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Postcard of the Schooner Bowdoin at anchor in Provincetown harbor. |
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The Schooner Bowdoin
Laurel Guadazno
BANNER CORRESPONDENT
A vessel under sail is a beautiful site. Miriam MacMillan expresses this in her description of her husband Admiral Donald MacMillan’s schooner getting under way: “With indicator hand on the deck telegraph signal pointing to ‘Astern Slow,’ the Bowdoin backed gracefully away from the dock. What a picture she must have made that June morning — flags of the international code, strung from stem to mastheads and on down to the end of the main boom, fluttering in the gentle breeze; her Oregon pine masts, newly coated with spar varnish, glistening in the sunlight; her new Manila running rigging, tight as a bowstring, standing out in contrast to her standing rigging which was as black as tar could make it!”
The Bowdoin was built for Provincetown’s hometown hero, Donald MacMillan, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989. The nomination papers site MacMillan, along with Robert Peary and Richard Bird, as among the greatest Arctic explorers of the 20th-century, and the Bowdoin as a “unique vessel in the annals of American maritime history and the saga of Arctic exploration.” The nomination papers continue, “Bowdoin is the only auxiliary schooner ever built in the United States specifically for Arctic exploration and the only surviving historic vessel in the United States associated with Arctic exploration except the nuclear submarine Nautilus, a much more recent vessel. Bowdoin is one of a handful of historic Arctic vessels left in the world and exemplifies the rugged conditions and the hardy navigator who braved the frozen north to unlock its secrets.”
Built to MacMillan’s specifications by Hodgson Brothers for approximately $35,000, the Bowdoin is 88 feet long, with a 20.2-foot beam. According to the Bowdoin College website, “... the Bowdoin is the smallest vessel designed expressly for Arctic work, but also one of the strongest. The ship is a two-masted auxiliary schooner, double-planked, and double-framed with white oak. A five-foot belt, one-and-a-half inches thick, made of tough Australian green heart, protects against ice, and the rudder is overly large for turning easily and quickly when working through narrow stretches of open water packs.” The ship is sheathed with ironwood to serve as protection against abrasion by ice.
The Bowdoin’s original engine, a 60-horsepower Fairbanks Morse, was designed to burn crude oil, kerosene, and even seal or whale oil if necessary.
The original engine has now been replaced by a modern Cummings diesel engine.
It’s hard to talk about the Schooner Bowdoin without talking about Donald MacMillan; the two were inseparable. MacMillan made 26 voyages north to the Arctic on the Bowdoin, the last one in 1954 when he was 80 years old. Together they logged more than 200,000 miles. Crewmembers gathered countless specimens of plants and animals and wrote important papers based on scientific information learned during voyages to the Arctic onboard the Bowdoin. Some of the specimens gathered during these expeditions are on display at the Provincetown Museum.
In 1959 MacMillan sailed the Bowdoin to Mystic Seaport and turned the schooner over to the museum for display. Unfortunately the boat was neglected while at the museum and deteriorated. In 1967 the condition of the Bowdoin came to the attention of MacMillan, and a group of former crew and friends formed the Schooner Bowdoin Association to save the ship. The ship was leased for a time to Capt. Jim Sharp of Camden, Maine. He restored the schooner and operated it as a museum and charter vessel. Captain Sharp sailed the Bowdoin to Provincetown in 1969 where Admiral MacMillan saw her for the last time. MacMillan died in 1970.
The Bowdoin is now owned by the Maine Maritime Academy and used as a training ship. It is also Maine’s official sailing vessel.
“On April 9, 1921, a schooner came down the ways at Hodgon Brother in east Boothbay, Maine, one schooner within a long line of schooners, but unlike any other before or since. For the Bowdoin was built with an unusual mission, and cat-like, she has lived several lives.” writes Virginia Thorndike in “The Arctic Schooner Bowdoin, A Biography.”
It would be wonderful if the Bowdoin could return to Provincetown for the Great Provincetown Schooner Regatta some year.
[Laurel Guadazno is curator of education for the Pilgrim Monument & Provincetown Museum.]
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Sep 16th, 2004