Workaday to Holiday: Schooners Along the Maine Coast

To celebrate the re-launch of the 1906 schooner MARY E, we present the story of Maine’s small workaday schooners and holiday windjammers, past and present. Maine schooners carried everything from stone to sugar along the New England coast, and fished for many species large and small. As 20th century commerce found less use for schooners, some (like MARY E) were transformed into passenger-carrying windjammers. This exhibit features artifacts and artwork from the worlds of working and pleasure sail, with forays into topics such as homegrown music and local food—both prominent features of coastal voyages.

The exhibit features another kind of transformation through the visually stunning "Ship Shape" by Phippsburg artist Dan Dowd. This assemblage piece reuses material removed from MARY E during her restoration and reinterprets them as a symbolic cross-section of the vessel. Not only does it document the varied shapes, woods, and hardware that form the fabric of a wooden schooner, it suggests a creative way to "upcycle" material discarded during restorations, keeping them on gallery walls and out of the landfill.