Tide-water power for Maine is going to be adopted and made a great success of sometime, and it will be on the basis that my father (James Madison Kendall) planned out. Our tide mill has been operating for ten years in a very crude, small way, doing a business of four or five hundred carloads of fertilizer and grain from the power of our one little wheel.

Our tidewheel is made in the shape of a wind mill, is 27 feet in diameter, and is set perpendicular in the water. A three-inch head (of tide) will carry it, and 14 to 16 inches or more will give us 40 horsepower. It is irregular in power, but runs for 18 hours out of the 24. It is a Yankee's idea of harnessing the tides.

My father's idea was to set this wheel on end, laying horizontal in the water and six or eight feet below the low-water mark. A large curb is built one-half way around it on opposite sides, with a system of gates (four) above and below, that are so arranged that on the flood tide, the upper gate opens on the flood tide side and closes on the ebb tide side, and the lower gate opens on the ebb tide side to allow the water in, and in order to get through, it must pass down through the wheel.

With a wheel 27 feet in diameter, the weight on the wheel is tremendous, and a three, six or twelve-inch head gives a tremendous power. If there is distance enough below the wheel to allow the water to escape, the entire weight of the water above the wheel would be resting on it, and turning it.

During the flood tide period, the gate on the ebb tide side, underneath the wheel, would be open and the gate above the wheel would be closed.

Icing of the wheel will not bother much in winter if proper attention is given. Electricity might be generated by the wheel itself that would create enough heat to keep the gates free from ice between the high and low water marks.

It is possible that many wheels, not just this one, could be installed along this river (Cathance). Even more wheels could go up all along the coast. Dry and wet ponds could be created between a thousand islands and points in salt water, where there are immense water areas, with a ten-foot change of water with every tide.

This dry and wet pond system simply means a dam is built to keep the water out, and another dam close by is used to keep the water in. Power from such wheels would be continuous.

There is power almost unlimited right here in Merrymeeting Bay. One can only imagine how many of these wheels that do not cause flowage could be run by a dam built from Center's Point to Brick Island, and from Brick Island over to Butler's Head. Naturally a lock would have to be provided at Cathance Channel for navigation. It would also be an easy process here in Bowdoinham to dam the Branch near the railroad bridges. Flowage down Denham's Stream, another surface drainage, would probably give perpetual electricity, lighting and heat for the town.

Bowdoinham Advertiser

July 1977

Frank Connors, Editor