A Thomaston-built Barkentine It survived peace, but not a war

by Brian Swartz

Where shipyards once spread along Thomaston harbor, only the Dunn & Elliott sail loft stands today at 54 Water Street, on land bought by Thomas Dunn and George Elliott in 1873. According to Major Shipyards and Shipbuilders of Thomas, Maine, 1820-2020, Walter Dunn & Co. built the sail loft in 1874. Nearby stood the Stetson & Gerry Shipyard, which Thomas Dunn and George Elliott acquired in 1879. They would launch 56 ships at their renamed shipyard through 1920. From the sail loft came the sails made for the last barkentine built in Maine, a ship that suffered an ignominious fate.

Steel-hulled steamships had largely displaced wooden-hulled sailing ships by the early 20th century. The Dunn and Elliott fleet had shrunk significantly, but as the United States joined the Great War in 1917, the businessmen resumed building sailing ships.

The yard first turned out a four-masted schooner. Then in 1919 Arthur, Frank, and Richard Elliott built two barkentines: the 1,216-ton barkentine Cecil P. Stewart and the 1,087-ton Reine Marie Stewart, designed to carry coal. Each had four masts, with the foremast square-rigged and the three other masts fore-and-aft rigged. Dunn & Elliott launched the five-masted

1,512-ton schooner Edna Hoyt in 1920. That ship was the last of her kind built in Maine.

The sailing ships were workhorses, intended to haul freight until economic or hull conditions rendered a ship impracticable to operate. A ship’s value could decline precipitously with age; Dunn & Elliott spent $200,000 to build the Edna Hoyt, but got only $25,000 upon selling the schooner in 1924.

Coal-hauling gradually shifted to the railroads, which took business away from coastal shipping. The Reine Marie Stewart hauled coal until 1928; left moored in Portland, the barkentine was towed to Thomaston and tied at the

Dunn & Elliott wharf. There the ship slowly deteriorated until sold by Arthur Elliott in 1937.

The new owners rigged the Reine Marie Stewart as a schooner. After World War II began in September 1939, German U-boats started sinking freighters and tankers carrying cargo and petroleum to Britain. As ship losses outpaced new construction, the demand rose for intact hulls that could haul freight, and the Reine Marie Stewart was pressed into service in 1942.

She sailed under the flag and registry of Panama, a neutral nation. In spring 1942 New York City stevedores loaded the Reine Marie Stewart with fruitbox lumber. After filling the holds, the stevedores stacked lumber on the deck six-to-eight feet high and then covered the cargo with canvas. The unarmed schooner soon sailed with 11 crewmen and steered for the West African coast.

Meanwhile, the Italian submarine

Leonardo Da Vinci prowled the warm waters toward which the Reine Marie Stewart sailed. Launched in mid-September 1939, the 251-foot Marconi Class submarine displaced 1,465 tons and had eight torpedo tubes, four anti-aircraft guns, and a 100-millimeter deck gun, a large weapon.

Commanded since October 1941 by Capitano di Corvetta Luigi Longanesi Cattani, the Leonardo Da Vinci spent early 1942 seeking Allied shipping near the Brazil coast, where convoys headed to and from Cape Town and the Indian Ocean sometimes passed. Cattani sank the 3,557-ton Brazilian-flagged freighter SS Cadebelo (outbound from Philadelphia) on February 14 (there were no survivors) and the 3,644-ton Latvian-flagged SS Everasma on February 27. There were 15 survivors from that 25-year-old freighter.

Briefly returning to the German U-boat base at Bordeaux, France, Cat-

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(cont. from page 41) tani put to sea on May 11 and reached West African waters. Late on June 2 he spotted the Reine Marie Stewart some 40 miles southwest of Freetown, Liberia. Becalmed, the engine-less schooner did not display any lights and sailed alone.

Cattani shelled the ship with his deck gun, but after the schooner did not sink, he launched a torpedo that blew a hole in the wooden hull. The 11 crewmen took to a 16-foot wooden lifeboat powered by an inboard motor. As they steered toward the nearby African coast, they were picked up by the British-flagged SS Afghanistan, which docked at Cape Town in late June and put the sailors ashore. They later returned to the United States aboard the SS Monterey, a 1931-launched ocean liner converted to a troopship during the war.

Today the Reine Marie Stewart lives on in oil paintings by 20th-century art-

As for