Ernestina-Morrissey shear plank
Wooden vessels can be a bit like the ax that doesn’t wear out as long as you keep replacing the head and the handle. Such is very nearly the case with the Ernestina-Morrissey, a 124-year-old schooner now being restored by Bristol Marine at Boothbay Harbor Shipyard. They have now reached an important milestone. With framing, beams and related structure completed, the planking has begun.
About almost a month ago, the first plank in the garboard strake was fastened. The garboard strake will be 5 inches thick at the mid-ship frames and tapered to 3 inches thick toward the sternpost. The first broad strake (the next planks above the garboard strake) will be tapered until the planks are all 3 inches thick and the rest of the planking will be 3 inches thick. The planks are of Danish oak.
The schooner in Essex, MA, in 1894. Named Effie M. Morrissey, after the first skipper’s daughter, she had a very successful fishing career on the Grand Banks. In 1905, she was sold to the Arctic explorer Captain Robert Bartlett who fitted her with an engine and reinforced her hull for working in the ice, He sailed the schooner, which he referred to as “my little Morrisey” on twenty Arctic expeditions over the next two decades.
On Bartlett’s death in 1946, the schooner was sold into the packet trade between Cape Verde and the US. She was renamed the Ernestina, also after the captain’s daughter. In 1977, the schooner was given to the people of the United States by the government of Cape Verde. The Ernestina-Morrissey was designated by the United States Department of the Interior as a National Historic Landmark in 1990.
A new documentary, “Sails Over Ice and Seas – The Life and Times of the Ernestina-Morrissey” is in production. Here is an excerpt.
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