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“Big Jim,” an iconic symbol of Maine’s fishing heritage, is standing tall again after a thorough restoration.
A crane placed the 40-foot-tall figure of a fisherman in foul weather gear on the lawn of the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport on Wednesday evening, ahead of a public celebration scheduled for Saturday.
“It’s been crazy and fun and rewarding,” said Kevin Johnson, photo archivist at the museum, who spearheaded the project.
The effort took about two years and involved disassembling Big Jim, and moving him from Gouldsboro to Belmont where a team of local artists repainted him in rich hues.
Big Jim’s visit coincides with the second year of the museum’s Sardineland exhibit, which celebrates the state’s sardine fishing legacy.
The character dates back to the 1950s, when a plywood version of the fisherman was stationed in Kittery, greeting visitors to Maine and advertising sardines.
“Now he’s advertising for our exhibit that tells the story of the sardine industry,” Johnson said. “So he’s still working in that capacity.”
Johnson said he’s hoping Big Jim will draw new visitors to the museum and boost Searsport as it continues to recover from a two-year overhaul of Route 1 that hurt many small businesses.
“Searsport had a rough few years with the construction,” he said. “So this might be a nice kickoff to put that in the past and celebrate what we have.”
Big Jim has changed through the years, mirroring shifts in Maine’s fishing industry. By the 1970s, the sardine fishery was waning, and Big Jim had moved to Prospect Harbor in Gouldsboro where he was stationed outside the Stinson Canning company.
The figure was originally made from plywood, but the canning company made a new aluminum version in the 1980s, said Jennifer Stucker, a board member for the Gouldsboro Historical society that has been central to the restoration effort.
Before the restoration, Big Jim wasn’t looking his best, Stucker said. He was noticeably faded and the sardine can he originally held had been painted over.
“His face got really pale and depressed looking. His hands got really weird. And he was holding a wooden lobster trap which we hadn’t used for decades,” she said. “And it was full of cooked lobsters.”
Daniel Miller, owner of Belmont Boatworks and a Belfast City Council member, took Big Jim apart with a crane and brought him to his boatyard where the old paint was blasted off.
Then, Belfast’s WOW! Collective used archival images to develop a drawing of Big Jim. They projected it onto the panels using a virtual reality headset and spent three weeks painting, said collective member Ashely Megquier.
On the last day, Big Jim was laid out in pieces on the floor.
“It was fun to see him come together like a puzzle. And then some of the paint was still wet, and one of the boatyard dogs came in and walked right across it,” said Megquier. “There’s probably a dog footprint in there somewhere.”
Big Jim will return to Prospect Harbor after the museum closes for the season in the fall. Many in the community are anxious for Big Jim’s return, Stucker said. Beyond his connection to the region’s sardine fishing past, Big Jim evokes the community’s successful effort to ward off a Norwegian company’s efforts to build a salmon farm in Frenchman Bay a few years ago.
“For us hyper-locally, he’s a symbol that we won,” Stucker said. “He’s not holding a basket of salmon.”
It’s been eye opening for many locals to see how people across the state connect to Big Jim, Stucker said.
“That is their local guy,” she said. “But he’s actually much bigger than that. He stands for a way of life in Maine for all of these generations.”