Item 83294 - Steamboat 'Merryconeag', ca. 1900
- Item 83294 - Steamboat 'Merryconeag', ca. 1900
- Contributed by Boothbay Region Historical Society
- Item 83294
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Image Info Boothbay Harbor photographer McDougall and Keefe took this circa 1900 photograph of the passenger steamboat Merryconeag. Merryconeag was said to be the fastest and best constructed steamboat of the Casco Bay and Harpswell boats. She was built in East Deering in 1888 at the George Russel yard for the Harpswell Steamboat Company.
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After serving in Casco Bay for nine years, the Merryconeag was bought to run between Rockland, Boothbay, and Portland. In 1905 she returned to Casco Bay, and in 1913 she began serving as a mobile post office for Orr's Island, complete with a mail clerk aboard, who cancelled the mail and made four deliveries a day.
The Merryconeag came to her end at the Orr's Island wharf in November 1918. A fire swept over her so rapidly that her lines had to be chopped with an axe as a government patrol boat threw a grappling hook to haul her away before her boiler exploded.