The L.A. Dunton

The Last of the Great Gloucester Schooners

Stern of the L.A. Dunton at Mystic Seaport 2015. The masts and rigging are out for repair. Most of the rest of the vessel is good shape. Fishermen’s Voice photo

The L.A. Dunton was built in 1921 at the Arthur D. Story Yard in Essex, Massachusetts. Many a schooner was built at the Story Yard over many decades as well as at the neighboring Burnham Yard, which has built boats since 1650 and still does.

The Dunton was the last to be built without an engine. At 123' with a 24' 11" beam, it was a classic banks schooner. These fast, stable, efficient vessels reached the pinnacle of sail powered fishing vessel design. The venerable Thomas F. McManus designed the Dunton.

Bays amidship where gutted fish was stacked. Boards were added across the front as the bay was filled. Fishermen’s Voice photo

The Dunton fished Georges Bank and the Grand Banks for cod, haddock, hake, pollock and halibut from Labor Day to Easter. Fishermen left the Dunton in dories to set trawls they would haul by hand. They would make three to four trips back to the schooner to unload fish and eat. Dawn to dusk were the hours on the water in dories. Other tasks included baiting the hooks on lines wound into tubs—wood barrels cut in half—and gutting the catch for icing down in bays in the hold.

Racing the schooner full of iced-down fish back to the fresh market for both freshness and price was part of the reward before shares were paid.

Bays amidship where gutted fish was stacked. Boards were added across the front as the bay was filled. Fishermen’s Voice photo

The L.A. Dunton was one of the vessels forced off the banks by engine-driven eastern rigs that fished with nets. It made its way to the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut in 1963. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1993. Among other reasons, its Thomas McManus lines and Arthur Story construction made it a likely candidate.

Touring this vessel provides a good view of what fishermen saw on the trip out or back to shore.

Visitors will have to imagine what fishermen saw in the dimly lit quarters of the foc’sle or the aft where they climbed out of their bunks in the dark and climbed back into them under the dim light of an oil lamp. It may take more imagination to envision huddling around the woodstove down below in near darkness with a gale howling wildly through the rigging, riding out a winter storm while anchored on Georges. Being alive the next dawn may have been the only consolation while baiting hooks out on deck in a snow squall before breakfast.

Line drawing and sail plan of the L.A. Dunton.