Maine had only a small whale fishery of its own, at Wiscasset in the 1830s. But Maine is the quintessence of American fishing and seafaring, and was the cradle of several generations of deepwater mariners.

Many individual Mainites made their mark in whaling as people from Down East did in virtually every other deepwater endeavor. Also, in the 19th century literally dozens of important whaling vessels were built in Maine's great shipyards.

Note the anonymous portrait of the Helen Augusta, constructed at North Yarmouth in 1844 (Brewington Gallery); ship-portraits by Charles S. Raleigh of whalers built in Maine in the 1870s and '80s (Brewington Gallery and elsewhere); and the splendid, oversize "Wiscasset of Wiscasset" tooth, engraved by William H. Acorn (1836), among the scrimshaw.

Maine was ever the seat of much maritime industry and invention: whaleman Charles Durgin, whose carved walrus tusks, abalone shells, and cow horns are frequently exhibited, and whose Arctic whaling journal was published in More Scrimshaw Artists, was trained as a carpenter and cabinetmaker in Maine before he ever went whaling.

The great Ebenezer Pierce, a whaling captain who invented the darting-gun in 1865 and held several subsequent patents on whaling gear, was born in 1817 at Livermore, Maine (several of his guns are exhibited in "Whaling in the South Seas").

Also of interest are the watercolor by William Ladd Taylor (1854-1926) entitled The New Harpoon, in the same gallery; and our outdoor exhibition, "Trees and Shipbuilding Woods," which is as pertinent to Maine as it is to Massachusetts.