Permanent Exhibits
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A Maritime History of Maine
Our core exhibit gives the visitor a broad overview of Maine maritime history. Our core exhibit uses more than 240 objects to give the viewer a general idea of Maine maritime history. It focuses on the major themes of earning a living on the coast, fishing, coastal trades, wooden and steel shipbuilding, war, coastal travel, and recreation. Included in this exhibition is our presentation on Bath Iron Works and our best model of a destroyer, as well as material relating to the Maine exports of lumber, lime, ice, and granite.
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A Shipyard in Maine: Percy & Small and the Great Schooners
America's only remaining wooden sailing vessels shipyard site.
Maine Maritime Museum includes a unique historic site. Percy & Small is the only intact shipyard in the country which built large wooden sailing vessels, and the giant schooners it built include the six-master Wyoming, the largest wooden vessel built in the country. This exhibit starts in the Museum’s Maritime History Building and proceeds out to four buildings of the shipyard and its wharves, building slips, and assorted other structures. Exhibits in the mold loft, oakum shed, paint & treenail shop, and mill & joiner shop use hundreds of objects to explain the process of wooden shipbuilding in the 1894-1920 period, and to tell the history of the shipyard and the huge four-, five-, and six-mast schooners built there.
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Snow Squall: Last of the American Clipper Ships
View the remains of the last American clipper ship in existence.
In the mid-19th century, American clipper ships astounded the maritime world with their amazingly swift passages to and from faraway seaports, bringing back exotic and valuable cargoes of tea, spices and silk. Over 300 such ships were built to profitably rush cargo from New York and Boston to California, Asia and Australia and return with teas, silks and spices. Of all of those American clippers, only one remains: the Maine-built Snow Squall.
Built in South Portland, Maine in 1851, Snow Squall was a full-rig, three-mast clipper ship, designed and built for speed not capacity. Built of Maine hardwoods and southern pine, the Snow Squall was 157 feet long with a draft of 16.5 feet. She generally carried a crew of 16. Built by Cornelius and Alfred Butler and launched at Turner's Island, Capte Elizabeth, Maine (now South Portland), Snow Squall departed Portland only once, on her maiden voyage, with no intention of a return.
She made voyages all over the world, carrying valuable and time dependent cargoes. In 1864, she was heavily damaged trying to round Cape Horn and was abandoned in the Falkland Islands. Through conservation efforts, In 1987 she was brought back, a fragment of her former self, as a unique surviving artifact of the age of American clippers. The bow section and others parts of the Snow Squall were recovered and are now housed at Maine Maritime Museum
Read a report on the Snow Squall Recovery Efforts.
Among the artifacts that Maine Maritime Museum received when it merged with Portland Harbor Museum was the advertising handbill pictured below that promoted what would become the final voyage of Snow Squall.
Read more details about the handbill from an article from MMM's The Rhumb Line.
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Historic Boat Collection
Page under construction.
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Lobstering and the Maine Coast
Page Under Construction.
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Grand Banks Schooner Sherman Zwicker
Page Under Construction.
