Down East Schooners and Shipmasters by Ingrid Grenon

Author:Ingrid Grenon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2012-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

Bill of lading for John Peck cargo on the schooner Black Snake from Boston sailing for Frenchman’s Bay. Courtesy of the Hancock Historical Society.

The story of the brig Homeward Bound is certainly interesting, and it was found in an envelope with many other seafaring stories at the historical society. The information was likely originally obtained from letters, journals or even personal recollections. This story was told by Augustus Foss, who was born in Hancock in 1838 and later killed in the Civil War. The words “Last Voyage of the Brig Homeward Bound, by Jack Windard” are typewritten on the first page.

We begin with a sailor whom we believe to be Augustus Foss, who ends up on board the Homeward Bound acting as second mate. It is unclear from the document exactly what the time period is, but we know it is autumn, sometime before the Civil War. Since there is a reference to the “South Shoal Lightship” off Nantucket in the story, we know the events take place after June 15, 1854, as that is when the lightship was established.

“I had finished a trip to the west coast of Africa in the bark Sunshine taking over a cargo of New England rum,” the sailor relates. The return cargo for New York included olive oil, wood and gum. “A few of us stayed by to make another trip, but after she was discharged it was found necessary to make some repairs and the owners ordered her to her home port.”

The brig’s home port was Portland, and Augustus eventually traveled to Portland but did not find the ship there. Instead, he found only a few schooners that would be working the coast during the winter, and “having no desire for that I took the boat back to Boston.”

In Boston, Augustus looked everywhere for a vessel to ship on, and clearly he would have liked a passage to someplace warmer than the New England coast. He made his way to Battery Wharf, where he found Hancock captain Henry Wooster and his first mate, John Stover, preparing to row out to the vessel Homeward Bound.

“Seeing me coming down the wharf,” Augustus explained, “they gave me the typical Down East hail of ‘Hello Gus, whither away?’” To which he replied, “Just taking in the sights, Captain Hen,” and said he was looking for work but had not yet found any.

“Then why don’t you put your dunnage on board the old brig?” Captain Wooster asked, explaining that he would first be going back to Franklin, Maine, to load box shooks and hogshead staves for St. Domingo in the West Indies. “The crew are home boys from Hancock and Ellsworth. We are chartered on logwood back to Boston,” Captain Wooster added.

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