While traveling from Bar Harbor down to Rockland, ME today, we rolled through Searsport, ME, and stopped at the home of Blue Jacket Shipcrafters. We picked out a nice model of a Friendship Sloop for our living room, and Donna bought me a beautiful kit of an 1877 New England Schooner. It will make a lovely addition to the town of Searsport on the Corinna & Searsport.

We also spent some time poking around Searsport. It’s amazing that almost no evidence of the once major shipbuilding industry remains. I did find one original looking boat shed and some evidence of the marine railway that used to serve it.

Many of the buildings in the town of Searsport are intact, based in the few pictures I’ve been able to find. Of the nine shipyards once in operation in Searsport, I could find obvious remains of only two — maybe three. Searsport was once the busiest port and shipbuilding center in all of Maine, but it is curiously un-documented, unlike other ports such as Rockland.

On another interesting note, there’s a print on the wall in our room that shows the two four-masted schooners (Hester and Luther) that were brought to Wiscasset in 1932 by Frank Winter, who was owner of the WW&F at the time. The ships languished after the railroad’s demise in the mid-thirties, and were finally removed in 1998. (more details on the Hester and Luther can be found here).