A Day's Work in Maine Study Guide

 

TRANSPORTATION

 The next time you drive down the coast, think about the same trip without the many bridges that cross Maine's large rivers. This gives you an important clue as to why water transportation was so important in the 1800s. Unpaved roads-as you can see in several photographs in this exhibit-tell us why trains were so much more important then than they are in Maine today.

The accident happened June 10, 1889. A brook washout caused the track to collapse under the weight of the train. This photo was evidently taken the following morning, after the wrecked railroad cars had been hauled off. New train track has already been laid across the brook on cribwork, to bypass the wreck. The engineer had set the air brakes but could not stop the train in time. He was thrown out of the demolished cab and was floating down the brook, unconscious, when he was saved.
      Braking a train before the invention of air brakes was a tough job. The engineer "whistled down" for brakes and reversed his engine. The two brakemen, one riding in the cab on the engine, the other in the caboose, started running towards each other over the swaying, rocking car tops, tightening each car's brake control wheel as they came to it. On an icy winter night, jumping the thirty-inch gaps between the rocking cars was not for the faint of heart. The jolting of the train sometimes knocked men off the tops, and it was many years before warning strips were hung in advance of low bridges. The most dangerous task was connecting the primitive link-and-pin couplers that connected the cars; old railroad men could be identified by their missing fingers. A subject of debate among railroaders was whether a man would be saved if he jumped up in the air just before the impact of a collision. What do you think?
      Before automatic signals, train traffic was ordered and monitored by telegraph. You can see the telegraph poles in this photograph. Imagine how difficult it was to keep track of all the trains coming and going, to be sure no two were on the same track, headed towards one another.
      There used to be many different railroads in Maine, hauling freight and carrying passengers from one place to another. Why do you think this has changed?

Wood was the primary fuel for the first forty years of American railroading, when over one million acres of trees disappeared into locomotive fireboxes. In 1869 the daily consumption of wood by railroads was estimated at 21,500 cords. Cutting railroad wood was winter work for farmers. The wood-sawing rig at the left runs off its own steam engine, which also propelled it down the racks to the next woodpile.

Trains were a vital part of transportation in Maine. They carried logs, granite, milk, mail, passengers, and all manner of freight. On most freight trains the caboose was the nerve center. All orders for the train were issued by the conductor from his caboose headquarters. The caboose also served as a look out for trouble on the track or smoke from hot junction boxes that could cause fires. On long journeys, the trainmen used the caboose as living quarters, since most were equipped with kitchen and bunks, much like early camper-trailers.
      The long nose of a steam-powered locomotive holds steam tubes. The steam is made by boiling water, using wood for a "woodburner," and later coal for coal-fired steam engines. The shape of a train's smokestack provides a clue to the fuel it uses. A woodburner's "balloon" stack, shown on the photo of the A. D. Lockwood, contained a series of baffles and screens intended to catch sparks. Notice the running wheels on the front of the engine, which are more flexible going around turns and curves.
      Compared to miles traveled and freight delivered, wrecks were comparatively few. As trains became more sophisticated, signaling systems were developed to help with safety. The Maine Central maintained line sheds every fifteen or so miles and the lineman was responsible for his fifteen miles of track, often traveled by a hand car (similar to the one in the photo). Maine Central's characteristically dark and light gray buildings can still be spotted beside country tracks. About twenty sheds, several crossing towers, and two stations are preserved at the Boothbay Railway Village in Boothbay Harbor. The Village offers a collection of materials to teachers for use in the classroom.

Discussion:
1. What kind of power fueled the engine in Maine Central No. 13?
2. What types of fuel fed steam engines?
3. What kind of fuel operates a diesel?
4. Why was the telegraph critical to trains?
5. How has rail travel changed?
6. What modern invention has made the caboose obsolete?
7. What replaced the trains as movers of freight and people?
8. Would a return to rail travel be ecologically efficient? Why or why not?

Activities:
1. Research the railways in Maine and plan a field trip to one of Maine's railway museums. Look for more information on their websites. How many railways were standard gauge (running on track which was four feet, eight and one half inches wide)?
      How many railways were narrow gauge (running on track only two feet wide)?
2. Find a former railroad workers to interview.
3. Research the telegraph. How did it work? Why don't we use it today?

Maine Learning Results Key:
ELA: B, C, D, E, F, H
SS/H: A, B, C
SS/G: A, B
SS/E: A, B, C
M: B, C, G
S&T: B, D, H, I, M

September 1902. The Boston/Bangor steamer City of Bangor beached at Lobster Cove, Sprucehead Island, South Thomaston, after a collision with Monhegan Island. A peapod from the Whitehead Life-Saving Service Station is taking passengers ashore.
      It was a foggy night, and the captain had just heard the faint sound of the foghorn on Manana, Monhegan's sister island, when the steamer hit a ledge just outside the harbor. The passengers were thrown from their bunks, but the only bad bruises, curiously, were those suffered by an acrobatic trick bicycle rider from Michigan.
      No one from Monhegan came out to help, so the captain backed the steamer off the ledge and headed for Rockland. The steamer was leaking badly, and he got as far as Sprucehead Island just before the rising water drowned the engine fires. When people on Sprucehead awoke that morning, they were surprised to see the big steamer parked on their clamflats.
      Piloting a ship in the fog in the days before radar, Loran, or GPS, was difficult, indeed, and some captains were better at it than others. In the early days, captains steamed timidly from headland to headland, but in 1845 a Captain William Flowers developed fog piloting with timed courses, calculating distance against time and engine revolutions (speed) and adjusting for tide and wind, to know where he was at all times. Some captains sailing close to shore used whistle echoes to figure out where they were. Another, familiar with one particular section of coast, even in thick fog, announced, "Now I know just where we are," when he heard the baa! baa! baa! of a sheep nearby on shore.
      In the days before good roads were developed, passengers and freight traveled up and down the coast on steamers and packet schooners and ships. If you look at a map that shows the Maine coast, can you see why going by boat was often easier than going by land?

 
Passengers and goods traveled up and down the seacoast of New England by ship before roads and automobiles, trucks and trailers changed travel.

Discussion:
1. How has navigation changed? Can boats and ships travel more easily in foggy conditions today?
2. Why do you think Monhegan residents did not come out to help the City of Bangor?
3. Why would some islanders be thankful when a ship was wrecked off their island?
4. What are peapods and why are they so named?
5. How does one become a boat captain?

Activities:
1. Check a map of Maine. Why do you think Monhegan Island was the site of several shipwrecks?
2. What protection device do most islands offer boats?
3. Research lighthouses along the coast of Maine. Label their location on a Maine map. Students may want to pick one lighthouse and study its history.
4. Write a letter to Maine Maritime Academy and invite a speaker who is a boat captain (or one who is in training) to come and speak to the class.
5. Research radar, loran, GPS, and other devices that make navigation easier. Do these same devices help with other methods of transportation?

Maine Learning Results Key:
ELA: B, C, D, E, F, H
SS/H: A, B, C
SS/G: A, B
SS/E: A, B, C, D
SS/C&G: A
M: B, C
S&T: B, D, F, H, I, M

Nowadays, when the biggest commotion on the Penobscot River in Bangor is the tail end of the Kenduskeag Canoe Race, it's hard to imagine that Bangor was once one of the world's great lumber ports. Can you imagine these large ships in Bangor today? In this picture, taken in 1895, an English steamer and a four-masted Scottish bark are loading birch spoolwood (for spools or bobbins) from Maine forests. A three-masted schooner, deep with coal to fuel the Maine Central locomotives, lies outboard of the bark, while across the river a four-master dries her topsails while waiting to load ice. Further up the river, two small Italian barks are loading fruit-box "shook"-bundles of box ends and sides used to make boxes. These Italian ships might have brought cargoes of salt from Italy to Maine, discharging them at fishing ports for use salting fish, before going up the river to get a cargo of lumber to take home.
      Other ships left with cargoes of ice, bricks, hay, slate, and lumber. Few jobs were harder than loading vessels with long lumber from rafts. Longshoremen, called "mudlarks," were often wet all day long and thought nothing of manhandling a four-inch-thick plank, sixteen to thirty feet long. Lumber was often loaded through bow ports, openings cut in the hull to make loading easier. The bow ports were closed when the loading was done, caulked tight around the edges, and reinforced, before the vessel sailed away.

 
Maine's big, tidal rivers used to be major routes for transporting goods in and out of inland Maine. As road and rail transportation took over, dams were built on the rivers to power factories and to provide hydropower electricity, and shipping on the rivers became a thing of the past.

Discussion and Activities:
1. Divide students into groups to research and report on the Androscoggin, Kennebec, and Penobscot Rivers.
      A. At the turn of the century, how far up each river could big ships travel?
      B. What types of cargo were shipped in and out on each river?
      C. How has shipping changed on these rivers and why? What methods of transportation are usual today?
      D. Why isn't water transport used more widely today?

Maine Learning Results Key:
ELA: B, C, D, E, F, H
SS/H: A, B, C
SS/G: A, B
SS/E: A, B, C, D
SS/B&G: A
M: B, C
S&T: B, D, F, H, I, M

In this 1880s photo taken in West Mount Vernon, two horses and a wagon set out to deliver four new "spring wagons," also known as "mountain wagons" from Lorenzo Chelsey's carriage shop.
      There were a lot of carriage makers in Maine in the 1800s. The region between Augusta and Farmington, including West Mount Vernon, probably had the most. There were 17 in Farmington. In 1882 they built 726 carriages and 150 sleighs. Nearby Chesterville had twelve carriage and sleigh-building shops in 1893. There were also a dozen or more carriage makers in Mount Vernon, including Edwin Carr, the biggest in Kennebec County in his day.
      Maine's most productive carriage-builder in 1887 was said to be E.F. Hanson of Belfast, whose four-story factory produced 235 vehicles that year. How many cars and trucks do you think your local car dealership sells in a year? Have any of them been made in Maine?
      Take a moment to see how many photographs of roads you can find in this exhibit. What do they tell you about travel by road in Maine in the late 1800s? Does this help explain why trains were so important during these years, and why ships and boats played a major role in transportation along the coast?

 
These new wagons look almost too delicate for Maine's rough dirt roads. Notice the front dashboard which is slightly curved to protect the passengers from any mud or debris the horses hooves might kick-up.

Discussion:
1. What form of transportation displaced the horse and buggy?
2. Carriages were fashionable and people often tried to out-do their neighbors with fancy wagons. Do you think these spring wagons were equivalent to Fords or Cadillacs?
3. What automobile was an invention of twin brothers from Kingfield, Maine?

Activity:
1. If a wagon travels along about about ___ miles per hour, have each child estimate how long it would take to get to school each morning by wagon, instead of the school bus. How long would their parents' commutes be?

Maine Learning Results Key:
ELA: B, C, D
SS/H: A, B, C
SS/E: A
M: B, C
S&T: D, H, I, M

Maine ships and Maine sea captains sailed to all parts of the world. In the photo to the left, the D. H. Rivers is probably carrying asphalt from Trinidad to Philadelphia, on her way home after she delivered 759,686 feet of spruce lumber to Buenos aires in 1897.

Schooners carried cargoes from Maine up and down the East Coast and often venturing far beyond, returning with goods to sell or trade. Many schooners didn't return to their home ports for more than a year.

Discussion:
1. Why did steam power replace sail to power ships?
2. List some of the cargoes traded between Maine and other ports.

Activities:
1. There are a number of "small" schooners in the windjammer trade in Maine. Research these schooners and find out which ones are old, where they were built, and what they used to do.
2. If a shipbuilding company is within reasonable distance, request a tour of the facility. Hodgdon Shipbuilding and Mills by Barbara Rumsey (Penosbcot Press) is an excellent history of a shipbuilding family.
3. Research: How have labor-saving devices affected the ship building trade?
4. Research: What powers the large ships that sail the oceans of the world today?
5. What is a ship's galley. How do you think galleys differ today from the ones in the 1890s?

Maine Learning Results Key:
ELA: B, C, D, E, F, H
SS/H: A, B, C
SS/G: A, B
SS/E: A, B, C, D
M: B, C
S&T: B, D, H., I, M

Captain Lincoln A. Colcord is photographed by his eighteen-year-old daughter, Joanna, on a trip from New York to Hong Kong. When the photo was taken, they were sailing south of Good Hope (the tip of Africa) in a gale, but Captain Colcord looks confident in his ship. This was no place to be dismasted or to develop a bad leak.

 
Maine captains sailed the world. Sometimes their families would accompany them, visiting ports as far away as China. For most sea captain's wives on board their husband's ships, the isolation of time at sea was balanced by freedom from the everyday chores that filled a woman's day at home. On board ship, a cook prepared meals, and cleaning and laundry was done by a steward. Mrs. Colcord hated this photograph of her husband, because it shows him without his store-bought teeth!

Discussion:

1. How do you think people on board ship entertained themselves on long journeys? Learn about wood carving, scrimshaw, sea chanteys.
2. Make a list of things you might find in an old Maine home that might have been purchased from distant lands.
3. Why do you think the captain might have removed his teeth?

Activities:

1. Create a map of an 1890s trip from Maine to China. (You can obtain information about the Colcords' trips, for instance, from the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport). Mark each port-of-call. What cargo or other exotic things would be found at each port? How do you think people from Maine communicated with a Chinese merchant or shipper? Two excellent resources for this period are: The Log of the Skipper's Wife by James W. Balana (Downeast Books) and Letters from Sea: Joanna and Lincoln Colcord's Seafaring Childhood (Tilbury House). These books could be used as a model for Activity 2 which follows. These contain not only chronological and wonderfully descriptive writing, but geography and a wealth of information about life aboard ship.
2. Using your map as a guide, pretend you are on board a ship. Write a journal telling about your trip. Be sure to add details such as the exotic animals you encounter, strange foods, how people dress, what happens on board.
3. Learn a sea chantey. (CD's such as Cappy John and other Stories by Fred Gosby, Round Pond are available from places such as Shermans' Bookstore in Boothbay Harbor or Freeport).
4. Write to the Maine Maritime Academy and find out the requirements today to become a sea captain.
5. Invite a sea captain to school to talk about his/her adventures. (The Coast Guard or Maine Maritime Academy are good resources.)
6. Invite a scrimshaw artist to your class (or perhaps the art teacher in your school could help the students to create their own. What was the original medium (ivory) for scrimshaw. Why has this been replaced? And by what type of material?
7. If your school is within a reasonable distance, visit the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath or the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport. These museums are also a good resource for teachers.

Maine Learning Results Key:
ELA: B, C, D, E, F, H
SS/H: A, B, C
SS/G: A, B
SS/E: A, B, C, D
SS/C&G: A
M: B, C
S&T: B, D, H, I, M
V&PA: A, B