USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Wiscasset > Wiscasset in Pownalborough; a history of the shire town and the salient historical features of the territory between the Sheepscot and Kennebec rivers > Part 50
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During the time that the Richard III was owned in Wiscasset she was com- manded entirely by Wiscasset men. One of her early masters was Capt. Jonathan Edwards Scott, but when she sailed from Greenock, Scotland, on March 14, 1861, for San Francisco where she arrived August twenty-seventh, laden with 1,445 tons of coal, Capt. John R. Greenough was in command. He was succeeded by Capt. Edward Hooker Wood, who took the ship on several long voyages to Callao, Kronstadt, Barcelona, Valencia, Bombay and Rio Janeiro.
The Richard III was in Wiscasset Harbor during the great gale of Septem- ber, 1869, and although in an exposed position, escaped damage as she had been hauled up on the flats for repairs.
About 1871, Capt. Joseph Tucker Hubbard took command of the ship and sailed in her for the next nine years. While he was in charge many of his townsmen made transatlantic voyages with him. Richard Hawley Tucker, for whom the ship was named, was a passenger in 1874, when the Richard III was bound for Liverpool with the first cargo of deals from the new mill at Wis- casset. His cousin, Joseph Patrick Tucker, also made the round trip to Liver- pool and return in 1875. In the autumn of 1878, when the Richard III went
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Richard III, launched October 29, 1859.
Ship Wiscasset, 1791. David Silvester, Esq., owner.
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....... 77. 30. 11
The whaleship Wiscasset, launched in October, 1833. Andrew Carnegie came over in this vessel in 1843.
Ships and Pirates
to Havre, France, arriving there the last day of the year, Nute Rines was one of the crew. On the voyage to Russia, James E. Ballard shipped as first mate and George H. Groves as seaman.
When the tide was high on the afternoon of April 22, 1880, the Richard III was towed from Charleston over the bar by the tug Republic and there set sail for Reval, Russia, and Helsingfors, Finland, with a full cargo of Carolina cotton. Taking advantage of the blue waters of the Gulf Stream, with its three-knot current to the northeast, the ship sighted the light on the Naze of Norway, rounded the Skaw, where a tall lighthouse (106 feet), round and red, stands sentinel on the tip of Jutland, entered Cattegat and cast anchor off Laeso Island, after a passage of thirty-five days out from Charleston.
When the ship was being unloaded at the Reval dock, pilfering peasant women with skirts made double would hide behind the bales and make a hole in the sackcloth in which the cotton was pressed, pull out handfuls of the fibre and tuck it away in between their skirts.
The return cargo was of railroad iron bars from Russia's great iron works in the Ural Mountains. A few furs and some Russian cigarettes in shiny blue boxes were stowed under the companionway. As supercargo came a young Russian, who had that year been implicated in a Nihilist plot to dynamite the Zimny Dvorets, Winter Palace, assassinate the Czar, Alexander II, and over- throw the existing régime. That attempt was unsuccessful but the father of the youth held a high official position in St. Petersburg and he knew full well that discovery would mean death or banishment for life as an exile to the bleak wastes of Siberia. He seized this opportunity of getting his son out of the country and under cover of darkness, the night before the ship sailed, without confiding his purpose to the captain, he brought the youth on board and bade him farewell. Father and son never met again. The Czar, Alexander II, was killed by a bomb in the Nevski Prospekt, the Regent Street of St. Peters- burg, March 13, 188 1, but the young Russian was then safe in South Carolina.
The homeward voyage was beset by storms. Off the coast of Sweden during a high wind the ship slipped her cable and dragged anchor. The anchor chain had be to payed out and the anchor cast away to prevent the Richard III from going ashore on Stockholm Rocks. She was obliged to put into Copenhagen to replace the lost anchor.
When in mid-ocean the ship encountered a September gale of such violence that the cargo shifted, throwing the vessel down on her beam ends with such force that she sprang a leak. For thirty-six hours every available seaman was
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ordered to man the pumps and work until the water was out of the hold, the iron replaced and the ship righted.
In October the Richard III reached Charleston and was ordered around the Horn to San Francisco. Owing to illness, Captain Hubbard was obliged to leave the ship and Capt. E. H. Wood, her former commander, came from Wiscasset to take her to the Pacific coast. In 1882 the Richard III was pur- chased by Middlemas & Boole, and subsequently changed ownership several times during the fifteen years she was running coastwise and offshore on the Pacific coast.
In 1897 she was converted into a coal barge for operation in British Colum- bian waters, subsequently making trips to Alaska. When Richard Hawley Tucker, then a famous astronomer, during a summer vacation spent in Alaska with his friend, Dr. Miller, rowed down from Juneau to Douglass Island, late at night on July 31, 1900, he was surprised when the moonlight revealed to him the Richard III, though much altered, for the upper masts and rigging had been taken down. She then hailed from Port Townsend, Washington, and was in the service of the Treadwell mine, carrying concentrates one way and a return freight of coal.
In January, 1907, the Richard III went ashore in the Clarence Straits off the coast of Alaska, between the islands of Prince of Wales and Revillagigedo, and became a total loss.
Among her commanders while owned in San Francisco were Captains James McIntyre and T. J. Conner, both of whom had been on the Pacific Coast for many years.
The Fannie Tucker
Wednesday, November 3, 1875, marked a day of jollification for Wiscas- set, for early in the afternoon a launching had been scheduled at the shipyard of Brown & Hodgkins at Birch Point, and the town took a holiday to witness that spectacle.
All of the wharves in the vicinity were crowded with onlookers and when the last blocks had been knocked away from beneath her keel, the ancient rite of christening was performed by her godmother who broke a bottle of champagne over her prow as she slid from her smoking ways and named her the Fannie Tucker, for the eldest daughter of Capt. Joseph Tucker, one of her principal owners. Other shareholders were William P. Lennox, Esq., Hon. Henry Ingalls, Capt. J. M. Roberts, her commander, and others of
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Wiscasset. Capt. Silas Nelson Greenleaf, who later purchased Captain Rob- erts' shares, was in command of the Fannie Tucker in 1882.
Although built under the inspection of the marine surveyor of the French Lloyds and receiving the highest classification, this ship did not measure up to the expectation of her owners.
She was a large vessel measuring 201 feet keel, 220 extreme length; 40 feet beam, 24 feet depth of hold, and of the burthen of 1,526 tons. As soon as she was completed on Friday, December tenth, she proceeded to Boston in ballast where she was chartered by Messrs. J. S. Farlow & Co. for a voyage, thence to Calcutta with ice, and a return passage to the United States. But on her arrival at the mouth of the Bramaputra, freights were so low that she was laid up for a year, during which time her timbers dried and shrank so that she had to be overhauled and refitted at great expense before she could sail for New York.
When at last she started homeward, according to regulations the vessel was provisioned with a year's supply of beef and hard tack, known to the sailors as salt horse and Liverpool pantiles (with thirty-two holes), ere they set sail and headed south for the Cape of Good Hope.
The report made by Captain Roberts on the arrival of the Fannie Tucker at New York is substantially as follows:
Soon after sailing from Calcutta, on October twenty-second, last, in latitude 6º North, longitude 85° East, he fell in with the English ship Kate Gregory, bound from Calcutta to Point de Galle, Ceylon, which was afire. Captain Rob- erts rescued the entire crew, numbering fifty-one persons. He provided amply for the men he had saved and all went well until November eleventh, when the crew of the British ship attempted mutiny, being led by the captain and the mates. The rescued captain demanded of Captain Roberts that he change his course for the island of Mauritius, due east of Madagascar, there to land himself, his officers and crew. This Captain Roberts refused to do as it would take him considerably off his course. Anticipating trouble, he placed a guard to watch the mutineers, and they soon ceased their demonstrations. Everything was quiet for the next fifteen days when the English captain again began to pester Roberts by insisting that he and his crew be set adrift in Mozambique Channel, which demand was likewise refused by Captain Roberts. He talked with the mutinous captain warning him of the consequences if he persisted in that line of conduct, and when this admonition had no effect he was obliged to keep him under restraint in irons, until the ship arrived at Algoa Bay in Cape
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Colony, where on December 20, 1878, the rescued crew were landed at Port Elizabeth.
Captain Roberts was quite within his rights in holding the boats as property of the ship until salvage should be paid, but while Captain Roberts was ashore the British captain went on board of the Fannie Tucker, and with some of his men took away the boats by force. These were afterward recovered when the facts were reported to the Collector of the Port who stopped the sale of the boats, and when Captain Roberts was obliged to continue his voyage, they were left in charge of the United States consul.
The Fannie Tucker made two voyages to India and then for some years was engaged in the California grain trade, making three voyages around the Horn. For three years she stayed in the Pacific during which time she made two voyages to Australia. Much of her time was employed in carrying coal from Seattle to San Francisco.
On her first passage from San Francisco to England which was in 1880, she sprang a leak in latitude 38° South and Captain Roberts changed his course and bore for Callao, Peru. On arriving there, the port was found to be blockaded by the Chilian war fleet so the Fannie Tucker headed south for Coquimbo, Chile. There she had to discharge a large part of her cargo and undergo expensive repairs, before proceeding on her way to the United Kingdom. In 1884 she made a passage of five months from Cardiff and then was laid up for a year at the end of which time she went north to British Columbia to load coal.
Capt. J. M. Roberts remained in the Fannie Tucker for the first six years and Capt. Silas Nelson Greenleaf took her from 1882 until she was sold in April, 1889, after the death of Capt. Joseph Tucker, at which time she was pur- chased for $ 35,000 by A. F. Stafford, a sail-maker of New York, who was sup- posed to represent the New Brunswick firm of Troop & Son of St. John. Under the new ownership the Fannie Tucker made one voyage to the Far East with case oil and on her return she took a general cargo from New York to Tacoma. She sailed on July 5, 1891, and a month later she put into Sao Salvador (Bahi de Todos-os-Santos) Brazil, leaking badly. At this time she was unloaded in order to disburden her sufficiently to make the necessary repairs, and a fire was found smouldering in her hold. She became a total loss. Charges of in- cendiarism were brought but proved to be groundless.
Capt. J. N. Frost who had purchased Captain Greenleaf's share when the Fannie Tucker was sold, was still in command when she perished.
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The First Wiscasset
The Wiscasset custom-house records show that there have been two ships named Wiscasset. The first, a double-decked vessel of 161 90/95 tons, 72 feet long with a breadth of 23 feet and depth of 1 I feet 6 inches, was built at Bristol in this county in the year 1791, and her first register was issued May 10, 1791, and signed by Francis Cook, who was then serving the first term as Collector of the District of Wiscasset, to which he was commissioned by President Washington. That ship was owned by David Silvester, Esq., and his son David, who were then well-known citizens of this town, and whose home was the substantial mansion which Joshua Silvester, another son of Squire Silvester, sold, in 1806, to Thomas McCrate, by whose descendants it was occupied at the time of its destruction by fire in 1866.
David Silvester was born here May 31, 1742. He was a son of Joshua and Mary Silvester, and a descendant of Richard Silvester who made application to become a freeman and was a resident of Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1630. The family, in which David was the eldest son, lived in the fort at Wis- casset (on Fort Hill) during two wars in the early perils of frontier life here, and his youngest sister, Rachel, was born in the fort. He was for many years an active and industrious business man, and became one of the most trusted and influential citizens of the town, and every movement in aid of the ad- vancement of the interests of this locality received his hearty support. Squire Silvester was also a selectman and a town clerk, and for several terms he repre- sented the town in the General Court of Massachusetts. He was one of the delegates from this town in the Constitutional Convention held at Boston in 1788 to consider and decide upon the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and he voted for its adoption by Massachusetts. In 1785, in association with Moses Davis, he was licensed to keep a ferry between Wiscasset and Edge- comb. Under a charter granted June 22, 1793, he was one of the original pro- prietors of the toll bridge at the place now called Sheepscot, owning one-third of the same. Directly in front of his residence, and on the water side of the street, were located his wharf and his dock, to and from which his vessels arrived and sailed after discharging and loading his cargoes.
His ship Wiscasset, like other Wiscasset ships, was engaged in the then flourishing trade between this port and Great Britain. After the decease of Squire Silvester, as he is known to this day, the Wiscasset was managed by his
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Wiscasset in Pownalborough
executors, one of whom was his son David, until 1799, when she was purchased by John Anderson.
The only existing picture of this first Wiscasset appears on a Liverpool pitcher owned by Miss Mary Gould of Groton, Massachusetts. No picture has been found of an earlier Wiscasset ship.
The last voyage of the Wiscasset was during the period of the French spoli- ation of American vessels and commerce. A letter written by Anderson in April, 1799, and addressed to the house of Anderson, Child & Child, of Liver- pool, states that he had recently purchased the ship Wiscasset, and that he de- sired that her freight and cargo from Wiscasset to Liverpool be insured for £1,000, in order that Anderson, Child & Child might have security for sums due them in case the ship should be taken. The ship sailed on, or about, the first of June with a cargo of oak, pine and maple logs and pine plank, which sold for £1,072: 13: 3. Her return cargo consisted of sixty-four hundred bushels of white salt and twelve tons of coal, the bill of lading of which, signed at Liverpool August 7, 1799, gives the destination of the vessel as Boston. Her last register, issued May 22, 1799, at which time Capt. John Stinson was master, was surrendered at Wiscasset June 9, 1800, and the end of her history is disclosed by the two words found at the bottom of the record: "Vessel lost."
John Anderson, her last owner, was an immigrant from Castle William, County Down, Ireland, and at the time he became owner of the Wiscasset, he was one of the leading ship owners of this town. Of his seven sons, one, Hugh Johnston Anderson, was Governor of Maine in 1844. Perhaps a few can even now recall the appearance of Anderson's great store, as it was originally called, which stood on the land now occupied by Lincoln Block. The Anderson build- ing with its "Dutch" doors (so constructed that the upper half being glazed swung independently of the lower half) and many paned windows, was an interesting specimen of the merchantile structures of his day.
The house of Anderson, Child & Child had several correspondents at Wis- casset, and so large were its transactions with our merchants that two of its members, Roylance Child and Baddesley Child, resided for some years at Wiscasset in the interest of their firm. Another member of the Child family was a familiar figure here for several years, and here he, John George Child, married the beautiful Elizabeth Parsons, daughter of Timothy Parsons and niece of Squire Silvester.17
17. The above account was taken from the papers of William D. Patterson.
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The Whaleship Wiscasset
In the year 1833 Messrs. William and John Hiscock built at their Noble- boro shipyard in the vicinity of the shell heaps on the eastern bank of the Damariscotta River, a staunch vessel of 380 18/95 tons, as appears by a copy of her register taken from the Wiscasset Custom House. This vessel was pur- chased directly after she was launched in October by Messrs. Wilmot Wood, Patrick Lennox and William Stacy, all of Wiscasset. The purchasers were a committee appointed by the Wiscasset Whale Fishing Company,18 1.18 for the townspeople had combined to buy and outfit the new vessel which was named the Wiscasset.
Although the halcyon days of the whale fishing business lasted nearly a dozen years, from 1835 to 1846, this was, as far as the records show, the only vessel which sailed from this town to engage in the Pacific whale fishery.
The Wiscasset was brought to this port by Capt. William Vincent, rigger, under jury masts and borrowed sails, safely rounding Linekin Neck and Gang- way Ledge and so up through Townsend Gut, only 70 feet wide, and by Swett's Island Channel, out into the main river and so to Wiscasset, where she arrived at three P.M., on the afternoon of the twenty-ninth of November. She was made fast to Parsons' Wharf and lay at her berth all winter until the following May, 1834, when she sailed on her first cruise.
William M. Boyd was president of the company and Wilmot Wood its secretary. From an advertisement for twenty seamen and green hands, also a blacksmith, in the columns of the Intelligencer, March 7, 1834, it appears that Jotham Parsons was the agent of the new first-rate whaleship Wiscasset, bound from the port of Wiscasset to the Pacific Ocean, and a news item states that the boats and casks for the voyage had been received from New Bedford.
The fitting of this ship was soon thereafter completed, and manned by men from this town and vicinity, in command of Capt. Richard Macy, an experi- enced whale fisherman, formerly of Nantucket, she started upon her maiden cruise. Of the log of this voyage no vestige has been found, and of the tidings
18. The Wiscasset Whale Fishing Company was a corporation organized under a charter granted by the Legislature of Maine, to John Brooks, William M. Boyd, Jotham Parsons, Nathaniel Coffin, William Stacy, Wilmot Wood, Barker Neal, Patrick Lennox and Joshua Damon, all of Wiscasset, and John Chase and Gardiner Gove, both of Edgecomb, their associates and successors, "for the purpose of carrying on the Whale Fishing at and from Wiscasset," with the power to "purchase and hold any estate real or personal for the objects of their association to an amount not exceeding at any one time in the whole, the value of One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Dollars." This charter was approved February 22, 1834.
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which the owners and relatives of members of the ship's company may have received during the absence of the ship, conjecture only can be made.
The results of the voyage are stated in the following news item found in the columns of the Lincoln Patriot, printed at Waldoboro, Friday, September 15, 1837:
By a letter from a gentleman in Wiscasset, we learn that the Whale Ship Wiscasset, Capt. Macy, arrived at that port on Monday morning last, after a passage of 120 days from the coast of New Zealand, with 2800 barrels of Sperm Oil and 80 barrels of White Whale Oil. The Wiscasset has been absent about forty months.
Only one hand was lost, and the voyage otherwise appears to have been a highly successful one. She arrived at her home port on September II, 1837. The returns of the voyage are said to have been sufficient to clear the ship of its entire cost and all of its bills.
A very interesting piece of scrimshaw work, a souvenir of the first voyage of the whaleship Wiscasset of Wiscasset, was preserved by the late Nathaniel Lincoln, in the tooth of a large cachalot, which was captured by the ship's crew in January, 1836, when a great school of sperm whales was sighted off the coast of New Zealand, in latitude 30° 30' South, and longitude 177° 30' West. Another tusk is said to have been treasured by Mrs. J. P. Gould of Bangor (Ellen Hubbard) a daughter of William McIntyre Boyd Hubbard whose brother G. W. Hubbard was a member of the crew of the whaler Wiscasset in the voyage of 1834-1837. So enormous was one of these gigantic creatures that he appeared like St. Brendan's whale, an island on the surface of the sea. When this leviathan was killed and the blubber tried out, the yield was ninety barrels of sperm oil.
Both of the whale's tusks were preserved by the sailors to prove the size of their capture. During the long days of their return voyage around the Horn, they polished these tusks until they had the finish of ivory. S. Svensen, a Swede, who was an apprentice to Capt. Isaac Lincoln, the father of Nathaniel Lincoln, was a member of the crew. With a sharp instrument he cut into the hard surface of the bone a picture of the capture and filled the grooves with India ink. On one side of the tusk the ship, true in every rope and spar, was depicted as hove to, while the boats harpooned the school of whales. The levia- than was pictured in the foreground raising his great tail and spouting, while the harping-iron was fast in his back.
On the opposite side of the tooth was etched the Wiscasset, under full sail, with streaming pennant, off Hendrick's Head light, almost home.
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A jawbone of the great whale was an object of curiosity at the Whaleship Wharf where it remained for a long time. It is now in the possession of Bowdoin College, at the Cleveland Museum.
The arrival of the Wiscasset was made the occasion of general jollification, bell-ringing, rocket-firing and whistle-blowing; in fact, so clamorous was the rejoicing that every inhabitant of the village was awakened to celebrate her triumphant return.
The second voyage of this whaleship was published in the Patriot thus: "Wiscasset, January 27, 1838. Sailed, the Whale Ship Wiscasset, Seth R. Horton, master, for the Pacific Ocean."
Three years later the Wiscasset was sold to a Sag Harbor19 whaling firm and made two successful voyages from that port, taking oil and bone worth $99,000.
Capt. Sylvester P. Smith commanded the Wiscasset and cleared from Sag Harbor, December 6, 1841, returning two years and six months later with 250 barrels of sperm, 2,600 barrels of whale oil and 2,700 pounds of bone, worth at the current rates $48,000.
Captain Payne made a voyage from Sag Harbor in the ship Wiscasset which lasted for two years and five months, sailing to the northwest coast for S. &. B. Huntting & Co., September 27, 1844. He returned February 19, 1847, with 3,700 barrels of whale oil and 34,000 pounds of bone worth $51,000. The records have very little to disclose about the Wiscasset, save that the vessel was then withdrawn from the fishery and sold to engage in the merchant marine. Her end is not known.
One incident worthy of mention is that when the Wiscasset sailed from Broomielaw in Glasgow, May 19, 1848, a small boy by the name of Andrew Carnegie, with his father and family, was emigrating from Scotland to the United States in this old whaleship.
In his own words:
We sailed from Broomielaw of Glasgow in the 800 tons sailing ship Wiscasset. During the seven weeks of the voyage I came to know the sailors quite well; learned the names of the ropes and was able to direct the passengers, to answer the call of the boatswain, for, the ship being undermanned, the aid of the passengers was urgently required. In conse- quence of which I was invited by the sailors to participate on Sundays in the one delicacy of the sailors mess, plum duff. I left the ship with sincere regret.
19. It was Mr. Charles Philip Cook, of Sag Harbor, a nephew of Colonel Huntting, a member of the firm to whom the Wiscasset was sold, who examined the Sag Harbor custom-house records and supplied that part of the information.
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The arrival in New York was bewildering. While I was walking through Bowling Green at Castle Garden, I was caught up in the arms of one of the Wiscasset's sailors, Rob- ert Berryman, who was decked out in regular Jack-ashore fashion, with blue jacket and white trousers. I thought him the most beautiful man I had ever seen. He took me to a refreshment stand and ordered a glass of sarsaparilla for me, which I drank with as much relish as if it were the nectar of the Gods, and I marvel at the dear old sailor. I have tried to trace him but in vain, hoping that if I found him he might be enjoying a ripe old age, and that it might be in my power to add to the pleasures of his declining years. He was my ideal Tom Bowling and when that fine old song is sung, I always see as the "form of manly beauty" my dear old friend Berryman. Alas! ere this he has gone aloft. Well by his kindness on the voyage he made one boy his devoted friend and admirer.
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