106 1906-6

106 1906-6

This is a wintertime view along the rail spur on the Penobscot Coal and Wharf Company pier at Mack Point in Searsport, Maine, looking out the tracks that permit the rolling containers, or coal pockets, to come alongside--in this case-- a docked six-masted coal ship. A crane offloads coal and dumps it in to the pockets, which then move back into the yard for shipping by rail to market. A worker is barely visible standing in between the coal pockets at the very end. By the early 20th century, Searsport, with rail access, had become an important eastern seaboard deep-water port not only for shipbuilding, but increasingly the shipping of coal and the raw materials for fertilizer. According to the exhibit "Museum in the Streets": [At Mack Point]...steam-powered cranes [that] offloaded ships...had been installed ...when C.H. Sprague expanded its geographic area of delivery and opened the Penobscot Coal and Wharf Company, a tidewater terminal...Mr. Sprague had dealt in the transportation of whale oil and coal. The demands of an explosive need, driven by industrial and transportation pressures of the Civil War, caused the company to thrive. When in 1879 Thomas Edison developed a practical lighting systm, the need for whale oil decreased, and in 1905 the company opened The Penobscot Coal and Wharf Company in Searsport. C.H. Sprague & Son became the major supplier of coal to America's European allies during World War II. The company had purchased and developed its own coal mine and could efficiently transport coal with its own fleet of coal-carrying ships. The last merchant vessel sank in WWII." [ref. Museum in the Streets]