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On Maine Lakes 'Steamers' Had Their Heyday

September 28, 2007 - They plied the waters of Maine, carrying summer passengers to turn-of-the-last century resorts that had sprung up on the shores of the state's bounding lakes, rivers and coastline.

And, they toted fishermen from rustic lakeside camps to prime fishing spots or hauled lumber and other freight from remote wilderness areas, like Moosehead.

They were the steamboats — a once-popular and practical mode of transportation in our state.

"Steamers" of all kinds and sizes first appeared in the niid-1800s, hit their heyday in the early l900s and puffed out of history by the mid-20th century.

"Maine's Steamboating Past," written by Maineborn-and-raised Donald A. Wilson of southeastem New Hampshire, offers more than 200 vintage photos of the proud old steamboats that traversed the state's waterways, sometimes linking places inaccessible by road or rail.

Distinctive for their smokestacks billowing white plumes of smoke, steamboats ranged in size from small boats capable of carrying a dozen-or-so passengers to triple-deckers, like the 90-foot long "Goodridge," built in Portland in 1911. It was capable of taking 600 people through the Sebago-Long Lake region.

Other steamboats, like the "Oriental" and the "Sebago," had side wheels reminiscent of Mississippi River steamboats.

Steamers also proliferated central Maine lakes and rivers. For instance, in the mid-1800s, the "Rough and Ready" carried passengers and freight on the Androscoggin River. Smaller steamers chugged across China Lake. Cobbossee Lake had several steamboats that brought tourists to lodgings like the Pine Island Hotel.

In the early 1900s, a spiffy little steamboat dubbed "Maranacook" took passengers around Lake Maranacook to summer establishments like Tallwood Inn and Maranacook Lodge. One of the book's photos shows a half-dozem mustachioed fishermen displaying their days catch at one of the steamer landings that dotted the lake's shores. Behind them is a small steamer with a striped canvas awning, from which they most likely fished.

Turn-of-the-last-century summer travelers dressed a lot more formally than they do today. Pictures show men on board the "Maranacook" decked out in hats, suits and ties; women in light-colored dresses and large hats.

Wilson is to be commended for gathering a generous amount of archival photos, old maps and steamboat memorabilia for the book. This scant introduction should have been expanded by several more pages to give readers a wider and deeper sense of the history of the era and to describe the different kinds of steamboats and how they worked.

There is no mention, for instance, whether steamboat boilers were coal or wood fired.

Besides rough weather and navigational hazards, the big enemy of steamers was fire.

Such was the fate of the first "Katahdin" steamboat built in 1896. She caught fire in 1913 on Moosehead Lake while towing a raft of logs off Sandbar Island, Wilson said.

A second Katahdin was built almost immediately, with its hull constructed at Bath Iron Works. She was 115 feet long and was registered to take 500 passengers, he said. For many years she hauled passengers, mail and freight and was later operated as tugboat to haul rafts of logs and pulpwood from Moosehead, which were then sluiced down the Kennebec River.

Kennebec Journal
9.10.2007


Lakes: Cobbosseecontee Lake, Long Lake, Maranacook Lake, Moosehead Lake, Sebago Lake
Regions: Sebago, Belgrade, Moosehead


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