ROCKLAND — The Rockland Public Library has created a new gallery on the lower level, where the Library and the Rockland Historical Society are co-sponsoring an exhibit of historical photographs of Rockland Harbor in the 1940s.

The exhibit, put together by the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, is titled “Kids, Cameras, and Post War Waterfronts.” It features thirty black and white photographs of Rockland Harbor in the late 1940s.

The photos were taken by Maynard Bray and Don Merchant when they were twelve-year-old best friends living in the South End. The boys loved boats, boatyards, and the harbor, and recorded their adventures with their Kodak cameras. They rowed and sailed and photographed the harbor from the water. They explored the Snow Shipyard at the end of Mechanic Street and the Snow Marine Basin off of Tillson Avenue.

They photographed old boats and climbed the mast of an old schooner to photograph a bird’s-eye view of the Snow Marine Basin. They developed their own film and printed their own photographs.

Maynard Bray grew up to be a marine engineer, then curator at Mystic Seaport, and finally a writer, editor, and boat builder in Brooklin, Maine. Don Merchant went to the Maine Maritime Academy, shipped as an engineer with the Isthmian Lines and the Maine State Ferry Service, and then established Merchant’s Landing on Spruce Head Island.

The photos of the Rockland Harbor will be on display at the Rockland Public Library for the entire summer of 2015, to remind the public of the great adventures a boy could have along the Rockland Harbor in the 1940s.