Lettie’s Back!

Here was a post I did in early spring 2013. She went to Portland, Maine for the work, and this morning

she returned to South Street Seaport Museum pier, about 36 hours travel out of Gloucester.

The timing was perfect for me . . . as I’m currently reading A Dream of Tall Ships, Peter Stanford’s account of the years from 1965–1974, when as the subtitle of the book has it, a story of “how NYers came together to save the city’s sailing-ship waterfront.” Well . . . round 1, at least.

Lettie looked glorious in the morning sun, nestling back beside Ambrose, but I couldn’t help looking especially closely at the bow. I’d just read this account the day before in Stanford’s book, a recollection about the vessel then-called Caviare in September 1968

“there was one thing that needed replacing, which not vital to the schooner’s structure, mattered a great deal to her appearance. This was the gammon knee, an oak extension of the stem arching forward under the bowsprit, which nicely completes the sweeping curve of the clipper bow. The old schooner’s gammon knee had been chopped back into a stump to allow a heavy rope fender to be slung under the bow when she’d been adapted for work as a tug.”

Wow! That’s one old foto I’d love to see, this vessel, with a rope bow fender, pushing a barge. Anyone have such a foto?

Lettie‘s back, and so is this fleet. Maybe Lettie‘d love to come out fishing with them? Vessel in the distance is Pati R. Moran. Brown fishboat in the foreground is Eastern Welder.