Chester Pike

by Mike Crowe

Chester Pike, Lubec 1950. Built at Colsons Boat Yard in 1949. Herring carriers hauled herring from weirs and later seiners to canneries. Note two men on wharf.  Lubec Historical Society Photo

Many 50 and 60 foot sardine carriers sailed to the hundreds of weirs along shore where sardines were caught. Sardines were loaded into the large central hold and sailed to the canneries.

These boats were designed and built for the task.

There were boatyards which specialized in the construction of these vessels. One of those yards was the Colson Boat Yard in Lubec. Ralph Colson started building his first boat when he was 14 on Campobello Island, Canada. He finished the 19 ton vessel Aritus 4 years later in 1916. Ralph built other carriers before floating his boat shop across the bay to Lubec, Maine. Ralph re-built the shop at 18 South Water St., building boats there until 1939. By 1952 there were 7 canneries in Lubec. One cat food cannery had 110 employees.

The Colson family. Builder Herb Colson is holding the lauching's champaign bottle.  Lubec Historical Society Photo

Ralph Colson’s son Herb began building boats in 1935. Seaboard Packing Company, ordered a boat from Herb and named the boat the Chester Pike, a senior member of the Pike family that ran Seaboard.

Herb cut the boat lumber from his wood. He, one employee and a part time helper built the Chester Pike.

Herb was a meticulous builder who took pride in his work.

Sardine carriers were heavily built and simple in design. The wheelhouse aft was small and was built over the engine. The deck was open with hatches over the hold.

Forward was the foc’sle with a wood stove for heat and cooking, and bunks. The Chester Pike went down the ways in 1949. It was the last boat Herb Colson built. He would repair sardine carriers until he died n 1956.

Early carriers were sail powered and sardines were hand dipped onto the carriers. Later diesel engines were used and hold pumping systems built on deck. Then sardines were caught by large seine boats offshore. In the 1960’s, the carriers went out to the seiners and pumped the sardines into the hold. Mid water trawlers came to the Gulf of Maine in the 1990’s and the wood carriers serviced them as well.

Sardines are small herring and by the 1970’s more of this fish was being used for lobster bait than canning. The last Maine sardine cannery closed in 2010.

The Chester Pike was sold out of the sardine industry in the 1970’s. It was used for other commercial activities and sank in a downeast Maine bay. It was refloated and has since disappeared into the mist that takes many old wooden vessels.

It lives on however, in it’s namesake Chester Pike’s Galley - Best Chow Downeast, a restaurant on US Route 1 in Sullivan, Maine near the intersection of Route 185 at the head of Frenchmen’s Bay. The restaurant’s owners owned the Chester Pike at one time. They have a collection of photographs of the Chester Pike on display in the restaurant.