Elbridge Gile's Wharf and Four-Masters, Mid-1930s
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Barbara Rumsey and Jim Hunt
The first part of the following article was written by Barbara Rumsey; Jim Hunt, a historical society trustee knowledgeable about Crowell & Thurlow vessels, wrote the second part about the Rawding.
The accompanying photo shows Elbridge Giles's towboat Two Sisters sitting high and dry on his wharf at Mill Cove (picture not posted). According to Lester Barter, Captain Will Blake of McFarland's Point had an almost identical towboat for local seagoing chores. In the left corner of the photo appears to be one of Elbridge's scows with a derrick for moving anything more than a man wanted to heft.
Carroll Gray discussed Elbridge's scows and towboats in 1987, and he remembered that the scow with a mast in her was the Yankee Star, but Elbridge "never sailed her, he didn't intend to, he never run her under sail. He had boats that towed them around, you know. He had one that had a four-cylinder engine in her and her name was Two Sisters. She was really a pleasure boat; it's what she was built for and probably used for that until Elbridge bought her. By putting a different wheel on her, why it gave her more power and towed these scows around. Originally, his towboat was the Hope; she was a big one. She had a single-cylinder engine. Her final days she was hauled out in the mud overe there between the hospital and the swimming pool."
According to Lester Barter, the wharf Elbridge Giles took over was probably one of the ice company's old wharves. Elbridge did away with the wharf's cribwork and put a strone edging in. According to the present Elbridge, he and his father Donald rebuilt the top of the wharf in the 1970s. The timbers lying north and south in the flats were probably rudimentary supports for Elbridge to run a boat or scow onto to do a little work on it.
Hulks, from Williams fish shack, Mill Cove
Four masted schooner at Mill Cove
The Vessel Graveyard
The December 18, 1936 Register printed a story on the vessel graveyard at Mill Cove and featured remarks about the Herbert L. Rawding: "The four-masted schooner, one of eight which have been lying off McFarland's Point for some time, weighed her rusty anchors Thursday and moved slowly out of the harbor. The schooner left Boothbay Harbor's widely known ship 'graveyard' in tow of an ocean-going tug. I. H. Foss and W. P. Partmenter were engineer and cook respectively.
"Hundreds of summer people visit the 'ship graveyard' annually to see the old vessels which in former years visited ports in every corner of the earth. With their fast-rotting rigging and gaunt masts towering well over 100 feet above their decks, the vessels are pathetic relics of the most romantic era of American maritime history.
"Throughout the past 15 years the numbers of old ships anchored off the point has varied. At times there have been nearly twenty. A short time ago there were but six. Recently two more were brought here from Eastport. The seven schooners remaining here after the departure of the Herbert L. Rawding are the Courtney G. Houck, the Helen Barnett Ging, the Harry G. Deering, the Maude M. Morey, the Freeman, the Zebedee Cliff, and the Edna McKnight. All are four-masters except the Houck, a five-master."
The Herbert L. Rawding
The three four-masters tied up at the pier on McFarland Point were laid up for lack of working during the Depression. The photo was taken between 1932 and April 1936 and shows the Maude M. Morey alongside the pier, possibly the Mable A. Frye, and the Herbert L. Rawding, all owned by the Boston firm of Crowell and Thurlow. The Maude M. Morey was brought to Boothbay Harbor in 1929 for repair after a collision with the SS Westport. She was never repaired and was towed to Casco Bay in 1941 and sunk as part of a breakwater. The Herbert L. Rawding was purchased in 1936 by Capt. Robert W. Rickson for $3,000. The Rawding had cost $190,000 when built in 1919. She was towed to Portland where she was refit, had her spanker mast replaced and her standing and running rigging renewed. She was outfitted with a new set of sails as well. The funds for these repairs came from New York financier Dr. Herman Baruch.
After her refit she returned to the coasting trade carrying lumber, coal, salt, and other traditional coastwise cargos. By this time there were just a few big schooners still active from the hundreds that were built between 1880 and 1921. The Rawding remained busy until 1942 when she was purchased by the International Steamship Company -- a company which never owned any steamships. That company was in constant disputes with the War Shipping Administration, but in late 1942 the Rawding finally sailed for Capetown, South Africa, with 1,500 tons of cargo. The Rawding began leaking badly when only four hundred miles from New York. She was taken to Norfolk where her cargo was unloaded and then to Charlestown, S.C., where she was laid up until 1945.
The End of the Rawding
Captain Alex Rodway, a Nova Scotian, still believed that money could be made with an old schooner. He bought the Rawding in January 1945 for $18,000. He took her to Canada, removed her top masts and made a few coastwise trips in her. In the fall of 1946, the Rawding suffered the indignity of having two war surplus diesel engines installed and, now absent her mizzen mast, she sailed for Alexandria, Egypt, with a cargo of a million board feet of lumber, at a prepaid freight of $35 per thousand, or $35,000! After unloading she went to Cadiz, Spain, loading a cargo of salt for Newfoundland. Three days west of Gibraltar she ran into bad weather. Between the heavy seas and the damage caused by the vibrating diesels for which she wasn't designed, she began to leak faster than her pumps could handle. A Portland-built American Liberty ship took off the Rawding's crew and she slowly sank. She was the last of the great schooners to carry a cargo on the Atlantic.