Mission to Essex

After bidding farewell to the fine folks and selkie of Gloucester, Bowsprite and Tugster left the site of the famed Sean Dive and headed around the corner to Essex to visit the historic Burnham yard, place of a recently started blog Boatbuilding with Burnham and

birthplace of 4000 schooners, including the current resident of the sixth boro known as Lettie G. Howard .

Our mission was to investigate the prolific sawdust output in Essex, daunting research requiring breaks between work.

After seeking high and

and low, we found it.  I felt silly not knowing how a riverbank  winding through the Essex marsh can produce thousands of finely-crafted wooden ships without generating heaps of sawdust!  After all, long ago I’d read and reread Gordon Thomas’ Fast and Able.

With this task completed, another identical twin of Bowsprite appeared, astride the tiller and protected by the pinked stern, offering to whisk us away to the next aspect of our mission.

Many thanks to the Burnham family.  Bowsprite’ and Tugster’s saga continues;  after all, some things Tugster can just NOT find by or for himself, ya know.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Unrelated:  something’s in the “whaata” (as Bowsprite’s identical twin would say)  here and here.