To tour the Sail, Power & Steam Museum with Captain Jim Sharp is to taste and then to understand the nautical significance of Rockland, Maine. This little museum (in square footage) is enormous in its impressive collection and its ability to convey Midcoast Maine’s place in history.
Located in Sharp’s Point South, or the old Snow Shipyard in the south end of Rockland’s waterfront, the museum is owned and operated by Sharp, with help from a crew of volunteers.
The museum offers two educational programs and two musical programs a month. Last month, Charlie Ipcar gave a talk about Maine steamboats. Tonight, July 27 at 7:00 p.m., the Yankee Brass Band is playing at Sharp’s Point South. Information about upcoming events can be found on the museum’s website or through the museum’s news releases, which are published two or three times a year.
But the best advertising, says Sharp, comes via word of mouth. “People come and enjoy the little museum for its quality so much that they tell their friends, and this is the chief way the museum brings people in,” he says.
Now in his late 70s, Sharp’s career of buying, restoring and operating all types of sea vessels has prepared him to share his knowledge.
Sharp’s professional career on the water began when he bought the schooner Stephen Taber in 1964. While running his windjammer cruise business out of Camden Harbor, Sharp developed the idea for a Sail, Power & Steam Museum.
When Sharp bought the historic schooner Bowdoin from the Mystic Seaport in Connecticut in 1967, he thought about using the sloop as a frontispiece for the museum he envisioned. But the boat was in better condition than he initially assumed, and so he decided to fix her up and sail her. The museum idea was put on hold.
Forty years went by. Then, in 2007 after acquiring the Outward Bound Complex, Sharp established his museum. He decided he could use the office building behind the museum as a source of income to finance the museum. However, he has had a difficult time finding tenants. Therefore, the museum has survived through donations and volunteers.
These donations take the form of nautical pieces, ranging from Nathanial Bowdetch’s personal mariners’ Astrolabe, dating to 1674, to a cannon ball that was stolen from the arsenal of the SS Constitution by an unknown person and donated by Charles Oaks. These gifts join pieces on loan, including a small handmade industrial steam engine on loan by Captain Dan West from Friendship, ME, and items from Sharp’s personal collection.
The exhibits are housed in an entryway, a community room with an office and library, and in rooms along a long hallway. There are no doors separating the display spaces. Open, arched doorways separate the white rooms and their wooden floors. These doorways keep the kiln room, lobster boat room, and other thematic rooms distinct from each other.
The museum has been renovated several times, but, like maintenance on an old boat, the work is never complete. This past spring volunteers added an engine house after cutting down timbers for the structure this past fall.
Despite Sharp’s recent financial challenges, he says he feels lucky. “I have done well with my real estate in Camden,” he says, and this success enabled him to buy the Outward Bound Complex that houses his museum.
“I have had such a fascinating life. And this museum is my payback.” To express his gratitude for the people who supported his schooner business, Sharp says, “I decided “¦ [to] do something that would benefit the community and “¦ Midcoast Maine.”
The museum isn’t “grand and glorious,” as Jim Sharp admits, but it is “small with quality.” The Sail, Power & Steam Museum is the culmination of Sharp’s career, and it is easy to imagine Rockland in its heyday of nautical success with Sharp as a guide.
“Many of the sailboats were built for the limestone industry. Rockland was named for the lime industry.” Limestone was quarried from Rockland, and using up to 100 kilns, the rock was baked in Rockland until it became a powder that could be packed into barrels. These barrels were transported by sailboats to New York and Boston where the limestone became cement for the growing cities.
Sharp hopes his visitors carry away a single message: “How important the 19th century of ship building and sailing was to this community and area.” And there’s no place better to be reminded, he says. “The Snow shipyard was the most prolific shipyard at building sailboats in New England.”
Sail, Power & Steam Museum, 75 Mechanic Street, Rockland, ME 04841.
The Museum is open from Wednesday to Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and on Sunday from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Kate Hynd is a resident of Thomaston and a participant in The Working Waterfront’s Student Journalism Program.