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Keywords: Merchant shipping

Historical Items

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Item 20176

St. Leon merchant ship, Castine, 1835

Contributed by: Maine Historical Society Date: 1835 Location: Castine Media: Photographic print

Item 100301

Letter from J.W. Jones to Robert Tate, West Indies, 1803

Contributed by: Tate House Museum Date: 1803-03-09 Location: Portland Media: Ink on paper

  view a full transcription

Item 9611

Ship's receipt, Antwerp, 1860

Contributed by: Pejepscot History Center Date: 1860-04-03 Location: Antwerp Media: Ink on paper

  view a full transcription

Tax Records

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Item 37298

128-130 Commercial Street, Portland, 1924

Owner in 1924: Marcia W. Rackleff et als Use: Store Building

Item 37294

122-124 Commercial Street, Portland, 1924

Owner in 1924: Marcia W. Rackleff et als Use: Wholesale Grocer

Item 37295

126 Commercial Street, Portland, 1924

Owner in 1924: Marcia W Rackleff Use: Storage - Produce

Online Exhibits

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Exhibit

The Life and Legacy of the George Tate Family

Captain George Tate, mast agent for the King of England from 1751 to the Revolutionary War, and his descendants helped shape the development of Portland (first known as Falmouth) through activities such as commerce, shipping, and real estate.

Exhibit

Launch of the 'Doris Hamlin'

The Doris Hamlin, a four-masted schooner built at the Frye-Flynn Shipyard in Harrington, was one of the last vessels launched there, marking the decline of a once vigorous shipbuilding industry in Washington County.

Exhibit

Big Timber: the Mast Trade

Britain was especially interested in occupying Maine during the Colonial era to take advantage of the timber resources. The tall, straight, old growth white pines were perfect for ships' masts to help supply the growing Royal Navy.

Site Pages

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Site Page

Bath's Historic Downtown - Merchants' Row

"Merchants are usually operators of stores. Merchants' Row is located at 108, 114, and 116 Front Street, the home of many retail stores, built at a…"

Site Page

Historic Hallowell - Shipping

"Examples of products would be food, ingredients, and medicine. They shipped potash which is found in chimneys, and it was made into gun powder."

Site Page

Maine's Road to Statehood - The Coasting Law of 1789

"… 1775 The Coasting Law of 1789 required that merchant ships port and register at each non-adjacent state as a way to raise port revenue."

My Maine Stories

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Story

Maine and the Atlantic World Slave Economy
by Seth Goldstein

How Maine's historic industries are tied to slavery

Lesson Plans

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Lesson Plan

Bicentennial Lesson Plan

Primary Sources: The Maine Shipyard

Grade Level: 9-12 Content Area: Social Studies
This lesson plan will give students a close-up look at historical operations behind Maine's famed shipbuilding and shipping industries. Students will examine primary sources including letters, bills of lading, images, and objects, and draw informed hypotheses about the evolution of the seafaring industry and its impact on Maine’s communities over time.

Lesson Plan

Bicentennial Lesson Plan

Becoming Maine: The District of Maine's Coastal Economy

Grade Level: 3-5 Content Area: Social Studies
This lesson plan will introduce students to the maritime economy of Maine prior to statehood and to the Coasting Law that impacted the separation debate. Students will examine primary documents, take part in an activity that will put the Coasting Law in the context of late 18th century – early 19th century New England, and learn about how the Embargo Act of 1807 affected Maine in the decades leading to statehood.

Lesson Plan

Longfellow Studies: Longfellow Amongst His Contemporaries - The Ship of State DBQ

Grade Level: 9-12 Content Area: English Language Arts, Social Studies
Preparation Required/Preliminary Discussion: Lesson plans should be done in the context of a course of study on American literature and/or history from the Revolution to the Civil War. The ship of state is an ancient metaphor in the western world, especially among seafaring people, but this figure of speech assumed a more widespread and literal significance in the English colonies of the New World. From the middle of the 17th century, after all, until revolution broke out in 1775, the dominant system of governance in the colonies was the Navigation Acts. The primary responsibility of colonial governors, according to both Parliament and the Crown, was the enforcement of the laws of trade, and the governors themselves appointed naval officers to ensure that the various provisions and regulations of the Navigation Acts were executed. England, in other words, governed her American colonies as if they were merchant ships. This metaphorical conception of the colonies as a naval enterprise not only survived the Revolution but also took on a deeper relevance following the construction of the Union. The United States of America had now become the ship of state, launched on July 4th 1776 and dedicated to the radical proposition that all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights. This proposition is examined and tested in any number of ways during the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. Novelists and poets, as well as politicians and statesmen, questioned its viability: Whither goes the ship of state? Is there a safe harbor somewhere up ahead or is the vessel doomed to ruin and wreckage? Is she well built and sturdy or is there some essential flaw in her structural frame?