USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Boothbay > The shipping days of old Boothbay from the revolution to the world war : with mention of adjacent towns > Part 16
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The first voyage was from Portland in January 1876 to the East Indies. Sixteen days out Captain Race was spoken in thirty-five west longitude 'All well,' and sixty-six days out he touched at Table Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and sailed for Algoa Bay, arriving in May. Here good anchorage was found except from the southeast. The bay is locally memorable as the first landing place of several thousand British
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THE BARKS
emigrants in 1820. A month later he weighed for Batavia, making the run via Mauritius in thirty-three days, or 180 days from Portland, in- · cluding time in ports. The bark proceeded to Soerabaja, Java, where loading was completed and in October sail was made for Portland. Arrival followed in 1877.
The next voyage was to Buenos Ayres in March, and the bark made the run there or to Montevideo in thirty-five days and seven hours, said at the time to have been the quickest passage from Portland ever made by a sailing vessel. The Lewis made other fast passages under Captain Race. Mr. Charles R. Lewis, bookkeeper and surveyor for the line, re- lated that on an East Indian voyage the bark made the run from Anjir Head, deep loaded with sugar, to Falmouth for orders in eighty-four days, and another from Boston to Melbourne in eighty-two days. Famous for her fast passages, the bark was a handsome vessel with fine lines and elliptical stern, the pride of Portland and the White Line. When new the principal owners were Russell and Benjamin Lewis; when lost the managing owners were H. and A. Allen of Bath.
Captain Henry W. Race was followed in command by Frank Mc- Carty, whom Alfred Race relieved about 1884 to make a Mediter- ranean voyage to Alicante. Salt in bulk of the heaviest known kind was loaded in Spain for Portland. Then a Captain Strout had the vessel for a time. About 1885 Adelbert Montgomery, formerly master of the bark Woodside, bought into the Charles R. Lewis and commanded her for a few years, then sold his interest to Eugene A. Reed, previously com- mander of barkentine Henry Warner. In August 1893 with Captain Reed in command the Lewis sailed from New York with hard coal for Portland and foundered. Mr. Lewis thought that during a heavy squall the cargo shifted and threw the bark on her beam ends. No one was left to tell the story. The Boothbay schooner Cora Louise also sailed from New York, and in the same storm was lost with all hands.
Descriptive of the old sailing-ship days an excerpt from the Boston Transcript is quoted, followed by part of a letter from a youthful local sailor:
The part which the wind-jammers played in the old-time New England trade with South America forms an interesting chapter in the history of American maritime enterprise even if it does not rank in importance with
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THE SHIPPING DAYS OF OLD BOOTHBAY
the story of the clipper ships and the China trade. There comes to mind the Lewis fleet which sailed from the port of Portland. It was composed of barks, small vessels in comparison with the ocean carriers of the present, but built with the lines of a yacht and further suggesting pleasure craft in their white paint, and their luxurious quarters below decks. They sailed back and forth almost with the regularity of steamships, and a round trip on one of them is now a precious possession in the memory of many a graybeard. In a sense tourist traffic to South America may be said to have had its beginning more than fifty years ago.
Dear Mother
Buenos Ayres 20th February 1870
We arrived here safely after a fine passage of fifty-one days, and have be- tween decks almost discharged. The mate, Mr. Hatch, is a fine man and says we are going to Boston and will be in at Union Wharf the last of May, if nothing happens. The Captain is a good man and feeds us on pies and doughnuts and I am quite satisfied. We have a good crew and there has been hardly a cross word spoken since I have been on board. Our bark is the prettiest one in port. As we lie four or five miles from land, I have not yet been on shore and have had no chance to see the place.
March 6th. We are discharged now and have 2000 hides in. We had four passengers out, one of them reminded me of Annie Parker, and expect to have some on the return voyage. Tell Mary I will try to obtain some ostrich feathers for her. I saw William Boyd here and he goes to Cuba.
R. W. Emerson
CHAPTER XII
THE SHIPS
C YOMPARATIVELY few full-rigged ships were constructed at Boothbay, A and the first of known record was named Commerce. The place where the keel of this small ship was laid down in the year 1795 is now unknown, but the owner, Edward Creamore, had a wharf and store near by the present West Harbor post office. The Wiscasset registry states: 'the ship has a square stern, no galleries, and no figurehead,' ... that 'she has two decks and registers 213 tons.' Robert Reed listed her length as eighty-five feet, width twenty-four feet and depth twelve feet.
The wages of the first master, Ephraim Delano, and crew follow:
the Master
Dolls. 30. 22.
Chief Mate
Second do 20.
Carpenter 18.
Six Seamen 78.
one Boy 7.
Dolls. 175.
The ship became a London trader, and when about to sail from Liverpool caught fire one night. It started in hay for horses on board and spread with great rapidity; two passengers were injured severely by an explosion of gunpowder, and others barely escaped with their lives. The Commerce was not damaged beyond repair and resumed the trans-Atlantic trade, and Creamore advertised: 'Sewing and Salmon Twine by wholesale or retail on credit, delivered at Wiscasset, if re- quested,' and 'A large assortment of Hard Ware, Woolens, etc., also groceries of the greatest variety.'
The final voyage of the Commerce, commanded by William McNeil Watts of Warren, under the young stars and stripes came in November of 1799. Nine days out of Liverpool for Boston with 'sundry articles of merchandise' consisting of woolens, broadcloth, stationery, whips, and twenty-seven hogsheads of porter in bottles, valued at over 1000 pounds sterling and owned by a passenger, Alexander Fullerton of Boston, the ship was captured by the French privateer Le Arrivage* of Bordeaux
* So spelled in old record.
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THE SHIPPING DAYS OF OLD BOOTHBAY
and sent in at Saint Andero on the Bay of Biscay. At Bilbao or Santan- der, Spain, where the ship was detained, the vessel was condemned by · the French consul. Fullerton took passage at Bilbao in the brig Rover and after a long passage and delay by ice floes in the cold latitudes ar- rived at Beverly in April 1800.
Another ship owned solely by Edward Creamore was the Townsend, constructed in 1793 at Cushing. Although small (172 tons), no larger than an ordinary brig of a later period, she had two decks. Boothbay was her home port until about 1797, then Wiscasset. The Townsend was employed in West Indian trade, commanded successively by Thomas Winch, William M. Reed, Joseph Trutt, Samuel Patterson, Ebenezer Gove, Isaac Hilton and perhaps others.
Edward Creamore, or Creamer as later spelled, was a physician and interesting character connected with the early history of Boothbay and Wiscasset. He seems to have settled first at Salem, Massachusetts, where he married Eunice Delano (or Deland). In May 1782 Creamore was ad- mitted to Essex Lodge of Freemasons, whose records show that he was born in Ireland in 1756. In 1792 the Doctor was one of the charter members of Lincoln Lodge, A. F. and A. M., of Wiscasset. About 1790 Doctor Creamore practised medicine at Boothbay, purchased land at the western harbor and built a home, sheds and a wharf, and engaged in trading and shipping. After a few years his activities were trans- ferred to Wiscasset, for in the town newspaper of April 1797 he ad- vertised that:
Edward Creamore of Boothbay, has removed to the store formerly occu- pied by Timothy Parsons, Esq., who has for sale an extended assortment of European Goods consisting of Hard Ware; Likewise a large quantity of Salmon and Sewing Twine-Dry Fish.
The loss of the Doctor's schooner Frederick and his ship made him more or less of a bankrupt, and in April 1800 he conveyed: 'Lands in Boothbay together with all the houses, wharves and buildings on the same erected by the said Creamore or others' to a Mr. Loring. Mention of the Doctor at Boothbay is found as late as 1802, when because of the Spanish spoliation of his ship he had a claim against the Government.
According to family records Edward Creamore died in July 1810 at
THE SHIPS
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Saint Anne, Jamaica, where he was buried. In a novel entitled Oak- ridge, the scene of which is laid in Wiscasset, the Doctor appears as one of the minor characters. His widow died in 1815, aged fifty-two. They had a family of seven children. Benjamin (1794-1854) married Anne M. Brace, said to have been an English resident of Saint Anne. Pre- sumably born at Boothbay, he died in Salem. A daughter, Ellen, mar- ried John Francis, inventor of a lifeboat. Of other children no record is available.
Contemporaneous with the Commerce was the ship Wiscasset, owned there by Silas Lee, Thomas Rice, David and Joshua Silvester. Of only 161 tons, she was built at Bristol in 1791. Soon after, Captain Richard Holbrook was in command, and her career ended under Cap- tain John Stinson. Early in 1800 the ship returned to Demerara leak- ing, and a little later was either condemned or lost.
In 1833 a ship of 380 tons, also named Wiscasset, was constructed at Nobleboro for William M. Boyd, president, and other stockholders of the Wiscasset Whale Fishing Company.
The whaling industry came to the fore in the early days of our coun- try, and the whaleships of Nantucket and New Bedford hold a memo- rable place in annals of the sea. Numerous small ships, totaling 4129 tons, were engaged in whaling in 1794; but the palmy days of the busi- ness came after the War of 1812 and it reached its peak in 1858, with ton- nage of 198,594 engaged. When minister to England in 1849, the Hon. Abbott Lawrence wrote in part: 'The skill and courage of American seamen have created, in that hazardous and almost romantic branch of national industry, a marine of 750 ships, belonging to the United States, which may be found in every sea.'
In May 1834 the Wiscasset was ready, and under command of Rich- ard Macy sailed provisioned for a long voyage. During the year the ship was reported off Cape Horn with loss of rudder, again at New Zealand early in 1837 'to sail for home soon.' Later she was spoken near the Bay of Islands, thirty-three months out, and her arrival on a Sunday eve- ning in September, 120 days from the coast of New Zealand with 2800 barrels of sperm oil, 'was greeted with general rejoicing by the citizens of Wiscasset.' It was a voyage of more than three years. Of the ship's
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THE SHIPPING DAYS OF OLD BOOTHBAY
master Mr. John R. Spears, in his excellent biography of Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer, says in part:
'Capt. Richard Macy, of Nantucket, "a very intelligent man,“ who had "long been engaged in the whale fishery," and had "shown more than usual skill in his observations" ... discovered an island four or five miles in extent, in south latitude 59 and west longitude 91, his ship passing "near enough to see the breakers." ' This happened sometime before April 1825, when he reached home.
Seth B. Horton relieved Macy and voyaged to the Pacific. In 1840 his ship was reported to have sailed from Tahiti with a cargo of oil, but a fire set by the cabin boy necessitated a return to port. Finally, in July 1841 Captain Horton arrived in the Sheepscot, forty-two days from Saint Salvador, with 1200 barrels of whale oil, 900 barrels of sperm oil, 17,000 pounds of whalebone and 6500 in specie for oil sold. To old-time whalemen sperm oil from the sperm whale was superior and more valuable than oil from the bowhead and southern right whale. The former was used in the old whale-oil lamps. Although whal- ing was profitable danger was frequently encountered. In 1816 the brig Philip in consequence of fouling a whale foundered in the Atlantic.
In the spring of 1848 Andrew Carnegie, aged thirteen, and his younger brother set sail from Glasgow in the Wiscasset to seek their fortunes in America, in which the former was signally successful. After seven weeks' passage, 'I left the ship with sincere regret,' wrote Andrew in later years.
In the fall of 1853 a splendid ship was launched at Boothbay and christened Aphrodite, after the goddess of love and wedlock in Greek mythology who, according to a legend, rose from the sea, hence 'foam- born.' The Aphrodite was a well-constructed ship of 680 tons (147: 10 × 31:7 × 15:9). A press notice lists John McDougall as the builder, evi- dently a mistake, since the official register states that Stephen Sargent was the sole owner of the new ship. She was sold to hail from Boston, and was taken there by Captain Samuel Wylie, who was relieved by Benjamin Melcher, of Brunswick, part owner and master. The other shareholders were George W. Kendall and John G. Richardson of Bath, P. Adams Ames, Henry L. Richardson and Samuel Page of Boston.
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THE SHIPS
Command of the ship devolved upon Charles F. Hardy, who in 1855 sailed from New York for Melbourne, touched at Table Bay and ar- rived in June. Thence he proceeded to Batavia and Semarang, Java, and in October sailed for Rotterdam. At Saint Helena, a towering mass of rugged rock rising out of the sea with a forbidding aspect, the ship touched for supplies and in December sailed in fine order. The Aphro- dite was never heard from afterward. Captain Hardy left a wife and children to mourn his loss. The ship was valued at $40,000, largely insured.
Early in April 1855 a double-decked ship was christened Northern Queen, beneath a fine figurehead, and slid down the ways at Race's Point, Hodgdon's Mills. She was constructed of oak and hackmatack by Charles Murray, and was of full model (142:3 × 30:8 x 19:6). The Queen hailed from Westport. The owners there were George W. Jewett, Ezekiel and Samuel Tarbox jr., and the Boothbay shareholders were Tyler and A. P. K. Hodgdon, Charles Murray and Allen Hodgdon, the master.
In November 1856 the Northern Queen sailed from New York for Bristol, England, with a full and valuable cargo of flour and wheat. Afterward no tidings were received. The value of the ship was $25,000. On the ill-fated voyage the mate was Granville Hodgdon, twenty-four and a brother of the master. They were natives of Sawyer's Island, sons of Tyler Hodgdon. Allen was born in 1820, and before he was thirty commanded the bark L. and A. Hobart.
The Judith was built at Boothbay in 1853 and hailed from New Orleans, there owned by Michael Heine, with exception of a sixteenth share owned by James Borland of Brooklyn. The ship was 172 feet in length, thirty-five in beam, registered 993 tons and bore a figurehead. Richard S. Brown was the first master.
The Odessa, launched from Andrew and William Adams's yard late in 1854, hailed from Damariscotta; owners, George Barstow and the builders. (Dimensions: 159 × 33:6 x 22:6; 820 tons.) Her depth was five feet more than Judith's, a larger ship with less draft for crossing the bar at the Pass of the Mississippi. A figurehead of an eagle adorned the prow of Odessa, a fine specimen of the American deep-water vessel.
The pride of Boothbay in the 1850's was the fine ship John G.
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THE SHIPPING DAYS OF OLD BOOTHBAY
Richardson, constructed by John W. Weymouth and launched April 5 1855. This substantially built vessel of 857 tons united carry- ing capacity with a beautiful sharp model and excellent finish, and was the nearest approach to a clipper ship that the local shipyards furnished to the American merchant marine. Benjamin H. Lewis was master.
He had no trouble whatever in shipping a crew, for the young men of the village were eager to sign up for the maiden voyage to London, where the celebrated Crystal Palace at Sydenham housed a world-wide fair. An inkling of the enthusiasm manifested may be had from a de- scription of a gathering planned to include the crew, related by Mrs. Annie B. Kenniston:
Among the sailors were my brother, Ben Blair, George Reed, also George Reed of up-town, and I think two of John Reed's sons. Another was Samuel M. Dodge of Edgecomb, later Captain Dodge, who married Orra, daughter of Leonard McCobb. I think they became acquainted on that day. The picnic was held on the 'Maul' on the west side of Holton's hill, where there was a large flat ledge with green mosses growing around it and embowered with trees,- a very beautiful place. A savory clam chowder was prepared by Mrs. Jackson, wife of a new physician who had come to town, and who was a great acquisition to the young people.
After the chowder was eaten a procession was formed and we marched down the hill to the music of a band consisting of a bass horn played by Isaac N. Blish, later killed in the Civil War, and a fife and drum. Weld Sargent was the fifer. We marched down to the old yellow McFarland house next to the Second Congregational Church. It was a large square house with a cornice around it and then stood back from the road and fronted south. Here we spent the evening playing 'strip the willow' which was nothing more than what we now call the Virginia reel. The game was taught to us by Mrs. Jackson in the old long kitchen. Someone played on the violin and the old kitchen resounded with our laughter.
Now, who were there? I can only guess after a lapse of sixty-five years. The three Sargent boys, Oscar, Lyman and Edward, and Ruel and William Smith. I don't remember that John Emerson was there, but Mary Emerson was and also Mary Holton, Josephine and Kate McClintock and Ellen and Mary Sargent. I think George Kenniston was there, because we had a high school at the Centre and we became acquainted with the boys and girls up there. We little thought that in a decade of time several of those happy boys
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THE SHIPS
would be lying dead on Southern battlefields; others languishing in Libby prison and little N. Curtis McFarland starved to death, under the sod of Andersonville prison.
Doubtless hearty cheers and good wishes accompanied the new ship as sail was made for Saint John to load lumber, and the passage to the river Thames was made in June. With cargo discharged the boys were at liberty to visit the fair. At Shields coal was loaded for New York and a pleasant summer passage followed. In contrast was a winter voyage from New York, during which the Richardson was nearly lost in a gale January 7 1856. In mid-Atlantic the main-topgallant mast carried away, and the ship was thrown on her beam ends. Several hundred bags of wheat were thrown overboard, and the ship righted and arrived in Falmouth for orders.
Thereafter the vessel was operated in the New Orleans cotton trade on a more or less triangular run. For instance, after arrival in England in 1860, coal was carried from Cardiff, Wales, to Rio Janeiro; and Bra- zilian coffee to Mobile and New Orleans. 'For Bremen,' reads The New Orleans Crescent January 11 1861, 'The A 1 very fast sailing ship J. G. Richardson, Captain Lewis, is now ready to receive cargo and will have immediate despatch. For balance of freight apply to Baxter, Lowell and Company.' The outbreak of war was imminent, conditions were unsettled, and Northerners hastened preparations for departure. In the river was John B. Emerson's bark Windward, and the Boothbay masters cleared at the custom house on the sixteenth, the ship with 2553 bales of cotton. Soon after the completion of the voyage a Captain Kendall took the Richardson, which in November 1862 was spoken on a passage from London to Melbourne.
'During her career the ship made a number of fast passages,' related the first master's nephew, Charles R. Lewis, and: 'On one occasion the J. G. Richardson sailed from New Orleans in company with three British ships and soon after leaving port a hurricane was encountered. The British ships were love to under one tack, went ashore and were lost. The Richardson, which had been hove to on the opposite tack, rode out the tremendous storm in safety.'
It is a coincidence that the Richardson sailed from Saint John on
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THE SHIPPING DAYS OF OLD BOOTHBAY
the first and also on her last voyage. On the fifth day out in 1868, with lumber for Buenos Ayres, a September gale blew with terrific violence · for six hours, doubtless a sou'easter, which completely wrecked the ship. The youthful master, Oliver, described the storm as the most violent he had experienced; that sails and spars were carried away; that the seams were so strained that she filled to the waterline and that the cargo alone kept the vessel afloat. Two days later the bark E. B. Hawkes hove in sight and rescued all hands. The ship was abandoned.
Afterward Captain Oliver sailed for R. Lewis and Company, until he retired, as master of the barks Ella and Tatoy; in 1884 the latter was lost near White Head, Nova Scotia. George W. Kendall was the manag- ing owner of the Richardson, owned when new by the builder, the first master and other citizens of Boothbay, and John Green Richardson of Bath.
The Wanderer, a name appearing frequently in annals of the sea, was launched late in 1854 at Hodgdon's Mills by John McDougall. In the specific and not the generic sense, she was the largest ship con- structed within the Boothbay yards (dimensions: 183:7 x 37:7 x 24). Early in 1855, before the first voyage, the Wanderer was owned in New York by Stephenson and Foster; in the 1860's solely by John Foster and hailed from Boston, commanded by Joseph Stetson. Earlier he had been master of the Maine brigs Beronda and Lealah and the steamer T. F. Secor.
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CHAPTER XIII
VESSELS AND VOYAGES OF THE EMERSONS
T THE clipper ship Rainbow, designed with concave bows by John Griffiths and launched at New York in 1845, is a familiar name to those interested in the lore of the sea; yet few know that her first master, John Land, was the principal owner of a full-rigged brig named after his famous ship. His third wife was Rebecca Clifford, of Edge- comb, and Jotham D. Clifford had the Rainbow constructed at the Robert Murray yard on Dyer's River, a tributary in Newcastle of the Sheepscot, where the ruins of a blacksmith shop mark the site of the old shipyard.
Well built of oak and chestnut and of 200 tons burden, the new brig was for sale in Boston late in 1847; owned the following March by John and Rebecca Land, James Bliss, Gilman Greenwood, all of Boston; Margaret A. Clifford of Edgecomb; William S. Emerson, Marshal Smith, Nathaniel G. Pinkham jr., all of Boothbay; and John Holmes of Newcastle. Captain Emerson was master.
Since the first voyage of the principal character among the Emerson mariners begins with the maiden trip of the Rainbow, this and parts of other family letters are inserted:
My Dear Son John
Schooner Extio, New Orleans June 27 1847
So far away I feel a good deal of anxiety for your happiness and the un- certainty of ever seeing you again. By a letter I received from your mother before I left Boston I was very sorry to learn you had a strong propensity for following the sea; it is the last business that I should recommend you to engage in; its pleasures and its pain I profess to be pretty well acquainted with and for one of your tender age to want to go to sea is ridiculous. Can you tell what capacity you could fill on board a vessel? You do not know the deprivations of a sailors life and I hope you never will by experience. I was in my seventeenth year when I started, and if you should go to sea it would be time enough to commence at the age of eighteen or twenty years. Educa- tion is the most important for you to prosecute at this time of your life, what you can learn now will be of immense value to you in your advanced years.
I have a man with me now that was telling me that when he first went to sea he was twelve years old and the crew took and mixed Lamp oil and
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THE SHIPPING DAYS OF OLD BOOTHBAY
blacking and daubed all over his face and then took an old Iron hoop and shaved it off, and a great many boys are abused in the same way and worse when they get away from home and have no one to take their part. Many sailors are unfeeling, the desperate part of Creation. I have not time to add any more but shall always rejoice to hear that you are a good dutiful boy.
Your affectionate Father W. S. Emerson.
John overcame parental objections to his following the sea and joined the brig at Wiscasset. On the passage thence in April 1848 until Cape Cruz was sighted, nothing of interest occurred with the excep- tion of speaking the new Baltimore bark W. H. G. Wright, from Demerara. They coasted along the southern shore of Cuba and the evening air was scented with its indefinable odor of tropical vegeta- tion and of the earth itself. The log book says: 'At midnight hove the topsail to the mast and laid by until five A.M.,' when sail was made and, .guided by a pilot, the brig passed a narrow entrance guarded by a pic- turesque fort and entered the magnificent landlocked harbor of old Saint Jago de Cuba, and in mid-afternoon anchored off the town with its red-tiled, one-story houses built in the quaint style of southern Spain. Now called Santiago, 'It was from this port that Hernando Cortez set sail in a little squadron for the Conquest of Mexico,' wrote William H. Prescott.
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