ROCKLAND – Those that fall in love with the charter schooners, which sail out of several mid-coast ports, have to be special. The season begins when the weather warms in the spring as they prepare for the upcoming season. That means going over every aspect of the schooner and making sure she will not have a problem during the summer season. When the season begins the end of May there will be hardly a day to catch one’s breath. When one trip is ending, they need to turn around and head out again on their next cruise. This does not end until the end of the season in mid-October. So, no matter the weather they are out there on Penobscot Bay cruising amongst the islands and enjoying time away from the rat-race ashore. When the season concludes and the schooner is ready for the winter, the winter work begins.
It takes a lot of knowledge to sail one of these vessels and if you are the owner you better have the knowledge to make any necessary repairs and understand business. One such person is Captain Tyler King the owner of the schooner AMERICAN EAGLE. He grew up in a boat yard and has sailed all his life. What is even more amazing he is just 26 years old.
Tyler said, “I grew up in Gloucester, Massachusetts. My father and mother run a little wooden boatyard down there, the Montgomery’s yard down on the Annisquam River, which was founded in 1904 and my Dad took it over from the third generation of the family in the late 80s. They built tons of boats there. Now it is the River Boat Works and growing up we had quite a few restorations and small boat projects. There are pictures of me holding caulking cotton, passing it to my Dad out of the box when I was about 2.”
Tyler’s parents met at the Apprenticeshop in Bath in 1983. “My Dad always loved carpentry and he didn’t really grow up with boats,” said Tyler. “My mom grew up sailing with her family up and down the coast and they had quite a few boats. They even went through the Erie Canal and into the Great Lakes. That was how they spent their summers. They both wanted to take this course because at that point it was free and they housed you in the Donnell House. I don’t know if it’s still there, but if you go upstairs into the shop and take a left, before you go out into the shop space there is a big picture of my mom caulking the bottom of a Susan skiff. After this, my Dad went over to England and worked, rebuilt a couple steam launches over in the midlands in Coventry and then came back here.”
The first boat they purchased together was the 1939 Alden cutter TUSITALA, which was built in the Montgomery yard in 1949. “She needed to be reframed and she needed a new piece of the keel,” said Tyler. “The deck was good, the rig was good, but the Gray gas engine gave them all sorts of fits. In trying to find a place to continue that project, they found Montgomery’s in Gloucester. They were living in Marblehead at the time and they ended up down there and dad started running the yard in 1988.”
“My folks had a 62-foot Alden schooner they bought in 1990,” continued Tyler. “ELIDA and she was in Marblehead for a long time. We owned her for 10 years and in that time my dad put a new deck on her, did a lot of planking, all the deck beams, the bottom half of the cabin houses, new cockpit and a fuel tank. She was built over in Thomaston at the Morse’s yard in 1922. My grandparent’s had a house up in Buck’s Harbor and so we would spend pretty much every summer as a little kid sailing up here.”
The schooner was sold when Tyler’s little sister came along. He added, “It was time. My folks built our house in that time and life got very busy, running a boatyard, building a house, having a 62-foot schooner and two little kids was kind of a lot. They eventually bought back TUSITALA and that is the boat I spent most of my childhood sailing,” said Tyler. “We took her up here quite a few times and down south.”
One of the most notable rebuilds he and his father did at the yard was on a 1947 Alden US 1. Tyler added, “The US 1 was sitting in the yard for a long time on a cradle and someone had taken the shear planks off to try and work on the frame heads. They didn’t support the keel properly and those boats had such long ends that she lost 18 inches of shear. A good family friend of ours, wanted to save her and so we brought her into the shop. My Dad spent the next five years rebuilding her. The keel was still good but they reframed her completely and then did a lot of the planking. They were able to save quite a few of the original laminated deck beams and then he put down a new composite teak deck, To get her back in shape they would put some posts under her and jack her off the shop floor. Dad put a little more shear than the plans called for and I think she looks much better. That was quite the project and I think that was one of the first paying jobs I had, I was like 8 or 10.”
Tyler worked in the yard right through high school. “The big thing in Gloucester that I always enjoyed was the Schooner Festival,” continued Tyler. “All these, big, beautiful boats and AMERICAN EAGLE was always there. I’d always been fascinated about growing up in a boatyard, but the bigger boats always intrigued me. In learning about Gloucester’s fishing industry, I was really fascinated by the fishing schooners and they were really interesting balance between old technology versus new technology, specifically the later period from probably 1895 to 1930 when they were transitioning to power.
“I was rather hopeless with all that stuff,” continued Tyler. “My teachers in school hated it because I would always try and spin any essay that I had into a way to read more about the things I actually wanted to read about. That little slice of naval architecture I find very fascinating because it was so refined. They had figured out so much in that short period of time to make the vessels seaworthy and safe, but also sail well and have enough hold capacity so they could actually make money. It was really interesting to see that progression.”
Most high schoolers do little or nothing all summer, but that was not the case with Tyler. “During the summers we came up here,” he said. “We would go into Camden and I remember once I got a couple of tours on the Camden boats. I wanted to work on one of the boats but I had to wait until I was at least 14. When I was 15, I put a cover letter together, I wrote a resume and I sent them out to a bunch of the boats in the fleet up here, trying to get on one of them for the summer. John Foss was kind enough to acknowledge it and said he didn’t have enough space for that year and so I could not get on the AMERICAN EAGLE, but I did end up on the schooner TIMBERWIND out of Rockport and that was really great. I sailed the summer from late May until late August on and had all sorts of adventures and misadventures. I wanted to keep doing it because I had a whole lot of fun and I tried to get on AMERICAN EAGLE again. I talked to John, but he didn’t have any room again. Fortunately, I was able to get in touch with Noah Barnes on the STEPHEN TABER and I was able to go and work for him in 2014. Two days after I graduated high school, I was onboard. Noah is a piece of work. He was fun to work for and he taught me a lot. He hired me as the mate when I was 16 and that was another huge learning experience getting to the next level. I ended up working on the TABER for two seasons. Then I went through the IYRS system program that winter and I got my American Boat Yacht Council certifications in diesel engines and electrical systems. The LADONA project was in its second year. I missed the big heavy part of it in Thomaston because I was at school and so I jumped into that project after the covering season. I would go home in the fall and cover boats with my Dad, doing the winterizing. I started out doing some carpentry stuff and then I built quite a few cabins and did a lot of finish joinery and bulkheads and bunks and cabin countertops and all that fun stuff. Then I moved into the systems side of things the latter half of the winter. I was the mate on her for a season. New boat, different problems trying to get all the teething problems out. After all that, I spoke to John that winter and he finally had a spot.”
The winter of 2017 Tyler started working for John rebuilding a Whitehall, which would be used on AMERICAN EAGLE. “That was really fun,” said Tyler, “and then went through the first spring here. Learned all of the ins and outs and ups and downs of how John does things. Then I sailed a full season for him and that was fun. After a few straight seasons I wanted to take a little break from sailing all summer. We had some big projects to do at the boatyard that I helped my Dad with. I also bought my little schooner and was working on that because the original intention was to run that as a little daysailer somewhere. I did that until 2021. I did fill in on a bunch of other boats in the fleet during that time. I was by no means not up here, but it was nice change of pace. It was nice to do something a little different. Then this eventuality came to fruition in a really good way, just a little sooner than I had planned for but the end result is the same.”
When Tyler returned he and Capt. John Foss had come to an agreement and he was her new owner. AMERICAN EAGLE was built at the United Sail Loft in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1930 for Patrick Murphy and originally named for his two children ANDREW & ROSALIE. She was originally used for swordfishing in the summers, but also would go dory trawling for white fish, haddock cod, whatever, in the wintertime. She is a happy compromise between sail and power, which came into use in the late 20s and early 30s. “Hand lining and dory fishing was getting kind of boxed out by the eastern rig draggers,” said Tyler. “You could go fishing with less people and get there and get home faster. The rivalry between the steam trawlers from Boston and the fishing schooners was always this romantic snippet of fishery history. Patrick passed away in September 1938 and the family ran the boat a few more years before selling to Capt. Ben Pine. He outfitted her as an eastern rig dragger and moved her to New Bedford. She was sold again in the late 1940s and moved back to Gloucester, and continued fishing until 1983. At that time, she was pretty worn out and at the end she was only doing day trips. John bought her in 1983 and she arrived here at the Shipyard on Halloween night. Apparently, she looked so terrible she didn’t need a costume. They hauled her out on the railway and jacked her up and slid her across onto the pad here in front of the shop. They put a building over her and over the next two winters they went through her. Her framing low down was in pretty decent shape. They completely redid the top half so all the topside framing, all the planking, all the deck, the deck beams because they were pretty worn out, cabin house, and the whole interior. She entered the passenger service in 1986, that was her first season and John’s been taking people sailing ever since.”
Originally, she did six day trips, with the exception of two cruises, one to Canada and another to the Schooner Festival in Gloucester. That has changed in recent years with more three- and four-day cruises. The season starts the last weekend of May and ends the middle of October. Once the schooner is readied for the winter, then begins the projects to keep her in Bristol condition. “This winter our fuel tank needed to be replaced,” said Tyler, “So we had to get that refabricated. I need to make a new fore gaff which was to replace an old one. Inside the shop we have a new side-boat from Lowell’s and that is getting some work done. We have some interior projects going on in some of the cabins on the boat. We also had a new mainsail made by Nat Wilson this winter. We did a lot of deck caulking, did some work on the windlass, we rebuilt one of our washdown pumps. A lot of little stuff needed to be attended to.”
There has been a lot of turnover in recent years in the schooner fleet with young blood coming in giving new life to the industry. HERITAGE, J. E. RIGGIN, GRACE BAILEY and VICTORY CHIMES have changed hands. It illustrates that this is still very much a thing that young people want to do. For years many of the passengers were returning customers, some returning for decades. When the time came that they were unable to return new passengers filled in some of the slots. COVID was a huge challenge and they are just rebounding from that and with a younger group taking over the helm they understand the benefits of social media and how it can gain them additional passengers.
It has been a busy winter for Tyler and he has not done much on his 42-foot Chapelle schooner, which sits next to the office. His real goal was to get a building over her before the snow flew and that he did. With luck he might find a little time before he has to turn all his attention to AMERICAN EAGLE. This schooner was built in New Jersey in 1941. She was designed for two people to go cruising in, summer on the coast of Maine and then head south for the winter. “She is basically a scaled down Gloucester fishing schooner,” said Tyler. “From 2018 to 2021 I did 105 frames, 48 planks, refastened most of the bottom, replaced ten feet of the cabin house, new cockpit, new engine, new engine beds, new piece of the stern post, a new piece of the horn timber and a bunch of tail feathers back aft, new stem, new knight heads, new shafts, new cutlass bearing and stripped all the rig. I have got to finish the bulkheads and put the sole down next.”
All businesses have their challenges and owning a schooner is no different, in fact it might be a bigger challenge. Fortunately for AMERICAN EAGLE she has a young and very capable owner that makes her future look very bright.
