Matinicus Island peapod

Matinicus Island peapod

15' 6" (l) x 4'11''(w) x 1' 8" (h) Matinicus Island peapod built c.1950 by Merrill Young and used by Orren Ames for lobstering off the island until the 1980s. With 2 oars, two bronze oarlocks and a trap pulley. Carvel planked, two thwarts, cedar on oak. White and red exterior, white interior. Matinicus boats all called double-enders. See accession file for more information from the appraiser about the possible builder. Good condition with no plank or rib breakage. Note for Wooden Boat: “In the summer of 2004,” Curator Ben Fuller writes from the Penobscot Marine Museum, Searsport, Maine, “I got a note from Chris Russell, a summer resident of Matinicus Island, enclosing photos of a double-ender he wanted to give to the museum. That September, I finally made it out to Matinicus—the outermost of Maine’s inhabited islands—by mail plane to have a look. The double-ender (the type is not called a “peapod” on the island) was built in the 1950s on Matinicus by Merrill Young for Orren Ames, the last of the island’s lobstermen to row and haul traps by hand. Orren fished it for 20 years or so before retiring and selling the boat to Russell, a descendent of one of Matinicus’ first settlers, who bought a house on the island in the 1960s. He wanted a boat for his daughter’s use but also hoped to preserve the double-ender. When I first saw the boat, she was pristine, although some of her iron fastenings were bleeding and she needed cleaning after 25 years in storage. There were no breaks in her carvel planking and no sister frames, indicating the care that Orren had used with her. The first thing I noticed was that she could not be rowed sitting down. Lobstermen commonly stood and pushed on their oars so they could see from buoy to buoy or work in and out of ledges, but all the other working peapods I’d seen had one station for sitting and pulling and another for standing and pushing, using extended oarlocks. A removable bulkhead of Masonite separated the forward area from the rest of the boat. A nice socket for a roller, still extant, made hauling easier. Wear on the thwarts and on the side showed the work the boat had done. But the paint looked good, as if Orren had painted her before turning her over to Russell. The oars were mismatched, and so were the oarlocks. Late in the summer of 2005, we fetched the boat, with a group of lobstermen helping to shift her from a truck to John Morin’s EQUINOX, out of Rockland. Kenny Ames, son of Orren, and now Matinicus’ oldest lobsterman, was there to talk about his early days lobstering by hand. The last lobstering double-ender of Matinicus is now on display at the museum, which also owns one built by Lin Young, Merrill’s father.”