Eastern Steamship Company Wharf, Kennebec River, Hallowell, ca. 1890
Hubbard Free Library
In A Maritime History of Bath and the Kennebec River Region, William Avery Baker pointed out that
... for eight months of the year Hallowell, Maine, was a seaport. From early April to late November, ocean-going vessels sailed up the Kennebec, forty-six miles from the open Atlantic, bringing Pennsylvania flour, West India sugar, and English cloth and hardware, returning with shingles, clapboards, hogsheads and barrel staves, white oak capstan bars destined for Boston or Bristol or Jamaica.
So many vessels called at Hallowell during this period that news was often published here before it arrived in Portland. Hallowell’s ship-owning merchants, anxious to protect their investments by manning their vessels with capable officers and crews, established a Navigation School at the Academy to teach advanced mathematics to boys who wished to pursue careers at sea. Good navigators produced good profits. Edward Preble Norton observed that in Hallowell at the time "Every boy who had arrived at the age of eighteen and who had not been on a voyage to the East or West Indies, was looked upon as 'non compos', and every man over thirty who was not called Captain had forfeited the respect of the community."