Vinalhaven Island has been the home port of a productive commercial fishing fleet for over 200 years. By 1819, Vinalhaven vessels were fishing for cod and herring from Seal Island all the way to Labrador waters. By 1878, Carver's Harbor was lined with docks, fishhouses, a sail loft, a net factory, and the Lane & Libby fish plant. Throughout the 19th century, boats brought bait, salt, and supplies to Vinalhaven and returned with fish and granite from the island's quarries. Lighthouses at Brown's Head, Heron Neck, Saddleback Ledge, Goose Rock, and Matinicus guided mariners through storms. In Vinalhaven shops, boatbuilders constructed small dories, peapods and double-enders, masted schooners, and lobster boats, as well as the 365-ton Margaret M. Ford. Passenger ferries played an important role as the primary link between Vinalhaven and the mainland. The island has long been a successful center of maritime economic activity, so it is no surprise that islanders call it "the center of the universe."

Vinalhaven Island has been the home port of a productive commercial fishing fleet for over 200 years. By 1819, Vinalhaven vessels were fishing for cod and herring from Seal Island all the way to Labrador waters. By 1878, Carver's Harbor was lined with docks, fishhouses, a sail loft, a net factory, and the Lane & Libby fish plant. Throughout the 19th century, boats brought bait, salt, and supplies to Vinalhaven and returned with fish and granite from the island's quarries. Lighthouses at Brown's Head, Heron Neck, Saddleback Ledge, Goose Rock, and Matinicus guided mariners through storms. In Vinalhaven shops, boatbuilders constructed small dories, peapods and double-enders, masted schooners, and lobster boats, as well as the 365-ton Margaret M. Ford. Passenger ferries played an important role as the primary link between Vinalhaven and the mainland. The island has long been a successful center of maritime economic activity, so it is no surprise that islanders call it "the center of the universe."

When the Island had Fish is the story of a tiny island, Vinalhaven Maine, that offers a close look at the significant history of Maine fishing particularly, but also offers perspective on the impact of industrialized fishing on small fishing villages all over the United States and the world. Vinalhaven’s documented habitation by fishermen dates back over 5000 years, and still today lobstering is the primary source of employment for its 1100 year round residents; islanders currently harvest lobsters at a rate almost unrivaled nationally. The book investigates the changing meanings of the notion of a “fishing community” and of community members changing relationships with the natural world and with international commerce. Through this broader lens, it sheds light on the way that species, including humans, are impacted by – and at moments contribute to - climate change, environmental degradation, and sustainable and unsustainable uses of natural resources. When the Island had Fish also provides a meditation on America’s past and future. Vinalhaven’s fishing history is in every way America’s history. It’s a story of habitations by native peoples and European-American settlers, their use of natural resources, their communities and kin, and their efforts to find ways to live in a harsh environment. Anyone interested in creating a viable collective future will learn from reading about the Penobscot Bay fisheries and fishermen, and about Vinalhaven’s citizens’ expansive knowledge of craft, husbandry, self-governance and community independence, and interdependence.

This volume explores how mechanisms of postindustrial capitalism affect places and people in peripheral regions and de-industrializing cities. While studies of globalization tend to emphasize localities newly connected to global systems, this collection, in contrast, analyzes the disconnection of communities away from the market, presenting a range of ethnographic case studies that scrutinize the framework of this transformative process, analyzing new social formations that are emerging in the voids left behind by the de-industrialization, and introducing a discussion on the potential impacts of the current economic and ecological crises on the hyper-mobile model that has characterized this recent phase of global capitalism and spatially uneven development.

written by workers of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration for the state of Maine, sponsored by the Maine Development Commission ...

Beneath the churning surface of Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary rest the bones of shipwrecks and sailors alike. Massachusetts' ports connected its citizens to the world, and the number of merchant and fishing vessels grew alongside the nation's development. Hundreds of ships sank on the trade routes and fishing grounds between Cape Cod and Cape Ann. Their stories are waiting to be uncovered--from the ill-fated steamship Portland to collided schooners Frank A. Palmer and Louise B. Crary and the burned dragger Joffre. Join historian John Galluzzo and maritime archaeologists Matthew Lawrence and Deborah Marx as they dive in to investigate the sunken vessels and captivating history of New England's only national marine sanctuary.