April 2017 MAINE COASTAL NEWS Page 5. MMM to Honour Maine's Boatbuilders By Lincoln Paine Maine Maritime Museum has named
Maine Built Boats to receive its twelfth annual Mariners Award on behalf of boat- builders and the boatbuilding community statewide. Due to the diff use nature of the industry—there are an estimated sev- enty-fi ve boatbuilding establishments in Maine today—it is hard to accurately assess the boatbuilding community’s contribution to Maine’s economy. But even raw numbers would fail to account for the outsize impact boatbuilding has on the many small coastal communities where it happens. Founded in 2005, Maine Built Boats
is a nonprofi t trade group that seeks to es- tablish Maine boatbuilding as a recognized brand regionally, nationally, and worldwide. It also works to strengthen ties within the state’s diverse community of shipwrights and between them and the industries whose products they use in building the best boats that art and science can devise. Maine Built Boats partners with various
government authorities to create and main- tain favorable conditions for the industry so that Maine boatbuilders can continue to exemplify the best the state has to off er. It also supports education in relevant marine trades to create a dynamic and sophisticated workforce and encourages the development of technologies designed to advance the craft of boatbuilding. The Maine Maritime Museum likewise
promotes traditional boatbuilding skills, especially through its Discovery Boatbuild- ing Program, which since 1995 has off ered a traditional boatbuilding curriculum for school-age kids who spend one day a week at the museum’s boatshop during the academic year. The museum was an early pioneer in utilizing boatbuilding as a vehicle to teach STEM—science, technology, engineering, and math—a concept that is now mirrored in numerous programs nationwide, and proceeds from the Mariners Award event will support the Discovery Boatbuilding Program.
Situated on a twenty-acre campus that
encompasses the grounds of three nine- teenth-century shipyards on the banks of the Kennebec, the Maine Maritime Museum has always emphasized the state’s millennia-old boat- and shipbuilding traditions. While the original inhabitants mastered the art of building dugouts and birchbark canoes for fi shing and travel in the Gulf of Maine and
through the interior, Europeans introduced new technologies and designs for fi shing craft, coastal and blue-water merchant ves- sels, workboats, and warships. In the nineteenth century, Maine ship-
wrights were among the fi rst to embrace steam technology and steel hulls, and their ships connected all the world’s major sea- ports. Today, Maine boatbuilders of every- thing from canoes, one-design racing boats, and luxury yachts to state-of-the-art lobster boats and workboats employ the best of the venerable wooden boat traditions as well as leading-edge technologies in everything from sailmaking to composite hulls. The decision to honor Maine boatbuild-
ers this year coincides with the museum’s acquisition of the 58-foot schooner Mary E, the oldest Kennebec-built wooden hull afl oat today and the oldest extant Maine- built wooden fi shing vessel. One of six- ty-nine craft launched by Thomas E. Hagan, the clipper schooner Mary E was built at the old Houghton yard (now part of BIW) in 1906. She spent thirty-eight years in the Block Island fi sheries and coastal trade and, if later stories are credible, as a rum-runner. Sold in 1944, she became a dragger and changed hands once more before being abandoned in 1960. Three years later she sank in a Thanksgiving Day hurricane in Lynn Harbor, Massachusetts. In 1965, William R. Donnell, II (whose great-grandfather’s house is part of the mu- seum) answered a promising ad in National Fisherman:
HALF SUNKEN FISHING SCHOONER —52’, 9’ draft, Built in Bath, Maine 1906. Has 2½” oak planking. Needs repairs. $200…
Donnell undertook a two-year renova-
tion of the Mary E on the grounds of what is now the museum, an eff ort he chronicled in a June 1968 article in Down East mag- azine. The Mary E was perhaps the fi rst historic schooner to be a USCG-certifi ed passenger vessel, blazing a trail for the Maine Windjammer Fleet. She changed hands a few times, most recently in 2006, when Matt Culen began a major restoration eff ort in collaboration with the Long Island Maritime Museum before moving her to the Connecticut River Maritime Museum docks in Essex for river tours. The Mary E will return to Bath this
The schooner MARY E. just acquired by the Maine Maritime Museum of Bath.
spring and after an overhaul by a team led by Andros Kypragoras will sail as the museum’s ambassador at events on the Maine coast, and off er daytrips, especially to students and others from organizations with a strong commitment to preserving the history, culture, and environment of the Maine coast. The Mariners Award ceremony—a
boatbuilders’ gam and happy hour followed by a dinner and award presentation—will take place at the Museum on August 24, 2017, from 5:00 to 8:30pm. Attendees can also look in on the Mary E restoration. For more information and tickets, readers are invited to contact Peggy Schick at 207-443- 1316 x327, or
schick@maritimeME.org; or visit
MaineMaritimeMuseum.org/about/ mariners-award/.
Maine Coastal News is now entirely online:
www.mainescoast.com
Bring your boat to New England’s most capable yacht yard for the care she deserves. Repairs, refi ts, storage and dockage available for vessels up to 200 feet and 480 tons.
Belfast,Maine 207-930-3740
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