The Grebe

Grebes come to the Halibut Point coastline when interior lakes freeze over. It's a solitary phase in the bird's year. We who roam the shore appreciate the diversity of birds flying, floating, and diving in this frigid season, no matter how drab their plumage. Paradoxically, there's more to see on the ocean in winter than in summer.



Horned grebe

How does this ball of fluff with a matchstick bill survive the blustery maritime? Obviously it is buoyant, dry at the skin, and well insulated. When it dives it can squeeze the air out of its feathers and flatten them to its body to improve speed and agility for chasing fish.

 
A glimpse at its outsized propulsion system indicates the grebe's advantage under water, both in covering distance and darting after its prey.

A grebe's lobed foot

It swims by spreading out its feet laterally and bringing them inward, producing forward thrust in much the same way as a frog. Unlike the full webbing of the loon's foot, the lobes along each toe make fine steering articulations possible. Recent experimental work has shown that these lobes work like the hydrofoil blades of a propeller [Wikipedia].

 

As soon as possible in the spring Horned grebes return to their nesting grounds in wetlands from Wisconsin and Central Canada westward to Alaska, where they molt into breeding plumage.

Horned grebe in breeding plumage
(Internet photo)
 

A photo from that distant place shows how the Horned grebe gets its name. Unfortunately we miss this vivid part of its plumage cycle, its complex courtship dance holding reeds in its mouth, and the chicks scrambling onto their parents' backs for a rest.

*  *  *

Your other likely grebe sighting at Halibut Point would be the Red-necked grebe.



Red-necked grebe, winter

Larger than the Horned grebe, and with a stout partially yellow bill and long neck, it resembles a diminutive Common loon.

Captured

Thrashed

Swallowed

The Red-necked grebe often brings a fish to the surface to subdue and then swallow it head first, spines pointing to the rear.

Red-necked grebe and Razorbill flying past Halibut Point
Note this species' characteristic "hump-backed" flight posture.

Grebes have unusual plumage, dense and waterproof. On the underside feathers grow at right-angles to the skin, sticking straight out to begin with and curling at the tip. Grebes can collapse these feathers to adjust their buoyancy in the water.

Red-necked grebe in breeding plumage
(Internet photo)

Red-necked grebes and Horned grebes return to similar breeding grounds. They are holarctic species, nesting and wintering in circumpolar territories of North American and Eurasia.

The Loon

 

  Folly Cove profiles, clockwise:

Great cormorant, Red-throated loon, Common loon

 

These three deep-diving birds with similar profiles can be seen along the winter shoreline around Halibut Point. They swim low in the water, unlike ducks. Their long necks and up-tilted heads, giving a snake-like impression, enable them to strike forward at the fish they pursue below the surface. Their beaks are variously specialized for the hunt. The cormorant's beak is hooked at the end, for grasping. 


Common loon surfacing with a crab

The loon has sharp, rearward-pointing projections on the roof of its mouth and tongue that help it keep a firm hold on slippery fish. It consumes most of their prey underwater. This one must have found the crab difficult to swallow.

Unlike most birds, loons have solid bones that make them less buoyant and better at diving. They can quickly blow air out of their lungs and flatten their feathers to expel air within their plumage, so they can dive quickly and swim fast underwater. Once below the surface, the loon’s heart slows down to conserve oxygen.

Common loon in breeding plumage

Common loons molt into breeding plumage just before or after leaving our area for their nesting areas in northern lakes and marshes, where they are known for their spectacular vocalizations.

Common loon in drab winter plumage

The parents head back this way on migration in the fall, leaving juveniles to gather into flocks and make their own journey south a few weeks later. Once the juveniles reach coastal waters, they stay here for the next two years.

Loon preening

The loon propels itself powerfully and with great agility using its large webbed feet. It dives as deep as 180 feet. Although its dives usually average under a minute, loons have been known to stay underwater for as long as 15 minutes and cover a great distance, leading birdwatchers mystified at their disappearance.

 
Common loons need from 30 yards up to a quarter-mile (depending on the wind) for flapping their wings and running across the top of the water in order to gain enough speed for lift-off. Migrating loons have been clocked flying at speeds more than 70 mph.

Common loon in flight

In flight the Common loon is distinguished by its dark upper body, large trailing feet, straight heavy bill, and pronounced collar.

Red-throated loon

By contrast, the Red-throated loon's size and proportions are smaller, its bill slim and upturned, and lacking a collar. We see it here in muted winter plumage without the determinant colorful throat. In flight its head and neck droop below the horizontal, giving the flying bird a distinctly hunchbacked shape. Its thin wings are angled back with a quicker, deeper wingbeat than other loons.

This species is capable of taking off from the water without a running start. Unlike the others, it can take off from land. The Red-throated loon breeds primarily in Arctic regions and coastal tundra, often on very small lakes.

 

The Red-throated loon is seen much less frequently around Halibut Point than the Common loon. It figures prominently in creation stories of indigenous groups throughout the Arctic. In the mythological telling, the loon was asked by a great shaman to bring up earth from the bottom of the sea. That earth was then used to build the world's dry land.

* * *

The Loon on Walden Pond, as told by Henry David Thoreau

As I was paddling along the north shore one very calm October afternoon, for such days especially they settle on to the lakes, like the milkweed down, having looked in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly one, sailing out from the shore toward the middle a few rods in front of me, set up his wild laugh and betrayed himself. I pursued with a paddle and he dived, but when he came up I was nearer than before. He dived again, but I miscalculated the direction he would take, and we were fifty rods apart when he came to the surface this time, for I had helped to widen the interval; and again he laughed long and loud, and with more reason than before. He manœuvred so cunningly that I could not get within half a dozen rods of him. Each time, when he came to the surface, turning his head this way and that, he coolly surveyed the water and the land, and apparently chose his course so that he might come up where there was the widest expanse of water and at the greatest distance from the boat. It was surprising how quickly he made up his mind and put his resolve into execution. He led me at once to the widest part of the pond, and could not be driven from it. While he was thinking one thing in his brain, I was endeavoring to divine his thought in mine. It was a pretty game, played on the smooth surface of the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly your adversary's checker disappears beneath the board, and the problem is to place yours nearest to where his will appear again. Sometimes he would come up unexpectedly on the opposite side of me, having apparently passed directly under the boat. So long-winded was he and so unweariable, that when he had swum farthest he would immediately plunge again, nevertheless; and then no wit could divine where in the deep pond, beneath the smooth surface, he might be speeding his way like a fish, for he had time and ability to visit the bottom of the pond in its deepest part. It is said that loons have been caught in the New York lakes eighty feet beneath the surface, with hooks set for trout -- though Walden is deeper than that. How surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly visitor from another sphere speeding his way amid their schools! Yet he appeared to know his course as surely under water as on the surface, and swam much faster there. Once or twice I saw a ripple where he approached the surface, just put his head out to reconnoitre, and instantly dived again. I found that it was as well for me to rest on my oars and wait his reappearing as to endeavor to calculate where he would rise; for again and again, when I was straining my eyes over the surface one way, I would suddenly be startled by his unearthly laugh behind me. But why, after displaying so much cunning, did he invariably betray himself the moment he came up by that loud laugh? Did not his white breast enough betray him? He was indeed a silly loon, I thought. I could commonly hear the splash of the water when he came up, and so also detected him. But after an hour he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly, and swam yet farther than at first. It was surprising to see how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a water-fowl; but occasionally, when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than any bird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberately howls. This was his looning, -- perhaps the wildest sound that is ever heard here, making the woods ring far and wide. I concluded that he laughed in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources. Though the sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I could see where he broke the surface when I did not hear him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and the smoothness of the water were all against him. At length having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, and I was impressed as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his god was angry with me; and so I left him disappearing far away on the tumultuous surface.

* * *

 

The Schooner

The national importance of any type of merchant vessel is usually very difficult to decide to the satisfaction of everyone, for there are so many points of view from which the subject can be approached....by any of these measuring sticks the schooner must be accepted as the most important.

Howard I. Chapelle ¹

 

Those great vessels were the outcome of the need to meet the heaviest winter seas and wind, and to make a fast passage to market after a good haul of fish. Early market meant top prices, but there was pride of vessel also. Fishing captains and crews bragged far more of their fast able vessels after outsailing a rival than of their big share of money after making the top of the market.

James B. Connolly ²

 

The Gloucester schooner Elizabeth Howard ²

Schooners constitute a broad class of vessels defined by their rigging. Schooners are 'fore-and-aft rigged,' sails set along the line of the keel rather than perpendicular to it, as in, for instance, a square-rigged ship.

A schooner has at least two masts: a mainmast stepped nearly amidships, and a shorter foremast. To the foremast there may also be rigged one or more square topsails or, more commonly, one or more jib sails.

Although vessels rigged with square sails are excellent for long voyages before trade winds, they are poor for coastal sailing, where all varieties of winds must be dealt with. Fore-and-afters handle better in coastal winds, have shallower drafts, and require a smaller crew in proportion to their size.

Fishing vessels in the Ipswich Bay, 1887 ³

Pictured here are several gaff-rigged schooners at work. A small ketch-rigged boat (main mast to the fore) lies anchored at the center of the picture. At the right is a single-masted sloop boat.

Schooners evolved in colonial America from shallops, open boats up to thirty or forty feet that could be sailed or rowed. Fishermen used hand lines over the rails, operating from built-in standing platforms. Eventually these craft were decked over.

Two forms of schooner rig development, 1833. ⁴
The Chebacco boat to right, pink-sterned

Pink (pinched) sterned boats offer greater weatherliness. They are more buoyant and split the wave impact of a following sea. Double-ended craft like Pinkies were easier to build and were usually steered with a tiller.

A third form of schooner-rigged craft, 1833 ⁴
The square-sterned Dogbody boat

The square-sterned (transom)Dogbody version provided more space aft. The Chebacco boats and Dogbodies lacked a bowsprit, jib, and forestay. 'Chebacco' refers to the early name for Essex. As schooners developed, the elliptical stern allowed more space for the mechanical gear accompanying a steering wheel.

Boom and stern tackle, Banks schooner c. 1908 ⁵

Beginning in the mid-1840s Essex shipbuilders began incorporating the sharp lines of the 'Baltimore clippers.' Southern merchants had long valued those speedy schooners in privateering, blockade running, slave trading, and outrunning pirates (or revenue cutters) in the West Indies.

As the century went on fishermen were venturing out in larger vessels to distant Banks to find worthwhile catches. Schooner design sought to retain the fast lines of the southern craft with added capacity, seaworthiness and dryness. "The new schooner had the low freeboard, deep drag to the keel, raking ends, straight sheer and marked deadrise of the Baltimore flyers, combined with harder bilges and longer body, to give cargo capacity. Her bow, too, differed from that of a typical Baltimore schooner in that it was very round and full on deck, but due to the greater flare employed was rather sharp on the water line." ⁶
 

"Down comes the balloon" ²

Eventually some of the more treacherous features of the high flying fishing schooners were modified in the interests of safety. The 'knockabout' style of twentieth century schooners successfully retained speed and increased capacity by increasing bow sheer and reducing or eliminating the bowsprit.


Gloucester schooner converted to dragger. ⁷
Currently rigged for swordfishing with harpooning pulpit in bow.

Auxiliary engines began to be introduced to the fishing fleet early in the twentieth century, eventually transforming, then replacing the sailing craft. All-sail schooners became a rarity by the 1920s.

 

Power boats of course have never equaled the visual appeal of wind-driven vessels. In the following images painter-photographer John Coggeshall caught the final decades of the schooner plying the waters around the northern tip of Cape Ann. ⁸



Schooner leaving Lanes Cove



Schooner off Lanesville

Schooners, Rockport Harbor

With an eye for her beautiful lines, Erik Ronnberg chose the schooner M. S. Ayer as a modeling subject. He portrayed the handlining crew with hooks baited for cod on the shoals of Georges Bank.

The schooner carries only a riding sail to keep her nose pointed into the wind while fishing lines are over the rail. Erik wanted to look below the water line, "to give some idea of the working process itself."

Schooner M. S. Ayer

"I've admired clipper bows for a long time. Some vessels just catch your eye. I was fascinated by her looks. The availability of photos was an incentive, showing the rigging details and a stern view with the yawl boat on the davits."

"She was built sharp, for speed, a dangerous design in heavy weather. But her owners the Wonsons of East Gloucester knew how to pick good skippers, and rigged her with a moderate sail plan....The whole project was just fun. I was building the model to please myself, which is why I still have her."
 
Sources
1. The History of American Sailing Ships, Howard I. Chapelle, 1935.
2. American Fisherman, photos by Albert Cook Church, text by James B. Connolly, 1940. 
3. The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States, ed. George B. Goode, Government Printing Office, 1887. Courtesy of the Cape Ann Museum.
4.  Jonathon Parson's Exercise Book, 1833. Courtesy of the Sandy Bay Historical Society.
5. Down on T Wharf, The Boston Fisheries as Seen Through the Photographs of Henry D. Fisher, by Andrew W. German, Mystic Seaport Museum, 1982.
6. American Sailing Craft, Howard I. Chapelle, 1936.
7. A History of Working Watercraft of the Western World, by Thomas Gillmer, 2nd ed., 1994. 
8. John Coggeshall photographs courtesy of the Cape Ann Museum.
9. Erik Ronnberg, ship modeler and Maritime Curator at the Cape Ann Museum.

The Single-masted Fishery

From the protected coves to either side of Halibut Point fishermen operated sailing craft to increase their range, speed, and capacity in making a living.

The single mast with sails fore and aft distinguishes the sloop rig. The simplest arrangement is a mainsail and jib. The reach for greater capacity, requiring greater hull length and sail area, necessitates additional crew to hoist the sails up taller masts. At a certain sized hull the sloop rig becomes unwieldy and gives way to splitting the sail plan between two masts, in the schooner rig.

The years between 1880 and 1907, when auxiliary engines began to be utilized, saw the rise and fall of larger-hulled sloop boats in the Cape Ann fishing fleet. These single-masted clippers were typically constructed with deck lengths of forty to sixty feet. 

Only in the highly specialized business of freighting stone from Cape Ann quarries did the commercial sloop rig survive into the early decades of the twentieth century. The large single mast was ideally suited as a derrick post for working the heavy loading boom. The flagship of the Cape Ann Granite Company, the sloop Albert Baldwin, measured 86 feet at the waterline. Its main mast towered 90 feet, extended by a top mast of 43 feet. The huge mainsail, over 1,100 square yards, was the largest ever made in the lofts of Gloucester or Boston. It required a crew of four or five men to handle it.

Lanes Cove, late nineteenth century
Old Lanesville Collection, Lanesville Community Center

Mast and sail to harness wind power were added to water craft of all sizes and purposes. In the foreground of the Lanes Cove photo above, a man holds a portable rig to set in his dory when conditions and intentions dictate. He is easily able to manage operations by himself, for a low investment but limited capability.
 
Moored out in the Cove are a 'sloop boat' and two small fishing schooners. Behind them on the pier the tripod masts of a granite derrick complicate the picture of diverse spar configurations. The term 'sloop boat' on Cape Ann came to be applied to vessels of this type smaller in size than standard fishing schooners. A similar term was applied to small schooners, ie, 'schooner boats,' which would be appropriate to the ones pictured here. The addition of 'boat' to the name of the rig indicated diminutive size.

Pigeon Cove Harbor, early twentieth century
Charles Cleaves photo, Sandy Bay Historical Society



 During this period the small craft of the inshore fishing fleet at the north end of Cape Ann had to compete for wharf space with the robust vessels of the granite industry, which had capitalized the harbor developments, generated greater commercial value, and paid  the bulk of the wharfage fees. 

Pigeon Cove Harbor detail

In these photographs, dories and low-draft sloop-rigged boats up to about twenty-five feet in length are tethered along the margins of the harbor.



Fishing boats, Pigeon Cove c. 1907
Postcard courtesy of Bob Ambrogi

Fish houses line the shoulders of the Cove. The still modest facilities of the Cape Ann Tool Company are off to the left.

Market boats at Boston's T Wharf, 1913
Henry D. Fisher photo

In this photograph the sloop-boat Lillian, fishing with trawl lines or gill nets on ledges off Cape Ann with a crew of four, has offloaded 700 pounds of cod at Boston on April 25, 1913.

Gloucester sloop-boat Laura Enos
Launched 1901, 50' at deck
Model by Erik Ronnberg

Deeper water ports such as Gloucester harbor supported the larger sloop boats that became popular in the late nineteenth century, with the trim hull lines of a contemporary schooner at a much lower cost. The Laura Enos was the pride of a prospering immigrant from the Azores, engaged in various inshore fisheries. In the course of a day trip he could come around Halibut Point into the Ipswich Bay. Ultimately he might aspire to ownership of a full-sized schooner to reach the offshore banks.

Laura Enos model detail

Growing up in Gloucester, Erik Ronnberg watched his father make a model of a sloop-boat. "It was imprinted on me," he says. "A great-looking boat. That beauty is driven by, if not derived from, the fact that they have to go through the wind and the water with speed and safety. Their good looks follow along from that."

Sources

Howard I. Chapelle, The History of American Sailing Ships, 1935; and American Sailing Craft, 1936.

Down on T Wharf, The Boston Fisheries as Seen Through the Photographs of Henry D. Fisher, by Andrew W. German, Mystic Seaport Museum, 1982.

Erik Ronnberg, Maritime Curator at the Cape Ann Museum.

"One Survivor of the Famous Fleet Cape Ann Stone Sloops,"  an article by Captain Charlton Smith from an unidentified 1924 Boston newspaper in the files of the Annisquam Historical Society.

 

"Rockport's Old Salts Still Tell Thrilling Yarns of Stone Sloops" Boston Sunday Post April 8, 1945.