Page 24. MAINE COASTAL NEWS June 2015 HISTORY FROM THE PAST - Bangor Daily Commercial - Early 1900s
11 December 1913 Sch. HUNT Safe; Lost Her Sails
The Three Master Towed into Rockland – Crew Exhausted from Working at Pumps.
Rockland, December 11. Anxiety for the three-masted New
York schooner LAURA M. LUNT and her crew of eight was relieved Thursday when the schooner was found anchored off Owls Head, several miles outside of this port, and towed into the harbor by the tug (?) N. SMITH.
Practically all the sails were gone, a third of the cargo of lumber shipped at Bridgewater, N. S., had been lost, and there was several feet of water in her hold. Revenue cutters were searching for the LUNT in response to an appeal sent to Portland by the steamer O. A. KNUDSON, Wednesday.
Capt. Johnson, who with his crew was much exhausted by work at the pumps, reported that after leaving Bridgewater Saturday, they ran into a succession of gales which continued Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, during which time they were about 50 miles northwest of Cape Sable. The mainsail and headsails were lost, but with the remaining canvas, they managed to work along to within 60 miles of Matinicus. There, they spoke to Knudson on Tuesday night and asked for a revenue cutter. They worked their way to Owl’s Head Wednesday and Wednesday night.
The schooner will be able to proceed to New York after replacing her sails.
17 December 1913 Bucksport Schooner Has Had Some Career
The REGINA, Now Owned by Capt. Tom Nicholson, Once the Pride of Grand Bank Fleet
Ending a glorious career as haddocker,
salt breaker, hand liner and seiner, the schooner REGINA now owned by Capt. T. M. Nicholson of Bucksport has been relegated to the ranks of a potato hooker bound foreign. When schooner grow old, one may expect them to be put into most any plebeian trade. But the REGINA isn’t old, only 12 years since she took her baptismal dip, and a fi shing schooner of 111 tons net like the 115-tons REGINA is good for a century with decent care. Frequenters of T wharf in Boston, couple the REGINA with Capt. Jerry Shea and crew of South Boston cracks of the red shirt type, and will be sorry to see the vessel go. Shea gathered about him a crowd of cronies, everyone physically a giant and devoid of fear. Most of the schooner’s men have fi shed in Irish waters, where they flippantly snapped fingers at gales and managed always to scramble safely up the ledges.
The REGINA has brought in tremendous fares and her earnings were enormous, shared by the crew, who talked buying houses with the surplus. One always knew when the REGINA was at T wharf in Boston by the fi ne clothes her men donned, veritable Beau Brummels who leaned toward neckties kissed with green and complacently puffed T. D.’s And the REGINA’s forecastle was redolent of days when members of the crew fi shed from T wharf in quaint little Galway luggers, black as tar could paint, with reefi ng bowsprits and iron tillers, lumbered with nets in which perch were caught off the Brewster ledges.
In the days before fi shing by steam the
REGINA was the pride of the fl eet and the crew jumped at opportunity to prove she could show her heels to the fl eet. She did, too, quite often. Some of her passages from
Georges is written in history as daredevil achievement. The vessel fought a northwest hurricane for more than 100 miles, wind dead in her teeth and mercury below zero. Hour after hour Shea and his huskies drove her toward market, never fl inching when great seas deluged the decks and the REGINA dove under the green combers as if she might keep straight on going for the port of missing ships. Along came T. M. Nicholson of Bucksport, with a wad of money in exchange for the schooner. Nicholson owns many vessels employed in the fi shing industry and knows the reputation of most everything afloat. This time he wanted a staunch schooner for the potato trade between Stockton, Savannah and Havana.
18 December 1913 Rockland Schooner Struck by Steamer Rockland, December 18.
Owners of the three-masted Rockland schooner METHEBESIC, received a telegram Thursday from Capt. David Brown, the master, that is the METHEBESIC was struck at the entrance to Long Island Sound by the steamer TENNESSEE Tuesday night and that the schooner had been towed to New York with her head gear carried away. The schooner had discharged a cargo of stone at Norwalk, Connecticut, and was bound to New York.
23 December 1913
Life Loss Small in Steamboat Traffi c The annual report of the supervising inspector general of the Steamboat Inspection Service to the Secretary of Commerce, for the fi scal year ended June 30, 1913, has been published.
During the year 7,965 vessels of all grades licensed. Of the 7,670 applicants for original or renewal of licenses who were examined for visual defects, 84 were found color-blind or with other defects and licenses refused.
Accidents resulting in loss of life during the year numbered 66, with a total life loss of 436. Of the lives lost 226 were from suicide, accidental drowning, and other similar causes, which leaves only 210 that can fairly be chargeable to accident, collision, explosion, or foundering. During the fi scal year 303,263,033 passengers were carried on steam vessels that are required by law to report the number of passengers carried. Taking the total number of lives lost as 436, it is seen that 695,557 passengers were carried for each life lost, whether of passengers or crew, and from all causes.
Particular attention was paid to the prevention of the overloading of steamers carrying passengers, and this practice has been materially reduced. One factor which has substantially controlled the allowance of passengers is the rules in force in regard to lifeboat equipment, for where steamers are boated according to the number of passengers carried they can not carry a larger number of passengers than justifi ed by their lifeboats capacity.
* * * * * Designs a Ship that Won’t Sink
Dickie Tells Naval Architects his Plans will Prevent Wrecks
Can’t Trust to Lifeboats
Vessels Must Be So Constructed as to Stay Afl oat Under any of the Mishaps Common to the Sea.
“Can a large passenger-carrying steamship be built that would not under any of the known mishaps at sea lose her buoyancy and sink?” was a question asked at the annual meeting of the American Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers in New York recently. The question was
answered by George W. Dickie, the vice president of the society, and one of the best known ship designers in the United States. Mr. Dickie thinks that it is possible to build such a ship.
“This problem,” said Mr. Dickie, in addressing the naval architects and marine engineers, “has occupied the minds of many, if not all, prominent naval architects since the disaster that overtook the TITANIC in 1912. A great deal of legislation followed this calamity, nearly all of which dealt with means of escape for everyone on board a sinking sink. In a smooth sea and with all conditions favorable it might be possible to handle and load 20 or 30 boats, and if they could remain in the vicinity of the disaster and intelligence had reached other ships within a radius of 200 miles, a large proportion or perhaps all of these boats might be picked up. In order that this condition be (?) however, we must assume exceptional conditions.
“I am writing this paper on board the CONGRESS, a new vessel on her maiden voyage from Philadelphia to San Francisco. This vessel was designed by me for the passenger and freight service on the Pacifi c coast, and is to run between Seattle and San Diego. With passenger list full this vessel carries 850 persons, and should it ever be necessary that they leave the ship during that part of her voyage north of San Francisco, I can hardly conceive of it being accomplished without serious loss of life. “The ship itself, even with half the freeboard gone, would be so much safer and more comfortable than small boats or rafts that it is worth much thought, careful planning, some compromises, and considerable money to accomplish the design of a hull which would not lose its buoyancy or stability when subjected to the known disasters of the sea and which at the same time would not be open to any serious fi nancial or commercial objections. “The conditions are so varying in
different types of vessels that the only way to handle the subject is to assume a certain type and work out the problem in its relation to the assumption, which is what I propose doing. I have taken a typical large passenger steamer of the following dimensions: Length between perpendiculars – 800
feet
Beam, molded – 90 feet Draught, loaded – 33 feet Here is Mr. Dickie’s suggestions for an unsinkable boat of the dimensions given above: With a coefficient of .64 these dimensions would give a load displacement of 42,130 tons. There would be a complete double bottom, the inner shell being from the fore peak to the after peak and up the sides to the lower deck, which would be 15 feet above the base line. The main deck would be 9 feet above the lower deck, and the upper deck 9 feet above the main deck amidships, and would extend parallel to the base line from Frame 87 to Frame 238. From Frame 87 to the stem, this deck would slope down, touching the stem at the height of 26 feet above base, and from Frame 233 it would slope downwards aft, touching the stern frame at a height of 27 feet. There would be twelve bulkheads extending from the inner bottom to the upper deck. These would be absolutely water- tight, without doors or openings whatever, and would be spaced as follows, the frame spacing being 30 inches. No. 1, fore peak, Frame 24; No. 2, Frame 45; No. 3, Frame 66; No. 4, Frame 87; No. 5, Frame 116; No. 6, Frame 145; No. 7, Frame 174; No. 8, Frame 206; No. 9, Frame 233; No. 10, Frame 254; No. 11, Frame 275; No. 12,
the after peak bulkhead; the double bottom space being divided in the same manner. As the horsepower of such a vessel would not be less than 45,000 the boiler compartments and coal bunker would, to a large extent, control the subdivision, and it will be noticed that I have provided four main boiler compartments, each 72 feet six inches in length. Each compartment is intended to take four double-ended Scotch boilers abreast, these to be 17 feet in diameter and with eight furnaces each, giving 128 furnaces in all, or 2,800 feet of grate surface to develop 16 horsepower per foot, which would be easy with forced combustion. It will be noticed that the boiler compartments have a bulkhead at each end 16 feet from the main bulkhead. These would each have four coal bunker doors, one opposite each boiler. Each bunker holds 750 tons, and as there are eight of them the coaling capacity would be 6,000 tons, all of which runs out directly in front of the boiler it is to serve. These bankers would be fi lled from either side through side doors three feet six inches square, with triangular side pieces forming hoppers when open, thus insuring quick coaling. The amount of coal provided is suffi cient for eight days’ steaming at 45,000 horse power. “I think,” added Mr. Dickie, “that it will be admitted that this ship could be considered safe from any injury to the bottom below the lower deck, and that danger of sinking would arise from rupture of the skin above the lower deck and under the water line, which is at the upper deck line. Such danger would arise from collision with another ship at such an angle as would cause penetration or through sinking some stationary mass between the lower and upper decks, opening up several compartments to the sea, as in the case of the TITANIC.” Mr. Dickie then discusses penetration by collision, in which case he points out the damage would be vertical, and if the striking vessel was large would penetrate a considerable distance into the side of the ship. He said that he believed that in such a disaster but more than three adjacent compartments, if it was near amidship, would be affected by the collision.
24 December 1913 Life Savers Did Splendid Work
Supt.’s Report Gives in Cold Figures the Sum of Heroic Rescues from the Sea. The annual report of the general superintendent of the Life Saving service for the last fi scal year, contains information of more than usual interest relating to the last season’s operation of the service corps. In the total of 1743 casualties, the highest number that has ever occurred within the fi eld of the establishment, but 69 vessels were totally lost. The destruction of two steamers on the Pacifi c coast, in January and April last, under circumstances that rendered the rescue of their crews by any human agency impossible, resulted in the drowning of 49 persons – more than half of the total number of lives lost during the year. Aside from these fatalities the total of lives lost was not proportionally large in relation to the number of disasters reported. Of the 1743 casualties above mentioned, 552 were sustained by documented vessels and 1191 by vessels of the undocumented class, the latter comprising small craft such as frequent harbors and other sheltered waters largely for pleasure. The documented vessels carried 5,787 persons, while those of the undocumented class had on board 3,254. The total estimated value of vessels and cargoes, both classes combined, was $15,623,150, of which $1,763,150 represents the value of the property lost.
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