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.