Has anyone seen the Wabanaki canoe on display at the Maine Maritime Museum? This artifact is said to be the oldest birch bark canoe built by Native Americans, dating about 1750. For Native Americans these birch bark canoes were the “pickup trucks” in their day. They could load pretty much anything in one of these canoes and paddle up and down Maine’s extensive waterways. The Wabanaki did have overland routes, to be sure, but these routes didn’t compare very well against waterways in the amount of trade goods that could be moved around.

The two-masted schooners built in Bath and elsewhere in Maine served much the same function two centuries later; these sailing vessels were extensively used in the 19^th century and into the early 1900’s. The Maritime Museum’s Mary E schooner, acquired by the museum in 2016 and extensively restored, is the last remaining example of a Bath-built wooden schooner.