Odds and Ends From The MUSEUM!
A photo displayed in the museum’s logging room shows Mrs. Alice Harkness christening GNP’s tugboat the O.A. Harkness on June 6, 1964. The man this boat was named for had a storied history with GNP and designed many boats for GNP. Although Harkness designed boats for GNP, the Harkness was designed by another man several years after Harkness’s retirement.
Growing up on the coast of Maine, OA was fascinated with boats. He built his first boat on the family property when in his twenties. He worked for several boat building companies including Bath Iron Works and Eastern Manufacturing Company all before GNP began operation. Harkness came to GNP in 1915 where he began creating models used for many years by GNP.
Harkness designed the West Branch 2 launched at Chesuncook in 1927 and typically towed 4000-5000 cords of pulpwood at a time and was more efficient in many ways than its predecessor the A. B. Smith. The West Branch 3, launched in 1943, worked North & South Twin lakes, known as the “lower lakes.”
Harkness designed many of the GNP fleet of tugboats. He also developed the smaller “boom jumpers” needed to operate on lakes filled with four-foot wood contained in floating log booms. The boom jumpers were used to do errands and light work around booming-out places and in bringing up and placing the slack boom.” (Moody) These boats could also cross a boom and were used in “sweeping” where leftover wood was collected after most had passed through a dam. The early boom jumpers had reinforced wood hulls. Later ones had steel hulls. Many of these “boom jumpers’ were referred to by number, not all had names.
Orris Albert (O. A.) Harkness designed at least 30 boats for GNP before retiring in 1950. Harkness died in 1951 in Veazie at age 81. He had worked for Great Northern for 36 years as Mechanical Superintendent of the Spruce Wood Department. He had lived in Veazie for most of his employment with GNP.
The towboat named for O. A. Harkness (13 years after his death) took place in 1964 with speeches and ceremony. Quoted in speeches at the occasion, “Though he lacked much in formal education, he was a mechanical genius of the highest order. A list of his inventions and improvements on equipment would take pages to list. The O. A. Harkness will be formally christened by his widow.”
A bit of Harkness trivia! “CAUCOGOMOC LAKE TRAVELED BY AUTOMOBILE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY OF THE WORLD It happened on Saturday, January 6, 1923. O. A. Harkness in his Franklin Car left Greenville at 7.15 A. M. for Rockwood via Moosehead Lake (on the ice). From Rock wood he sped to Seboomook via turn pike and from thence to Loon Stream and on to the head of Caucogomoc Lake. Here dinner was served to him, after which he made the run over the ice to the lake dam at the foot of the lake. Turning the car in the camp yard, he returned by the same route to Greenville, reaching there at about 6.30 P. M.”
Articles in “The Northern” magazine and the Roger Moody book, Logging Towboats and Boom Jumpers, provided information for this article. Both are available at the museum.
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