Keywords: Somes Harbor
Item 21186
Somes Sound, Mt. Desert Island, ca. 1900
Contributed by: Great Harbor Maritime Museum Date: circa 1900 Location: Mount Desert Media: Photographic print
Item 16460
Somes Sound Looking South, 1893
Contributed by: Southwest Harbor Public Library Date: 1893-08-31 Location: Southwest Harbor; Southwest Harbor Media: Photographic print
Exhibit
For one hundred years, Acadia National Park has captured the American imagination and stood as the most recognizable symbol of Maine’s important natural history and identity. This exhibit highlights Maine Memory content relating to Acadia and Mount Desert Island.
Exhibit
Summer Folk: The Postcard View
Vacationers, "rusticators," or tourists began flooding into Maine in the last quarter of the 19th century. Many arrived by train or steamer. Eventually, automobiles expanded and changed the tourist trade, and some vacationers bought their own "cottages."
Site Page
"… European exploration & settlement at Winter Harbor Piles of logs along the Saco River, ca."
Site Page
Mount Desert Island: Shaped by Nature - Arriving in Bar Harbor
"Arriving in Bar Harbor Bar Harbor steamboat landing, ca. 1885Maine Historic Preservation Commission Arriving at the Bar Harbor wharf…"
Story
An enjoyable conference, Portland 2021
by John C. Decker, Danville, Pennsylvania
Some snippets from a 4-day conference by transportation historians in Portland, September 7-11, 2021
Story
The Joys of Kayaking - Pam's Story
by Pam Ferris-Olson
Pam has kayaked in many special places but her fondest memories are being made on Casco Bay
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?
