This past week the historic fishing schooner American Eagle was Hauled out for it's spring maintenance...
Schooner American Eagle
The schooner American Eagle, built in 1930 as Andrew and Rosalie,
marked an important transition in the nationally significant fishing industry of the United States, then and to a large extent still centered at the port of the schooner's origin, Gloucester, Massachusetts. A 300-year tradition of building sailing fishing schooners at Gloucester and nearby ports ended with the construction of Gertrude L. Thebaud in 1930. The rise of motor power doomed the sailing schooner. In its place a new type of vessel, the auxiliary schooner, was built beginning around 1900. The auxiliary schooner was the forerunner of the modern trawler, built and introduced to the fishing industry in the 1930s and
40s. The last auxiliary schooner built in Gloucester, Andrew and Rosalie is now, under her new name of American Eagle, the oldest known Gloucester combination power and sailing fishing boat left afloat, and the earliest example of this transitional type that led to the modern trawler of today's fishery.
After fifty-five years in service, including time as a motor powered trawler, American Eagle was restored to her auxiliary sailing rig and placed in service as a "Maine Windjammer," in 1986, carrying passengers in commercial recreational service as part of a "dude fleet" that dates to the 1930s and was and remains unique in the annals of marine recreation and maritime preservation as part of a fleet that first introduced the concept of adaptive use to historic vessels.
THE FISHERMEN OF GLOUCESTER AND THE AUXILIARY SCHOONER ANDREW AND ROSALIE
The fishing industry of the United States, while spread throughout the nation and found on every waterway and coast, was born in New England waters some 300 years ago. Since then, from the fishing ports of Massachusetts, particularly Gloucester, hailed the nation's largest fleet of fishing schooners. Gloucester thrived as a fishing port and shipbuilding center from Colonial times through the 1920s, and continues as an important center of the American fishing industry. In 1880, Henry Hall, assessing U.S. maritime activity and industry for the 9th census, described Gloucester as "the center of the fishing business of New England, and of late years has devoted itself almost entirely to enterprise in that direction....
From Gloucester and other small towns fishing fleets sailed to work the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and other fishing grounds off the eastern seaboard where shoal waters hosted tremendous numbers of cod, haddock, hake, halibut, pollock, cusk, skate, catfish, whiting, monk-fish, wolf-fish, and lumpfish. To meet the conditions of the trade, shipyards in Gloucester and nearby towns, notably Essex, designed and built thousands of American fishing schooners in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Hundreds of fishing schooners were built in and around Gloucester, many of them in the town itself. In 1880, Henry Hall counted 475 vessels in the Gloucester district, 133 of which had been built in Gloucester, 215 in nearby Essex, and the rest "principally in Maine." The Gloucester fishing schooners,
known as "Gloucestermen," took many forms during the century they dominated America's fisheries. Various types were predominant in certain years clipper schooners, Fredonia inshore and offshore schooners, "Indian Headers" and "knockabout" schooners were among the better known types. The heyday of the fishing schooner came after the Civil War, when the New England fisheries were
profitable and expanded, and Boston and Gloucester were the nation's leading fishing ports.
The introduction of steam engines led to a short-lived adoption of this form of motive power to fishing vessels in the 1880s and 1890s. Bulky and expensive steam engines were not economically suitable for the New England fisheries, however. The development of the internal combustion engine led to the rise of the auxiliary schooner in the 1890s. After 1901, the number of gasoline-engines installed in schooners then under construction, and the modification of older, sailing schooners increased. "The gradual conversion of the bulk of the fishing schooners to auxiliaries eventually led to the increasing suppression of sail,
with the engine becoming the paramount propulsion by 1925. The complete suppression of sail followed the introduction of heavy oil engines and the appearance of diesel trawlers and seiners after 1930. The steel and wood-hulled, flush decked trawlers were a vastly different vessel type as the mode of fishing had changed from dory-fishing to deploying nets. The last sailing fishing schooner constructed in Gloucester was Grace L. Thebaud, built in 1930 almost as an anachronism at the same time the auxiliary schooner Andrew and Rosalie was launched, herself soon to be replaced by the trawlers then under construction.
Andrew and Rosalie was built at Gloucester by the United Sail Loft Co. in 1930 for Capt. Patrick Murphy, an 1880 immigrant to Gloucester and well-known fishing schooner master. Named for Murphy's son and daughter, the new schooner was launched sideways from the company's wharf on June 2, 1930 as Rosalie Murphy christened the vessel. The Atlantic Fisherman, covering the
event, noted Andrew and Rosalie "will be used for swordfishing, netting and trawling. " The occasion was a proud day for Gloucester the schooner was the largest vessel built in the town in 20 years. Andrew and Rosalie sailed on her maiden voyage June 24, "the craft going swordfishing."
Incomplete records of the schooner's fish landings at Boston from January 1934 until September 1952 show she landed 1,040,600 Ibs. of fish for the 16 months reported, which projects to an average of 780,450 Ibs. per year, or a career total of 41,363,850 Ibs. of fish when she finally retired in 1983. 7 Patrick Murphy died in 1938, and the schooner was worked by the family until 1941, when
it was sold to the Empire Fish Co. and renamed American Eagle. As American Eagle, the schooner fished as a trawler from 1942 until July 1983, the majority of that time under the ownership of Gloucester brothers John, Joe, and Gus Piscitello, who acquired her in 1945.
In 1984, American Eagle was purchased by John C. Foss of Rockland, Maine, then owner of the schooner Lewis R. French, who intended to restore the vessel's schooner rig and enter her in the "dude fleet" of Maine. The survival of American Eagle, as well as several other historic 19th- and early 20th-century
schooners, depended on earning their keep in a new maritime trade. During the Great Depression, scores of old vessels were laid up, and left to slowly rot in every cove and mudflat along the coast. In 1935, artist Frank Swift, then living at
Bucksport, Maine, conceived the idea of saving the rapidly vanishing schooners. While watching a coaster unloading pulpwood at a mill on the banks of the Penobscot River near his home, Swift thought of chartering a schooner for extended passenger cruises. While several vessels, including the schooner Stephen Taber, were available for day-long sails, a prolonged cruise similar to the "dude" ranch experience in the west was a new concept. It was also the first time the concept of operating, adaptive use of a historic vessel was applied to maritime preservation. Swift's first vessel, the 1881-built schooner Mabel, was chartered in 1936, with a Deer Island skipper as captain and his wife as ship's cook.
At first the concept was slow in catching on, but by 1939, Swift was able to purchase the schooner Annie F. Kimball and began operating her out of Camden, Maine, on six-day cruises at $32 a head. Around that time, Swift advertised one or two-week cruises: These schooners are not yachts just picturesque downeast
sailing vessels, clipper-bowed and able, with billowing sails and hempen rigging. Each Monday, from July 4th until September 10th, the Annie Kimball and
the Lvdia Webster will sail from Camden, Maine, for a week's cruise not to follow an exact itinerary but to use the winds and tides to make the cruise most
interesting.
Other entrepreneurs and vessels followed Swift's lead, and by the late 1940s several schooners, saved from oblivion, were part of the "Maine Windjammer" fleet, otherwise known as the "dude fleet" or the "head boats." The trade was declining in the mid-1960s when a new group of entrepreneurs, young men and women who had crewed and skippered the schooners, took over the business. At the same time the old vessels themselves were wearing out, and only a handful were left. In the early days of the trade, with an over-abundance of schooners, Swift and the other owners had usually run a ship hard, stripped and sank her, and bought another. In the 1970s, in order to survive as demand increased for the "windjammer experience" in an age of few surviving historic schooners, the
young entrepreneurs turned to building new schooners on the lines of the old vessels, with a few modern improvements, and rescuing laid-up or soon-to-languish schooners, some of them former fishing vessels, for the trade. In 1971, the 1886-built oyster schooner Isaac H. Evans was rescued by Doug and Linda Lee and restored. The success of Evans inspired John Foss, who bought and restored Lewis R. French between 1973 and 1976. To do the work, Foss and the Lees purchased an old shipyard at the north end of Rockland. Joined by the dragger J. & E. Riggin, a 1927- built schooner owned by David and Sue Alien, the fleet, collectively run out of the "North End Shipyard" as "Maine Windjammer Cruises," was augmented by the arrival of American Eagle, bought and restored by John Foss in 1986 to replace French, which he sold that year to his brother-in-law, Dan Pease, who owns and commands her now.
American Eagle was brought to the North End Shipyard, where restoration began in June 1984.n The restoration was completed in June 1986, when the schooner was relaunched for her new service. There are now some 15 "windjammers" , including American Eagle, operating along the Maine coast. The schooners no longer carry loads of wood or granite, but, as owner/captain Doug Lee remarked, "the only cargo that loads and unloads itself." 12 The windjammers are unique in the nation in their offering of marine recreation. They do not provide "sail training," but instead instill a relaxed sense of the sea and travel under sail, in which the passengers are encouraged, not required, to lend a hand as needed. The North End Shipyard continues to maintain and restore the schooners as needed, and offers its services to other historic vessels on the coast. Thus, skills are preserved along with the historic fabric of the vessels themselves the vanishing trades of shipwrightery and, in the operation of the schooners, the skills of seamanship. [MARITIME HERITAGE OF THE UNITED STATES NHL THEME STUDY LARGE VESSELS AMERICAN EAGLE (Schooner)
United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form]
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