The last regular steamboat run stopped in 1959, and in 1961 the last steamboat, the Sabino, left Portland. We went to Orr's Island on a charter. Frappier wrote his first book on steamboats 20 years ago, but couldn't find a publisher until 1993. A lot of the people who rode the boats regularly are gone. Stoddart Publishing Co. Ltd., the Canadian company that published ''Steamboat Yesterdays,'' is waiting until sales pick up before publishing Frappier's second volume.
Museums like to hark back to the clipper ships, or the glory days of sail.
When you realize the last American cargo carried by sail was carried in 1941, we should look at the decades that followed sailing ships.