Live Yankees: The Sewalls and Their Ships

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Description

For nearly a century members of the Sewall circle of relatives of Bath, Maine, built and managed a fleet of stout deepwater square-riggers―a fascinating story. Correspondence from their captains offers adventure of another kind―mutinies, shipwrecks, and “cannibal isles.”

No circle of relatives has been more intimately associated with the history of the city of Bath, then a number of the most productive shipbuilding communities of any size on this planet. Despite a veneer of old-fashioned formalized civility, international shipping in the late 1800s and early 1900s was once a highly competitive, low-margin, and continuously cut-throat business. Whilst the Sewalls’ shrewd responses to market changes make a fascinating story, the surviving correspondence from their captains offers adventure of another kind. Sewall captains were required to make regular reports to the Sewall office, and this correspondence is a treasure-trove of stories about the voyages of Sewall ships–surly crews, mutinies, plagues, shipwrecks, cannibal isles, destitute widows, and more, along side details of ship performance, weather encountered, trouble in port, and even lawsuits. The Sewalls also invested in railroads and other non-maritime securities and speculations, and also became involved in politics, but it is in the maritime world that they’re best remembered. As the owners of the last surviving important fleet of American square-riggers engaged in all over the world trade, it was once the Sewalls’ fate to attract the curtain on this economic enterprise. No circle of relatives had worked more assiduously, more stubbornly, or with more enterprise to delay the arrival of that day.

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