July 2011 MAINE COASTAL NEWS Page 5. THE STEAM YACHT CANGARDA, A TRUE SURVIVOR


CAMDEN – Once of the most interesting boats to visit the Maine coast last season was the 1901 steam yacht CANGARDA, which is owned by a summer resident of Islesboro. This past winter she was worked on at Way- farer Marine in Camden and then this spring she was prepared by her captain, Steve Cobb, for a trip up the New York Canal system to the Great Lakes. She was scheduled to return the end of June, cruise the coast of Maine and then follow the Classic Regatta south with the intention of being at New York City and later Mystic Seaport this fall. As to where she will go this coming winter, that has yet to be decided.


CANGARDA arrived at Wayfarer Ma- rine in very early December. Captain Steve Cobb said, “We had been down to Mystic Seaport since September. We came up here and decommissioned the boat for the winter and it was about the 25th of January before we got hauled out. They managed to get us into Building #1 and we redid the topside paint job, which was the main project this winter. There were also several steel projects on the hull itself, modifications of some of the thru- hull fittings and so forth.”


They came out the end of April early May and Captain Cobb immediately began re-commissioning the boat. Captain Cobb’s primary job is engineer, because he is the only who has, at the moment, a license for the engine.


Mid May they left Wayfarer Marine, did a quick stop at Islesboro to take onboard some provisions and the owners things be- fore heading to Portland Yacht Services in Portland. There they did a Coast Guard opera- tional exam. The owner was also going to sit for his practical exam for the engine room operation. They then would leave Portland for New York City, then head up the Hudson to Waterford and then through the Erie Canal. From there they plan take go up into Lake Ontario and down to Clayton, New York and then over to Rockville, Ontario to one of her former owners estate. Captain Cobb said,


“We will probably be a week in each place and then we will go down to Montreal and from there, depending on the weather, we may keep going down the St. Lawrence or we may turn around and come back up through the Erie Canal.”


R A F F L E GREAT


This coming winter they do not need any major work down, just the normal varnish and paint. Captain Cobb added, “We may hope- fully come back here again in early winter and stay until next season in the water.” CANGARDA is one of the only remain- ing large steam yachts left in the world. She was built at Pusey & Jones in Wilmington, Delaware in about five months starting in March of 1901. Captain Cobb explained, “She was built for Charles Canfield and his wife Belle Gardner and the combination of their two last names is where the name of the boat comes from. He only kept the boat for a couple of years because he lost it in a divorce settle- ment when Belle was waiting on the dock with her lawyer when he came back from a cruise with his girlfriend. It was supposedly the most expensive divorce to date in Chicago history. The boat was then sold to the Fulfort family in Rockville, Ontario. George Fulfort Sr. was a self made millionaire who had made his money in patent medicines. He pretty much pioneered directly mailings. He sold a lot of pink pills for pale people, which was the name of his product. He died fairly young in a racing automobile accident in about 1903, just after they had got the boat. His wife Mary, and their four kids, renamed the boat MAGEDOMA, Mary, George, Dorothy and Martha. They kept it through two genera- tions in Rockville, Ontario. They cruised the 1000 Islands, Eastern Lake Ontario and as far away as Montreal and Quebec City. They entertained a lot of notable friends on board, including the future King George and his brother. The boat was laid up in World War I, but in World War II they loaned it to the Canadian Navy. She was commissioned as a warship and flew a white ensign, carried two 50-caliber machine guns and a crew of seven


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CANGARDA at Wayfarer Marine in Camden.


people. She did St. Lawrence River patrols and served as a training platform for people coming into steam engineering. After World War II the Navy gave the boat back and they decided not to keep it. She had been beat up pretty bad during the war, she was old-fash- ioned and expensive to run. It was sold to a fellow from Rochester. He lived aboard for the next 30 or so years with the boat tied up alongside a dock. When he finally sold the boat it was purchased by someone from Gloucester, Massachusetts, who started a restoration. They took her to Gloucester with the hull inside a swimming pool liner, to keep her from sinking. They got her down there and they completely gutted the boat and put it in storage. Then they started patching up the hull. He got sick, and unfortunately he


Continued on Page 21. Great Island Boat Yard Surveying CANGARDA


PORTLAND/BROOKLIN – Talks are held at the Maine Boatbuilder’s Show in Portland and at the last one, one of the speakers was noted yacht captain and marine surveyor Giffy Full. He was telling stories and one of his stories was doing a survey on the steam yacht CANGARDA for a potential buyer. Full explained, “A man from Rockport, Massachusetts came to me very interested in saving this old steam yacht. I found out that she had been in the water up in Lake Erie, Rochester, New York behind the old railroad station tied up and that she had not been hauled out for 30 years. People thought, well she’s in fresh water that won’t bother her. “Before I went up, I talked to a man I knew, Percy Wilson, a first class ship sur-


Continued on Page 21.


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