June 2016 MAINE COASTAL NEWS Page 7. T S, P & S M
ROCKLAND – The State of Maine has two fi ne well-established maritime museums. We have the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath and the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport. There are also several historical societies that have a very good maritime exhibits. There is one museum that seems to be on the rise and that is the Sail Power & Steam Museum in Rockland, started by Jim Sharp. Jim said, “My wife and I were retired
for 20 years and we were traveling all around the world having a wonderful time. After 20 years this property came up and I fl unked retirement. This property was down at the south end of Rockland, the old Snow shipyard. They built more vessels here than anywhere else in Rockland. They didn’t build the big picket fence schooners like they built down in Bath or at Camden. For a 140 years they built the two, three and four master schooners, the ones that really carried the commerce that built this great nation. Those huge vessels, the picket fence schooners, were short-lived. Some of these little two, three and four masters lived 50, 60, 80 and 100 years. “We got this piece of property and I
decided what a great chance to build a mu- seum,” said Jim. “I always wanted to have a Museum, my house is a museum. I thought we’ll put the museum in and I will be able to put my feet up on the desk, lie and brag because I am the oldest thing around, but here I am working my buns off all the time now and having more fun than a barrel of monkeys doing it. I would give people the fi fty cent tour and they would say ‘this is great you should see what my grandfather left in our barn.’ I would go over and I would say ‘why don’t you lend that to us,’ and we will display your grandfather’s name under
it. That is the way the collection started. We added more and more, till now we are full.” Every year he has been making changes
for the better. This year he wanted a new entrance, one with a Foucault pendulum. This is a pendulum on a long wire, like the 40 foot pendulum they created. Jim added, “We had a nice easy winter so we were able to pour the foundation, build this atrium and put a 20-foot steeple on top of it. The 40 foot pendulum responds beautifully. Next we’re going to add a big compass rose on the fl oor and you will be able to come into the muse- um and see just exactly where that pendulum is going back and forth on the compass rose. Spend an hour looking through the museum and go back and look again and you will fi nd that it has moved 11 or more degrees while the earth turned underneath it.” What catches many people’s eye are
the RC models that line the east wall. These were all built by Harry Lauer, a carpenter who lived in Camden. Later in life he started building models and over the years he built more than 25. These are large pond models, commercial boats mostly. Jim added, “The biggest tugboat that he has there is the Darby, which is twin screw, radio controlled, elec- tric boat. He use to sit in his canoe and he would have a line to the Darby and with his controls the Darby would tow him around the pond.” The further you move into the museum
the more impressive the exhibits become. When talking about what displays capture people’s attention, Jim said, “Our steam house has 12 steam engines that we run every day on compressed air. One is turning a drill press and another one is turning a jack shaft with four engines on it. We have Nathaniel Bowditch’s original personal astrolabe dated 1674. We also have his backstaff and
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A view at some of the exhibits at the Sail, Power & Steam Museum in Rockland.
it is dated 1701 and it is engraved made by George Flowers 1701 for the William Bowditch family. We also have a nice BOWDOIN display with a narwhal tusk. We have Robert Peary’s rifl e that he had in 1909 when he went across the ice toward the Pole. MacMillan was on that expedition and he had frozen feet so he couldn’t leave the outstation. Peary gave him his rifl e and told him ‘take my gun and protect yourself from the polar bears until we get back.’ We have a collection of models from Dynamite Payson. We have more than 20 original builder’s models from the Snow Shipyard. They are actual builder’s models of the ves- sels built right here. We have pictures of their launchings and under sail. We have an inch to the foot half-model of the ADVENTURE. Then we have another model, 3 foot model depicted in 1970s with the equipment the ADVENTURE had on her when I had her in 1970. Fully rigged, sails and everything. We have a room that is about the lime in- dustry. The lime industry named Rockland.
Limestone was very important because they made cement out of it. It was an instant industry for Rockland. They would have a team of horses that hauled the stone down to the waterfront where they would put it in kilns and burn it. They would burn 28 cord of wood in a 24-hour burn. Between here and Camden there were 200 lime kilns in the late 1800s. Rockland at the time was the fourth busiest seaport in the United States. They were shipping fi sh, granite and lime. When they cook the lime it took all the moisture out of it. If it gets a little wet it burst into fl ames. The vessels leaked through the deck and that stuff got wet and would burn the ships up. We have a display in our tool room on the ice industry, which was a phenomenal in- dustry. We have a shipwreck room in there, which shows the Great Gale of 1898, when the steamer PORTLAND was lost, which we have a model of. She was found on Stelwag- on Bank sitting upright on the sea fl oor, her
Continued on Page 8.
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