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Barkentine Reine Marie Stewart

The barkentine Reine Marie Stewart is berthed in Thomaston Harbor in this view across the Georges River from the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood, likely so-called because prominent Thomaston shipowners had moved to Brooklyn Heights, New York, by the East River, the better to oversee their ships and businesses. Stratospheric shipping rates brought on by World War I attracted both speculative plungers and the staid Thomaston firm of Dunn & Elliot, longtime sailmakers, shipbuilders, and shipowners. Not having built a vessel since 1904, their once-large fleet of schooners had dwindled to four, and so, in 1917, they went back to work. By 1920 they had built a four-masted schooner, twin four-masted barkentines, and a five-masted schooner. The five-master, the Edna Hoyt, built in 1920 for $200,000, sold four years later for $25,000 as the bottom fell out of the shipping business.

The twin 1919 barkentines, the Cecil P. Stewart and the Reine Marie Stewart, found cargoes as best they could, mostly in coastwise trades, although the Reine Marie made a voyage to Greece. In 1927 the Cecil P was lost on the New Jersey shore, and in 1928 the Reine Marie was laid up at Thomaston, awaiting better times that never came, becoming a mouldering photographic icon. In 1937 she was sold to Nova Scotian owners and rerigged as a four-masted schooner. In 1942, with tonnage again in demand due to war, she was purchased by Boston owners and sailed for West Africa. Off Sierra Leone she was sunk by an Italian submarine.

Text by William H. Bunting from Maine On Glass. Published by Tilbury House Publishers, 12 Starr St., Thomaston, Maine. 800-582-1899.

Maine On Glass and prints of the photographs are available through the Penobscot Marine Museum: PenobscotMarineMuseum.org.