A Schooner for the Ages

The sun was rising over New Bedford, Massachusetts, on April 12, 2015, and a light northerly was flapping flags on State Pier as Capt. Charlie Mitchell shifted his 58' tugboat, JAGUAR, into reverse. From the helm, Mitchell watched the short hawser on his bow rise, shudder, and pull tight. With a small crowd watching from the docks, he throttled up JAGUAR’s 1,000-hp diesel engine and eased the weary remains of the legendary schooner ERNESTINA-MORRISSEY out toward Buzzards Bay.

The schooner, whose careers as a Gloucester fishing schooner, Arctic explorer, and Cape Verdean packet were recounted in the previous two issues of this magazine, lacked her booms, topmasts, and sails. She had been named EFFIE M. MORRISSEY during her fishing and Arctic years and renamed ERNESTINA when she joined the packet trade. In 2014, in honor of her long, brilliant, and varied career, she was renamed ERNESTINA-MORRISSEY. And she was bound, on this Sunday morning, for a massive rebuilding in Boothbay Harbor, Maine.

What of her hogged ’midships, droopy sheer, and concrete-patched transom might survive this project? The state wanted a faithful restoration, and had entrusted that to Boothbay Harbor Shipyard. Shipwright Harold Burnham, of Essex, Massachusetts, would serve as the owner’s representative.