Page 20. MAINE COASTAL NEWS January 2012 CAPTAIN JOHN FOSS LAUNCHES REBUILT TUG CADET


The schooner AMERICAN EAGLE sitting at her dock at Northend Shipyard in Rockland. Continued from Page 1.


contractor, in the ‘80s. The last time she was used must have been in Portland in the late ‘80s. The propeller that was on her had an H&H invoice number painted on it. H&H could date that invoice to 1989. So to my knowledge she had been out of the water since ‘89.”


In the summer of 2001 Journey’s End Marina of Rockland took their hydraulic trailer to East Boothbay, loaded CADET, and brought her to Northend Shipyard. Captain Foss explained, “Just an overnight project. It was a spare time project in the winter. I usually have a couple of guys working with me on the schooner in the winter and as we had time they turn their hand to working on the tug. By the time we were done the planking was new, the upper framing, the whole deck framing, the stem, and the stern had been sawed off, so we had to re-create the oval. The yellow pine planking around the waterline had been protected by ice sheathing, but when I took the ice sheathing off I discovered that the reason they put the sheathing on was that the yellow pine planking was totally chowdered, there was no way of saving any of that. She is re-fastened with 20 penny copper nails. Despite the fact that we had most of the original plans, she is modified somewhat. I have no idea what the original engine was, but when she came to Rockland in 2001 she had a partly vandalized 671, which I gave to the vocational school. Now she has a B series Cummins that came out of a friends lobster boat when he was repowering. Where there was originally a several ton slow turning gas or diesel engine, there is now accommoda- tions. My dear wife wanted a complete head with shower and bunks. Her profile is pretty close, and a friend gave me a copper eagle to put on the wheelhouse. Now I hope we can find something for her to do that is construc- tive.”


It should also be mentioned that Captain Foss was looking for a steering wheel and he was given the sardine carrier BIFISCO’s. He refinished the wheel and she looks great in her new home.


There is very little left to do, some wiring, plumbing, and build and put a mast on at the after end of the house.


Captain Foss did not see a lot of cruising in her near future, he is waiting until he retires. He said, “I wanted to get her in the water in time for the winter pleasure boating season here in Maine. I would like to try to get out a couple of nice days this winter. My schedule in real life involves being rather busy about


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seven or eight days a week from the first of April until the first of November. Hopefully there might be a weekend this summer.” When asked how he got into the wind- jammer business, Captain Foss said, “I am from a small island west of here, Manhattan. My dad (Reginald) took a job as a bond salesman in Boston after the First World War. He was then asked to go to the New York office. He worked there until 1960 and I showed up in ’47. After my grandfather died, my grandmother moved down to Freeport to be near my uncle who ran the bank there. When my father and mother got married after the war they bought an old house there. I would look at the Sears catalog in the winter in New York and say look we can buy a furnace and we can move to Maine year around. So I have been here since 1960, but I spent all my summers in Maine, before 1960. I got a chance to work in the boatyard down there in high school and college. I had an old dory and would putt around the bay. Some- time in the course of being in high school and seeing one of these windjammers go by I thought who the heck would sail on one of those things?”


Captain Foss went to Bowdoin College and ran the sailing team. He added, “We didn’t race very well, but we had a pretty good time. The schooner BOWDOIN was coming up from Mystic Seaport and I wrote Dr. Morse, who was in charge of repatriating her to a place more appropriate. I propositioned the organization, that maybe some people from the sailing team could come up and do some work on the BOWDOIN in the distant hope of going sailing on her. So a couple of us would come up. We didn’t get much work done, but we had a pretty good time. I got offered a job on Jim Sharp’s ADVENTURE and did that for a summer and then after college I went in the Coast Guard for a couple of years on a ship out of Boston. I tried to arrange my leave so I could go sailing. When I was through with the Coast Guard I had helped Doug and Linda Lee a little bit on rebuilding the ISAAC EVANS in Bath, in- cluding running various hardware down to Massachusetts in my Volkswagen Beetle. After one more summer working on the AD- VENTURE I took the money I had saved up in the Coast Guard and bought the LEWIS R. FRENCH. Doug and Linda and I were also in the process of locating a spot to work in the Penobscot Bay Area. We looked in Belfast, Rockport, Camden and Rockland. There was one spot in Rockland that looked pretty good, even had a marine railway, but some- body advised us when the tide was in there isn’t a place to put paint can. So we went partners in the Northend Shipyard and then went partners in rebuilding the LEWIS R. FRENCH. That was in the fall of ‘73. “We got the FRENCH going in the spring of 76,” continued Captain Foss. “Doug and Linda and I worked on rebuilding


a couple of condemned houses the next couple of winters. Then they started the project of building the HERITAGE. That was done in ‘83 and the fall of ‘84 I got a call from George Nichol, who owned the REGINA MARIS saying they were about to be given an old schooner hull and what was the pros- pect of selling it. After a long conversation I found out he meant the AMERICAN EAGLE, which was a vessel I had an eye on. You know how it is you kind of know where most of the old boats are. There had been a symposium at the Cape Ann Historical Association in the fall of ‘83, maybe ’84, talking about the tran- sition from sail to power in the Gloucester fleet. Jack Gilbert had spoken at that confer- ence and they used the AMERICAN EAGLE as an example of one of the last vessels built that had sails, although it had an engine. Anyway I found out who owned the AMERI- CAN EAGLE called them up and they said, “Give her away, we can’t afford to give her away. She’s for sale.” I went down and looked at her. There were three old fishermen that were looking for homes. There was the AMERICAN EAGLE, nice name and the guys that owned her were really nice fellows, and were just tired of keeping her pumped out. Another vessel at the same pier in Gloucester had been built in Rockport, Massachusetts in the late ‘20s. A very pretty model, a little bit smaller. She had a Waukesha engine in her, which they called the “Walk-ashore” engine, because if you had one you better be able to walk ashore. She was a little too small. Then there was the EVELINA M. GOULART in Fairhaven. Good history, built by Arthur D. Story, treenail fastened. Comparing the GOULART and the AMERICAN EAGLE, AMERICAN EAGLE was all spiked fastened, a more modern construction method. GOULART was also involved in a bunch of problems. The owner hadn’t paid his last yard bill, he was behind on his boat loan, one of his crew members had been injured, but the icing on the cake was when he told me that the engine was worth twice what he was asking for the boat. I checked out the engine and it was full of salt water. I looked around the engine room and there was this bathtub ring of oil about eye level, the boat had been flooded. She was just a mess. Quite candidly I couldn’t imagine trying to attract people to come sailing on a vessel with as long a name as the EVELINA M. GOULART. So anyway, out of the three boats the AMERICAN EAGLE was the choice.”


AMERICAN EAGLE had a very long career as a fishing boat. Captain Foss said, “She was built as a swordfisherman for Patrick Murphy, who was a fairly successful fishing captain in Gloucester. Murphy was originally from Newfoundland and came to Gloucester when he was 16. She was origi- nally ANDREW & ROSALIE and was built on the dock by United Sail Loft in Gloucester in 1930. She was named for Patrick Murphy’s two kids. Well, things are always compli- cated, they really were his brother’s kids. Murphy and his wife would go home to Newfoundland, and one time they said to his brother, who had like 12 kids, why don’t you let us have a couple of those. So they took these two home with them. They had this boat built when he was in his 60s. He would take her swordfishing in the summers and she went dory trawling on Georges Bank under sail and power in the 30s. Murphy died in ’38 and Mrs. Murphy asked their family friend Ben Pine, who was from Newfoundland, to be her managing owner. He renamed her AMERICAN EAGLE in early ‘41 as a patriotic gesture. Ben Pine and another fellow, whose name I think is Blanchford, were used equip- ment dealers you might say. Ben Pine ended up finding lots of people jobs on boats during the Depression. He gave Sterling Hayden his


first job on a sailing vessel. He said he sold the boat in 1945 by which time dory trawling was not making much sense. She was also doing some mackerel seining when they put a big- ger engine in. But in ‘45 she went down to New Bedford and had a trawl winch put on deck and had a pilot house built on her. After that she was basically like a lot of old slabs. They tried making one trip to the Grand Banks, but she was too small. Then they went mackerel fishing down in the Carolinas and work their way up following the fish. But the last 10 years they used her as a day boat. As a day boat a lot of the equipment on board was kind of let go and the forecastle filled up with old rubber boots and blankets. There was a lot of stuff on board, but not much of it was savable.”


She arrived at Northend Shipyard in Rockland on Halloween 1984. Captain Foss went in partners with his brother-in-law, Dan Pease who had been mate for him on the FRENCH. He was now mate on the ROSEWAY and was interested in getting into the business.


“As you would expect the ends of the vessel were pretty poor,” added Captain Foss. “We took the lines off the port side because she had been rigged starboard side for dragging. We had to retop her essentially. We use the same method that had been worked out in this neighborhood on similar projects earlier. After all, when we hauled her out she was only 50 some years old. Al- though if you figure the life expectancy of a New England fishing boat is more like 20, 50 is pretty good. She had had her stern sawed- off for a practical matter at some point. We had to fair that back out. We tore off the planking until we got down to good framing, just below the water line in most places with the exception of where the ice boxes had been in the forecastle and where the battery boxes had been in the engine room. Then we re- placed every other sawn frame, fastened the ceiling and put up cross walls, went back and did the even numbered frames, new stem, stem apron, forefoot, some keelson, new rud- der trunk, horn timber, pretty much every- thing above the water line is new except for some of the ceiling inside. As far as materials I used quite a lot of locus in her where she originally had oak. We don’t get as much salt water over the deck as she did when she was fishing.”


They completed rebuilding AMERI- CAN EAGLE in the spring of 1986. Pease ended up with the FRENCH and Captain Foss with the AMERICAN EAGLE and has been sailing her ever since.


“When we got back to Gloucester the first time after rebuilding her there were sev- eral reactions,” said Captain Foss. “Most people said this can’t be the same boat. Other people said this is exactly the way I remember her at launching in 1930. Then there were some that said she was even better than I remember her.


“One of the reasons I went with AMERI- CAN EAGLE was although the Penobscot Bay area may be the best place in the world to sail there are other places. It is nice to get out of the yard once in a while. We’ve been able to get her licensed international and we have run about a dozen trips to Canada over the last 25 years. We can also go to a tall ship events in New York or Boston if there’s enough interest.”


Like many of the schooners they have been saved by those that have a special love for them. No, they are not carrying merchan- dise or whatever up and down the coast. They now carry people and it is different way of life, one not so cruel, at least to the boat and thus they have saved them for another few generations.


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