Maine History Online

Transformations in Maritime Industries

The decades after the Civil War saw the elaboration of this dual economy along the coast. The Panic of 1857, the Confederate raiders, and soaring insurance rates set American shipping on a downward trend.

At mid century Britain stepped up its production of iron and steel steamships that were larger, safer, more comfortable, longer lasting, and more predictable in their arrival and departure schedules than wooden ships. Maine shipyards had neither the capital nor the skills to compete as steel ship producers. In addition, America's expanding railroad networks shifted trade away from sea lanes. With a vast interior blessed with raw materials and growing cities, America turned its back on the Atlantic basin and its ocean highway.

Still, Maine postponed the inevitable by seeking markets unavailable to steamships. Sailing ships remained competitive in the trans-Pacific trades where coal depots to power the steam vessels were rare, and Maine yards responded by producing the Down-Easter, a huge square-rigged vessel of tremendous strength and speed built to carry grain from Australia and California along with other bulky, low-value items like cotton, iron, and guano.

Designed and built exclusively in Maine, the Down-Easter combined speed, cargo capacity, and strength – a combination necessary to match the brutal weather off Cape Horn with a shifting cargo of wheat.

During the Civil War, northern shippers abandoned transatlantic voyages in order to carry goods along the coast and into Canada. Because these voyages required a great deal of maneuverability, Maine produced gigantic schooners – vessels rigged fore-and-aft for steering into the wind.

At a time when British steel ships were out-competing the rest of the world, Maine's shipbuilding families carried the craft of wooden shipbuilding to its apogee.

The decades after the Civil War brought declines in the deep-sea fishery as well. The Civil War ended shipments of Maine fish to southern plantations, and after the war new fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes edged Maine dealers out of southern and middle-western markets.

The trend toward fresh, as opposed to salt or pickled fish disadvantaged isolated Maine ports, and Canadian fish dealers sold salt fish in Maine's West Indies markets. Finally, pork and beef from the Chicago stockyards replaced fish as America's main source of protein.

While markets weakened, insurance costs for fishing vessels increased, as did costs for salt, hemp, iron, and foodstuffs. These higher costs gave wholesale fish dealers an opportunity to gain control over the industry. New regulations resulted in crew-members who once had been co-investors becoming wage earners as new equipment led to bigger catches and depleted fish stocks.

The lobster fishery began in the 1820s. Demand increased in the 1870s with canned seafood and in 1875 fish dealers experimented with holding live lobsters in fenced-in coves to await good prices. Lobster pounds were soon common along the coast and improved the marketing of fresh lobsters.

Dealers also learned to ship their product live in barrels of ice and seaweed as far west as the Mississippi River, and a burgeoning coastal tourist industry added another inducement to the growing fishery. Due to conservation laws, competition from Canada, and the loss of markets for this luxury, demand declined during the Great Depression of the 1930s

Soft-shelled clams, sold for bait or canned for chowder, and weir fishing for herring, which was processed in large canneries in eastern Maine and sold as sardines, provided other shore-based activities. Cod, hake, scallops, salmon, shad, alewives, striped bass, smelt, eels, tomcod, and sturgeon also eased the burden of declining markets for Maine's staple salt cod.

Seasons of Work

Each of these fisheries was seasonal, and none provided a year-round source of income. The yearly round of fishing, farming, woodcutting, and trading followed the natural cadences of season, tide, weather, fish migration, and growing season.

The advantage of this way of life was the independence it brought. Villagers grew their own food, built their own homes, harvested their own firewood, fashioned their own tools, and built their own boats. Independence was not a genetic characteristic of the Downeast Yankee but part of a broader pattern of responses to environmental and economic conditions characteristic of the North Atlantic rim from Maine and the Maritimes to Scandinavia.

These work patterns also included "salt-water" farming. For these fisher-farmers, the coast offered a longer growing season and plenty of clamshells for lime, seaweed for mulch, and salt grass for fodder, and the uplands produced hay in great quantities.

Islands were ideal for sheep pastures, being safe from dog and wolf predation and requiring no fencing. Since the snow was light and the dense dwarf evergreen provided shelter and browse, sheep needed no care during winter.