Ships & Shipbuilding: The Great Coal Schooners

Down Easters had to compete against foreign shipping, but domestic shipping was a legally protected trade. Beginning in the 1870s, coal shipped from the Delaware River and the Hampton Roads area of the Chesapeake Bay encouraged the building of larger and larger schooners. Three-masted schooners had long been the primary means of transporting coal to Boston and Maine, but, by the 1880s, the four-masted schooner had become more popular. The late 1890s saw five-masted schooners, and the first six-masted schooner, George W. Wells, was built in Camden, Maine in 1900.

Five-Masted Schooner "Martha P. Small"

Six-Masted Schooner "George W. Wells," Rigged and R

Schooner Nettie Langdon

By 1910, 45 five-masted schooners and 10 six-masted schooners, each the length of a football field, had  been built, mostly by Maine shipyards. Bath was their primary builder, but many were built in Rockland, Camden, Belfast, and other Penobscot Bay towns.

These Maine-built schooners, owned both locally and by out of state coal shippers, were more efficient in the domestic coal trade than square-rigged Down Easters would have been. They required a much smaller crew, could be built at lower cost, and sailed better in the prevailing winds along shore. While most schooners shipped coal along the eastern seaboard, some carried cargoes to Europe.

Like the Down Easters, coal schooners eventually succumbed to competition from steam colliers, though not without a fight. Some continued to work, as the economy permitted, into the 1920s. In the end, they couldn’t compete with steamers, barges, and the railroads.