Ice houses in Rockport Harbor provided cold storage until the ice demand increased in the summer time. Sawdust was often used to insulate the ice blocks. Many schooners are laid up for the winter.
After the ice was brought to the ice house, it was conveyed in and out of storage. Often, ice was moved by gravity in chutes, or by human power; but later, powered conveyors moved the ice.
A weir is constructed each season by pounding in vertical piles, then crossing the piles with long straight sticks, then filling in vertical branches. When fish swim to the weir leader (the straight part that comes out from shore), they are diverted into the pound, where they swim around in circles. The seine net is set inside the weir to catch the herring.
Weir fishing was practiced by Maine's Natives, and was especially popular further east where big tides made putting a "Fence in the Water" relatively easy.
In the 1940s there was a herring weir in Rockport Harbor, here worked by Harlan Hurd. After a seine net is set and pursed inside the weir, the fish are dipped from the seine into a herring carrier, a sizable power boat that carried herring to a cannery and usually were cannery-owned. The late 1940s saw the height of the canning industry with the largest amounts ever packed. Just after this photo was taken herring carriers started to use fish pumps which could pump herring out of a weir or seine and into the hold of the carrier, saving hours of work.
Hand-tinted photograph of Yokohama, in a lacquer album with mother-of-pearl inlay. Book of Japanese photographs. This is a souvenir photo and the label has it as" Hatoba at Yokohama."
Granite was king on Penoboscot Bay islands in the last quarter of the 1800s. After granite was quarried, it was often carved with decorations or carved into statues such as eagles. The work attracted skilled stone cutters from Italy and other European nations to carve figures in the granite for public buildings and churches.
