Maine's location provided it not only with the raw materials necessary for scraping a living from the land, but also connected its vast natural enterprises ? fishing, quarrying, lumbering among others ? to global markets via Maine-built ships of extraordinary design.

Just after the Revolutionary War, Charles de Talleyrand-Périgord observed, “Maine was a place of opportunity that . . . combines healthfulness and fertility, whose whole coast is one vast harbor of the sea, which is watered by rivers, lakes, ponds, creeks and streams in abundance according to the most fortunate distribution.” - DD