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The Roseway’s New Mission
Posted by Raven on June 11th, 2006
In 1925, when the 260-ton vessel from Essex joined a fleet of Grand Banks schooners, the Roseway sailed as a fishing yacht, designed to compete in races against similar tall ships from Nova Scotia.
A year later, it earned the moniker “mutiny ship” after a 15-day voyage from Georgetown, S.C., left the crew “suffering from want of food [and] terrific seas that nearly capsized the lumber-laden vessel,” according to a Globe account.
In 1934, the Roseway set a record of 74 swordfish caught in one day, and during World War II, the Navy fitted the boat with a .50-caliber machine gun and assigned it to help guide ships through the minefields and antisubmarine netting protecting Boston Harbor, where it served until 1973 as the nation’s last pilot schooner.
Now, after years of ferrying tourists along the Maine coast, serving as a prop in a television remake of Rudyard Kipling’s “Captains Courageous,” and a purgatory that at one point left it dismasted and slated for a scrapheap, the Roseway has returned to Boston, rebuilt and rechristened for a new mission.
With $1.3 million of new sails, booms, masts, and a host of other physical and technological improvements, the sleek, 137-foot ship will now offer two-hour sails around the harbor and charter cruises and serve as a classroom in Boston Harbor, according to its new owners, the World Ocean School, a nonprofit sailing school from Camden, Maine.
“We felt she had an incredible history that we wanted to preserve,” said Abby Kidder, executive director of the World Ocean School, adding that it was less expensive to rebuild the old schooner than build a new one. “We thought Boston was the most appropriate spot for her.”
