Maine Built Boats, a nonprofit industry organization, has been chosen to receive the Maine Maritime Museum’s twelfth annual Mariners Award in 2017. Founded in 2005, Maine Built Boats is a nonprofit trade group whose purpose is to establish Maine boatbuilding as a recognized brand regionally, nationally, and worldwide, and to strengthen ties within the state’s diverse community of shipwrights and between them and the industries on whose products they rely to build the best boats art and science can devise.

Thanks to their state's long, indented coastline and innumerable rivers, Mainers have relied on watercraft for thousands of years, and boat and shipbuilding is a venerable tradition. While the original inhabitants mastered the art of building dugouts and birchbark canoes for deep-sea fishing and travel through the interior, Europeans introduced new technologies and a host of specialist designs for fishing craft, coastal and deep-sea merchant vessels, workboats, and warships. In the nineteenth century, Maine shipwrights were among the first to embrace steam technology and steel hulls. Today, Maine boatbuilders of everything from canoes, one-design racing boats, and luxury yachts to state-of-the-art lobster boats and workboats employ not only the best of the old wooden boat traditions but also the best of the new technologies in everything from sail making to composite hulls.

To further its aims, Maine Built Boats supports education in relevant marine industries to create a dynamic and sophisticated work force, encourages the development of technologies designed to advance the art and craft of shipbuilding, and partners with relevant local, state, and federal government authorities to create and maintain favorable conditions for Maine’s boatbuilding industries so that they can continue to exemplify the best Maine has to offer the nation and the world. The Maine Maritime Museum is proud to recognize Maine Built Boat's essential work with its 2017 Mariners Award.