Oakum Bay, Castine. Me. 2.

Oakum Bay, Castine. Me. 2.

Oakum Bay, Castine. Me. Oakum Bay, part of Castine Harbor, takes its name from the tarred fiber used for caulking wooden planks in shipbuilding. In his 1894 book Tales of the New England Coast, Castine-born author Noah Brooks described the work of several women "spinning into yarn the oakum picked from ropes and cables that had been weathered by gales off Cape Horn, bleached in the fiery suns of India and the South Pacific or mildewed by the everlasting fogs of the Grand Banks." Brooks was evoking an image of Castine, when its working waterfront was lined with shipyards, wharves, boathouses, and sailors' boarding houses. This c. 1920 photo shows Acadia Wharf at the far left; Joseph Dennett's machine shop (later a boat shop and now a restaurant); Hooper's lumber shed (Witherle Wharf in the mid-1800s and now Eaton's Boatyard); and the three attached buildings of the coal shed (now gone). Fish houses stand along the beach. In the late 19th century Castine had large salmon weir and Banks fisheries. A cannery smokestack is visible beyond Acadia Wharf. The little steamer at the end of Dennett's Wharf is the "Little Buttercup," which traveled the Bangor, Winterport, Castine, and West Brooksville route, bringing tourists, Eastern State Normal School students, and other passengers to Castine.