USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Wiscasset > Wiscasset in Pownalborough; a history of the shire town and the salient historical features of the territory between the Sheepscot and Kennebec rivers > Part 44
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Daguerreotypes
Enoch Piper, the son of Silas and Abbie Piper, was born in Wiscasset, in 1797. He was one of the ten children born to his parents, eight of whom lived to be over seventy years of age. Henry W. Piper, Esq., a brother of Enoch, died in January, 1877, aged eighty-two. Six of these children sur- vived him of whom John D. Piper was the youngest.
In early life Enoch Piper went to Boston, and soon after the photo- graphic process known as the daguerreotype process was invented by M. Daguerre, in 1839, Piper learned the art of taking pictures by the agency of light, and it was he who first introduced the method into Maine. Some of the older residents remember his primitive gallery in Rockland, Maine, and the curiosity it excited. A few regarded it as akin to witchcraft.
Mr. Piper invented and perfected the process of preserving meat by arti- ficial refrigeration. He obtained a patent and for several years brought salmon and other fish from St. John, New Brunswick, which were frozen and brought to New York City during the winter season. He accumulated quite a fortune from this industry, but subsequently lost the larger part of it in litigation over his patent.
Enoch Piper was married for the first time at the age of seventy years to Penelope Williston, who survived him. He died childless at St. John, June 13, 1877, aged eighty years.
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Shipbuilding
The most lucrative business carried on in Wiscasset was the building of vessels and the manufacture of lumber for export to European and West Indian markets. The early inhabitants drew most of their actual food sup- plies from the fields and streams, but for clothing, agricultural implements, manufactured articles, live-stock, and many other necessities, they were dependent on the mother country, so these commodities formed the return freights from the British Isles.
The magnificent forests in this vicinity furnished all of the timber neces- sary for the building of ships and sailors were not lacking. The sterile soil and short crop season sent many a youth to sea, where he served before the mast until competent to become a master mariner.
It is not known how soon after the resettlement shipbuilding was begun on the Sheepscot, but the turning out of small craft for river transportation and travel at the time when waterways were the only dependable highways, must have engaged the attention of the new-comers directly after their ar- rival, although records of sizable vessels do not appear until after the incor- poration of Pownalborough.
Abiel Wood, Wiscasset's most extensive ship-owner, came to the Point from Middleboro, Massachusetts, in 1766; and he must have opened a shipyard soon after that time. John Currier, in his testimony given during the year 1801, stated that he "worked in the ship-yard of Abiel Wood in 1767, 1768 and for several years thereafter, and that Wood had a vessel building in said yard in 1798."
The exact location of the Wood shipyard has not been determined, but several of the older inhabitants believe it to have occupied that place on the shore of Bradbury's Cove, where, in later years, Morrill Hilton, Jr., had his shipyard, the slipways and showels of which can still be traced at low tide. This yard was on the right of the road leading from the Point to the old salt store of the Johnstons, now used as a storehouse for coal by Free- man D. Southard. This location would have been near the ropewalk, potash house and home of Gen. Abiel Wood.
Another early shipyard of doubtful location was that of Maj. Seth Tink- ham, although it is generally conceded to have been at the foot of State (now Main) Street, close by the old town landing. Some of the stone steps
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Ship THLA. SARA WISCASsel, off Bol
Telassar, built at Wiscasset in 1847. George H. Wood, master.
Bark Casilda built at Wiscasset in 1837. Tonnage 257. Master E. H. Hall. Painting by Pelligrina.
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leading to the latter place are still visible just north of the Lincoln Block, though the greater number of them have been buried by road construction.
There is known to have been a shipyard in the tidal cove, where in the eighteenth century the river indented the shore almost as far as Main Street -or as far as the south fence bounding the land now owned by Carroll T. Berry. This was originally the Kingsbury shipyard. John Kingsbury, son of Col. John Kingsbury, was born in Newburyport in July, 1748. At the age of twenty he married and very shortly afterward brought his wife to Wis- casset, where after residing for a brief space of time with his mother in the old Kingsbury home on Main Street (moved later to give place to the Nickels house) he bought land and erected a small house on the lot between Court and Pleasant Streets. There, having learned a shipwright's trade from his brother-in-law, John Hues, he started a shipyard and carried on shipbuilding. The ways or timbers on which the vessels were launched, are said to have been just back of where is now the Congregational vestry.
In this house at least two of Kingsbury's children were born. His daugh- ter Emma was born in 1770, and his son "John Kingsbury, the rigger," who was wont to say that he "was born in the IIth year of the reign of His Ma- jesty, George III." About the time of the war of the American Revolution the business of John Kingsbury, Sr., became so reduced that he sold his house and land to Jacob Woodman and removed to some wild land about a mile and a half from the village, on what is now the Gardiner road, which place was afterwards the home of his grandson, Rhodes Kingsbury.
From The Cumberland Pacquet, a newspaper which started in 1770 in Whitehaven, England, we learn that "Daniel Brocklebank sailed in the fifth ship (the Castor) he built in America from Sheepscot, on May 8th 1775 for Whitehaven," reaching there thirty-two days later.2
The shipyard of Isaac H. Coffin was located in that part of town called Joppa, the section now principally occupied by the tracks and station of the Maine Central Railroad. The shipyard was just north of Miller's wharf at. the place now covered by the freight shed. A picturesque reminiscence of Joppa, written by a former resident who signed himself "One of the Boys" is given below:
20. After several years spent at sea during the course of which letters of marque were granted to him as commander of the brig Castor by George III, Captain Brockelbank established a ship- building yard at Whitehaven in 1788 and twenty-five vessels were built there by him. Information furnished by Mr. Denis Haughton Bates of the Anchor-Brockelbank Line of Liverpool, England, which was founded in 1770 by Daniel Brocklebank and is, so far as is known, the oldest shipping company in the world.
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The passenger station of the Knox & Lincoln Railroad has usurped the site of Elliot's shop, and has but little about it now to remind one of the days when our clothes were flung on the ash logs of the block and pump-maker's shop and we ducked and dived while shouts and screams were heard along the Sheepscot at high water.
In that old shop we first knew the pungent spicy odors,-as chips flew from the lathe, -of that wonderful wood lignum vitæ, and of the tradition that after years of immersion in salt water, the lignum vitæ would become whet-stones. The flats of Joppa now con- tain pieces surreptitiously planted for that purpose. Joppa town is esoteric, and lives only in tradition and history. Miller's wharf in Joppa, in the busy season, was often covered with great casks of molasses, with bungs out, ready for the U. S. gauger. Samples were taken for sale, and often, too, for candy making properties, this latter test being un- official and unreported.
Vessels were built at Joppa, but they were of no especial interest to the boys until launching days arrived, when we were all in attendance and watched particularly to see the ways properly laid with grease. The boys stood high in that poetry of "gliding into the native element" etc., and assisted with a good deal of noise and some labor, in getting the vessel where Uncle John Kingsbury, the rigger, would put her in order for some driver of a captain to "give her fits" in a norther, outside of Seguin.
Near Joppa were the graving ways where the West India men submitted to the burning process, to extinguish the life of the teredo or sea-worm; and the Betsey, Sirius, Ajax, and others, with a coat compounded on shore, of arsenic, brimstone and tar, were here made ready for another voyage.
The shipyard of Whitney & Sewall was at the foot of Main Street and is thought to have been in the place of the Tinkham yard.
The Ayer shipyard was near the present location of the Rines Brothers blacksmith shop.
John Johnston & Sons built their vessels at the extreme southeastern cor- ner of the Point just beside the old ferry-ways. Next came the yard of Morrill Hilton, Jr., near the house now occupied by the present register of deeds, Norris Miller.
Harriman & Clark had their shipyard also in Bradbury Cove, where is now the foundry, at the foot of the Richard H. Tucker lot. From this yard in 1854 the ship Golden Horn was launched, and two other vessels were launched that same day; the ship Mackinaw from the yard of Isaac H. Cof- fin, and the ship Tamerlane from the Johnston shipyard. Never has Wiscas- set's water front presented a more gala appearance than on that day of the triple launchings.
A shipyard in Edgecomb in 1845 was run by David Jackins where coast- ing schooners were built.
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Brown & Hodgkins had their shipbuilding plant at the extreme northerly end of Birch Point just east of the present bridge.
The Maine Shipbuilding Company was at Holbrook's Island in 1890.
The Standard Shipbuilding Company was at Birch Point in the World War.
Among the master builders whose names are preserved are: Stephen C. Dutton, John Currier, John Kingsbury, Master Carlton, Master Turner, Robert Trevett, Jacob Woodman, Spencer Greenleaf, Morrill Hilton, Jr., Samuel Chisam, and Alexander Troup, who was a shipwright in the early years of the nineteenth century.
In the present century Henry Pendleton and his sons Fred F.21 and Em- ory Pendleton came here from Camden in 1900 and began work at the brick foundry. Later they moved to Holbrook's Island, where they established their boat-building shop.
Jotham Donnell and Charles Rundlett were the shipwrights in Alna.
In the shipyard of William McGilvery of Searsport, where in more re- cent years so many Wiscasset-owned ships were built, Marlboro Packard was the master builder in 1866. Master Dutton worked in Newburyport.
Moses Huntoon was an exceptional wood-worker. He was a ship-carpen- ter and built gundalows at Wiscasset Point.
In those days the men worked for long hours, and no labor union or walk- ing delegate interfered with their allotted tasks. Sit-down strikes and scab labor belong to the days of the mass-thinking present. The master of the shipyard was there at dawn in order to get the work laid out for the men when they arrived just after sunrise.
The plan of the vessel was in the head of the master builder, whose thumb was his measure, and whose eye was his guide. The rough rule for cargo carriers was "a fourth of the length for the beam and a half of the beam for the hold." This of course did not apply to the clipper ships, built later for speed.
Many a scientific naval architect had his first lessons in stress and strain from these conscientious shipbuilders to whom their vessels were little short of human beings, many of the characteristics of mankind being ascribed to them. They were called stiff and cranky or pliant and easy going. They were handled as deftly and intelligently as a man would guide a balky horse. For
21. Fred F. Pendleton learned his trade in the Herreschoff yard at Bristol, Rhode Island. Emory Pendleton also worked there.
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the most part these men loved their work, and should it fall to the lot of any one of them to man the ship, he knew how to stick to her to the last, and, if necessary, go down with her to the depths of the sea.
The Launching
"Here's the Devil to pay and no pitch hot" was a phrase familiar to those who frequented the shipyards in the days of wooden shipbuilding. In the old shipyards when a vessel on the stocks was nearing completion and the seams of her planking had been caulked with oakum they were rendered watertight by being payed with hot pitch. For this purpose a huge cauldron of boiling tar was seen in every shipyard. The work called for adroitness and speed and the Devil was supposed to be an efficient workman for such a job, and also a very impatient one. If he consented to pay the vessel and the pitch was not all ready for him an unpleasant situation developed. It took a long time to bring a great cauldron of tar to the boiling point as it was likely to catch fire if carelessly hurried. The Devil was not one to be kept waiting.
Launching is the process of sliding a vessel off the stocks on which she has been built-or in other words, removing her from the land to the water. We have seen that, with this in view, every vessel was built on an inclined plane one end of which reached below the surface of the water to a depth greater than the ship's draught; also that the keel was built, not on the slip itself, but on blocks of wood placed about three feet apart.
In order to maintain the equilibrium of the hull while building, it rests in a cradle, the bottom of which is supported by ways on the slip, which is made of planed timbers leading toward the water and the balance kept by shores or stanchions under the bilge. The cradle is built out about ten feet on each side of the vessel and up to the flat of the floor. The cradle is so formed that the weight of the vessel holds it together, but when that is withdrawn through the buoyancy of the water, the cradle breaks up into small pieces which are salvaged by boats on the river.
In order to facilitate launching, ways and slides are built under the bilge on both sides and run the whole length of the ship, and between them a heavy coating of tallow or axle grease is laid. The slides are on top of the ways and the packing, like a solid cradle, is on top of the slides. Up to this time the weight of the vessel has rested on the blocks under the keel, but at this point it becomes necessary to lift the ship and transfer most of her
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weight to the launching ways. This is accomplished by means of wedges, many small blocks of oak or yellow pine, driven in six inches apart between the packing and the planking, or between the launching ways and the skin of the ship. Then with mauls and iron wedges the blocks below the keel are split and driven out and when the underpinning is gone the vessel rests on the ways.
When, in the language of the builder, the vessel had been made "as tight as a cup" or caulked, payed and painted, and the finishing touches added so that she was "all ship-shape and Bristol fashion," the great launching day arrived. All of the town and most of the county headed for the shipyard. The air of the village was fraught with a holiday atmosphere as the scent of the shipyard arose, a pungent bouquet of mingled odors of tallow grease and sawdust, hempen rope and oakum, boiling tar and the steam from hot iron from the smithy forge as a few last rivets were driven tight and strong. Horses, chaises, the stage-coach, hay-racks, wagons and teams of every known variety were hitched to posts and trees as Wiscasset witnessed a near approach to a traffic jam, while the human tide drifted shoreward. The fes- tivities began with a drink and ended with a dinner. A regular allowance of grog was served to the ship carpenters and workmen at eleven o'clock.
After consulting the Farmer's Almanac, the chosen time for the launch- ing was usually at noon when the tide was high at that hour. There on the stocks was the vessel, all bedight in a new set of signals, and there astride of the bowsprit sat the launching man, or ship's godfather, with a bottle of rum in hand, uncorked but not untasted, ready to christen the nameless ship as she slid from the ways to the waves.
The well-known adage of "time and tide" caused the launchings to take place promptly. It only remained for the men to drive out the last few blocks. In the old days they began with the forward blocks but so many acci- dents and a few fatalities resulted from this method that it was found safer to reverse the procedure and knock out the after blocks first, leaving just a few to bear the strain and the vessel cleared herself of these when she slid off the ways.
When with a clean, sharp stroke the last block had been released and the ship with all flags flying started to slide down her slippery pathway, gather- ing momentum as she went, a great crescendo arose. It was a chorus in which the sound of many voices mingled with the smashing of the christening bot- tle, the ripping and splitting of wood, a whirlwind of flying chips and splin-
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ters, the cheers of the onlookers and shouts of the boys, the plunge into the stream and splashing of the anchor quickly cast to hold her lest the snub line break, and every whistle in the harbor saluting. For a few minutes pan- demonium reigned.
Immediately after the launching came the rolling. This was accomplished by everyone on board of the vessel running first to one side and then to the other, tipping the ship to port and then to starboard so as to free her from all loose timbers clinging to her sides. At least one vessel capsized during this process. When the newly launched ship was riding at anchor in the stream all hands went below "to splice the main brace."
When the launching rites were over the whole crew in procession from the shipyard adjourned to Lincoln Hall, where a bountiful repast was spread on long tables and the afternoon was spent in feasting and social in- tercourse. It is recorded in a newspaper of the day that on one such occasion Dr. Packard admonished them "not to let their rejoicings overstep the bounds of prudence."
The launching, however, did not finish the vessel. The next move to- wards completion was stepping the masts, or placing them upright in sockets made for that purpose. Before steam-winches came into use this was done by hand, and by using a system of tripods and block and tackle the mast was put up in sections. Then the yards, sails and rigging were adjusted to make the vessel ready for her maiden voyage. The notice of a ship's sailing was often followed with, not "D V," but "W & W P," meaning wind and weather permitting.
Masts for the Royal Navy
Prior to the Revolution, England, with an inadequate supply of native timber for the British Navy, looked to His Majesty's plantations for masts and spars from the tall virgin pines of the primeval forests. Surveyors and measurers of timber and boards were annually elected in the maritime prov- inces. Trees which measured a certain size a foot above ground, in the ver- nacular "one foot up and two foot through," were marked with the broad arrow and a capital "R" and reserved for the Royal Navy. In the provincial charter it was ruled that:
All trees of the diameter of twenty-four inches, upwards of twelve inches from the ground, growing upon any soil or tract of land within our said Provinces or Territory
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not hitherto granted to private persons, are reserved for masting the Royal Navy and all persons are forbidden to fell, cut or destroy any such trees, without the Royal License, first had and obtained, under penalty of forfeiting £100 sterling for every tree so felled, cut, or destroyed without said License.
By the time the resettlement had begun at Wiscasset the masting business was about exhausted at Portsmouth; consequently it was moving eastward and up the rivers. The hauling or baulking of these huge "sticks" to the nearest water-way required skill and labor on the part of the men, who, with their axes entered the forest and cut a passage way. By first felling one tree on the right, then one on the left, and landing them as they fell across the opening, a corduroy road was formed which when covered with snow made it possible to haul the large trees out of the woods. This was called "swamping a road."
For the entire period during which the colonies remained under British government the masting regulations were a source of strife between the colonial authorities and the Crown. It was the masting regulations that caused the pursuit of the Gruel and the Marquis de la Fayette up the Sheep- scot River by British frigates in Revolutionary times.
After the Civil War when most of the big trees had vanished many of the square-rigged vessels were fitted out with built-up masts. These were constructed of four or more pieces of timber held together with iron bands.
The original masts for the United States Frigate Constitution were of single white pine and in the year 1796 they were cut in the town of Malta, now Windsor, on the north side of the present Augusta road, between Cooper's Mills and Bryant's Corner and within half a mile of the Corner. Thomas Cooper of Newcastle and one Gray who afterwards settled in Windsor or Whitefield, cut the trees, swamped a road to Puddle Dock in Alna and hauled them into the Sheepscot River. The next spring they were brought to Wiscasset where the government agents yoked them at both ends with pieces of white oak 5 by 8 inches, slipped through mortices in the trees and towed them to Boston by a sailing packet.
The first set of built-up masts used for Old Ironsides was made in 1811 at Boston. Each mast was composed of the hearts of four trees. The present masts of the Constitution are likewise of the built-up variety.
It will be recalled that the Constitution was built at Boston and was launched October 21, 1797. Edmund Hartt was the master builder. Origi-
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nally Old Ironsides was one of four sister frigates whose story is one of the least known chapters in American history; they were the Constitution, the Constellation, the United States and the President. The Constellation was scrapped; one of the others rotted away at a Bristol dock; the fourth was lost at sea, so the Constitution is the only one now remaining.
The Sail Loft
Ezekiel Cutter was one of the early sail-makers. In more recent times a sail loft was operated on the eastern shore of the town about 150 feet south of the long bridge, by William W. Elmes, who was a painter by trade and lived on Middle Street at the corner of Big Foot Alley.
The familiar and pungent odors of oakum, tar and bees-wax proved to be so alluring that it attracted many loafers who chewed this mixture.
The yards of the vessel were measured. Then the cotton canvas was spread in this loft; the sails cut on the bias; and the selvages overlapped and double stitched. The top of the sail was its head and the bottom its foot; the sides were leeches; the upper corners were earrings; the lower corners of a square sail, and after lower corners of other sails were the clews. The sails were furnished with rows of short ropes for the purpose of reefing them when their area became too great for the wind.
The effect of the sail is increased by wetting it as the pores of the canvas close more tightly through the swelling of the hemp. Sails are nearly all either triangular or quadrilateral, and to give them greater strength a strong rope or cord is sewn into the outer edge all around the border of the sail. The sails of a ship are either square or fore-and-aft. In small boats the most common is the lug-sail and the leg-o'-mutton, a triangular sail on a shorter mast at the stern. There are staysails and spankers, flying jibs and studding sails, main-topgallant sails, fore-royal topsails, shoulder-of-mutton sails; in fact, far too many to be enumerated here.
In the sail lofts of J. W. Taggart & H. F. Thompson and that of T. H. Saunders & W. W. Elmes, and later that of E. G. Lane & Stephen Jones, the sail-makers plied their trade with palm and sail-needle, marline spike and sail-hook, twine and bees-wax, grummets and ropes of Manila hemp.
John Topham had a sail loft on the water side of Front Street next to the old custom house, in 1857. He was afterwards associated with J. W. Tag- gart. Isaac Jackson, a journeyman, John Hutchins, Fred Sears, Charles E.
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Quinnam and Walter B. Hall worked in these sail lofts to turn out the wings for Wiscasset ships which would waft them to distant lands.
Sail-making now ranks with the obsolete industries of the town.
Figure-heads
During the days when square-riggers were built on the Sheepscot River, the figure-heads which ornamented their ample prows were often costly and highly finished productions. They were carved from wood in heroic propor- tions and put together with pegs or composition-for iron nails would rust and streak the paint-and were invariably a device in keeping with the name of the vessel which bore them. Thus the ship Samoset built in 1847, dis- played a full-sized sagamore, all white excepting his face, neck and shoul- ders, which were the tawny color of an Indian's skin. This piece of sculpture was designed by I. S. Cromwell of New York, and the figure-head of the Alliance also represented his handiwork. The Othello had a head and bust of the Moor of Venice, carved by Dodge and Anderson also of New York. Cornelius Sharpe carved the stern moulding and bust for a Wiscasset vessel in 1826, which was still in use a score of years afterward. The ship Gondar had for a figure-head the Queen of Sheba, resplendent in regal robes and a starry crown, gorgeous enough to have bewildered even Solomon. When the Gondar was burned to the water's edge in Charleston, South Carolina, the Queen of Sheba was the only part of her rescued. Another Johnston ship, the Wallace, had for embellishment a doughty highland warrior. The Moultrie had a bust of General Moultrie, carved for Capt. R. H. Tucker, her owner, by William B. Gleason of New York.
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