Pauline

Type

Fishing Vessel

Period

20th Century

Nation

United States

Overview: Pauline is an 83-foot wooden sardine carrier built in 1948 by Roy Wallace at the Newbert & Wallace yard in Thomaston, Maine. Known as the "Queen of the Fleet," she was considered one of the most beautiful and best-kept carriers in the Maine sardine fishery and is a sister ship to the Jacob Pike (1949), now preserved at the Penobscot Marine Museum. Service History: Pauline hauled herring from seine-net catches and weirs around Vinalhaven and offshore islands such as Wooden Ball and Seal Island at the mouth of Penobscot Bay to sardine canneries, including the North Lubec Canning Co.'s Rockland plant. She worked the coast during the mid-20th-century heyday of Maine's sardine-packing industry, an era in which fleets of fast wooden carriers rafted up nightly at harbors like Carvers Harbor on Vinalhaven awaiting word from spotter planes on where herring had been found. Later History: In 1988, after the sardine canneries went into decline, the owners of the windjammer Stephen Taber bought Pauline, removed her aft pilothouse, and converted her into a passenger vessel with an enlarged superstructure. She toured the Maine coast as a cruise/passenger boat for roughly two decades before falling into disuse, eventually sitting idle at Billings Diesel & Marine in Stonington. Notable Facts: Pauline was donated to the marine-education nonprofit OceansWide, which is restoring her to her original sardine-carrier configuration for use as a base of operations for student science and ROV programs. The restoration proved far more extensive than first expected, requiring a near-total rebuild of the hull beyond the keel and a handful of other original 1948 timbers, and has been documented in WoodenBoat magazine and by regional Maine news outlets.