2007-04-27
Portland — From 1846 to 1867 the now-forgotten Bath shipbuilding firm of Trufant & Drummond launched 49 wooden-hulled sailing vessels. Three were whalers for New Bedford owners, and until the firm went out of business Trufant & Drummond were the only Bath yard to build whaling ships.
The remaining 46 were merchant vessels, including "flying Dragon," one of only twenty sailing ships in the 19th century to make the passage from an east coast port to San Francisco in fewer than 100 days. Vessels built by Trufant & Drummond ranged in size from the 232-ton brig "George Stockham" to the three-decked 1738 ton "Emerald Isle," built for the liverpool-to-New York immigrant trade, and considered enormous when she was launched in 1853. Drummonds captained several of the ships--men who had been born within sight and sound and smell of the ocean and as boys had gone to sea as inevitably as young herring.
By tracing the voyages of all these vessels in 19th-century newspapers, seamen's journals, and ships' logs, it's been learned that one was crushed in Arctic ice, one was set on fire by a disgruntled sailor, one was several times struck by lightning (harmlessly, since it was one of the very few ships of the time to have "lightning protectors"). One came within inches of striking an iceberg. Three cleared their last port of call and vanished off the face of the earth. Mutinous crews on several of the ships were quelled by the captain's pistols. One ship foundered off the coast of South America and several of her crew clung for seventeen days to her floating wreckage. When rescue finally came, one boy was left alive to tell what had happened. There was a farcical attempt to steal one vessel from her dock In New York; still another was the subject of a decision by the United States Supreme Court. And the last shot fired in the Civil was tore through the sail of one bark--two months after the war officially ended. Of Trufant & Drummond's vessels, one survived for nearly sixty years, another for 129 days.
[Ann Drummond Hughes of Portland has written a book about these vessels, which she hopes to publish this year.]
Comments and photos about this story
There are not yet any reader comments.
Use the form below to submit your comment and it will appear here.
