2 continuous steel decks, poop and forecastle decks
Installed power
no auxiliary propulsion; donkey engine for sail winches, steam rudder, generator
Propulsion
wind
Sail plan
25 sails: 7 gaff main sails (No. 1 to 6 of equal size, spanker sail of larger size), 7 gaff topsails, 6 staysails, 5 foresails with 43.000 sq ft (4,000 m²) [46,617 sq ft (4,330.86 m²)] sail area
1902: 16; 1907: 18 (captain, engineer, 2 stewards, two helmsmen (1st & 2nd mates), 10 to 12 able seamen)
Thomas W. Lawson was a seven-masted, steel-hulled schooner built for the Pacific trade, but used primarily to haul coal and oil along the East Coast of the United States. Named for copper baron Thomas W. Lawson, a Boston millionaire, stock-broker, book author, and president of the Boston Bay State Gas Co., she was launched in 1902 as the largest schooner and largest sailing vessel without an auxiliary engine ever built.
Thomas W. Lawson was destroyed off the uninhabited island of Annet, in the Isles of Scilly, in a storm on December 14, 1907, killing all but two of her eighteen crew and a harbor pilot already aboard. Her cargo of 58,000 barrels of light paraffin oil caused perhaps the first large marine oil spill.
Development and construction
Thomas W. Lawson was designed by naval architect Bowdoin B. Crowninshield (famous for his fast yachts) for Captain John G. Crowley of the Coastwise Transportation Company of Boston, Massachusetts. Construction was contracted to the Fore River Ship and Engine Company on June 25, 1901 at a cost of approximately $250,000. She was the only seven-masted schooner, the only seven-masted sailing ship in modern times (see Zheng He's treasure ships), the largest schooner, and the largest pure sailing vessel, in terms of tonnage, ever built. Larger sailing vessels with auxiliary engines for propulsion were the British Great Eastern (1866), the French France II(1911) and German R. C. Rickmers(1906), the latter two of which were five-masted barques.[citation needed]
Thomas W. Lawson's design and purpose was an ultimately unsuccessful bid to keep sailing ships competitive with the burgeoning steamship freight transport trade. However the ship's submerged hull was too large and sail area too small for good sailing properties; compounded by a forced reduction in load capacity from 11,000 to 7,400 long tons that made “working to capacity” impossible, the combination undermined expected profits.[citation needed]
Launched on July 10, 1902, Thomas W. Lawson was 475ft (145m) overall, 395 feet (120.4 m) on deck, and contained seven masts of equal height (193 feet (58.8 m)) which carried 25 sails (seven gaff sails, seven gaff topsails, six topmast staysails and five jib sails (fore staysail, jib, flying jib, jib topsail, balloon jib) encompassing 43,000 square feet (4,000 m²)) of canvas. Originally painted white, the ship's hull was later painted black. The naming of her masts was always a subject for some discussion (see external link "The Masts of the Thomas W. Lawson"). In the original sail plan and during construction named (fore to aft): 'no. 1 to no. 7', no. 7 being replaced by "spanker mast." The names of the masts changed then to: 'fore, main, mizzen, spanker, jigger, driver, and pusher' at launch and to: 'forecastle, fore, main, mizzen, jigger, and spanker' after launch. Different naming systems ensued, e.g. 'fore, main, mizzen, rusher, driver, jigger, and spanker' or 'fore, main, mizzen, no. 4, no. 5, no. 6, and no. 7', the naming preferred by the crew (which incorporated a possible misunderstanding between "fore" meaning "foremast" and "mast no. four"). Even a naming after the days of the week was discussed with the foremast being named "Sunday" and the spankermast "Saturday".[citation needed]
The ship consisted of a steel hull with high bulwarks and a double cellular bottom four feet deep and used 1,000 tons of water ballast. She measured 5,218 gross register tons, could carry nearly 11,000 tons of coal, and was operated by a crew of 16 to 18 including captain, engineer, two helmsmen, and two stewards. Due to the shallow depth of the eastern ports except Newport News, Virginia, she could not enter them with her maximum load. As a result, she carried a reduced capacity of 7,400 tons in order to reduce her working draft. She had two continuous decks, poop and forecastle decks, a large superstructure on the poop deck including the captain's rooms with fine furniture and leather seats, the officers' mess and rooms, card room, and a separate rudder house. On the main deck were two deckhouses around mast no. 5 and behind mast no. 6, as well as six main hatches to access the holds between the masts. Two huge steam winches were built in under the forecastle and behind mast no. 6. on the main deck. Smaller electrically driven winches were installed beside each mast. The exhaust for the donkey engine boiler was horizontally installed. All seven lower steel masts were secured by five (foremast: six) shrouds per side, the wooden topmasts with four shrouds per side to the crosstrees. The two ship's stockless anchors weighed five tons each.[citation needed]
Service
Deeply loaded in Boston Harbor, hull painted in black; photo taken in 1906 or 1907Schooner Thomas W. Lawson, by Thomas Willis, oil on Canvas with Silk Embroidery
Often criticized by marine writers (and some seamen) and considered difficult to maneuver and sluggish (comparisons to a "bath tub" and a "beached whale" were made), Thomas W. Lawson proved problematic in the ports she was intended to operate in due to the amount of water she displaced. She tended to yaw and needed a strong wind to be held on course. Originally built for the Pacific trade, the schooner was used as collier along the American East Coast. A year later in 1903, Crowley withdrew her from the coal trade. He had the topmasts, gaff booms and all other wooden spars removed and had chartered her out as a sea-going barge for the transportation of case oil. In 1906, she was retrofitted for sail at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company for use as a bulk oil carrier using the lower steel masts to vent oil gasses from the holds. Her capacity was 60,000 barrels. Under charter to Sun Oil Company, she was the world's first pure sailing tanker, carrying bulk oil from Texas to the eastern seaboard.[citation needed]
In 1907, Thomas W. Lawson was under charter to the Anglo-American Oil Company (part of Standard Oil) and set sail on November 19 from the piers of Marcus HookRefinery (20 miles south of Philadelphia) to London with 58,000 barrels of light paraffin oil. Two days before leaving, the new captain, George Washington Dow, had to hire six new men to the crew because six other seamen had quit their jobs due to payment problems. Those new men weren't able seamen and some did not speak fluent English. Leaving the mouth of the Delaware River, on November 20, the large schooner set course for England under fair weather conditions. But the following day the weather turned considerably worse. The ship was not sighted for more than 20 days during its first transatlantic journey, which was quite horrible in extremely stormy weather. With the loss of most of her sails, all but one lifeboat, and the breach of hatch no. 6, causing the ship's pumps to clog due to a mixture of intruding seawater and the engine's coal in the ship's hold, the schooner reached the Celtic Sea northwest of the Isles of Scilly. On December 13, entering the English Channel, she mistakenly passed inside the Bishop Rocklighthouse. Her captain anchored between the Nundeeps shallows and Gunner's Rock, northwest of the island of Annet, to ride out an impending gale, refusing several requests of St. Agnes and St. Mary's lifeboat crews to abandon the ship. Captain Dow, trusting in his anchors, only accepted the Trinity House pilot Billy "Cook" Hicks from St. Agnes lifeboat, who came aboard at 5 p.m. on Friday 13. Both lifeboats of St. Agnes and St. Mary's had to return to their stations because of an unconscious crewman on the former and a broken mast on the latter. They cabled to Falmouth, Cornwall, for a tug which could not put to sea, unable to face the storm.[1]
During the night, around 1:15a.m., the storm increased, her port anchor chain broke, and half an hour later the starboard anchor chain snapped close to the hawsepipe. Left to the mercy of the raging seas, the pounding schooner was smashed starboardside on against Shag Rock near Annet by tremendously heavy seas after having grounded on the dangerous underwater rocks. All seven masts broke off and fell into the sea with all of the seamen who had climbed the rigging for safety, on their captain's command. The stern section broke apart behind mast no. 6, drifting from the capsizing and sinking ship. In the morning light the ship's upturned keel could be seen near the reef from which the wreck slid off into deeper water. Some 16 of the 18 crew and the Scillonian pilot Wm. "Cook" Hicks, who was already on board, having climbed up the spanker rigging for safety, were lost. Captain George W. Dow and engineer Edward L. Rowe from Boston were the only survivors, probably because they managed to get on deck from the rigging and jumped into the sea before the ship capsized. Both were lucky in being washed to a rock in the Hellweathers, to the south of the wrecking site, to be rescued hours later by the pilot's son, in the six-oared gig Slippen, looking for his father.[2] Despite wearing their lifebelts, the other seamen died in the thick oil layer, the smashing seas, and the schooner's rigging that had drowned so many of the crew, including the pilot. Four bodies were found later – those of Mark Stenton from Brooklyn, cabin boy, of two seamen from Germany and Scandinavia, and that of a man from Nova Scotia or Maine. Furthermore, some bodies without heads, legs or arms were also found which could not be identified. They were all buried in a mass grave in St Agnes cemetery.[citation needed]
The broken-up and scattered wreck was relocated in 1969. The bow lies at 56ft deep on position 49°53′38″N06°22′55″W / 49.89389°N 6.38194°W / 49.89389; -6.38194 to the north-east of Shag Rock, and the stern, with the spanker mast 400m to the southwest.[1] It can be visited by scuba divers under calm weather conditions. One of the anchors is now built into the outside wall of Bleak House, Broadstairs, the former home of Charles Dickens, and can be seen with a picture of the schooner.[citation needed]
Memorial
In 2008 a memorial seat was blessed by the Reverend Guy Scott in the churchyard of St Agnes, the nearest inhabitable island to the wreck and the home of the pilot, Billy "Cook" Hicks. The seat, made of granite from a St Breward quarry, faces the mass, unmarked grave of many of Thomas W. Lawson's dead.[3]
See also
Preußen, the largest square-rig pure sail ship ever launched
Wyoming (schooner), largest wooden hull schooner built in the United States
A sailing vessel's rig is its arrangement of masts, sails and rigging. Examples include a schooner rig, cutter rig, junk rig, etc. A rig may be broadly categorized as "fore-and-aft", "square", or a combination of both. Within the fore-and-aft category there is a variety of triangular and quadrilateral sail shapes. Spars or battens may be used to help shape a given kind of sail. Each rig may be described with a sail plan—formally, a drawing of a vessel, viewed from the side.
A brig is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: two masts which are both square-rigged. Brigs originated in the second half of the 18th century and were a common type of smaller merchant vessel or warship from then until the latter part of the 19th century. In commercial use, they were gradually replaced by fore-and-aft rigged vessels such as schooners, as owners sought to reduce crew costs by having rigs that could be handled by fewer men. In Royal Navy use, brigs were retained for training use when the battle fleets consisted almost entirely of iron-hulled steamships.
A topsail ("tops'l") is a sail set above another sail; on square-rigged vessels further sails may be set above topsails.
A staysail ("stays'l") is a fore-and-aft rigged sail whose luff can be affixed to a stay running forward from a mast to the deck, the bowsprit, or to another mast.
A cutter is any of various types of watercraft. The term can refer to the rig of a sailing vessel, to a governmental enforcement agency vessel, to a type of ship's boat which can be used under sail or oars, or, historically, to a type of fast-sailing vessel introduced in the 18th century, some of which were used as small warships.
This glossary of nautical terms is an alphabetical listing of terms and expressions connected with ships, shipping, seamanship and navigation on water. Some remain current, while many date from the 17th to 19th centuries. The word nautical derives from the Latin nauticus, from Greek nautikos, from nautēs: "sailor", from naus: "ship".
A full-rigged ship or fully rigged ship is a sailing vessel with a sail plan of three or more masts, all of them square-rigged. Such a vessel is said to have a ship rig or be ship-rigged, with each mast stepped in three segments: lower, top, and topgallant.
Stays are ropes, wires, or rods on sailing vessels that run fore-and-aft along the centerline from the masts to the hull, deck, bowsprit, or to other masts which serve to stabilize the masts.
Earl of Pembroke was a wooden, three-masted barque, which was frequently used for maritime festivals, charters, charity fund raising, corporate entertaining and film work.
Blackadder was a clipper, a sister ship to Hallowe'en, built in 1870 by Maudslay, Sons & Field at Greenwich for Jock Willis & Sons.
A jackass-barque, sometimes spelled jackass bark, is a sailing ship with three masts, of which the foremast is square-rigged and the main is partially square-rigged and partially fore-and-aft rigged (course). The mizzen mast is fore-and-aft rigged.
Preussen (PROY-sin) was a German steel-hulled, five-masted, ship-rigged sailing ship built in 1902 for the F. Laeisz shipping company and named after the German state and kingdom of Prussia. She was the world's only ship of this class with five masts, carrying six square sails on each mast.
James Baines was a passenger clipper ship completely constructed of timber in the 1850s and launched on 25 July 1854 from the East Boston shipyard of the famous ship builder Donald McKay in the United States for the Black Ball Line of James Baines & Co., Liverpool. The clipper was one of the few known larger sailing ships rigged with a moonsail.
Potosi was a five-masted steel barque built in 1865 by Joh. C. Tecklenborg ship yard in Geestemünde, Germany, for the sailing ship company F. Laeisz as a trading vessel. Its primary purpose was as a "nitrate clipper" collecting guano in South America for use in chemical companies in Germany. As its shipping route was between Germany, Bolivia until 1870 but, during the "pacific War" was transferred to Chile, it was designed to be capable of withstanding the rough weather encountered around Cape Horn.
The three-masted schooner Victory Chimes, also known as Edwin and Maud or Domino Effect, is a US National Historic Landmark. She is the last surviving Chesapeake Ram schooner. The boat on the Maine State Quarter is meant to resemble the Victory Chimes.
Jadran is a sailing ship for basic naval training built for the Yugoslav Royal Navy and currently in Montenegrin Navy service. A three-mast topsail schooner or barquentine with an auxiliary engine, Jadran was built in Hamburg, Germany between 1930 and 1933, and commissioned on 19 August 1933. Prior to World War II she completed seven long training cruises with trainees from the Yugoslav Naval Academy, including one to North America. As Yugoslavia was neutral at the outbreak of World War II, Jadran was able to conduct short cruises in the Adriatic Sea. In April 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis powers, and Jadran was captured and renamed Marco Polo by the Italian Navy. She continued to be used as a training ship in the Adriatic, operating out of the Istrian port of Pola, and was featured in an Italian propaganda film.
Alexandria was a cargo-carrying three-masted schooner built in 1929. Originally named Yngve, she was built at Björkenäs, Sweden, and fitted with a 58 H.P. auxiliary oil engine.
Colonial Ship King George was the first ship, by virtue of having three masts, built in the colony of Sydney, New South Wales.
A sail plan is a drawing of a sailing craft, viewed from the side, depicting its sails, the spars that carry them and some of the rigging that supports the rig. By extension, "sail plan" describes the arrangement of sails on a craft. A sailing craft may be waterborne, an iceboat, or a sail-powered land vehicle.
Hicks, John, An Absolute Wreck: The Loss of the Thomas W. Lawson. London: Private publication (2015), 219pp with 58 illustrations and seven appendices. ISBN978-1-909817-25-8
Hornsby, Thomas, The Last Voyage of the Thomas W. Lawson. Publ. in the 'Nautical Research Journal' Vol. 5 (1959), pp.53–59, 61, illust.
The Western Weekly News: DISASTER AT SCILLY - American Sailing Ship Lost. Hugh Town, Scilly Isles, December 21, 1907
Rodd, Peter, Wreck of Thomas W. Lawson. Publ. in The American Neptune Vol. 29, Salem (1969) pp.133–138.
Coughlin, W. P., The Last Voyage of the Thomas W. Lawson. (1964).
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