Mount Desert Island: Shaped by Nature

Somes Sound was wide and deep enough to accommodate two, three and even four masted ships and would give them a handy port from which they could sail to nearly any location on the east coast. The hard workers didn't always use machinery. Before the invention of cranes and derricks, men would work in human conveyer belts loading the paving stones into vessels by hand! Some of the granite blocks that they carried on these schooners weighed 5 to 8 tons and to get an idea of how much that is 2000 pounds is a ton and 8 tons is 16,000 pounds! Later on, after a few years, the ships would come into Somes Sound and wait for its granite load, which was loaded now by cranes that were operated by donkey engines They'd use the engines to lift the stone onto the waiting vessels. An interesting story related by Susan O'Neil from James Grant was about the sinking of the Dephini. "It was Sunday morning, this three masted ships loaded with pavin' and this other one ( The Delphini), landed with pavin' or maybe cut stone, was there...Saturday have the loading complete. An Mr. Maycomber left here just as soon as it was loaded, he went right to Ellsworth to have it insured. And the next morning the vessel left an' went down to the narrows and struck the ice dash run into this big ice cake-thats the spring of the year, ya know, the Sound had been frozen and it came down alongst here."