As visitors stroll between buildings on a beautiful summer morning, heads turn to find the source of a rhythmic tap-tap-tapping. The sound of mallets against wood chisels is coming from a rustic structure with a sign announcing “Boatshop.” Another wooden sailing vessel is under construction on the grounds of the former Percy & Small shipyard, now the home of the Maine Maritime Museum.
Located on the banks of the Kennebec River in Bath, Maine, the museum occupies the United States’ only remaining shipyard site with original workshops and slipways where great wooden sailing vessels were once built.
During its heyday, the Percy & Small yard specialized in constructing sailing schooners (four to six masts). Among them was the giant wooden schooner Wyoming, built in 1909 and the largest ever constructed in this country. Photographs can’t convey the massive size of the six-masted ship, so the museum built a life-size steel sculpture of the vessel’s bow and stern sections. Spanning the Wyoming’s actual 450-foot overall length, the structure dominates the museum’s grounds.
With seven family-friendly exhibits and four original Percy & Small shipyard workshops scattered about a shaded waterfront site, there is much to see and do. Inside the museum’s flagship Maritime History Building are four climate-controlled galleries exhibiting an extensive collection of marine memorabilia, art, vintage shipbuilding tools, and ship models. During the summer months, visitors can also sign up for cruises on board the Maine-built wooden motor cruiser Schoodic to view lighthouses along the scenic Kennebec River, attend a nautical lecture series or book talks, enjoy musical events, or take a class in celestial navigation.
Other popular attractions include hopping aboard the Sherman Zwicker, a 142-foot wooden Grand Banks fishing schooner docked each summer at the museum. Savor the scent of old wood timbers and experience the cramped quarters that easily call to mind the movie classic based on Rudyard Kipling’s novel Captains Courageous, with its scenes of life in a vessel on the storm-tossed sea for weeks at a time. Later, amble across the museum’s park-like grounds for a guided tour of a furnished Victorian-era home, the Donnell House, to witness how a shipyard owner lived in 1892.
Ever wonder how a lobsterman works his trade? The museum dedicates an entire structure to Maine lobster fishing, complete with a collection of antique lobster boats. For history buffs, there’s a building housing relics from the full-rig, three-masted American clipper ship Snow Squall, built in 1851. Sections of the clipper’s bow are displayed along with models illustrating wooden-ship construction techniques used during the distant Age of Sail.
The museum enjoys strong ties with the Bath Iron Works shipyard (now part of General Dynamics Marine Systems), just a mile north. The shipyard is renowned for building generations of U.S. Navy destroyers. In fact the museum displays superb scale models, such as an eight-foot model of the destroyer USS De Haven (DD-727), launched at the Iron Works on 9 January 1944. Board a museum trolley for a one-hour narrated shipyard tour. Observe yard workers as they build the latest high-tech Arleigh Burke–class destroyers and understand the origin of the slogan Bath-Built Is Best-Built.
Visitors from all over the world are drawn to the Maine Maritime Museum’s picturesque and busy boatshop. Located in an airy old building that once served as a carriage house for the Donnell home, the boatshop is where wood shavings always seem to cover the floor and hand-crafted wooden boats are still constructed using traditional methods. At the time of this report, a classic Haven 12½-foot sloop was being built on commission to raise money for the museum. Past projects include Whitehall-style pulling boats for overseas clients. Visitors are encouraged to wander into the boatshop and talk with the dedicated volunteer boatbuilders. Many happily do.
Looking for lunch? Try the museum’s Even Keel Cafe. Open daily during the summer months from 1030 to 1500, it offers tasty meals and a terrific view of the river. And if you’re lucky—while enjoying your lobster roll—a sleek, recently completed destroyer from BIW might just be making her maiden voyage downriver to the sea.
Maine Maritime Museum
243 Washington Street, Bath, Maine 04530
Tel.: (207) 443-1316
www.MaineMaritimeMuseum.org
Open daily 0930–1700
Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, & New Year’s Day
Admission free for members and children under 6, adults $15, seniors and students with ID $12, children 6 to 17 $10