Rockland man’s new book a vital history of shipyards

Bert Snow, 82, couldn’t help himself.

When his father died in 1977 and left him boxes and boxes of records about Snow’s Shipyard, the family business, Snow started reading. And reading. The more he learned, the more he wanted to know.

The retired police chief had to learn not only all about Snow’s, but all about the Rockland yards and all the wooden vessels which were hand-crafted for the lime, lumber and passenger trade around the world. When he approached Courier Gazette publisher Sid Cullen, he asked for the history of the business.

“There is none,” Cullen said.

There is now.

Snow’s more than 20 years of research will culminate in the publication this month of “The Main Beam” by the Rockland Historical Society. The book, to be sold for $85, is a comprehensive history of the boats and boatyards of Rockland. The effort records the documentation number placed on the main beam of every documented vessel, hence the title. The book includes the history of virtually every documented boat built in Rockland from 1795. “I hope I got them all, but I might have missed a few” because of lost records, Snow said.

Included are 216 schooners, 44 barks, 44 brigantines, 10 clipper ships, 3 ketches, 30 full rigged ships, 15 sloops and 48 motor vessels.

But it is much more than a dry history book. It contains “stories that will curl your hair,” said Snow at a historical meeting on Saturday.

No night in the 210-year history of the Rockland shipping industry was wilder than Nov. 26, 1898, now called the “Portland” storm since the steamer Portland was lost with all 192 aboard. This was a century before The Weather Channel and no one had any idea of the approaching hurricane. In all, the surprise storm wrecked 400 boats along the East Coast.

“No one knows how many men were lost. But at four to five members on each boat, it was a substantial loss of life,” Snow said. There is no dependable computation of how many Rockland sailors were lost that night.

Rockland boats, which were smashed to pieces that night, were the Addie E. Snow, Bertha E. Glover, Bessie H. Gross, Ella F. Crowell, E. Arcularius, Island City, Jordan L. Mott, Lena White, Maynard Sumner, Pentagoet, and the appropriately named Hurricane.

Ezekiel R. Nash captained one of the few survivors of the terrible blow, the Morris and Cliff, which rode out the gale in Provincetown. He wrote in his diary that “Grim death was the closest aboard that I have ever known. Blow? The hardest I’ve seen in my 45 years at sea.”

Another frightening tale is that of the schooner Frank Jameson, which left Rockland on Nov. 20, 1877, carrying ice, if you can believe that, to Richmond, Va. The ship was struck by a Chesapeake Bay gale and lost its rudder. Sole survivor William Reid reported that the captain tried to lash oars together to make a raft but all the rest of the crew was lost when the vessel smashed on the rocks. The only trace of the crew were hands and arms found in the smashed rigging, Snow said.

Historical society volunteers each got 100 pages of research to review. David Hoch, a descendent of the great Rockland lime company family, took the first 100 pages, which included the Jameson wreck. The Jameson’s cook, John Coster, was Hoch’s great-grandfather. “I never knew how he died until I read that history,” Hoch said. At one point, 150 wooden vessels were running lime out of Rockland.

Snow felt compelled to write the book since he is a descendent of the Snow family, which ran the Snow’s shipyard for 140 years under various names, turning out more than 50 large wooden vessels. He compiled reams of research, but admittedly didn’t know what to do with it all. “I don’t know how many legal pads I filled up,” he said.

Rockland’s unofficial historian laureate (and also the new mayor) Brian Harden learned of Snow’s work and offered a free lunch to discuss it. At the lunch, Harden proposed that the historical society take over and make a book of the 20 years of valuable research.

“Bert was like a good police officer. He wanted just the facts, ma’am,” Harden said. “And like any good Mainer, he was reluctant to ask for help.”

The historical society held more than 150 meetings over the last three years to complete the task. They hired Noreen O’Brien as the copy writer. “This is a phenomenal piece of work. The indexing alone was a challenge,” she said. It took nine months just to write the captions for the 440 photos and illustrations.

Retired history professor and society member Gil Merriam said, “Anyone in the area will find some relative aboard one of these boats. It is not just a list of the boats, but the story of the people, the risks they took, the lives that were lost, the Rockland ships that sailed all over the world.”

Doug and Linda Lee, who built the last wooden schooner in Rockland (Heritage, 1983), said, “‘The Main Beam’ is a world-class book.”

Those interested in the book should contact Harden at 594-8151 or Rockland’s Reading Corner Bookstore at 408 Main St. The historical society will handle the book sales to maximize profits to repay the $50,000 printing cost.

“This probably is going to be the most notable history of local ships and shipbuilding you will ever see. We all owe Bert so much. No matter who worked on it, this will always be known as Bert’s book,” Harden said.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.