Searsport is an incorporated town and deep water seaport located at the confluence of the Penobscot River estuary and the Penobscot Bay immediately northwest of Sears Island and Cape Jellison in Waldo County, Maine, United States.

The town is known as "the home of the famous sea captains" and the "Antique Capital of Maine".

[citation needed] Searsport was settled in the 1760s and incorporated on February 13, 1845, from portions of Prospect and Belfast.

In 1747, when fire destroyed the Province House in Boston, General Samuel Waldo advocated, unsuccessfully, that the capital of Massachusetts be moved to Searsport, which was part of the Waldo Patent he had purchased about 1720.

[4] It was named after David Sears of Boston after he agreed to grant a large sum of money towards the town's founding.

During the 19th-century the port had 17 shipyards and built 200 ships, while supplying fully one-tenth of the United States' merchant marine deep water captains, per square mile more than any other community in the country.

[citation needed] Searsport is Maine's second largest deep water port and is ideally located from the point of view of railroad, wood products and other development interests.

[6] Searsport harbor is an excellent sheltered anchorage, covering an area of roughly 2 by 3 miles (3 by 5 km), with a controlling depth of 40 feet (12 m) at mean low water and an average tidal fluctuation of 10 feet (3.0 m).

[7] The port facilities at Searsport were a preferred loading point for ammunition during World War II.

It borders the towns of Prospect and Stockton Springs to the northeast, Belfast to the southwest, Swanville to the northwest and Frankfort to the north.

A five-member board of selectmen (with its members serving three-year terms) is elected on the Tuesday before the annual meeting and it, along with the town manager, run the town's daily affairs, including overseeing town water, sewage treatment, law enforcement, fire protection, emergency medical service, recreational programs and a library.