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One of the oldest industries in Maine is boat and shipbuilding. Native Americans wove a network of trade around Maine, both coastal and inland, in lithe birchbark canoes. The Old Town Canoe Company, at Old Town on the Penobscot River, carries on the tradition using modern materials. Those early-native crafts served as models for the bateaux and canoes used by lumbermen on the rivers. Examples of traditional vessels such as these can be found at the Rangeley Lakes Region Logging Museum in Rangeley, the Dead River Area Historical Society in Stratton, and the Maine Watercraft Museum in Thomaston. Loggers also used steamers such as the SS Katahdin that now serves as the Moosehead Marine Museum in Greenville.
Colonists built modest vessels for fishing and trade, but the heyday came with the towering square-rigged clipper ships and Down Easters of the 1800s, as well as their nimbler counterparts, the coastal schooners with two to six masts. The majesty of vessels such as these can be experienced firsthand aboard the traditional sailing schooners of the Maine Windjammer Association's fleet.
 Traditional boatbuilding skills have been passed down through the generations in Maine. For those with a sensory affinity for wooden boats, one can study the craft at the Wooden Boat School in Brooklin or the Apprenticeshop/Atlantic Challenge Foundation in Rockland. The Landing School of Boatbuilding and Design in Kennebunkport offers courses on boatbuilding in more contemporary materials, but continues a local tradition dating to 1607, when English colonists built the Virginia-Maine's first ship-at the Popham Colony near the mouth of the Kennebec. Some significant examples of famous Maine-built ships include Ranger, an 18-gun sloop-of-war launched in 1781 and commanded by John Paul Jones; the 1943 Jeremiah O'Brien, named for the famed "Machias Admiral" who captured the Royal Navy's Margaretta during the American Revolution; and the magnificent Down Easter Henry B. Hyde, one of the most beautiful square-rigged ships ever built.
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