The Age of Sail — Camden's Shipbuilding Era

For most of the nineteenth century, Camden was an industrial town, and its industry was ships. The combination of deep water in the harbor, timber in the hills, and proximity to rope and ironwork manufacturers made the Penobscot Bay region one of the premier shipbuilding districts in the country.

Several yards operated in Camden simultaneously at the industry's height. The Carleton, Norwood and Company yard, just up the shore in Rockport, launched large square-rigged ships intended for the deep ocean trades. The Frederick Billings, built nearby in Rockport in eighteen eighty five, measured two hundred eighty two feet in length and was said to be the largest square-rigged vessel ever built on the Penobscot. She sailed to Liverpool, to India, and around Cape Horn to San Francisco.

The shift from wooden sail to iron steam caught the Camden yards as it caught yards everywhere in the late nineteenth century. The orders slowed, the skilled joiners and riggers moved away or found other work, and the trade that had defined the town for generations faded out. What remains is the harbor itself, deep and sheltered, and the schooners that still sail from it, smaller than the square-riggers but carrying the same basic relationship to wind and water. Camden did not entirely stop building its identity around boats. It stopped building that size of boat.