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    Vinalhaven Island's Maritime Industries
    Vinalhaven Island's Maritime Industries
    Vinalhaven Island's Maritime Industries
    Ebook162 pages41 minutes

    Vinalhaven Island's Maritime Industries

    By Cynthia Burns Martin, Vinalhaven Historical Society and Roy Heisler

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    About this ebook

    Vinalhaven Island has been the home port of a productive commercial fishing fleet for over 200 years. By 1819, Vinalhaven vessels were fishing for cod and herring from Seal Island all the way to Labrador waters. By 1878, Carver's Harbor was lined with docks, fishhouses, a sail loft, a net factory, and the Lane & Libby fish plant. Throughout the 19th century, boats brought bait, salt, and supplies to Vinalhaven and returned with fish and granite from the island's quarries. Lighthouses at Brown's Head, Heron Neck, Saddleback Ledge, Goose Rock, and Matinicus guided mariners through storms. In Vinalhaven shops, boatbuilders constructed small dories, peapods and double-enders, masted schooners, and lobster boats, as well as the 365-ton Margaret M. Ford. Passenger ferries played an important role as the primary link between Vinalhaven and the mainland. The island has long been a successful center of maritime economic activity, so it is no surprise that islanders call it "the center of the universe."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateMay 18, 2015
    ISBN9781439651346
    Vinalhaven Island's Maritime Industries
    Author

    Cynthia Burns Martin

    Cynthia Burns Martin is professor of business administration at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire. Roy Heisler is director emeritus of the Vinalhaven Historical Society. Most of the images in Vinalhaven Island's Maritime Industries are from the collections of the society, founded in 1963.

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      Book preview

      Vinalhaven Island's Maritime Industries - Cynthia Burns Martin

      Harbor.

      INTRODUCTION

      Vinalhaven is one of the largest islands in the Penobscot Bay, situated off mid-coast Maine in the path of the Labrador Current, which brings nutrient-rich water south, attracting abundant fish. Outlying banks in the path of the warmer northbound Gulf Stream, such as Georges Bank, lie within a day’s sail. Extreme tidal mixing fosters diverse species of marine life for harvest. Prior to recorded history, Native Americans camped at the island in summer to fish, hunt for seal, and gather shellfish. By the late 17th century, Penobscot Bay was being fished for cod by Europeans. Early settlers called the island South Fox Island.

      In 1762, twenty-seven men and their families came to the Fox Islands from the westard, the mainland lying to the west of the islands. They came seeking economic opportunity in what was wild, uncultivated land, but farming shallow topsoil on granite ledge offered little more than a subsistence living. Many quickly turned to cutting firewood for the Boston market or trading in coasters, single-masted sloops or double-masted schooners sufficiently seaworthy for trips to and from the mainland.

      Leaving Vinalhaven soil and venturing west to the mainland across 12 miles of water can be a formidable journey even today when the wind is blowing from south-southwest, raising high seas in the open bay. Vinalhaven’s commerce and community have always depended on reliable transportation of goods and people to and from the mainland. Some of the island’s early settlers had boats that were available for hire. On August 18, 1775, Thaddeus Carver hired Job Philbrook and his boat Polly to bring a broken sawmill crank to the mainland for repair and returned a month later on September 17.

      The American Revolution disrupted economic activity for the settlers at Fox Islands, most of whom left the island and abandoned their houses and possessions to British troops that ranged Penobscot Bay from their base at what is today Castine, at the mouth of the Bagaduce River. During the war, the British destroyed many of the colony’s schooners, impacting the fishing industry for years to come. After the war, settlers returned to the islands, and in 1784, seventy-two settlers (including one African American and two women) successfully petitioned the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for a grant of the land they called North and South Fox Islands, later known as North Haven and Vinalhaven. By 1785, mariner Thomas Ginn was running a freighter between the two islands and Boston, according to the town history.

      A significant force in the economic history of Vinalhaven was the federal act of July 4, 1789, that created a bounty for catching, preserving, and exporting codfish, to stimulate exports and appease fishermen for a tax on imported salt used to cure cod. A subsequent act in 1792 added another bounty for vessels and fishermen employed fishing for cod at least four months a year, creating incentive for private owners to rebuild the country’s merchant fleet after the Revolutionary War. The vessel bounty was calculated using a base rate multiplied by tonnage of the vessel, with the highest base rates per ton for vessels that exceeded 30 tons. A vessel bounty was divided among owners (three-eighths) and fishermen (five-eighths). Lucrative government bounties, coupled with the competitive advantage of proximity to rich fishing grounds, made offshore fishing a more attractive investment than farming shallow topsoil in a short growing

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