History | |
---|---|
Name | Mercantile |
Builder | Billings Family |
Launched | 1916 |
General characteristics | |
Length | 155 ft (47 m) LOA, 80 ft (24 m) on deck [1] |
Draft |
|
Propulsion | Sail, auxiliary engine |
Sail plan | gaff-rigged two-masted schooner |
Notes | shoal draft centerboard |
Mercantile | |
Location | Camden Harbor, Camden, Maine |
Coordinates | 44°12′36.10″N69°3′45.87″W / 44.2100278°N 69.0627417°W |
Built | 1916 |
Architect | Billings Family |
NRHP reference No. | 82005265 & 90001470 [2] |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | 4 December 1991 |
Designated NHL | 4 December 1991 "Mercantile (schooner)". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Archived from the original on September 23, 2010. Retrieved June 25, 2008.</ref> |
Mercantile is a two-masted schooner berthed in Camden Harbor, Camden, Maine. Built in the 1914-16 on Little Deer Isle, Maine, she is one of a small number of such vessels still afloat from a time when they were one of the most common cargo vessels of the coasting trade. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1991, she now serves as a "Maine windjammer", offering multi-day sailing cruises to tourists.
Mercantile is a total of 115 feet (35 m) long, with a deck 80 feet (24 m) and 22 feet (6.7 m) wide. Her normal sailing rig consists of a mainsail, foresail, two headsails, and no topsails. She is framed and planked out of white oak, and has a pine deck. Her woodwork was originally fastened by treenails, but when restored these were changed to galvanized spikes. [3]
Mercantile was built on Little Deer Isle, Maine by members of the Billings family over three seasons, and was launched in 1916. From then until 1943 the Billingses operated her in the coasting trade as one of thousands of such vessels built. In 1943 she was briefly involved in the mackerel fisheries of southern New England, before she was sold to Frank Swift and adapted for use as a tourist vessel. In the 1930s Swift conceived of the idea of using these vessels, which were generally laid up in coves and harbors and left to rot, to carry paying customers on sailing cruises, and this was one of the early vessels he used for this purpose. Although she has undergone several ownership changes, she has always operated in the tourist trade out of Camden Harbor. [3] Her most recent major restoration was in 1989.
C.A. Thayer is a schooner built in 1895 near Eureka, California. The schooner has been preserved and open to the public at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park since 1963. She is one of the last survivors of the sailing schooners in the West coast lumber trade to San Francisco from Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. She was designated a National Historic Landmark on 13 November 1966.
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Roseway is a wooden gaff-rigged schooner launched on 24 November 1925 in Essex, Massachusetts. She is currently operated by World Ocean School, a non-profit educational organization based in Boston, Massachusetts, and is normally operated out of Boston, Massachusetts and Saint Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. She was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997 as the only known surviving example of a fishing schooner built specifically with racing competition as an objective. In 1941, Roseway was purchased by the Boston Pilot's Association to serve as a pilot boat for Boston Harbor, as a replacement for the pilot-boat Northern Light, which was sold to the United States Army for war service.
Grace Bailey, also known for many years as Mattie, is a two-masted schooner whose home port is Camden Harbor, Camden, Maine. Built in 1882 in Patchogue, New York, she is one of four surviving two-masted wooden-hulled schooners, once the most common vessel in the American coasting trade. She was one of the first ships in the fleet of historic vessels known as "Maine windjammers", which offer cruises in Penobscot Bay and the Maine coast, entering that service in 1939. She last underwent major restoration in 1989-90. She was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1992.
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