3
(continued from front cover)
The schooners of the mackerel fleet varied considerably in size at
the end of the 19th century. Prior to 1880, vessels suitable for this
work usually measured 60-80 tons, but with the introduction of
new hull types and incentives to increase the sizes of new
schooners, the early 1900’s saw schooners of 120 tons, and more,
being fitted out for mackerel seining. Auxiliary power was intro
-
duced; nets and boats increased in size; double-crews and gear
were carried in the largest vessels; finally, in the 1920’s, the seine
boats themselves were fitted with engines. This last innovation
was made necessary by the nets, which had become so large they
could not be set and pursed quickly enough under oars alone: if
an “average” seine net measured 203 fathoms long by 21 fathoms
deep in 1880, by 1910 it had grown to 235 by 23 fathoms, and in
the 1920’s, when engine-powered boats became common, the
seine net measured 300 by 24 fathoms.
The schooner
Benjamin W. Latham was designed for Captain Henry
Langworthy of Noank, Connecticut, by Thomas F. McManus of
Boston. She was built in the shipyard of Tarr & James at Essex,
Massachusetts, and was launched on October 30, 1902. She was a
very small mackerel seiner for her day, measuring only 72 tons
gross; the same fishery employed vessels nearly twice her tonnage.
Latham’s hull is more like the “spoon-bow” type than anything
else. At the time of her building, this shape was a relatively new
development for fishermen. This design reflects the influence of
B. B. Crowninshield who introduced this hull type to the fishing
fleet two years previously with his first example schooner, Rob
Roy. Also unusual was the knuckle at the forward edge of the
keel, an experiment which few builders seemed inclined to copy
in later vessels. This was a period when owners were anxious to
see their vessels fitted with keels that were straight, not “rock-
ered,” the latter characteristic having caused many schooners to
slip and fall down on the marine railways when hauled out.
Latham’s keel may have been over-designed for this reason.
Nearly every vessel in the Noank fishing fleet was fitted for mack-
erel seining in the early 1900’s, and this undoubtedly was the prin-
ciple activity of Benjamin W. Latham. First registered as a sailing
vessel, she seems to have been fitted with a 48-horsepower gaso-
line engine sometime in her second or third season. This would
have dictated that her propeller shaft be fitted off-center, either to
port or to starboard as shown on the plans. Since a seiner “bailed
the seine” (removed the fish from the net) to starboard, it would
seem wise to have had the screw to port to avoid fouling the nets.
In keeping with most fishermen,
Latham’s career goes mostly un
-
documented, except for meager scraps of information yielded re-
luctantly by officials of customs and registry documents. She is
known to have had accommodations for a crew of fifteen, and be-
cause of her size, she was a “one-boater” (towed one seine boat).
If the seine boat was a 40-footer, it would always have been
towed astern, since there was no deck room for it aboard the
schooner.
In 1906,
Latham was re-registered at New York and operated out
of the Fulton Fish Market. What sort of fishing she did at this time
is not known, although it seems likely that she was converted to
dory trawling. Very likely, she would have been cut down in rig
in the 1920’s, working mainly under power thereafter. What she
looked like in 1939 under Puerto Rican ownership is not known,
nor is the nature of her work. She was lost in 1943 off San Juan,
Puerto Rico.
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