Before lobster, Maine had a thriving sardine industry. A sunken ship reminds us of its storied past

PORTLAND, Maine — An 82-foot motorboat, one of the first refrigerated sardine carriers during the heyday of Maine’s sardine industry, is scrapped after a salvage operation to recover the sunken vessel.

The Jacob Pike was hit by a storm last winter.

The 21-year-old great-great-grandson of the ship’s namesake wants to see the historic wooden vessel preserved and has launched a nonprofit organization that would use it as an educational platform. But the U.S. Coast Guard does not have the authority to transfer ownership of the ship. And any new owner could be responsible for paying up to $300,000 in restitution for environmental cleanup.

Sumner Pike Rugh said he still hopes to work with the Coast Guard, but he understands the fate of the ship is likely still up in the air.

“It’s a shameful end to a legendary ship,” said his father, Aaron Pike Rugh.

Around the world, Maine is synonymous with lobster—the state’s signature seafood—but that wasn’t always the case. Over the years, hundreds of sardine canneries have operated along Maine’s coast.

The first American sardine cannery opened in Eastport, Maine, in 1875, with workers sorting, cutting and packing sardines, fueling American workers and later Allied troops overseas. On the other coast of the country, sardine canneries were immortalized by John Steinbeck in his 1945 novel “Cannery Row,” which focused on Monterey, California.

The Jacob Pike was launched in 1949 and is a wooden ship with an engine. The ship was equipped with a kind of refrigeration system with which barrels of herring could be loaded from fishing boats before they were unloaded at canneries.

As tastes changed and sardines fell out of favor—leading to the closure of canneries—the Jacob Pike hauled in lobsters. Its glory days were long gone last winter when it sank off Harpswell in a violent storm.

In recent years there has been a revival of interest in canned fishbut the historic ship had already sunk—or in this case, sunk.

Sumner Rugh, a senior at the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York, was halfway around the world on a tanker off the coast of South Korea when he heard that the ship he wanted to save was gone. No one else seemed interested in the vessel, he said, so he formed the nonprofit Jacob Pike Organization, with a board that included some of the former owners.

He said he hoped the Coast Guard would turn the ship over to the nonprofit without being saddled with the costs associated with environmental cleanup. Since that’s not possible, he’s changing his goal to keeping the entire ship intact. Instead, he hopes to save documentation and enough parts to reconstruct the ship.

The Coast Guard took over the cleanup of fuel, batteries and other materials that can pollute ocean waters when the current owner was unable or unwilling to undertake the task, said Lt. Pamela Manns, a spokeswoman based in Maine. The owner’s phone was not accepting messages Tuesday.

Last week, salvage crews used airbags and pumps to pull the ship from the sea, making it sturdy and seaworthy enough to be towed to South Portland, Maine.

While sympathetic to Sumner Rugh’s dream, Manns said the Coast Guard plans to destroy the vessel. “I can understand that this boat means something to him, but our role is very clear. Our role is to mitigate pollution threats. Unfortunately, the Jacob Pike was a pollution threat,” she said.