BACKSPACE: End of the (rail) line

This schooner was the last to be launched using a rail system at Brooklin Boat Yard. Photo courtesy of the Penobscot Marine Museum.

March 16, 2026

By staff

Railways were how Brooklin Boat Yard had always hauled and launched its boats ever since it began operating in 1960, and a greased gridwork, wooden cradles, and a winch truck were how they were moved around on land. A Travelift ended this in 1986, making the scow schooner VINTAGE, above, the last traditional railway launching. Pete Culler designed this handsome 45-footer and Brooklin Boat Yard did the building, including her spars and ironwork.

Joel White, right, with his son, Steve, at Brooklin Boat Yard. Photo courtesy of the Penobscot Marine Museum.

Beginning in the spring of 1986 with the Travelift’s arrival, Joel White (hand raised in the foreground) began seriously transitioning Brooklin Boat Yard to his son Steve, seen here on the left guiding a main girder. Shortly afterward and until he died in 1997, Joel designed boats full-time while Steve gradually expanded the operation tenfold and gave the place a world-class name by building one remarkable race winning yacht after another—many designed in-house by Joel and his successors Bob Stephens and Will Sturdy. Steve transitioned to employee ownership in 2023, with longtime project manager Brian Larkin as the boatyard’s president.

Maynard Bray Collection

These photos are from the Maynard Bray collection at the Penobscot Marine Museum. Bray grew up along the industrious waterfront of Rockland in the years after WWII. The place was an early and important teacher for him. Maynard caught the bug for boatbuilding and for photography partly from his older cousin, Elmer Montgomery, whose photos are also in the museum’s collection. Throughout high school and college, Bray spent lots of time on the water with his sweetheart, Anne, and others they met, particularly aboard the couple’s MDI class sloop Pixie, which they bought in 1953.

Not surprisingly, after college, Maynard’s career kept him close to the water, photographing Electric Boat, Bath Iron Works and Mystic Seaport. In the mid-1970s, the couple moved back to Maine, settling in Brooklin, where Bray started writing and editing for WoodenBoat magazine. In this capacity he met many interesting boats and their owners, and owned several of his own.

Bray donated his photo archive to the Penobscot Marine Museum in 2013.

-The Penobscot Marine Museum, with details from Maynard Bray’s original photo captions.

“BACKSPACE” is a partnership between the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport and The Rising Tide that showcases the unique coastal and maritime history of our towns in and around the Blue Hill Peninsula. This feature, pulled from the museum’s extensive photographic archives and associated records, will appear monthly in The Rising Tide. For more information about the Penobscot Marine Museum, please visit their website.