Live Yankees The Sewells and Their Ships

by Bunting, W H.

• ISBN13: 9780884483151
• ISBN10: 0884483150
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-03-26
• Publisher: Tilbury House Publishers

Summary

For nearly a century members of the Sewall family built and managed a fleet of more than one hundred merchant vessels, mostly stout deepwater square-riggers. No family has been more intimately associated with the history of the city of Bath, then among the most productive shipbuilding communities of any size in the world. Despite a veneer of old-fashioned formalized civility, international shipping in the late 1800s and early 1900s was a highly competitive, low-margin, and often cut-throat business. While 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

Author Biography

W. H. Bunting is the author of Portrait of a Port: Boston 1852û1914; Steamers, Schooners, Cutters, and Sloops; A Day's Work: A Sampler of Historic Maine Photographs, 1860û1920 in two volumes; Sea Struck; and The Camera's Coast. With