“Lobstering and the Maine Coast” at the Maine Maritime Museum

Abstract

Exhibit Reviews “LOBSTERING AND THE MAINE COAST” AT THE MAINE MARITIME MUSEUM LAURENCE F. GROSS Maine stands as the most exceptional of the northeastern states through a combination of poverty, large size, small population, and its unique conjunction of forest and seashore. Few visitors fail to notice and admire the boats and buoys along the coast, the direct evidence of lobstering. Piles of lobster traps and related paraphernalia clutter the shore around docks and lobstermen’s houses. Such things, along with the crustaceans themselves (in life and in plastic), likewise denote the state’s second most common entrapment device, the tourist trap. Despite the pervasiveness of these sights, few “from away” know any­ thing about what it means to lobster. “Lobstering and the Maine Coast,” the exhibit at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, and its accompanying catalog, aim to provide “a comprehensive view of the social, political, economic, and technolog­ ical history of this most salient of Maine’s maritime activities.” For a maritime museum to devote a major permanent exhibit to so current a topic, one in which local residents are still active and which raises strong and often emotional opinions, strikes me as rare and healthy. To attempt to provide so broad an interpretation of a way of life, as opposed to simply displaying traditional types of boats, offers a still greater challenge. The exhibit’s opening lines acknowledge the close association of Maine and lobstering, noting that what observers “do not see is the hard work, long hours, and danger” inherent in the endeavor. The visitor can move fairly quickly through descriptions of habitat and species to depictions of the development of commercial lobstering. Excellent historical images are combined with artifacts and a re-creation Dr. Gross is a curator at the Museum of American Textile History in North Andover, Massachusetts. His article, “Wool Carding: A Study of Skills and Technology,” appeared in the October 1987 Technology and Culture. He is currently working on a history of the Boott Cotton Mills in Lowell, Massachusetts.© 1988 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/88/2904-0005$01.00 904 “Lobstering and the Maine Coast” 905 ofa cannery processing room whose purpose is to show the technology and labor of canning, the first method of processing lobster to enable shipping it long distances. Noting that canneries were controlled from Boston or Portland, the exhibit shows the development of canning techniques, including equipment for forming and sealing the cans, along with advertisements from suppliers of materials (see fig. 1). The canning room combines artifacts, facsimile boxes, cut-out figures, and heaps of plastic lobsters (a necessary substitution, certainly); it also indicates the relative wages earned by male and female laborers in­ volved in this seasonal work (see fig. 2). By the 1890s, minimum-size laws had been instituted to protect the diminishing fishery. The canneries were doomed and were succeeded by the live-market trade we know today. Mixing historic illustrations and artifacts with contemporary equipment such as traps, the displays depict lobstering as a source of outside income for a community, albeit one often controlled by “monopolistic” dealers. The exhibit recognizes the distance between producer and consumer by pointing out that lobstermen “dislike being considered quaint or simple” and describes Fig. 1.—The first canneries appeared on the Maine coast in the 1840s, where lobsters were packed for commercial use. (Photos by Roy Lawrence; courtesy of the Maine Maritime Museum.) 906 Laurence F. Gross Fig. 2.—Early canning equipment and full-sized graphics of workers give museum visitors an inside look at one of the early coastal industries. the lobsterman’s relationships with suppliers and the related busi­ nesses and tasks most of them engage in (often putting their boats to other uses) to produce necessary supplemental income. A mannequin lobsterman in a re-created lobster shack will talk to the visitor about what his way of life means to him. Overfishing, fog, long hours, and a fluctuating marketplace do not deter him from the assumption that when the traps are full of “counters” it “feels like I’m in charge of my life.” A second effort to get at what lobstering...