L. A. Dunton: Last of the Gloucester Fishing Schooners

The L. A. Dunton, launched in Essex, Massachusetts, in nineteen twenty-one, is one of the last surviving examples of the great Gloucester fishing schooner, the vessel that dominated the North Atlantic cod and halibut fisheries for two centuries.

She was designed by Thomas McManus, the master naval architect who refined the schooner to its peak form, and she fished the Grand Banks and Georges Bank, first from Gloucester and later from Newfoundland, with an engine added by nineteen twenty-three and her rig later cut down. Mystic Seaport acquired her in nineteen sixty-three before she could be scrapped. She sits today as a National Historic Landmark, her enormous rig and heavy oak hull a reminder that before diesel, hundreds of vessels like her worked the Grand Banks under canvas, racing home with their holds full of salt fish.