Historic Hallowell

Jordan Gardner, Nick Hanley & Grant Bowen

Grant Bowen's Interview with Captain Arthur Moore, Harbor Master 

Shipbuilding was a huge industry in Hallowell in the late 1800s. They would build ships on the Kennebec River and then send them to sea to ship goods to other cities like Boston or New York City and return with goods from those who traded with them.

The ships built here were great vessels of enormous size, such as the Hallowell. The Hallowell was built in 1810 by Ebenezer Mayo, and this ship had a length of 107.4 feet and a depth of 14.5 feet (depth meaning how much of the ship was under water.) The beam of the Hallowell had a length of 28.9 feet.

There were also many shipbuilding yards along the Kennebec and lots of workers building these ships. They would get giant logs to put in their ships and huge quantities of cloth for the masts and sails. To construct the mast, they would get large wood and make a long and thick, pole-like object and then put smaller lengths of wood crossing the mast to hold up the massive sails which were called booms. Then they would stick it right into the center of the ship and hold it there with huge bolts. They would construct different decks one at the top which is where workers and sailors tied the masts or steered the ship. The other decks were used for storage or sleeping quarters. The massive decks would most likely collapse without multiple knees.

Knees were huge braces shaped in a sort of L shape and placed so that the top was connected to the bottom of the above head deck while the other end was pinned to the wall supporting the roof. Giant, wooden bolts were used to hold everything into place; they would wedge these into the ship with giant wooden or metal mallets. The metal one was referred to as a beetle, and a man would take a beetle or wooden mallet, grasp it with two hands, and slam the bolts deep into the wood to hold the braces in place.

One of the other tools they used were axes which came in all kinds of shapes and sizes. The bigger and thicker ones were used for the softest logs while the thinner axes were used for the hardest logs. There was also the adze, a tool like an axe used for shaping and dressing wood. It was different from an axe because it had a long and slender, curved blade set at a right angle to the handle. There was also a drawing knife, a slender blade with sharp points protruding from the bottom, and on either side, there were wooden handles which one or two people held to saw.

This old fashioned, wooden shipbuilding hss been mostly left behind by the large, metallic ships they make nowadays with blow torches, drills, and all kinds of tools they didn’t have back when Hallowell was building ships. The end of the shipbuilding industry left hundreds of workers in Hallowell without a job.

As reported in the September 24, 2001, Kennebec Journal, Kevin Pomerleau and four other divers recovered wooden artifacts from the bottom of the Kennebec River just east of the intersection of Water and Winthrop Streets. The ship's knee above (a bracket to strengthen deck timbers) is of particular interest because it was found near the site of the City Wharf Shipyard that opened in the early 1950's. Warren Russ, an underwater archaeologist, associated with the University of Maine's Darling Marine Center in Bristol, believes it is a "blank". A shipyard would have a stockpile of "blanks" and select one as a pattern to fit others to a ship being built. Russ believes the "blank" above was for a ship of at least 150 tons. The largest ship launched at the City Wharf Shipyard in the 1850's was in excess of 1,000 tons.

picture description by: Sam Webber