HARPSWELL, Maine — In fishing towns, a sunken boat can quickly become a community concern. Harbormaster Paul Plummer said that is exactly what happened after the 75-year-old fishing vessel named Jacob Pike sank during the first of two fierce, back-to-back January storms.
"It's been the talk of the town the last couple of months," Plummer said.
The boat is an 83-foot wooden sardine carrier, launched in 1949 for the Holmes Packing Company at a time when the sardine industry was big business in Maine. The carrier boats were sleek designs compared to most boats of the time, built to have thousands of pounds of fish pumped on board from nets where they had been caught, then able to haul the fish to the canning plants on shore.
The Jacob Pike did that work for decades until the sardine industry vanished. The boat became a familiar sight along Maine's midcoast, in particular, where the company had canneries in Rockland and Portland, as well as one in Eastport.
Very few of the classic old boats remain. That's one reason Sumner Rugh is searching for a way to save the Jacob Pike, to help preserve that part of Maine's fishing history.
"It was huge," Rugh said of the sardine industry. "You look now and everything Maine has a lobster claw or moose antler [on it] and Maine's biggest export is lobster. Lobster then was not what it is today."
The sardine industry had about 40 canning plants along the coast, according to a history of the Jacob Pike from the Penobscot Marine Museum. That included Holmes Packing, which was owned by Rugh's family. His full name is Sumner Pike Rugh, and he is the great-great-grandson of Jacob Pike, who had the boat built.
That means for Rugh, the boat embodies both Maine and family history. The family sold the vessel decades ago before Rugh was born, but he said the stories of the boat have been a part of his life—which is why the news of her sinking hit him so hard.
Rugh is a junior at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and was working on a tanker in South Korea when word reached him that the Jacob Pike had sunk.
"I was on the ship climbing into my bunk and I see this text on my phone. And I kept reading and saw the picture and my heart sank. It was a knot in my chest, I thought, 'Man, that’s the end of an era. That’s it, it's over, it's done, 75 years just gone,'" Rugh explained.
But for Rugh, the story didn't end there, because he couldn't let that be the last word about the boat he says was known on much of the coast.
"I couldn’t help myself. It was about me and [my] family before me that's always pushed and worked for what they believe in. And I couldn't bear the thought that it wouldn't even get a newspaper article," Rugh recalled in an interview more than a month and a half later. "And the more I waited, I'm sitting in South Korea and nothing. Three ice shacks floated away [in South Portland] and they're in The New York Times. Maine's most iconic sardine carriers barely made a Facebook post. And I said, 'I have to do something.'"
Rugh created a website to sell Jacob Pike shirts to spread the word and to raise money for some way to salvage the old boat.
But there is a significant complication: he doesn’t own the Jacob Pike.
The old sardine carrier was acquired last year and brought to Harpswell by a local resident, who Harbormaster Plummer said wanted to rebuild her. The boat had sat at anchor for about half a year, Plummer said. Concerned about the vessel's condition, he called in the Coast Guard to inspect it, but the agency told him the boat was in adequate condition. Plummer said the storm was so severe the boat couldn't handle it and sank at anchor.
Plummer said initially, the owner promised to get the boat raised and moved but has not appeared to take action to make that happen.
The Coast Guard eventually stepped in after oil began leaking from the Jacob Pike, and the agency hired a contractor to bring in divers to pump out the fuel tank. There is now an oil containment book surrounding the wreck—which is partly exposed—as it sits in about 24 feet of water.
Plummer said the town issued the owner a notice to present a plan for removing the Pike, but no plan was forthcoming. So, Plummer said, Harpswell's next step is to summons the owner for abandonment of watercraft.
The Coast Guard, meanwhile, is focused on the continuing pollution risk, because there is often still an oil sheen on the water. Because there is a nearby aquaculture farm, the Coast Guard is making weekly inspections of the wreck site and developing a plan to raise the Jacob Pike and remove any further pollution threat, whatever that entails.
Harbormaster Plummer wants the boat removed, but how that will happen still isn’t clear. The Coast Guard could become part of its plan once it's completed, but that isn't known yet.
Plummer said the town doesn't want taxpayers to have to bear the expense.
Rugh, meanwhile, is doing what he can from his current assignment at sea in northern Europe, hoping to find someone willing to provide the funds to bring the Jacob Pike to allocation on shore, where she could possibly be rebuilt and preserved as an educational relic of an industry that once thrived.
Mostly, Rugh said he doesn’t want the boat and her legacy forgotten.
"It's had 75 years of working and its time is over. She needs a retirement, and one that's not laying on the bottom of the ocean," Rugh said.