VANITY

Built for Edgartown fisherman Thomas Pease in 1923 and later sailed by his son Oscar Pease, VANITY was among the last of more than 140 vessels created by Edgartown master boatbuilder Manuel Swartz Roberts. She was used a working fishing boat for more than fifty years — the last working catboat on the island of Martha’s Vineyard and perhaps the last anywhere on the East Coast. After service in World War II, Oscar Pease operated her for decades in Edgartown Harbor, hiring out for fishing charters and beach picnics in the summer, dragging for scallops in the winter, and pursuing other species of fish and shellfish in season. When he died in 1995, he left Vanity to the Dukes County Historical Society (now the Martha’s Vineyard Museum), which maintains her as a “floating exhibit” and returns her to Edgartown each summer to take donors and VIPs on harbor cruises under sail.