The mountains visible across Frenchman Bay are part of Acadia National Park. The Age of Sail lingered into the 1900s because sailing ships remained more economical than steamships for carrying heavy cargos such as granite, and generations of watercraft used the bay for business and pleasure. From this hillside, people could once see passenger steamers bound for Bar Harbor, tugs towing large sailing ships carrying granite, ore, lumber, and fish, and private yachts heading to the resorts of the wealthy in Sorrento, Grindstone Neck, and Bar Harbor. Today the bay is more often filled with working lobster boats, kayaks, pleasure yachts, and sailboats. Colonel Paul Dudley Sargent, born in 1745 and died in 1828, was a Revolutionary War hero, merchant, first county justice, and judge of probate. The Revolutionary War nearly ruined him financially because he had a large interest in vessels lost by capture or shipwreck. While in Boston in 1772, he may have helped plan the Boston Tea Party. A close friend of Lafayette, he fought under George Washington. After the war, he retired with his wife and children to a small farm at Sullivan in the District of Maine, and in 1820 his son organized an effort to bridge Taunton Bay from Hancock to Sullivan.