''Mantenhas'': Ernestina's Work Today by Peter Stanford
"To willingly go out in the North Atl antic in a bloody littl e schooner, and then, worse than that, anchor the thing and get in one of those little dories and row away fro m the ship, in a fog," said Captain Dan Moreland , "be lieve it or not, that was considered a technological breakth ro ugh." He was speaking at Mystic Seaport Museum 's 8th Annual Symposium on Southern New England Maritime History, ex pl aining how the big Gloucesterman he commands had started out in life as a Grand Banks schooner. Thi s is just one of the careers the vessel has lived through. She went on to sail out of Brigus, Newfoundl and , with an American in her crew li sted as skipper so she could come in to market her catch in US markets. T hen, in 1925 she was picked up by Captain Bob Bartlett fo r hi s annual trips to Greenl and and Alaska to catch and bring home li ve musk ox and other fauna for variou s zoos and museums. These voyages continued during World War II under the auspices of the US Navy, who commi ss ioned Capta in Bob to carry out urgentl y needed suppl y and survey work in those remote waters he knew so well. And then ensued her postwar career as the "Cape Verdean Mayflower," as a New York Times reporter chri stened her, rev iew ing an ex hibition on the ship and her place in the story of Cape Verdean immigration to the United States-an ex hi biti on sponsored by the NMHS to support the campaign to save the ship. Think of it: The last sailing immigrant packet ship, bringing peopl e to build new li ves in the United States as late as 1965 ! It was a 4,000-mil e passage over seas as dangerous as in the Mayflower' s day, traversed by the aging schooner without radi o or auxiliary power, arri ving every year or so in Prov idence where her people came down to her at the pier and she became "a sort of community center, in effect," in Captain Moreland 's words. Earlier, Moreland noted that the old Morrissey sailing out of Bri gus was for the Newfoundl anders, " their connection to what makes the world round ." And so, when Moreland took charge of the ship ' s restorati on as a first-class sailing vesse l after her return to the US in 1982, he and the Schooner Ernestina Commi ssion of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts dedicated her sailing to " mantenhas"-maintaining the salt water connection between the communities the schooner served . So, in that true and Ii vely way, she sti II serves those comm unities today, challenging all who see her with hermagnificentpresence, and with her continuing story. And the beat of that story continues: a report in Cruising Club News has her coming into Bri gus las t summer at 12 knots--outrunning the classy ocean-racing yachts sent out to meet her! w
Captain Dan Moreland at Ernestina' s helm off Gloucester, 1987, where working schooners gather each summer to try their paces, in memory of the International Fishermen's Races of yore.
SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1989
Schooner weather! Ernes tina ex-Effi e M. Morrissey strides along, her bow wave flashing white under overcast skies, off Portland, Maine in 1987. Photo, Captain Jan Miles. The watch turns to, to sheet in theforesai/--->{lnd it takes the whole gang to do it. But anything is easy, after tailing on to that long throat halyard fa ked out on deck in the fo reground!