Sharp’s Point South and the Sail, Power & Steam Museum are fortunate to occupy these hallowed grounds.
We are proud to be established on acreage encompassing about half of the original, legendary Snow Shipbuilding site. Rockland Marine, our neighbors on the other half, is an active and productive yard doing both new construction and ship repairs just as the Snow family did from 1862 until 1937. The yard was, for all those 75 years, truly a family business. The Snows built more vessels than most any yard in Maine and in fact, most of New England as well. Down the list of their accomplishments are 31 documented vessels: ships, schooners, sloops, barks and brigs, all built to the highest specifications possible. These were undoubtedly some of the finest vessels that sailed the seas. The Snow family, all seamen and sea captains, knew what a vessel should be and how it should be built. “She is a Snow vessel” was the highest kind of praise from those who follow the sea. It was a common tribute to the Snows in those days.
April 1891, a new keel is laid for the next schooner at I L. Snow Co. Shipyard.
Oct 1891, the new schooner is nearing completion.
Schooner Hugh De Paynes, launched 1910. I L Snow Co (Captain D.L. Lee collection)
April 1893, the new schooner “Lavinia M. Snow” given a trial trip and is waiting for business. (Courier-Gazette of Rockland)
Nov 1898: weather wisdom by the skipper of the schooner “Lavinia M. Snow”
(from Rudder magazine)
A Tug was cruising off Cape Cod looking for a tow. She hailed a large schooner, becalmed in the unseasonably warm and pleasant day. The schooner’s master declined the tow as the day was Saturday and he would be unable to discharge on Sunday, saying rather curtly he would wait for the breeze. Four miles away lay the Lavinia, wallowing in the same calm. As the little tug steamed alongside, the schooner became a beehive of activity. The excited skipper was busily preparing the towing hawser and, hastily hailing the tug, he accepted the tow forthwith. Hooking on to the heavily laden schooner the little tug found the big schooner’s deep draft to be all the challenge the towboat’s ambitious engine could ask.
The weather soon changed. The wind started to blow with purpose. The snow was soon blanketing visibility and the sea was making up fast. When they came abreast of Boston Light, the northeast gale had turned into a howling blizzard and it was all the little tug could do to handle the Lavinia. Puffing and belching black smoke, they ultimately made it to the anchorage in the confines of the harbor. The next day the old Snow schooner was one of a very few vessels still afloat. What the skipper read in the high cirrus clouds that day enabled him to save his schooner, his crew and his cargo while the Portland Gale wrought havoc and destruction over the entire Northeast.
The Lavinia M. Snow was not only a well built tough and curvaceous schooner but she was a lucky ship with a sagacious skipper. Built with the care that all “Snow vessels” were, she lasted until 1930 when a gale drove her ashore to be lost on the grave yard of the coast, Cape Hatteras.
The Snow shipyard in the 1930s showing the long, white salt shed in the foreground,
a steam passenger vessel and two newly constructed fishing vessels
being built in tandem on the launching ways
The vessels were all built by hand in the days before back hoes and cranes, and were planked and framed with broad ax and adz by artisans of the time, master builders such as John Gamage and his seven sons.
In the mid 1930s, another view of the salt shed, machine shop and the two,3-masted
schooners, George E. Klinck and Charles H. Klinck laying at the timber wharf.
This is presently the wharf at Sharp’s Points South. (Richard Snow collection
During WWII the shipyard built twenty wooden vessels which included ten mine-sweepers to clear our harbors and net-tenders to ensnare submarines sneaking into our naval bases.
A newly launched net-tender showing the net handling apparatus at the bow.
The shipyard is still operating 145 years later, after having constructed over 63 new vessels, rebuilt an unknown multitude and repaired an uncountable number of ships, barges and vessels of all description.
The Sail, Power and Steam Museum recognizes this amazing record and honors the Snow seafarers prominently through displays, documents and archival material furnished by both the Historical Society of Rockland and the memorabilia of the Snow family.
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