A Clipper of the i88o's, the 

 Mackerel-Seiner Daniel Marcy, 

 1882, out of Gloucester. {Smith- 

 sonian p/into ^j8i6-d.) > 



Inboard Profile and Deck Lay- 

 out of a halibut-fishing schooner 

 1880, for fishing on Georges Bank. 

 From G. Brown Goode, The fish- 

 eries and fishery industries of the United 

 States, Washington, Government 

 Printing Office, 1884-87. 



His experience as commander of some of the extreme 

 clipper fishing schooners, and his knowledge of the 

 causes of the extensive losses in lives and vessels that 

 had occurred had led him to begin a campaign to 

 bring about safer and better schooners. Writing in 

 newspapers and later in the publications of the Fish 

 Coinmission, he effectively centered attention upon 

 the shortcomings of the fashionable model of schooner. 

 He obtained the aid of a number of competent de- 

 signers such as Lawlor, John Bishop, and Thomas 

 Irving, and he also modeled schooners hiinself to 

 illustrate what could be produced in a schooner hav- 

 ing more depth, lower ballast, and a greater range of 

 stability than was possible with the existing model. 

 The speed of the shoal clipper was too well appreci- 

 ated for his campaign to be successful, if based upon 

 safety alone, so it was also necessary to prove that the 

 new, deep, safe schooner would be as fast or faster 

 than the fashionable type. 



The Fish Commission planned to build a smack- 

 schooner and, from 1883 to 1886, Collins exhibited a 

 number of his designs for such a vessel to serve as a 

 model for the ideal fishing schooner. Lawlor was very 

 much interested in the subject and aided Collins with 

 his designing; in 1884 Lawlor built on speculation the 

 deep and improved fishing schooner Roulette, which 

 attracted much attention. She was fast, weatherly, 

 and able to carry sail. In 1885 Lawlor designed a 

 number of fast schooners having the straight, upright 



stem of the pilot schooner; these were the schooners 

 Arthur D. Story, John H. McMamis, and the A. S. & R. 

 Hammond. These schooners were fast and though less 

 deep than the Roulette, they were nevertheless much 

 deeper than average in proportion to length. 



In 1886 the Fish Commission finally built its re- 

 search smack, the Grampus. She was obviously influ- 

 enced by Lawlor's work and had a straight upright 

 stem, much dead rise, a deep draft and low ballast, 

 and a narrow stern. In 1887 the Boston yacht de- 

 signer, Edward Burgess, designed a notable fishing 

 schooner, the Carrie E. Phillips, which introduced a 

 nuinber of improvements. She was a plumb-stem 

 vessel in the Lawlor fashion and had iron standing 

 rigging, a spike bowsprit, and improved ironwork. 

 The success of this schooner led to the Burgess design 

 of the .Nellie Dixon and Fredonia, sister schooners built 

 in 1889; they were so highly approved that the "Fre- 

 donia Model" as it was called, remained popular well 

 into the early 1900's. These efforts during the period 

 1884-89 to improve schooner design had produced 

 fast, safe, and handsome schooners that were uni- 

 versally admired throughout the world. 



The years between 1875 and 1895 had also been a 

 period of experimentation in fishing methods. A 

 number of 3-masted salt bankers had been launched, 

 a ketch-rigged beam trawler had been built and tried 

 out; improvements had been made in the small 

 schooners and smacks employed in the alongshore 



7U 



