Phoenix of the Seas

Timeline

February 1, 1894 – Schooner Effie M. Morrissey is launched at James & Tarr Shipyard in Essex, Massachusetts, for the John F. Wonson Company in Gloucester

1894-1905 – The Morrissey fishes out of Gloucester under William Morrissey, Clayton Morrissey and other captains, mainly dory-trawling for cod on the Grand Banks

1905 – The vessel is sold to Captain Ansel Snow of Digby, Nova Scotia

1905-1914 –Ansel Snow and other Canadian captains sail out of Nova Scotia ports in the Morrissey, but make use of the vessel’s U.S. registry to sell their catches in American ports

1914 – The Effie M. Morrissey is sold to Captain Harold Bartlett of Brigus, Newfoundland

1914-1924 – Harold Bartlett converts the schooner to a coastal trader, carrying coal, salt and general merchandise to Newfoundland and Labrador

1924 – Harold Bartlett sells the Morrissey to his cousin, Captain Robert Bob Bartlett, who had earlier won fame as Admiral Peary’s Arctic navigator

1925 – Bob Bartlett makes an unsuccessful cod-fishing trip

1926 – In preparation for the Morrissey’s first scientific expedition to the Arctic, this one organized by publisher George Palmer Putnam, Bartlett modifies the schooner for ice conditions by adding an auxiliary engine and reinforcing the hull with greenheart wood

1926-1941 – In annual expeditions sponsored by scientific institutions, museums and zoos, Bartlett cruises to Arctic regions north of Canada, Greenland and Siberia with parties of scientists, and with teen-age apprentices who become known as Bartlett Boys. Films shot during these trips become popular short subjects in movie theatres.

1928 – On the longest cruise made by the vessel, Captain Bartlett takes the Morrissey from Newfoundland down through the Panama Canal and up the west coast of North America and through the Bering Sea into the Siberian Arctic and back, on an expedition sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History

1940 – In the course of an expedition to the northwest corner of Greenland, Captain Bob sails the Morrissey to her farthest point north, 635 land miles from the North Pole

1942-1945 – When America enters World War II the Morrissey is requisitioned and, under Captain Bartlett, serves as both a U.S. Army and Navy vessel in construction of air bases in the Canadian Arctic, and in resupplying weather stations on Greenland

1946 – Bob Bartlett dies, the Morrissey is sent to Gloucester and put up for sale

1946-1947 – Three veterans of South Pacific naval operations – Melvin and Sidney Jackson and Michael Wassel – purchase the Morrissey and fit it out for a trip to Tahiti, but get no farther than Haiti

1947 – Fire breaks out in the Morrissey at a pier in Flushing, New York, and she is swamped by fire department hoses. The vessel is salvaged, sent to Rowayton, Connecticut, and once again offered for sale.

1948 – Henrique Mendes, a Cape Verdean-American with long experience putting worn-out vessels to use as packet ships in the Cape Verde islands, buys the Morrissey, takes her to New Bedford and makes repairs with volunteer help

1949 – Mendes sails the Morrissey – without engine or radio – to Cape Verde with cargo and one passenger, and has the vessel’s name changed to the Ernestina

1949-1963 – With various captains operating the boat, Henrique Mendes makes eight transatlantic round trips between Cape Verde and Providence. Most of his commerce is in shipping merchandise and carrying passengers in the Ernestina to destinations on the Cape Verde islands.

1963-1967 – Henrique Mendes retires, sells the schooner to his daughter Ernestina and her husband Luiz Silva Randall. Randall sends the Ernestina on two more trips to Providence and back, under Captain Alexander Fortes.

1967-1976 – Luiz and Ernestina Randall sell the Ernestina to Alberto Lopes. Badly deteriorating, the ship sails less and less, as repatriation efforts begin in America.

1976 – After repairs, the Ernestina sets sail to take part in OpSail ‘76 in New York harbor, a major U.S. Bicentennial event. Soon after departure the schooner is dismasted and forced to return to Cape Verde.

1977-1982 –Restoration continues, funded by the Cape Verde government and through funds raised by the National Schooner Ernestina/Morrissey Friends Committee. Through negotiations between Michael Platzer and the newly independent Cape Verdean government, the President of Cape Verde offers the Ernestina as a gift to the people of the United States. The Schooner Ernestina Commission is formed by the state of Massachusetts to take delivery of the vessel.

1982 – The Ernestina is repatriated, sailing back to America and home-ported in New Bedford

1983-1990 – Dan Moreland is named captain and executive director of the Ernestina, and embarks on a program to raise funds through ambassadorial visits to East Coast ports and presence at maritime events. The vessel is restored to her original fisherman configuration, with progress toward gaining Coast Guard certification.

1986 – The Ernestina joins the Parade of Sail in New York harbor for OpSail ’86 celebrating the centennial of the Statue of Liberty

1987 – On a Great Lakes cruise to Michigan and Wisconsin, the Ernestina is introduced to Heartland America. The vessel is certified by the U.S. Coast Guard for sail training, and Captain Moreland and the Ernestina organization earn an award for outstanding commitment to excellence in historic preservation from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

1990 – The Ernestina is designated a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Interior Department. Amid charges of accounting irregularities, Captain Moreland and all members of the Schooner Ernestina Commission are discharged.

1991 – Under a new captain, Gregg Swanzey, the Ernestina sets out on a transatlantic goodwill tour with a crew that includes disadvantaged youths training as apprentice seamen. But the ship is caught in the fringes of the Perfect Storm, funding is withdrawn, and the cruise aborted.

1994 –Governor William Weld designates the Ernestina the official vessel of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and reconstitutes the Schooner Ernestina Commission. The schooner, with Gregg Swanzey as executive director, begins a decade of on-board and dockside educational activities for school children, seniors and persons with disabilities.

1998 – The Ernestina hosts a reunion cruise of Bartlett Boys who, in their teens, had sailed to the Arctic in the vessel when she was the Effie M. Morrissey

1999 – During this typical year in her educational role the Ernestina is at sea 165 days, covering 4,000 miles

2000 – Taking part in OpSail 2000 in which tall ships visit seaports the length of the East Coast, the Ernestina welcomes visitors aboard in Wilmington, Delaware north to Halifax, Nova Scotia

2001 - The Ernestina is victorious in the race of large schooners at the annual Gloucester Schooner Festival, and Captain Willi Bank is presented the trophy by Senator Ted Kennedy, a long-time supporter of the vessel

2002 – Reunion cruises are organized for crew members who sailed on the Ernestina’s repatriation transatlantic crossing in 1982, and for members of the Morrissey family, mainly those descended from Captain Clayt Morrissey

2003 – State funding for the schooner is sharply reduced, she loses Coast Guard certification, and is tied up at the dock in the New Bedford Whaling National Historic Park. Volunteers incorporate the Schooner Ernestina-Morrissey Association (SEMA), and pursue fund-raising and basic maintenance activities over the next decade.

2007-2009 – Restoration work on the forward part of the schooner is conducted in Boothbay Harbor, Maine under the direction of Essex shipwright Harold Burnham

2014 – Thanks to funding granted through the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, and pledges from two generous philanthropists, the vessel is saved once again. Renamed the Ernestina-Morrissey, she is to be towed to the Boothbay Harbor Shipyard for total restoration.

Contents

Timeline

Preface

Acknowledgements

First Incarnation: Gloucester Highliner

1. Let Her Be the Effie M. Morrissey

2. Pride of the Wonson Fleet

3. Mixed Nationality at Digby

4. Coaster to the Settlements

Second Incarnation: Arctic Voyager

5. Down and Out on Murray Hill

6. The Morrissey’s Last Cod

7. George Putnam’s Arctic Circus

8. To the Pacific for a Theory

9. Co-Starring on the Silver Screen

10. Monument at Cape York

11. Bob Bartlett’s Arctic

12. Louise Boyd’s Secret Mission

13. The Morrissey as Warship

14. Farewell to the North

Third Incarnation: Packet to Cape Verde

15. The Morrissey Adrift

16. Enter Henrique Mendes

17. Becoming Ernestina

18. Transatlantic Lifeline

19. The Brave Packet Years

20. Downward Spiral

21. Bicentennial Breakdown

22. Renewal at Mindelo

23. Mid-Atlantic Suspense

Fourth Incarnation: Ocean Educator

24. An Active Sailing Program

25. Perfect Nightmare

26. Fiesta for a Legend

27. An Incredible Bargain

28. To Take Wing Once Again!

Notes

Index

Illustrations

Preface

This book changed course during the writing, for a very happy reason.

Let me go back to the beginning. When it occurred to me that a book should be written about the Ernestina-Morrissey, the prospects for the vessel were dim indeed. Although she had been designated the official vessel of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, much of the state funding had been withdrawn. She had been declared by the U.S. Coast Guard unfit to carry passengers, after which she was tied up at a dock for a decade. Hopes for her ever to sail again were kept alive by an undiscourageable collection of former crew members, wooden boat enthusiasts, and marine history savants. All of them believed passionately that a ship with such a remarkable history as this one should not be allowed to die.

After all, this vessel had sailed in three centuries, and burst into a new life from metaphorical ashes three times. She was an Essex-built Gloucester fishing schooner originally named the Effie M. Morrissey. She measured 114 feet in length overall. Not very imposing for a state vessel? After all, the state ship of land-locked Ohio, the nuclear submarine U.S.S. Ohio, is 560 feet long overall, almost five times the length of the Ernestina-Morrissey. But the size of a vessel does not necessarily equate to her significance. Another wooden vessel, estimated to have been a foot shorter in length than the Ernestina-Morrissey, made quite a splash when she entered Massachusetts waters. That was the Mayflower.

For ten years out of Gloucester the Morrissey battled northwest gales on the Grand Banks in pursuit of cod, and made winter runs to Newfoundland for bait herring, her rigging rigid with ice. Then did the same for another decade out of Nova Scotia ports.

Legendary Arctic navigator Captain Bob Bartlett took her over and for fifteen years of museum-sponsored expeditions, and then three more of military missions, he sailed her above the Arctic Circle in poorly charted waters where, as Naval Commander Alexander Forbes recalled, when feasible, the helmsman followed leads of open water; when these didn’t serve, the schooner simply rammed the pans with a jarring crunch … leaving a streak of red bottom paint on the ice as it floated away on the quarter.

After she was almost destroyed by fire and flooding, Henrique Mendes put her into the packet trade, and renamed her the Ernestina. She made slow, storm-tossed 3,500-mile crossings of the Atlantic between Providence and Cape Verde under sail alone, her decks crowded with everything from live animals to trucks and general merchandise. Between transatlantic trips she traveled among the Cape Verde islands, borne down with cargos of oil drums, lumber and pozzolana volcanic ash for making concrete.

She was returned to America thanks to a broad-based repatriation campaign, and the generosity of the new Cape Verde republic. Then she was regularly at sea well over a hundred days a year on sail training cruises and day trips that introduced thousands of school children to ocean learning. She showed off her sleek clipper lines in port visits and sailing ship regattas.

Throughout her long career she entered into the lives of the peoples along the shores of the waters she traveled. She was familiar to every fishing harbor from Gloucester east along the Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador coasts. The men from those settlements fished from her, paired in dories, and many of them stepped ashore in Gloucester and put down roots in America. North of Greenland whole Inuit families crowded aboard her. Bob Bartlett reunited with aged hunters who had been young when he and they were together on Admiral Peary’s attempts to reach the North Pole. Serving under Bartlett in both the U.S. Army and Navy, she helped to build air bases in the Canadian Arctic in World War II, and carried relief teams of G.I. meteorologists to their Greenland weather stations. She was a welcome sight to Cape Verdeans when she arrived in their islands bearing gifts and messages from America, and equally welcomed by the Cape Verdean-Americans on her returns to Providence when she was one of the few ocean-spanning links to their homeland. Repatriated to America, she ushered aboard eager young people who hoped sail training would be their gateway to new careers, and was host to all those eager school children.

And here she was, slowly decaying at a New Bedford pier, her history mostly forgotten or distorted. She was a slave ship, someone would say. Oh no, a privateer, someone else would argue. The fact was that she was one of the most historically important of American sailing vessels, but one that remained virtually unknown to the general public.

Maybe, I thought, a book about her would help. Help raise public awareness and indignation at her abandonment. Help loosen public and private purse strings. One other Massachusetts-built vessel, rotting at a dock, had been saved by a poem. In 1830 the New York Journal of Commerce reported that the U.S.S. Constitution, the American frigate that had embarrassed the almighty British navy by defeating the Guerriere in the War of 1812, needed costly repairs. According to the article the Secretary of the Navy recommended that the vessel be broken up for scrap (the fate that befell her sister ship, the Congress). A twenty-one-year old Harvard law student wrote a poem he titled Old Ironsides. His plea to save the historic ship began, Ay, tear her tattered ensign down … The verses were picked up by newspapers across the country, and sold as broadsides on the streets of Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. The public outcry forced the Navy to back down – and Old Ironsides was saved. She is now America’s official Ship of State, visited by over half a million people every year at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston Harbor. They line up to step aboard this proud example of American naval fortitude, a national treasure that would have been lost forever had it not been for those impassioned verses. (The poem’s author, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., would switch careers and become a distinguished physician and gentle Boston satirist in books like The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.)

So maybe, if I told the full story of this other indomitable schooner — another Massachusetts vessel whose influence had reached far beyond the boundaries of the state, and made her truly a national heritage – it might be of some help to those loyal supporters who were keeping the cause of the Ernestina ex Effie M. Morrissey alive.

That was three years ago. Then, halfway through the writing of the book, a remarkable thing happened. Against all odds, the hopes for this Phoenix of the Seas were ignited once again. Thanks to a large grant from the Massachusetts government, and equally generous contributions from two philanthropists with strong ties to the vessel, contracts were signed and the vessel, renamed the Ernestina-Morrissey, was slated to go into a shipyard for complete restoration.

As a consequence, this volume has become one of celebration rather than supplication. The Ernestina-Morrissey has beaten the odds once again. Her spirit lives. It is a spirit that has won the affection of all who sailed her. To Captain Bob Bartlett she was his beloved little Morrissey. The schoolboys who sailed in her with Bartlett to the Arctic returned to her aid in their own late years, and said how much she meant to them. To one of her later captains, Amanda Madeira, it was the ship’s karma that prevailed when, as the Ernestina, she won a schooner race in Gloucester in 2001. Long-term advocate for the vessel, Julius Britto, said It has been her soul, her spirit and her dignity that has compelled us all to restore her to sailing glory …

Just where the Ernestina-Morrissey’s new flight will take her, after her rehabilitation, is hard to say. But she will have a safe berth at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, the state’s marine training institution. And sail she will, this flagship of maritime Massachusetts, lifting her white wings over the seas once again.

Acknowledgements

The schooner Ernestina-Morrissey (originally the Effie M. Morrissey and later the Ernestina) has, in her first 120 years, been a very active participant in four very different scenarios: sailing out of Gloucester and then Nova Scotia after cod, challenging Arctic ice in the name of science and then of national defense, renewing the links of Cape Verdean-Americans with loved ones on the islands, serving as state ship of Massachusetts as ambassador for the commonwealth’s maritime heritage and at-sea classroom for thousands of school children. To trace each of those incarnations it was my pleasure to become acquainted, and in some cases reacquainted, with valuable resources and knowledgeable individuals.

For the Essex and Gloucester years I began with the works of those two prime authorities, Dana Story in The Shipbuilders of Essex and Gordon Thomas in Fast & Able: Life Stories of Great Gloucester Fishing Vessels. Kurt Wilhelm, Acting Curator at the Essex Shipbuilding Museum, provided important documents and photos from the museum archives. Cape Ann Museum staff members, notably Librarian and Archivist Stephanie Buck and Photo Archivist Fred Buck, were once again imaginatively helpful. Robert E. Viator’s monograph, Wealth from the Deep: The Fishing Wonsons of Gloucester, was valuable for details on the John F. Wonson Company, as well as all the interlinked Wonson family enterprises. The archivists at the Northeast Region repository of the National Archives in Waltham, Mass. were obliging in retrieving for me the records of the Gloucester Custom House in which I found the enrollment records for the Effie M. Morrissey and other John F. Wonson vessels. For the Effie M. Morrissey’s years under Nova Scotia skippers, Frederick William Wallace provides, in his Roving Fisherman, an exuberant account of a trip he made in her from Portland, Maine to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.

For Captain Bob Bartlett’s tough-love partnership with the Morrissey during the twenty-year span when they sailed together to the Arctic, nothing equals Bartlett’s own versions of those adventures in his Sails over Ice and The Log of Bob Bartlett. Other accounts were consulted, but with care – one of the captain’s crewmen spat fire over most biographies of Bartlett. One narrative that was entirely reliable was Quest for a Northern Air Route in which Alexander Forbes described World War II cruises with Captain Bartlett in the Morrissey to survey sites for Arctic air bases.

Bartlett’s career was so much in the public eye that he left a rich trail of newspaper and magazine references, as well as newsreel footage filmed aboard the Morrissey. Bartlett himself was careful to save his expedition papers, and these are archived at the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives in the Bowdoin College Library. Kathy Petersen, Archives Assistant, was very helpful in providing a finding aid to the collection, and retrieving boxes of materials for me to consult in a quiet research area.

The schooner’s years as a Cape Verde packet, and with her new name as the Ernestina, are documented in well-researched text and a wealth of visuals in the archived Ernestina Timeline website. This award-winning site includes, as well, much documentation from the Bartlett years, such as journals from Bartlett Boys, the teenagers who sailed on the Morrissey as apprentices, and a diary Robert E. Peary’s granddaughter kept of the voyage of the Morrissey under Captain Bartlett to raise a monument to Admiral Peary in the High Arctic. Pursuing the timeline led me into the Ernestina-Morrissey’s recent and current history, and here Mary Anne McQuillan, past president and currently secretary of SEMA, the Schooner Ernestina-Morrissey Association, was of inestimable aid. Mary Anne fired up the skills gained in her years as an educator, read my first draft with great care, and offered a number of useful corrections and suggestions.

Mary Anne put me in touch with Laura Pires-Hester, Ph.D. (formerly Laura Pires Houston), who played a key role in the campaign that led to the return of the historic vessel to America. Since then Dr. Pires-Hester has, for decades, led fund-raising and other activities on behalf of the ship. She sent me comments that enhanced my understanding of events during the repatriation years, provided a selection of photos, and referred me to her comprehensive papers relating to the Ernestina that are filed in the Claire T. Carney Library at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Judy Farrar, Archives and Special Collections Librarian, retrieved pertinent portions of the collection for me to study, and later enabled me to select photos from the collection, a number of which are included in this work.

Mary Anne McQuillan also introduced me by e-mail to Sean Fisher, Archivist at DCR Archives, Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. At the DCR Archives in Danvers, Sean made available for me Schooner Ernestina Commission Records I was interested in reviewing. I am further grateful to Mary Anne for sending me a copy of Bringing E Home, Stephan J. W. Platzer’s first-hand account of the Ernestina’s transatlantic voyage from Cape Verde to New Bedford in 1982, returning as a gift to the American people. Stephan was generous in providing two of his photos from the voyage.

For the Ernestina-Morrissey’s fourth incarnation – Ocean Educator – there was ample coverage in the Massachusetts media for the ship operating under the control of a state commission, and then as the official vessel of the commonwealth. The Ernestina Timeline continued to be another valuable source until it was discontinued in 2003. Since that time the SEMA volunteers have kept up the organization’s website, and an active presence on YouTube and other social networking sites, with information on Ernestina-Morrissey events and status.

Amanda Madeira, who as a licensed captain often sailed in command of the Ernestina over a ten-year period during which she was also operations director, told me much about the ship during those years and the people who sailed her. Amanda was also helpful in providing a selection of photos from her files. Fred Sterner, who sailed on the Ernestina as chief mate, and served ashore on the Schooner Ernestina Commission and in many other capacities supporting the vessel, answered questions I had about operations at sea. Harold Burnham, that maestro of wooden schooner design and rehabilitation, told me about the design and construction of classic Essex fishing schooners, and modifications required to meet today’s certification standards. And a shipwright of wooden ships on a very different scale – Eric Ronnberg, who builds rigorously authentic ship models – provided me with the documentation that clearly establishes when, by whom, and for how much the Effie M. Morrissey was built.

Barry Rower brings his trademark graphic taste and design expertise to the visual qualities and readability of the book. My wife Anthea has been, as always, together with me every step of the way, making each of those steps an adventure and a joy.

First Incarnation: Gloucester Highliner

Over a blue-green sea, tumultuous with rearing, roaring water marching in foam-capped battalions to the horizon, the schooner stormed along before the wind and the taffrail log was spinning to a rate of knots seldom before attained by her.

— Frederick William Wallace

1. Let Her Be the Effie M. Morrissey

She began with the high hopes of the Wonson brothers. They — Roger, Frederick and Franklin — had come by way of the family line into control of the John F. Wonson fisheries company in Gloucester, Massachusetts. They were the current generation of the intricately interrelated Wonson clan of East Gloucester. Roger Williams Wonson, as president, contracted for the building of vessels and fitting them out. He would view the harbor from his splendid house high on Mount Pleasant Street, then return his attention to some model he was tinkering with. Roger was granted patents for several of his designs for improved fishing gear.

Affable, energetic Frederick Giles Wonson, the second brother, was the front man for the company. Fred was in charge of product sales and marketing, and he hired the skippers of the company’s boats. Out of sight and behind his ledgers was Franklin Augustus Wonson, the company’s financial wizard. Franklin had been trained to be a numbers man at a business school in Boston.

The firm had prospered by ordering the building and outfitting of a fleet of first-class offshore schooners, which they put under the command of able captains who went about harvesting the cod that then teemed on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. The company owned eighteen schooners in 1893. That was one of the biggest company fleets in Gloucester in those years, when Gloucester was America’s No. 1 fishing port. The Wonsons had been adding a new schooner every year in the late ’80s into the mid ’90s, each of those over 100 tons burden, or capacity. To be sure, some of the new boats replaced others that had been lost. Despite ordering schooners that were fast but weatherly, the Wonsons knew from sad experience that all of the vessels they sent out, and all the crewmen crowding their decks, might not return. Three of the company’s schooners were lost between 1893 and 1896. Fourteen men were lost when the John W. Bray went down in a gale. Gloucester captains were sea-wise, and their vessels able, but fishing under sail was inherently hazardous.

The Wonson brothers considered their business to be on an even keel when they ordered a new schooner to be built in 1893. By the end of that year, though, they might not have been so confident in their investment. That was the year the Reading Railroad derailed into receivership, triggering a financial panic. Thousands of businesses failed and hundreds of banks went dark and shuttered as the steam went out of the economy. More than four million workers were out on the street in the worst financial collapse in the history of the nation up to that point.

Two big Gloucester fish wholesalers went bankrupt and one of them, E. G. Hotchkiss, went down owing the Wonsons $300. The brothers could sense the economic fundament shaking beneath their feet. Nevertheless, they stood by their order for the new schooner. It was to be built in Essex, the next community north on the coast from Gloucester, and that was fortunate for Essex because shipbuilding was the life blood of the town. The contract helped to support not only the shipwrights who crafted the ships, but the blacksmiths who forged the shipyard tools and the iron fittings on board. In fact every article of wood, iron, copper, glass and fiber that went into the construction of a wooden fishing schooner — and that included pumps, barrels and anchors — was produced in Essex and Gloucester.

So all of the fabricators and laborers were immensely relieved that the work would go forward on the boat being framed up. She already had a name: the Effie M. Morrissey. Effie was the daughter of William Morrissey, one of the Wonsons’ captains. Captain William Edward Morrissey was among the most respected schooner masters in Gloucester. He was a Nova Scotia man down from Lower East Pubnico. That was on the Acadian shore, where French Canadians had settled in 1651. These had been expelled by the British in 1758. When they were allowed back in 1767 they shared the shores of Pubnico harbor with several Irish families, including the Morrisseys. William Morrissey was one of four brothers in the family, all of whom became fishing skippers. In 1867 he married Caroline Larkin in nearby Woods Harbour. Ten years later Caroline gave birth to her second daughter, Effie Maud.

Bill Morrissey was so successful fishing for the Wonsons that they named one of their big schooners after him, the W. E. Morrissey, launched in 1890. In that vessel, and in the Meteor launched a year later, Morrissey continued to bring back big trips, and