The Maine Maritime Museum in Bath

If you stand on the grounds of the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, close your eyes and listen closely, you might hear the persistent sounds of industry - the faint echo of men laboring long hours to build great ships. It could be the casual banter of the workers, the resounding “thump” of a mallet or the buzz of a saw slicing wood.

Located partially on the site of the Percy & Small shipyard, in Bath, Maine, these sounds filled the air from 1897 to 1920. It takes only a little imagination to hear them. During those years, forty-one large schooners were constructed, bearing four, five and six masts. Because of its significance, the shipyard site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. What better location to tell the story of maritime Maine?

Other sounds prevail today, like giggling children happy to be out on a field trip, and birds twittering overhead in the trees. But a strong sense of the nautical past still clings to this spot with good reason.

Perhaps the most famous ship produced at this site was the six-masted coal schooner Wyoming, launched in 1909. Unfortunately, the vessel did not live a long life. The Wyoming was lost during a gale east of Cape Cod in 1924. She was the largest wooden schooner ever constructed and could carry more than 6,000 tons of cargo. Some considered her the pinnacle of wooden shipbuilding.

“Maine was a very significant state in the nation’s shipbuilding industry through most of the 19th century. As long as wooden shipbuilding was state of the art, Maine built more ships than any other state in the union,” says Nathan Lipfert, library director of the museum.

If those dedicated craftsmen from the turn-of-the-century were alive today, they would be pleased to know the heritage of ship building in Maine is alive and well. It must be gratifying to see a vessel you helped create, glide along the water and equally as devastating to hear of her loss.