UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
MAINE
Waldo County

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Belfast, situated on the Penobscot Bay and drained by the Passagassawakeag River, is the county seat of Waldo County, Maine. As of 2010 the population is about 6,700.

The area was once territory of the Penobscot tribe of Abenaki Indians. In 1630, it became part of the Muscongus Patent, which granted rights for English trading posts with the Indians, especially for the lucrative fur trade. About 1720, General Samuel Waldo of Boston bought the Muscongus Patent, which had evolved into outright ownership of the land, and was thereafter known as the Waldo Patent. Waldo died in 1759, and his heirs would sell the plantation of Passagassawakeag (named after its river) to 35 Scots-Irish proprietors from Londonderry, New Hampshire. Renamed Belfast after Belfast, Northern Ireland, it was first settled in 1770, and incorporated as a town in 1773. The village was mostly abandoned during the Revolution while British forces occupied Bagaduce (now Castine). Following the war, the seaport was rebuilt and thrived. It was a port of entry, and designated county seat of Waldo County in 1827. Belfast was incorporated in 1853 as a city, the 8th in Maine. It developed into a shipbuilding center, producing hundreds of three, four and five masted schooners. Materials for wooden boat construction were shipped down the Penobscot River from Bangor, the lumber capital of North America during the later 19th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfast,_Maine]

 
The steamer Belfast [left] was built in 1823 and carried passengers and freight for the Eastern Steamship Lines Inc., connecting Bangor and further downstream Penobscot River ports with Boston, Massachusetts. The ship suffered several accidents, among them a collision with the J.T. Morse at Rockland docks in 1910 and a collision with the Alma A.E. Holmes off the coast of Marblehead, Massachusetts, in 1914, with both incidents resulting in the sinking of the other ships. Due to the falling patronage the company abandoned the service in 1935 and the Belfast sailed for her last voyage, on December 27, to Boston, where she was tied up together with her sister ship, the Camden. [http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1928&dat=19351228&id=89sgAAAAIBAJ&sjid=_WoFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3485,6972672; https://bangordailynews.com/2010/05/23/living/steamer-sank-the-jt-morse-at-rockland-docks/; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alma_A._E._Holmes (ship)]

Several glasses of this collection show other ships.