Wartime designation: Shearwater (CG 67004)
Sail Number:
Type: Auxiliary schooner
LOA: 81’6″ / 24.80m – LOD: 64’6″ / 19.65m – LWL: 48’3″ / 14.71m – Beam: 16’6″ / 5.03m – Draft: 10’0″ / 3.00m – Displacement: 36 gross tons – Original Owner: F. L. Crocker- Former name(s) Tamarit (1939–1969) – Year Launched: 1929 – Designed by: Theodore Donald Wells – Built by: Rice Brothers Corporation, East Boothbay, Maine – Hull Material: Wood – U.S. National Register of Historic Places: March 9, 2009 – Location: North Cove Marina, Manhattan, NY.
Historical:
The auxiliary schooner Shearwater was designed by Theodore Donald Wells and built by the Rice Brothers Corporation in East Boothbay, Maine in 1929. During World War II, it was requisitioned into the United States Coast Guard to patrol for German U-boats. The Shearwater completed a circumnavigation of the world in the early-1980s and later worked as a research laboratory for the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute of Environmental Medicine.
Shearwater first traveled through the Panama Canal in July 1946 and in the late 1970s and early 1980s completed a two and a half-year global circumnavigation. In December 1971 she was donated to the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute of Environmental Medicine. She worked as a yacht-for-charter in 1966 while on the West Coast sailing to California’s Channel Islands and was again used as a charter while owned by the University of Pennsylvania.
The Shearwater was purchased by her current owners in 2000. On the morning of September 11, 2001, she was hit by falling debris from the World Trade Center, but was sailed to New Jersey for safety. The Shearwater was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 9, 2009
WWII service
On November 7, 1942, after being requisitioned by the War Shipping Administration, she became a member of The United States Coast Guard’s Coastal Picket Patrol. She was painted gray and bore the numbers CG 67004. Based at Little Creek, Virginia she patrolled the waters east of the Chesapeake Bay entrance and south towards Cape Hatteras. She was designed and built as a gaff rigged schooner but during this period was changed to a Marconi rig.
Henry Donald (Don) Dutton served onboard CG 67004 patrolling the Chesapeake bay during WW2.
Provenance (The Wall of Remembrance – The Owners, Notable Guest, and Reunion Information):
Owner: (1929) F. L. Crocker
Resources
- NPS Focus”. National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. Retrieved August 5, 2011.
- “About the Shearwater Classic Schooner”. Manhattan by Sail. Retrieved July 28, 2011.
- Critchell, David (September 2008). “Shearwater, schooner”.
- National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.
- Lance Dutton, dad Henry Donald (Don) Dutton served onboard CG 67004 during WWII
Hello, I have photos of the crew and the boat during WWII. My dad served on her cruising the Chesapeake Bay. I will gladly email you the photos for historical use.