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Down East: A Maritime History Of Maine

Lincoln P. Paine
Copublished with OpSail Maine 2000

Paperback, $14.95
ISBN 0-88448-222-7
6 1/2 x 9 3/8, 192 pages, Illustrated
Maritime/History

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Down East: A Maritime History of Maine is a fascinating introduction to the history of a unique culture I have known and loved for many years. OpSail Maine 2000 is to be commended for publishing this marvelous and affirmative history of Maine. The author, Lincoln Paine, draws on the work of a diverse and capable selection of authors, including John Smith, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and John Marin. Paine's economy of phrase and clarity of purpose make this book a delight for anyone curious about the past or interested in the future of the great State of Maine. —Walter Cronkite

Lincoln Paine has laid down the framework for an understanding of the maritime history of Maine in a most enjoyable fashion. He successfully relates the population and the landscape of today to their historic foundations. He does so with liberal doses of interesting and evocative first-person anecdotes. This is a book that can be read in an evening and yet should certainly find a place in one's reference library. It not so much supplants the efforts of prior historians as it helps put their work into context. One will, we feel, refer to this work again and again. — RAdm. Richard I. Rybacki, USCG (Ret.), OpSail Maine 2000, and Thomas R. Wilcox, Jr., Maine Maritime Museum

When planning began for OpSail Maine 2000, a celebration of the millennium and of Maine's maritime history, culminating with a fleet of tall ships from around the world sailing into Portland Harbor at the end of July, OpSail set out to plan more than a three-day waterfront extravaganza, and to instead find a way for people to begin relearning the valuable and exciting lessons of our maritime heritage.

One of OpSail Maine's accomplishments has been the establishment of the Maine Maritime Heritage Trail, which links historic sites, programs, and institutions throughout Maine in an ongoing celebration of Maine's maritime history. OpSail Maine also reached into the classroom with the Portland Press Herald's "In the Classroom" curriculum featuring the experiences of Lincoln and Joanna Colcord's seafaring childhood aboard their father's merchant ships (from Letters from Sea, Tilbury House/Penobscot Marine Museum), and a Tall Ships Summer Reading Program through local libraries.

As another way of increasing ongoing awareness of and appreciation for Maine's maritime history, OpSail Maine and Tilbury House, Publishers are publishing a new, updated maritime history of Maine. Written by Lincoln P. Paine, a maritime historian, author, and teacher. Paine is the co-chair of the OpSail Maine 2000 Education Committee and was one of the principal architects of the Maine Maritime Heritage Trail. His highly acclaimed Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia (Houghton Mifflin, 1997) was among the books named "Best of Reference 1998" by the New York Public Library.

Down East: A Maritime History Of Maine offers an enjoyable, accessible overview of our state's maritime history, from the geography and ecology that have always shaped life in Maine, to early Native American travel and trade on our waterways, European efforts at settlement that predated the Pilgrims, wars and revolution, burgeoning international trade and shipbuilding, the continuing role of the fisheries, and present-day Maine as vacationland, with pleasure boating and yachting an interesting justaposition to the shipping that makes present-day Portland the largest port in New England.

The book's maps and drawings provide a wealth of useful information, while a number of historic photographs give us a window into the past, as do some rich and varied paintings and illustrations from Maine's art museums. (In celebration of OpSail Maine 2000, the seven maine art museums that comprise The Maine Art Museum Trail will feature special exhibitions.)

Lincoln Paine's narrative history is intended as an introduction to Maine's fascinating maritime history, and the book's engaging style, illustrations and maps, chronology, and bibliography are an invitation to explore it further, either through reading or by setting out on the Maine Maritime Heritage Trail to visit some of the historic sites around the state that reflect our river, lake, and seafaring heritage.