Three New Old Books -- Pinkies, Gloucester, and Growlers

While in Williston, North Dakota, earlier this month, I picked up three gems. A family friend was helping his mother move out of the family home and said I could have any books I wanted. I limited myself to three due to traveling:

Man and His Measure, Francis Connolly, c. 1964. An anthology of literature much like Harold Bloom's Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?

A William Faulkner reader.

The American Language, H. L. Mencken, older edition. I see the 1984 edition is available for $40 on Amazon.com.

And, for the record, after a bit of looking through several bookstores in Boston, I finally found a book on Cape Ann, north of Boston: The Port of Gloucester, James B. Connolly, c. 1940. I see the first edition is available from a collector for $100. My copy may not be quite that pristine, and no dust jacket (if there ever was one) but for me it's priceless. It cost me $24 at a Boston bookstore; I agonized quite some time deciding whether to buy it, but am now glad I am.

My son-in-law is eager to teach our granddaughters how to sail. It was a real surprise then to see that the Port of Gloucester has so much trivia on sailing that one might not have expected.

For example:

By and by, when Gloucestermen ventured on offshore fishing, they built bigger boats. They had to if they hoped to come back home (they were sailing farther out on the open sea). Sloops and ketches came first; and then came the delightfully named pinkies. The first pinkies had two fore and aft sails, a foresail and a mainsail, but no head sails -- no jibs. They were of ten to twenty tons and decked over, with a little poop cabin aft, a poop forecastle forward. In the waist of the boat, by way of a bulwark against men being washed overboard, would be a 6- to 8-inch plank set on edge.

A sloop: a sail boat with a foresail and aftsail on a single mast.

No design is perfect for all conditions; sloops are designed to optimize upwind sailing. However, sloops also offer an excellent overall acceptable compromise, if not optimal, to all points of sail. It is clear that the most difficult direction to sail is to the windward (known as sailing close-hauled); this requires some specific design features. The sail should be as vertical as possible to optimize the energy of the wind. -- wiki

A ketch: a two-masted boat, with both fore- and aft-sail rigging on each mast.

Ketch was a "catch" or fishing boat. (Ketch from Middle English cache, from cacchen, to catch. The mizzen is bigger to hold the bow (front) of a boat toward the wind and oncoming waves. The mainsail at the front of the boat would have been dropped and the mizzen trimmed tight on the centreline. Set up this way most boats will point directly into the wind in a reliable way. It is also possible to ease the mizzen slightly to allow the boat to move slowly forward. -- wiki

Pinkie schooners:

Pinky Schooners were a common type of  fishing vessel that sailed out of Cape Ann harbors from the early eighteenth century through the early twentieth century. In 1839, there were 64 registered out of the Gloucester district. Pinkies were generally smaller vessels from which men fished over the side but were known for their weatherlyness and seaworthiness. These vessels were so distinctive and common that a careful study of many marine paintings from the era will have a Pinky or two in the background if they are not featured elsewhere in the painting. Many or the paintings of the famous artist Fitz Henry Lane housed in the Cape Ann Historical Museum have Pinkies in them.

It is believed that the Pinkies developed from Chebacco boats and a good many of them were built at Essex. These vessels were built to a very high standard and some lasted a very long time. The original MAINE was built in 1845 and sailed until 1926. The ARDELLE is a typical full-rigged clipper Pinky and her design is largely based on the original MAINE.

 A pinkie moored alongside Motif 1.


Cape Ann Brewery

Also, while visiting Gloucester, we happened upon a wonderful microbrewery and restaurant: Cape Ann Brewery (the website has numerous broken links). They sell jugs there, called "growlers" that hold 48 ounces of beer. The serving staff did not know much about the history of the "growler," but then this in the Port of Gloucester:

Those early boats usually carried three-man crews, and they went in entirely for shore fishing, which included an occasional venture to the eastward along the Maine shore. They would be gone for three days, four days, sometimes for a week. Their grub was scant and unvaried. A list of stores for the crew of a ketch for a week's triop shows four pounds of flour, five pounds of fat pork, seven pounds of sea biscuit half a gallon of water and "a little New England rum." The little rum means the jug of rum without which a Gloucester crew of those early days never put to sea.