Harpswell officials are working to raise a historic 83-foot fishing boat that’s been leaking oil in the New Meadows River after it was sunk by one of the twin storms that hit Maine’s coast in January.
But it’s unclear who would pay for that work or how quickly it could happen. It’s also questionable whether a new owner would be able to save the boat once it’s recovered, although a relative of its original owner is making a longshot effort to do so.
Derelict boats appear to be a growing problem along sections of Maine’s coast. There’s been an uptick in old vessels being abandoned in Portland Harbor.
For now, Harpswell is trying to get Cyrus Cleary, the owner of the sardine carrier, to pay for its recovery, so as to avoid forcing local taxpayers to foot the bill. On Thursday night, the Select Board is considering whether to declare the vessel abandoned and give Cleary 15 days to remove it — failing which, he could face civil or criminal penalties.
“Ultimately, it should fall on the owner,” said Harpswell Harbormaster Paul Plummer.
But in an interview, Cleary said he doesn’t think he’s responsible for all the costs of removing the boat and has disagreed with U.S. Coast Guard officials on how to get it out. If he doesn’t fully cooperate, the town could have to resort to plan B, which is appealing to the Coast Guard to fund the recovery — although it’s not clear that agency can afford the work either.
In the meantime, the Coast Guard has removed some of the fuel that’s come out of the sunken vessel, with the help of the waste disposal contractor Clean Harbors, but the pollution is expected to persist.
“Clean Harbors went down with a diver and a suction, sucked out what [oil] they could, but then it got too dangerous,” Plummer said. “They thought they got a lot of it. They came back a couple days later and said, ‘Oh jeez, it’s still sheening, so we need to do something.’”
First built in 1949 by Newbert & Wallace in Thomaston, the Jacob Pike was a refrigerated vessel used to fish for and transport sardines. After the collapse of Maine’s sardine industry, the vessel was used to transport lobster, then pogies. The ship was retired from fishing in 2022.
After it retired from fishing duty, it passed through several owners before Cleary bought it last summer with the goal of restoring it. However, Cleary said that his health took a downturn that forced him to pause the work, leaving the vessel anchored in the river for months.
While Cleary said that he had been checking on the aging boat to ensure it could stay afloat, it sank to the bottom during the first of the January storms, and he expects it to keep releasing oil that has seeped into its wooden hull.
But it’s not clear how much Cleary will help with the removal. He said that he initially bought materials necessary to refloat the boat so it could be removed from the river and fixed up, but that the Coast Guard didn’t approve his plan.
By Jan. 18, the Coast Guard had taken over the work of cleaning up the oil, and after some disagreements with the agency, Cleary said that he has ignored all other requests to deal with it. He also said he’s not responsible for all the recovery costs and is prepared to fight Harpswell’s efforts to get him to pay for them.
“The harbormaster … had a sheriff’s deputy deliver a letter demanding that I submit a written plan on how I’m going to get the boat out of there within six days,” Cleary said. “And my response was, ‘Sorry, Coast Guard’s doing that.’”
Meanwhile, the Northern New England sector of the Coast Guard is looking into options for floating the Jacob Pike, but the agency typically only has funding to recover one vessel per year, according to Plummer. Once it has been floated and water has been pumped out, officials would also have to get someone to claim the boat, either to restore or scrap it.
While it’s a big undertaking, there is one family that’s trying to help. The sardine carrier was originally built for a man named Moses B. Pike, who named it after his father. At the time, it was reportedly the second refrigerated sardine carrier on the East Coast.
Now, Pike’s great-grandson, Sumner Rugh, is working to find a museum or sponsor to fund the work. Rugh, a student at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in New York, expects it could cost $50,000 to float the Jacob Pike and up to $1.5 million to restore it. He’s selling t-shirts and mugs with the vessel’s likeness to raise awareness.
“It had a very storied career, and it’s unfortunate to see it end like this,” Rugh said. “I’m doing everything I can to make sure that maybe this isn’t the final straw.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story gave an incorrect date for when the Jacob Pike stopped fishing for sardines.