Bath ME Maine

USA

Bath is nicknamed "the city of ships," and the name proves itself before you even dock. Heading up the Kennebec River, passengers spot the massive cranes of the Bath Iron Works shipyard, where destroyers are still assembled today for the US Navy. For more than two centuries, this small Maine city has been building ships, and it has launched thousands of them. The human-scale cruise ships that visit tie up at the Maine Maritime Museum's pier, which puts the port call's first attraction right at the foot of the gangway.

A Museum with Its Feet in the Water

The Maine Maritime Museum occupies an eight-hectare campus along the Kennebec, on the site of the former Percy & Small shipyard. It was here that the Wyoming was launched in 1909, the largest wooden schooner ever built: a life-size sculpture set into the lawn traces her nearly 140-metre outline, bowsprit included. Standing among her six stylized masts gives you an exact sense of just how immense that era's ambitions were. Visitors can wander freely among the site's original buildings, the blacksmith's shop, exhibits on lobstering and navigation, and a reconstructed lighthouse lantern room complete with a period Fresnel lens. Allow a good two hours to take it all in without rushing.

The River and Its Lighthouses

In season, the museum offers narrated cruises on the Kennebec aboard its excursion boat. Depending on the route chosen, you'll pass a half-dozen lighthouses, including Doubling Point and Squirrel Point, set on wooded points reachable only by trail. The river, wide and calm, is home to seals and ospreys, and the riverbanks tell the region's story on their own: launch ways, wooden docks, captains' houses facing the water. In the nineteenth century, ice was also harvested here, cut into blocks in winter and shipped by schooner all the way to ports in the South.

The Historic Centre

A few minutes from the museum, downtown Bath lines Front Street with its nineteenth-century brick façades. The area has kept a genuine neighbourhood feel: a century-old hardware store, an independent bookstore, cafés, designer boutiques and performance venues occupy the old merchant buildings. The nearby residential streets are worth a detour for their shipowners' homes topped with cupolas, from which captains' wives are said to have watched for their ships' return. A terraced park descends toward the river and offers a relaxing view of the bridge and river traffic. On Saturday mornings, a public market brings the street to life in season, and there's no shortage of benches for watching the regulars come and go, coffee cup in hand.

Bath Port Call at a Glance

• The maritime museum can be visited directly from the docking pier, no transportation needed.
• Downtown is a few minutes away by shuttle or taxi; energetic walkers can get there on foot in about half an hour.
• The naval shipyard itself isn't open to visitors, but its cranes and grey hulls can be admired from the riverbank.

An Insider's Port Call

Bath doesn't appear on any list of major cruise destinations, and its regulars are almost glad of it. Those who come ashore here touch something rare: a community still living off shipbuilding, proud of its past without turning it into a show. Heading back down the Kennebec toward the sea, as the shipyard's cranes disappear behind the trees, you carry with you the image of an industrious, understated Maine, worlds away from the summer crowds, one that makes you want to keep following the thread of its rivers for a long time yet.