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Sail Number: 46015

Wartime designation: CG-65016.

ex; Morning Star

LOA: 81’6″ / 24.84m – LOD: 65’4″ / 17.50m – LWL: 46’5″ / 14.12m – Beam: 14’9″ / 4.47m – Draft: 8’6″ / 2.57m – Displacement: 70,400 lbs / 31,933 kg – Ballast: – Sail Area: 2,054 ft² / 190.82m² – Original Owner: Charles Lee Andrews, Long Island – Year Launched: 1926 – Designed by: John G. Alden – Design No.: 273 B – Type: After Cockpit – Built by: Fred F. Pendleton’s shipyard, Wiscasset, Maine – Documentation or State Reg. No.: – Owner’ Website: www.alden-schooner.com

Historical:

CURLEW was designed by John G. Alden for Charles Lee Andrews, Port. Washington Long Island and built and launched in 1934 by Fred F. Pendleton’s shipyard, Wiscasset, Maine

WWII service

WWII Wartime designation: (1940-1960) – CG-65016 – Picket Patrol

Donated on the 31st of January 1940 to the US Coast Guard Academy at New London CT for the grand sum of $1.00. Here she served as a sail-training vessel and saw coastal submarine patrol duty for the Coast Guard during WWII.

Provenance (The Wall of Remembrance – The Owners, Crew & Notable Guest):

• Owner: (1926 – 1937) – Charles Lee Andrews
• Owner: (1937 – 1940) William Jay Schieffelin Jr
• Owner: (1940 – 1951) US Coast Guard Academy, New London CT
• Owner: (1951 – 1960) USCG Recruit Training Center, Cape May, New Jersey
• Owner: (1960 – 1970) Mr. Robert Gervasoni of Trenton, N.J. and Mr. Sam Fiorello of Yardley PA
• Owner: (1970 – ?) Louis G & Mildred Holcomb, Saratoga California
• Owner: Carlos Romer, Marina del Rey/li>
• Owner: Steven King
• Owner: 1985 Pat and Marlene Russell
• Owner: 2002 Captain Robert A Harrison Jr., then of Newport Beach CA
• Skipper: Robert Beare
• Crew: Lieutenant Donald H. Treadwell
• Crew: Joshua Sparrow
• Commanding officer: Arnold Peterson
• Crew: 1st Class Boatswain Mate Preston Mason
• Crew: Bobby Wies
• Crew: Marinus Middeldorp
• Crew: Sean Brennan
• Crew: Frank Sherman
• Crew: Bobby Wies

Resources

• Curlew Charters, Inc
• Coast Guard Modeling
• MIT Museum

Historical:

The schooner Bowdoin was designed by William H. Hand, Jr., and built in 1921, in East Boothbay, Maine, at the Hodgdon Brothers Shipyard now known as Hodgdon Yachts. She is the only American schooner built specifically for Arctic exploration, and was designed under the direction of explorer Donald B. MacMillan. She has made 29 trips above the Arctic Circle in her life, three since she was acquired by the Maine Maritime Academy in 1988. She is currently owned by the Maine Maritime Academy, located in Castine, Maine, and is used for their sail training curriculum. She is named for Bowdoin College.

Bowdoin was declared the official sailing vessel of the state of Maine in 1986. In 1989 Bowdoin was designated a National Historic Landmark in recognition for her significant role in Arctic exploration.

WWII service

On 22 May 1941 the United States Navy purchased Bowdoin from MacMillan for use in the war effort. She was placed in commission as USS Bowdoin (IX-50) on 16 June 1941. She was one of the very few sail powered vessels commissioned in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Her first commanding officer was her previous owner, Lieutenant Commander Donald B. MacMillan. (MacMillan had received a commission in the Naval Reserve in 1925 and was retired for age in 1938 but volunteered for active duty in 1941 at the age of 66.) MacMillan was soon reassigned to the Navy’s hydrographic office. As of March 1, 1942, her commanding officer was Lieutenant (junior grade) Stuart T. Hotchkiss.

Bowdoin was assigned to the South Greenland Patrol but did not report for duty at Ivigtut. The Greenland patrol existed for two major purposes: to assist in the defense of Greenland and to support the Army in its task of setting up air bases on Greenland as stopover and fueling points for aircraft being ferried to Great Britain. Bowdoin provided services in conjunction with air base site surveys and construction. That assignment lasted about 27 months.

During that time, in October 1941, the two portions of the Greenland Patrol — the northeast and Bowdoin’s south — were combined into a single command, the Greenland Patrol, Task Group 24.8 which took its orders directly from Commander in Chief, Atlantic Fleet. About two years after that event, on 23 October 1943, the auxiliary schooner was placed in reduced commission.

On 16 December 1943, Bowdoin was placed out of commission at Quincy, Massachusetts. Her name was struck from the Navy list on 16 May 1944. She was sold as a hulk on 24 January 1945 through the Maritime Commission’s War Shipping Administration. Purchased by friends of MacMillan, the battered schooner was refitted once again for Arctic exploration.

Bowdoin was one of a very few sail powered vessels in commissioned service in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

Provenance (The Wall of Remembrance – The Owners, Notable Guest, and Reunion Information):

Owner/Guardian: (1921) – (1941) – Donald B. MacMillan
Owner/Guardian: (1941) – (1945) – US Navy
Owner/Guardian: (1945) – (1959) – Donald B. MacMillan
Owner/Guardian: (1959) – (1967) – Mystic Seaport
Owner/Guardian: (1967) – (1988) – Schooner Bowdoin Association, Inc.
Owner/Guardian: (1988) – (current) – Maine Maritime Academy

World War II Classicfication: USAT Argosy Lemal (S-6)

Type: Three-master schooner

Ex; De Lauwers (1917–20), Argosy Lemal (1920–49), Ametco (1949–52), Clair Crouch (1952–64), Booya (1964–74)

LOA: 117’5″ / 35.79m – Beam: 24’5″ / 7.44m – Draft: 10’4″ / 3.15m – Displacement: 254 GRT – Ballast: – Original Owner: Gebroeders van Diepen – Port Registry: Netherlands 1917–20 – Newcastle upon Tyne 1920–23 – Port Adelaide (1923–42) – United States Army (1942–49) – Australia (1949–74) – Year Launched: 1917 – Designed by: Gebroeders van Diepen – Built by: Gebroeders van Diepen, Waterhuizen, Netherlands – Hull Material: Steel – Ship Plan Location: Mystic Seaport 28.44 CLYTIE; 34.58 ft. 6 meter – Fate: Sank 24 December 1974

Historical:

Booya was built in Waterhuizen, the Netherlands in 1917 by Gebroeders van Diepen, under her original name, De Lauwers. She was a three-masted auxiliary schooner with a steel hull and a 130 bhp engine. At the time of her loss, she was 35.8 metres long and had a gross register tonnage of 262 tons.

In 1920, she became known as the Argosy Lemal after she was purchased and registered by the Argosy Shipping and Coal Company in Newcastle-on-Tyne in England. In 1923, she was brought to Australia and was purchased by Yorke Shipping Pty Ltd and subsequently played an active role in coastal shipping working numerous ports including Port Adelaide and Hobart. That company later became a subsidiary of the Adelaide Steamship Company.

U.S. Army WWII service

In November 1942, the Argosy Lemal was requisitioned by the Commonwealth Government and she played an important role in the US Army Small Ships Section, functioning as a radio communication vessel in the Arafura and Timor Seas during World War II. The crew of 12 was made up of Australians, Americans, Norwegians, Scandinavians, Scots and British personnel. As operations against the enemy began in the island and ocean areas northward from Australia in 1942, amphibious communications became necessary, the SWPA chief signal officer, General Spencer B. Akin, created a small fleet that served as relay ships from forward areas to headquarters, however their function and number soon expanded, when they took aboard the forward command post communications facilities as the Army’s CP fleet. The small communications ships, part of the U.S. Army’s Small Ships Section of Australian acquired vessels known officially as the “catboat flotilla,” proved so useful in amphibious actions that Army elements in SWPA operations continually competed to obtain their services. The first Australian vessels acquired by General Akin to be converted during the first half of 1943 by Australian firms into communications ships were the Harold (S-58, CS-3), an auxiliary ketch, and the Argosy Lemal (S-6), an auxiliary schooner.[Note 1] From Milne Bay, the vessels then, served at Port Moresby, at Woodlark, and in the Lae-Salamaua area through mid-1943.

A graphic account of some of the vicissitudes of the Argosy Lemal and its mixed crew came from S/Sgt. Arthur B. Dunning, Headquarters Company, 60th Signal Battalion. He and six other enlisted men of that unit were ordered aboard her on 9 September 1943, at Oro Bay, New Guinea, to handle Army radio traffic. The commander of the ship reported to naval authorities, not to General Akin. After six months’ service along the New Guinea coast, the skipper was removed for incompetence. His replacement was no better. Among other things, he obeyed to the letter Navy’s order forbidding the use of unshielded radio receivers at sea. Since the Signal Corps receivers aboard the ship were unshielded and thus liable to radiate sufficiently to alert nearby enemy listeners, the men were forbidden to switch them on in order to hear orders from Army headquarters ashore. As a consequence, during a trip in the spring of 1944 from Milne Bay to Cairns, Australia (on naval orders), the crew failed to hear frantic Signal Corps radio messages to the Argosy Lemal ordering her to return at once to Milne Bay to make ready for a forthcoming Army operation. On the way to Australia the skipper, after a series of mishaps attributable to bad navigation, grounded the Argosy hard on a reef. Most of the crew already desperately ill of tropical diseases, now had additional worries. The radio antennas were swept away along with the ship’s rigging, and help could not be requested until the Signal Corps men strung up a makeshift antenna. Weak with fevers and in a ship on the verge of foundering, they pumped away at the water rising in the hold and wondered why rescue was delayed till they learned that the position of the ship that the skipper had given them to broadcast was ninety miles off their true position. As they threw excess cargo overboard, “some of the guys,” recorded Dunning, “were all for jettisoning our skipper for getting us into all of this mess.” Much later, too late for the need the Signal Corps had for the ship, the Argosy Lemal was rescued and towed to Port Moresby for repairs to the vessel and medical attention to the crew, many of whom were by then, according to Dunning, “psycho-neurotic.” Besides Dunning, a radio operator, there were T/4 Jack Stanton, also a radio operator; T/Sgt. Harold Wooten, the senior non-commissioned officer; T/4 Finch and T/5 Burtness, maintenance men; and T/5 Ingram and Pfc. Devlin, code and message center clerks. Dunning described the Argosy as a 3-mast sailing vessel with a 110-horsepower auxiliary diesel engine. “She was the sixth vessel,” he wrote, “to be taken over by the Small Ships Section of the U.S. Army, her primary purpose was handling [radio] traffic between forward areas and the main USASOS headquarters.”

Provenance (The Wall of Remembrance – The Owners, Crew & Notable Guest):

• Owner/Guardian: (1917) Gebroeders van Diepen
• Owner/Guardian: (1920–23) Argosy Shipping & Coal Co Ltd, Newcastle upon Tyne
• Owner/Guardian: (1923–42) Yorke Shipping Pty Ltd, Port Adelaide
• Owner/Guardian: (1942–49) Australian Government
• Owner/Guardian: (1949–52) Australian Middle East Trading Co
• Owner/Guardian: (1952–64) M B Crouch & Co Ltd
• Owner/Guardian: (1964–68) Mornington Island Fishing Co
• Owner/Guardian: (1968–74) Denham Island Transport Co. On the evening of 24 December 1974, Booya was moored near Fort Hill wharf with four crew and one guest on board. As Cyclone Tracy approached Darwin, she – and all other vessels – were ordered off the wharves and instructed to find safe anchorage. Booya was last seen at about 8.00pm leaving Fort Hill wharf. For the next 29 years she remained missing, presumed sunk with the loss of all lives in the huge seas whipped up by Cyclone Tracy’s 300 km/h winds.

Historical:

Blue Dolphin was designed by the famous naval architect William Roue, designer of the famous racing schooner Bluenose. Sometimes called a sister ship to Bluenose, Blue Dolphin was in fact considerably smaller but reflected the overall style of Bluenose. Blue Dolphin was built for Stephen Henry Velie, Jr of Kansas City. A rich businessman interested in “long foreign voyages,” Felie ordered a fishing schooner style vessel with an extra reinforced hull but luxurious cabins in place of a fishing hold. She was registered at Shelburne for the beginning of her career which her owner used as a base for adventure trips to the north.

After the war, Blue Dolphin was apparently sold to a Mr. David C. Nutt who was involved in oceanographic research in conjunction with various universities, civilian research organizations, and the Office of Naval Research. Mr. Nutt was also a naval reserve commander. On 3 April 1949, she was designated as “suitable for use as a naval auxiliary in time of war” by the Chief of Naval Operations. She was also authorized to fly the Naval Reserve Yacht pennant. The last information available on her indicates that she continued to conduct oceanographic and hydrobiological research out of Boothbay Harbor, Maine, into the summer of 1954.

While still in Maine, The Blue Dolphin changed hands again. A printer from Detroit named Joe Pica purchased her. Pica had already restored one vessel – the Katherine II – and was looking for a larger ship.

He sailed Blue Dolphin into the Great Lakes where she was berthed in Sarnia, Ontario, for a number of years. That was the last time the Blue Dolphin left the dock under her own power. She sank at the dock in Sarnia at least twice during the restoration efforts. The first time, Pica said the fresh water permeated her okum caulking and when freeze up came it turned to ice. With ice-out, so went the caulking opening up a seam one eighth inch wide by nearly one hundred feet long. With no ship keeper to stem the inflow, she sank. The second sinking Pica attributed to sabotage – unsubstantiated.

Journalist and photographer Bruce Kemp became interested in the restoration when he was assigned the story by Sailing Canada Magazine. Because of his affiliation with another magazine at the time, he wrote the final piece under the name of Howard Douglas Jr. Kemp and his wife Donna worked with Pica in trying to set up a foundation, have debts forgiven and to make the ship an ambassador for the city of Sarnia. Kemp also worked on the project as the last in a string of divers and helped raise the ship the second time. He was instrumental in getting folk singer Stan Rogers to agree to aid the project.

Rogers commemorated the schooner with his song, “Man with Blue Dolphin”, part of his From Fresh Water album. The liner notes mention that Rogers wrote the song based on his contact with Bruce Kemp and Kemp’s experiences trying to raise and restore the Blue Dolphin. Unfortunately, a few weeks after writing the song “Man with Blue Dolphin” Rogers died in an airplane fire in Cincinnati.

When money problems began to plague the ship again, Pica hired a tug to tow the Blue Dolphin over the border into the United States and away from his creditors. He did this without telling any of the people trying to help him.
Blue Dolphin spent her final years in Detroit near the Goat Yard Marina. She was last seen by Kemp in 2001. She was lying on her side and partly submerged. Her history and disposition since then is unknown.

Demise in Detroit of Blue Dolphin – by Neil McLaughlin

She was moved to an inlet near the goat yard marina in Detroit. Joe Pica passed away and the boat was left to sink further into the mud and disappear. Marina upgrades eventually had the ship wrecked and trucked away for trash. Goat yard marina did save the cabin roof. I have some pictures. I worked on this boat for several years in Sarnia. I got to know Joe Pica pretty well and was one of those surprised when he took the boat away.

WWII service

Modified for Naval service at George Lawley & Sons Shipyard, Neponset, MA. from 26 March 1942 to 4 April 1942. Designated a miscellaneous auxiliary, IX 65 and placed in service at the Section Base, Boston on 6 April 1942.

Blue Dolphin spent the next 38 months serving as station vessel at Casco Bay, Maine. Shortly after Germany surrendered, she was placed out of service at Boston on 28 June 1945. Her name was struck from the Navy list on 11 July 1945, and she was delivered to the Maritime Commission’s War Shipping Administration for disposal on 14 September 1945.

Provenance (The Wall of Remembrance – The Owners, Notable Guest, and Reunion Information):

Owner/Guardian: (1926) – (1933) William James Roué
Owner/Guardian: (1933) – (1942) Amory Coolidge, Boston, Massachusetts
Owner/Guardian: (1942) – (1945) The United States Navy (USN)
Owner/Guardian: (1945) – (1954) David C. Nutt
Owner/Guardian: (1954) – (Blue Dolphin spent her final years in Detroit near the Goat Yard Marina) Joe Pica, Sarnia, Ontario

Historical:

Black Douglas is a three-masted staysail auxiliary schooner built for Robert C. Roebling (great-grandson of John A. Roebling and grand-nephew of Washington Roebling) at the Bath Iron Works of Bath, Maine, and launched on 9 June 1930. Designed by renowned New York City naval architects H.J. Gielow & Co., she is one of the largest steel-hulled schooners ever built.

The ship’s 120-foot Douglas fir masts supported 9,111 square feet of sails that propelled the vessel. Auxiliary power was provided by twin 325-horsepower Cooper Bessemer diesel engines. These were later replaced with a 400-horsepower Enterprise diesel and then again with two Volvo diesel engines with twin shafts. The vessel was originally to be named Grenadier, but Mr. Roebling was persuaded by the Bath boatyard foreman to go with Black Douglas, after the famous Scottish knight. On her bow was placed a carved wooden figurehead of the knight.

The Roeblings and their friends sailed the Black Douglas on a maiden voyage through the Straits of Magellan at the southern tip of South America. In 1936, the family purchased the Modena Plantation on the north end of Skidaway Island, off the coast of Georgia. They then moved there from Trenton, New Jersey, and lived aboard the Black Douglas while the farm and living structures were being built onshore.

In September 1941, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) purchased the ship following a special 30 June Congressional appropriation of $290,000 to begin the North Pacific fur seal investigation work. The Black Douglas was reconditioned in preparation for the work at Mingledorff’s shipyard in Savannah, Georgia.

The vessel, having been converted into a floating biological laboratory for seal research, set sail on 29 October 1941 for Seattle, Washington. Some sources suggest that the large lettering “UNITED STATES SEAL INVESTIGATION” was painted on her sides to help deter submarine attacks in the Atlantic and Carribean waters during World War II. Two months later, the 7 December bombing of Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into the war. It is reported that while enroute to Seattle, the Black Douglas was fired upon by an enemy submarine off the Oregon coast and manage to escape by cutting her engine and blacking out.

Upon reaching Seattle, the ship requisitioned by the U.S. Navy, who then removed her figurehead and sailing gear (masts, spar, tackle, rigging, etc.). Four .50 caliber machine guns and sonar equipment were installed for military duty and on 18 April 1942, the USS Black Douglas was placed into service classified as the Miscellaneous Unclassified Auxiliary, IX-55. On 8 April 1943 she was reclassified as the coastal patrol yacht PYc-45 and commissioned on 19 April. That year, her engine was replaced with twin 450-horsepower Volvos connected to a single shaft. During the war, she patrolled the waters near Neah Bay off the Washington coast. After the war, the vessel was decommissioned at the Puget Sound Navy Yard on 20 September 1944.

She was removed from the Navy Register and returned to the Fish and Wildlife Service on 4 October 1944. At last the FWS had the Black Douglas available for its North Pacific fur seal project, however, two and a half years passed before the cruises actually began. During this time, the renovations and refitting were being made in Seattle to once again outfit the ship for the task at hand.

On 16 May 1947, the Black Douglas finally sailed northbound to begin the long-awaited studies of the Alaska fur seal herd. Headed by Dr. Victor Scheffer of the FWS, the work entailed tagging the seals and studying their feeding habits at the Pribilof Islands breeding grounds in the Bering Sea.

The Black Douglas followed the fur seal herd to ascertain alleged poaching threats and the seals’ migratory routes both to and from the Pribilof Islands. Druing the cruises, the crew also had the opportunity to study other marine mammals that potentially prey upon the young fur seals. That first year of the project, mechanical troubles prevented the vessel from trailing the seal herd further west than Attu Island at the end of the Aleutian chain. On 12 August, she returned to Seattle.

On 2 November 1948, the Black Douglas again sailed from Seattle north to the Pribilofs and Aleutian Islands to continue the fur seal study. The ship pursued the herd south as far as southern California to locate the wintering grounds before returning to port in late December. During the several 1947-49 cruises made from Alaska to California, almost 4 million seals were followed. These voyages also provided the opportunity to collect information from observing albatrosses at sea.

The captain and crew of the Black Douglas received commendations from the Secretary of the Interior as a result of their night rescue of 18 survivors from the Panamanian lumber ship Salina Cruz, which burned on 17 October 1949, about 100 miles off the coast of Oregon. Fortunately, the survivors, suffering from exposure, had been spotted in two lifeboats by Coast Guard planes.

The Black Douglas’ service in Alaska turned out to be short however. Following the fur seal cruises in 1949, the vesssel was moored at Treasure Island (San Francisco, California), used by the FWS to collect oceanographic data concerning currents and chemical/biological water characteristics. Late in 1949, the Black Douglas was reconditioned for oceanographic work and was relocated at La Jolla, California, near San Diego. Renovations included the installation of bathythermograph and plankton winches, and an overboard work platform. A wet laboratory was created from a portion of the galley.

From 1949-65, the Black Douglas was assigned to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Southwest Fisheries, and the California Department of Fish and Game for use in oceanographic cruises made between Oregon and Mexico. In 1949, the vessel and three other ships were involved in a coast-wide ocean pilchard research program. Other studies involved:

• Sardine spawning patterns off southern Califonia and Baja California (Jan-Feb 1951)
• Vertical distribution of southern California jack mackerel fish larvae (Apr 1955)
• Detailed physical and chemical hydrographic observations, and southern California egg and larval collections of sardine and other ecologically associated species, such as mackerel and anchovy (1956)
• Nightly plankton and temperature collections from areas frequented by the sardine fleet out of San Pedro, California (Oct-Dec 1957)

In 1965 the FWS descendant fisheries agency, Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (est. 1956), replaced the Black Douglas at La Jolla with the newly built research vessel David Starr Jordan. Bidding opened on 18 July 1966, for the auctioning of the Black Douglas. She was sold to Louis Black, a treasure hunter who used her to search for the sunken Spanish galleon Atocha.

The vessel was then sold in 1972 to the George Stoll family, owners of the Flint preparatory school in Sarasota, Florida. Sinc

e the ship was now showing severe wear from the many years of intensive use, she was fully remodeled, given new masts and renamed the te Quest. The revivied vessel partnered with another Flint boat, the te Vega, to visit various locations throughout Europe and the Mediterranean as a training ship for students learning to sail.

The Flint school was eventually disbanded in 1982 and the te Quest was sold to an investment group. The ship was brought to Germany, where, at a cost of $4 million, she was extensively restored as a luxury schooner at the Abeking and Rasmussen shipyard, and renamed Aquarius. During the 9 June 1996 weekend, the Aquarius (Black Douglas) returned to Skidaway Island for the first time in 55 years to celebrate her homecoming and 66th birthday. She also attended the Centennial Olympic Games which was being held at that time in Georgia.

In May 2003, the Aquarius was in Nice, France, under British registry, carrying a $1-2 million “historical” premium, and being offered for sale at a price of $6-7 million. She had additional maintenance and refitting work done in 2005 as a sailing yacht under the name El Boughaz I. Photos and references of the vessel found on the Internet dated as recently as 2009 showed her based out of France, apparently owned by King Mohammed VI of Morocco.

WWII service

Coastal patrol vessel in United States Navy service during World War II (PYc-45)

Provenance (The Wall of Remembrance – The Owners, Notable Guest, and Reunion Information):

Owner/Guardian: (1930) – Robert C. Roebling
Owner/Guardian: Louis Black of Santa Monica, California
Owner/Guardian: Capt. George Stoll
Owner/Guardian: SMCD Limited (King Mohammed VI of Morocco.)

Resources

NOAA Fisheries
NavSource