What shocks Maine should shock all New Englanders. Nabisco has stopped making Crown Pilot Crackers. Crown Pilot was a fancy name for hardtack, those crackers that New Englanders have smashed up and softened in their chowder for 216 years, give or take.

Made from flour, water and salt, these simple crackers do not go bad during long sea voyages or winters in Alaska. That’s the point of them, and as the word “hardtack” suggests, they are durable. Other names are pilot bread, ship’s biscuit and sea biscuit. (Equestrian note: The champion racehorse Seabiscuit was the son of Hard Tack.)

A company in Newburyport, Mass., started the first commercial production of hardtack in 1792. It was bought in 1898 by the National Biscuit Company, which later changed its name to Nabisco. Nabisco halted production of Crown Pilot Crackers in 1997, only to resume amid a public outcry. This time, it probably really means it.

Nabisco says that Crown Pilot Crackers is a “niche” product — a product with a small audience — that does not belong in its streamlined future. (Nabisco was acquired by Kraft Foods in 2000.) Determined shoppers may still be able to find Crown Pilot Crackers at stores with slow turnover, or in warehouses. (They do last.)

Apparently, at least two small manufacturers still make hardtack — Interbake Foods (Sailor Boy Pilot Bread), in Virginia, and Purity Factories (Pilot Biscuits), in Newfoundland. Memo to the New Englander looking for a niche business: Opportunity knocks.