Schooner (7m).
L/B/D:
385 × 50 × 35 dph (117.3m × 15.2m × 10.7m). Tons:
5,218 grt. Hull:
steel. Comp.:
17. Des.:
B. B. Crowninshield. Built:
Fore River Shipbuilding Co., Quincy, Mass.; 1902.
The only seven-masted schooner—and one of the only seven-masted vessels of any rig—ever built, Thomas W. Lawson was an extreme attempt to keep sail viable in the coastal trade against competition from steam vessels. Carrying twenty-six sails—three each on her seven masts and five head sails—she was equipped with auxiliary steam winches for sail and cargo handling, as well as steam steering gear, economies that enabled her owners to run her with a minimum of crew. Nonetheless, she had no auxiliary propulsion. Her masts, each of which was 193 feet high, were called fore, main, mizzen, no. 4, no. 5, no. 6, and spanker. Built for the Coastwise Transportation Company of Boston, she was nearly 200 tons larger than the five-masted ship
Preussen, which was launched the same year. She was not an especially graceful vessel, and Basil Lubbock describes her as having "the lines of a canal barge, and about as sweet as a bath tub."
Named for a Boston businessman, Lawson was built for coal trade, for which she proved ill-suited because she drew too much water for the ports she was intended to serve. Converted for use as an oil tanker, she sailed between Texas and the Delaware River for a number of years before being chartered to the Sun Oil Company in 1907. On November 19 of that year, she sailed from Philadelphia for London with 2 million gallons of oil. Caught in a succession of winter gales, her hull and masts provided so much windage that she reportedly made twelve knots under bare poles. On December 13, she was riding out a gale off the Scilly Isles when she dragged her anchors and broke up on Hellweather's Reef, with the loss of all but Captain George Dow and one of her crew, Edward Rowe.
Ronnberg, "Stranger in Truth than in Fiction." Watts, "Thomas W. Lawson."
