Bowdoin B. Crowninshield ADVENTURESS

Historical:

Adventuress is a 133-foot (40.53m) gaff-rigged schooner launched in 1913 in East Boothbay, Maine. She has since been restored, and is listed as a National Historic Landmark. She is one of two surviving San Francisco bar pilot schooners.

Adventuress was built for John Borden, the founder of Chicago’s Yellow Cab Co. at the Rice Brothers’ Boatyard in East Boothbay, Maine, and was designed by B.B. Crowninshield. Borden intended to sail to Alaska to catch a bowhead whale for the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Aboard this maiden voyage sailed the famed naturalist Roy Chapman Andrews. During the voyage, Chapman stopped on the Pribilof Islands and captured film of fur seals, which led to efforts to protect their colonies. Borden’s efforts to catch a whale failed and he sold Adventuress to the San Francisco Bar Pilots Association, which marked the beginning of her career as a workboat. For 35 years, she transferred pilots to and from cargo vessels near the Farallon Islands. During World War II, she was a United States Coast Guard vessel, guarding San Francisco Bay.

Around 1952, Adventuress was brought to Seattle, where she went through several owners. Eventually, she wound up in the care of Monty Morton and Ernestine Bennett, who managed a non-profit sail training organization called Youth Adventure. Under their ownership, the boat was restored to most of her original lines, which had been altered during her years as a working vessel. In 1988, Sound Experience began conducting educational programs on the vessel, and the following year she was listed as a National Historic Landmark.

Adventuress 1913

The bronze bell, that reads “Adventuress 1913,” has been in the possession of Alfred R. “Nick” Lemos since he received it as a boy in 1936. He has kept the bell ever since, until this spring when Lemos asked his adult children to help him find out the fate of the ship named on his bell. Their internet search quickly found that the ship, which was built in 1913 in Maine for an Arctic mission for the American Museum of Natural History, was not lost or wrecked. In fact, the ship had a decades-long career with the San Francisco Bar Pilots and was still sailing in the Seattle region. It was then that Lemos picked up the phone to call Sound Experience, the nonprofit that sails Adventuress as a youth environmental education ship, to say, “I think I have your bell.” Sound Experience’s Executive Director, Catherine Collins, was stunned when she received the call. “Not in our wildest imaginations did we think that her original bell still existed,” said Collins.

Indeed, such a find is a rare opportunity, according to San Francisco-based National Trust for Historic Preservation Field Director Anthony Veerkamp. “Reuniting an artifact with its original home is always exciting,” says Veerkamp. “Together, Adventuress and her bell are greater than the sum of their parts, prompting us to look at the stories that they hold with fresh eyes.”

According to Lemos, the bell was given to him when he was ten years old by a police boat captain who patrolled San Francisco’s waterfront during Prohibition. The captain was dating Lemos’ grandmother. Laughing, Lemos recalls, “I think he gave me the bell to keep me quiet.”

How the police boat captain found the bell remains a mystery. However, it may have been lost in June 1915 when Adventuress caught fire at the dock just a year after entering the service of the San Francisco Bar Pilots. Following extensive repairs, the ship went back into service in October 1915. Adventuress’ current ship’s bell reads “Bar Pilots 1915,” likely commemorating her return to service following the fire.

“The San Francisco Bar Pilots Association used sailing schooners such as Adventuress from the Gold Rush up until the early 1970s to board ships and navigate them safely into San Francisco Bay,” says Captain Dan Larwood of the San Francisco Bar Pilots. “The Bar Pilots have been keeping station 10 miles west of the Golden Gate to serve inbound and outbound ships since the California State Legislature first created the Association in 1850. Adventuress served the San Francisco Bar Pilots faithfully day and night, in good and bad weather, for 35 years.”

As much as the bell means to him, Lemos wants to restore the bronze artifact to where it belongs, aboard Adventuress. For their part, the San Francisco Bar Pilots are pleased that their former schooner has found a new life in Puget Sound. Says Captain Larwood, “We are especially glad that her original bell – without which no pilot boat is complete – is being returned to her.”

Collins, and documentary film maker John Leben, sat down with Lemos at his Belmont home to hear his story about the bell. Once their interviews are complete, the bell will be taken to the National Park Service’s San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park where curators will inspect the bell to verify its identity as the bell that was aboard Adventuress when she was launched 101 years ago in East Boothbay, Maine.

“This is an exciting discovery,” says Stephen Canright, Curator of Maritime History at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. “Bells were an important part of traditional sailing vessels’ outfit. They would be rung in fog or reduced visibility situations, and were used to keep time, marking the passage of the four-hour watches, or duty periods. But as an artifact, Adventuress’ bell is important for another reason,” Canright emphasizes, “It clearly marks, for future generations, the fact that pilot schooners served on the San Francisco Bar every day, 24/7, for over 120 years.”

The timing of this find is extraordinary, coming just after the completion of a successful multi-year, $1.2 million hull restoration for the historic ship. As all work was done to the 50-year standard set by the Secretary of the Interior for historic vessel preservation, Adventuress will literally sail for generations to come. Adventuress is one of only two National Historic Landmark sailing ships, along with the 1891 scow schooner Alma, that are still in active service on the West Coast. Remarks Collins, “Finding the bell is the icing on the cake.”

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

• Owner: (1913-1914) – John Borden II
• Owner: (1914) – San Francisco Bar Pilots
• War service – U.S. Coast Guard
• Owner: San Francisco Bar Pilots
• Owner: (1952) – O.H. “Doc” Freeman
• Owner: (early 1960’s) – Monty Morton, and Ernestine Bennett (Youth Adventure)
• Owner: (1988) Sound Experience, Sound Experience, a platform for environmental education about Puget Sound. She sails from March into October, on trips ranging from 3 hours to 7 days. Paid employees and volunteers perform office, crew, and maintenance work

Resources:

• Sound Experience, a nonprofit founded by Barbara Wyatt and Morley Horder
• Wikipedia
• San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park
• National Park Service