Steamboat Songs from Maine?

Subject: Steamboat Songs from Maine?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 22 Jan 14 - 08:24 AM

I'm doing a special project and I'm looking for vintage songs and poems about the little steamboats which served the communities in Midcoast Maine for well over a hundred years. The "Sabino" at the Mystic Seaport Museum is the only survivor of this fleet of steamboats.

Surprisingly, I've only come across one incompletely remembered "tribute poem":

The Sabascodegan

Pull in the gangplank, we're on our way
For an old-time sail down Casco Bay…
We're on our Harpswell way at last
With bright flags flying from the mast,
Blue sky above, blue sea beneath…
(Beware the ledges or we'll come to grief)*;
New scenes before closed eyes unfold,
The years have flown and we are old;
The 'Degan ne'er again will make
That Harpswell trip we loved to take;
Denied that bygone priceless joy
To see her round Old Thumbcap's buoy;
No longer does her wheel and spoke
Yield to the hand that once did stroke
Each part, not unlike a caress
With loving pride and tenderness;
And may her crew, where'er they be
On this or on another sea,
Sail bravely on that final run
When day is gone and night has come.

Notes:

By Frank Linwood Bailey, Harpswell, Maine
As partially remembered by a friend,
from Steamboat Yesterdays, p. 79.

* Suggested fill to complete the line.

I'm not interested in songs about the larger steamers that connected Maine with Southern New England. But there should be more tribute poems and songs, disaster songs, and social fun. I've also failed to find any photos of musicians playing on the steamboats, and that happened quite often when they were chartered for excursions and other special events.

Cheerily,
Charlie Ipcar

Subject: RE: Steamboat Songs from Maine?
From: maeve
Date: 22 Jan 14 - 08:36 AM

Interesting project, Charlie. You've checked with Capt. Jim Sharp?
http://www.sailpowersteammuseum.org/