
Evolution of Vessel Types in Maine |
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The first vessel built in Maine by Europeans was the pinnace Virginia, built in 1607-8 at the Popham Colony at the mouth of the Kennebec River. Though the colony did not last more than a year, the Virginia did, and it later served to bring supplies to Jamestown, also settled in 1607. Virginia was about fifty feet long, with two masts: one with square sails and the other with a triangular fore-and-aft sail. Launched in 1608, it helped bring the settlers back to England after the colony’s leader died. Note the sideways picture of the vessel on the left side of the map of Popham Colony.
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With a slow growing European population, there was little shipbuilding in Maine in the colonial era. In 1640-41, a bark was built at Richmond Island, south of Portland.
Some of the few colonial vessels built were mast ships, designed to carry Maine’s mast-sized white pines to England for the Royal Navy. More common were smaller sloops and schooners used for fishing and for shipping goods to Boston or the West Indies. Ship construction around Penobscot Bay didn’t really start until after 1759, when the French retreated from Castine, and the British encouraged settlement east of the Penobscot River.
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Sloops and Schooners
During the early years of settlement around Penobscot Bay, most vessels built were small sloops and schooners. With little money or market for larger vessels, Bay residents needed these smaller ones for fishing and coastal transportation. Designed for coastal trips, they could sail closer to the wind than square-rigged vessels and were smaller, handier, and required fewer crewmen. More schooners were built around Penobscot Bay than any other type of vessel.
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Brigs and Brigantines
Small square-rigged brigs and brigantines were first built on the Penobscot soon after the American Revolution, as new markets opened for the new nation. They typically had a fuller hull than a schooner, and carried more cargo. Square rigs were better for deepwater, transoceanic passages. Shipbuilding then slowed after the imposition of Jefferson's Embargo in 1807.
Barks and Ships
After the War of 1812, more people settled in the Penobscot Bay area. They fished, lumbered, quarried rock, and built and sailed ships to link the growing communities around the Bay and trade to the south. Ship owners prospered from carrying lumber to the West Indies and the cities of the East Coast, and wanted larger vessels for that trade. At the same time, with shipbuilding becoming more costly in southern New England, Maine-built vessels became competitive for carrying southern cotton to northern cities and to England. For these new markets, shipbuilders built barks and ships, much bigger sailing vessels that, by the 1850s, carried cargoes to ports around the world. Slightly smaller barkentines were popular in the Atlantic deep water trades.
Clipper Ships
The famous clipper ships were a short-lived phenomenon that had little impact on Maine shipbuilding. Clippers were designed for carrying small, high value, perishable cargo products like tea from the Orient, and for transporting people and goods to booming gold fields. The economics of the clippers, too large a crew for too small a cargo, killed them after less than 20 years.
Because of their high building cost, most American clippers were built in Boston and New York, where there was plenty of investment capital and many experienced shipbuilders. A few clippers were built in Maine, including the famous Red Jacket, built in Rockland in 1853. Red Jacket was 251 feet long and registered 2,305 tons. It was known as a fast-sailing ship and could sail 17 to 18 knots in a good breeze.
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