The Bucksport - Prospect Ferry

The Bucksport - Prospect Ferry

View of the ramp on the Bucksport, Maine side of the Bucksport - Prospect Ferry service. In the view you can see a scow and its dinghy at the foot of the ramp. You can also see Fort Knox on the Prospect side of the river.A little further up the coast from Belfast, the Town of Prospect lies across the Penobscot River from Bucksport. And Bucksport was where people from Prospect needed to go for supplies.In the early days, ferries were a catch-as-catch-can operation, but in 1807, according to Alice Verrill Ellis in her book, The History of Prospect Maine 1759 to 1979, the first regular ferry service for Prospect was instituted in 1807. The “ferry” was a scow owned by Mr. Whitman and Mr. Towle. Then in 1820, Col. John Lee purchased ferry rights and imposed a toll of 25 cents per person or per animal.After Lee’s retirement, his son operated the ferry and Andrew Bennett, his scow captain, fashioned a paddle wheel for the scow. This wheel was attached to a horse-operated treadmill by means of a shaft. This contraption was fairly efficient, except that it proved problematic in winter when equipment froze, so then the ferry was sculled by manpower. It seems likely that Lee and Bennett’s horse-powered ferry was the most unique of all of Maine’s old-time ferries.Fort Knox, now Fort Knox State Park or Fort Knox State Historic Site, is located on the western bank of the Penobscot River in the town of Prospect, Maine, about 5 miles from the mouth of the river. Built between 1844 and 1869, it was the first fort in Maine built entirely of granite; most previous forts used wood, earth, and stone. It is named after Major General Henry Knox, the first U.S. Secretary of War and Commander of Artillery during the American Revolutionary War, who at the end of his life lived not far away in Thomaston.