Today I saw the movie, “In the Heart of the Sea,” directed by Ron Howard and somewhat loosely based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. How was it? The movie was … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Essex
This weekend, the 31st Annual Gloucester Schooner Festival was held, culminating in the Mayor’s Cup Schooner Race. The Esperanto Cup, representing the large schooners, was won by the schooner Columbia, built in 2014, a steel replica of the W. Starling Burgess designed … Continue reading
Wooden boat building is part science, part engineering and part pure artistry. On Tuesday, the National Endowment for the Arts honored Harold Burnham of Essex, MA as a 2012 recipient of a National Heritage Fellowship. Harold Burnham is an eleventh generation boatbuilder, … Continue reading
Here is a wonderful 20 minute film made in 1947 about, as the tile suggests, shipbuilding in Essex, Massachusetts. It has the slightly corny Hollywood production values of its time but does a good job at showing the construction of a … Continue reading
The pinky schooner Ardelle was launched recently from the historic Burnham Boatbuilding yard in Essex, MA. They used the traditional “Essex side-launch” technique, which, to my uninitiated eye, looks very odd. Nevertheless, it obviously is effective. The Ardelle’s debut Thanks to Tom Russell … Continue reading
The wreck of the whale ship Two Brothers, which sank 188 years ago on French Frigate Shoals, 600 miles northwest of Honolulu, was recently located by divers. The captain of the whale ship was George Pollard Jr., whose previous ship, … Continue reading