Maritime Island Press
has a new book
New Book
The Maritime Age
on a Maine Island
The Rise and Fall of Westport Island’s
Eastern Shore across from Boothbay
By Ken Swanton
Nearly three centuries ago, a family settled on the wilderness that was the eastern shore of Westport Island, but they failed. Then the Hodgdon family tried and thoroughly succeeded. They multiplied and flourished with the growth of the maritime age to a bustling community of 140 people in 1850. They were sea captains, fishermen, shipbuilders and farmers, and had a tidal mill. Then the maritime age withered, and the community declined to just one lonely widow in 1950.
This is a true story of ten generations. Who they were. What they did. What they built. What they left behind. Through the lives of these long-ago mariners, the rise and fall of Maine’s colorful maritime age comes to life.
168 pages with over 300 color pictures, 8 x 10 inches
“What a magnificent work! The detail you captured of the families that settled on, thrived on, then suffered hardship on, the eastern shore is just amazing. You managed to make their stories engaging while capturing the full boom to bust cycle.”
Dennis Dunbar
The Author
Ken Swanton
Westport Island is personal to me. Swantons came to nearby Bath in 1760 and started its shipbuilding industry. My dad’s uncle left shipbuilding to buy a run-down Westport farm in 1910. It was the end of an era, with a handful of aging mariners in the neighborhood. Dad was his lead farmhand. He taught me the island skills: building a wharf with trees cut in the forest, fixing boat engines, carpentry, wiring, plumbing and how to—and the importance of—straightening used nails and saving them in the barn. His uncle told him, “You only learn half of what you need to know at MIT, the other half you learn on the farm.”
I am a retired entrepreneur. The people who grew the maritime age were the entrepreneurs of their era. I followed Dad and his uncle to MIT and then went to Harvard Business School. I was Vice President of a Fortune 50 company and then co-founded a technology company and ran it for many years. After I retired, I hid on the island during the early COVID lockdown and began to dig into its history. Three and a half years of research resulted in the maritime story in this book.
Table of Contents
The “Maritime Age on a Maine Island” tells the story of a maritime community from its beginnings 4000 years ago, through the pioneer age, to its pinnacle in the mid-1800s and then to a withering decline. The epilogue shows the rebirth of the neighborhood’s maritime age buildings today.
Sample Pages
Where to Buy the New Book?
The new paperback is available from the Westport Island History Center.
