After seven months of being submerged off the coast of Harpswell, the historic fishing boat Jacob Pike has finally been raised by the U.S. Coast Guard. But a descendant of Jacob Pike himself is fighting to save it from being destroyed.
Sumner Rugh, a student at the Merchant Marine Academy in New York, is the great-great-grandson of Jacob Pike, the namesake of the refrigerated sardine carrier. His nonprofit, the Jacob Pike Organization, wants to refurbish the vessel and use it for education.
But acquiring the boat has proven tricky, Rugh said. The Coast Guard towed the boat to Portland on Wednesday to be destroyed. Rugh asked the Coast Guard to donate the vessel to his nonprofit, but because the Coast Guard doesn’t own the boat, it can’t donate it.
Pamela Manns, a lieutenant with the U.S. Coast Guard, said the Coast Guard worked with several parties involved in the Jacob Pike’s removal and decided the best course of action was to dispose of the boat.
The owner, Cyrus Cleary, had an initial disagreement with the Coast Guard on how to remove the boat, which led to the town declaring it abandoned and giving the Coast Guard the authority to remove it under the Clean Water Act.
The Coast Guard can raise the boat and destroy it but cannot donate it, according to Manns. The Jacob Pike Organization, which filed its charter with the state on Thursday, considered acquiring the title, but owning the title may come with Cleary’s fiscal responsibility for the boat’s removal, which could total around $300,000.
“We, as the Jacob Pike Organization, will not be taking on any of his financial responsibilities because that’s not our place,” Rugh said.
So, if the title comes with Cleary’s financial obligations to the U.S. Coast Guard, Rugh’s organization will not take it. And it’s a race against an invisible clock. Rugh doesn’t know when the boat will be destroyed, so he wants to figure out how to take ownership before it is. Manns said the boat is in the process of being cleaned, which should take a few days, and didn’t know when it would be destroyed.
Rugh wants to save the Jacob Pike for its historical significance. Built by Newbert & Wallace in Thomaston in 1949, the boat was one of the first refrigerated sardine carriers, Rugh said. Moses Pike, Rugh’s great-grandfather, had the boat built and named it after his father, Jacob.
The Jacob Pike could carry 60 tons of sardines at a time, sometimes weighing the boat down so much that water would slosh over the deck, Rugh said. It carried sardines from American and Canadian fishing grounds to canneries across the coast. In 1997, the carrier found a new career in carrying lobster bait since the sardine industry was in decline. It was retired from fishing in 2022.
“When people think about Maine, they think about lobster, but that wasn’t really what Maine started on. It was other fishing industries,” Rugh said.
Cleary purchased the vessel last summer with the intent to refurbish it, he said in a March interview with the Bangor Daily News. But after his health declined, he wasn’t able to continue the work and kept it moored off Harpswell for several months.
The boat sank in the first of two January storms that devastated Maine’s coast. It’s covered in marine growth and needs a lot of restoration before it can pass any kind of inspection to be seafaring again.
If the Jacob Pike Organization is able to obtain it, the organization will take it to Front Street Shipyard in Belfast, have it rebuilt. Once it passes the Coast Guard Certificate of Inspection, the organization would use it as an educational vessel.
Rugh’s vision is for people of all ages to come and learn about Maine’s fishing and shipbuilding industry, using the Jacob Pike as a platform.
“It’s the most storied sardine carrier on the East Coast,” he said.
