Historic steamboat back in operation

A 109-year-old coal-fired steamboat returned to cruising the Mystic River after a more than two-year restoration project.

The Sabino, billed by the Mystic Seaport maritime museum as the nation’s oldest coal-fired steamboat in regular operation, resumed public cruises Wednesday from the maritime museum in Mystic, Conn.

The 57-foot steamboat, which was designated a national historic landmark in 1992, was built in 1908 in East Boothbay, Maine, and spent most of its career ferrying passengers and cargo between the mainland and islands off Maine’s coast.

The maritime museum bought and restored the wooden-hulled vessel in 1973, and has used it as a working exhibit since then, providing daily tourist cruises up and down the river during the summer and early fall.

“To feel the moist heat on your face as you are approaching the engine, to smell the coal fire and feel the relatively quiet smooth operation of the original steam engine is exciting,” said Quentin Snediker, the director of the museum’s preservation shipyard. “You’re moving a vessel that weighs 50 tons, just with heat and water.”

The shipyard, which has also been responsible for projects including the building of the Amistad slave schooner replica, began the extensive restoration of the Sabino in 2014.

The project involved major woodwork, including replacing the shaft log, which was “about as deep a surgery as you can do on a wooden hull,” Snediker said. Shipwrights also reframed much of the stern, replaced the keel bolts, installed new planking and decking and restored portions of the superstructure, including the pilot house.