The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-07-27

country-slid off the ways at the Fore River yard at Quincy Point last week with a perfection of graceful motion that
 caused old Boston sea captains to declare
 that it was the neatest bit of work of it's
 kind that they had ever seen, 1t seemed
 a little significant to more than one spec
 tator that the loudest note in the din or
 iubilation should have happened to be the {. big vessels own steam siren whistle. Not
 because 1t made so much noise--thougn 1t made a great deal--but because 1t typt-
 fled the new idea of the sailing vessel
 in other words. bringing steam to con-
 auer steam. The popular opinion for a
 generation has been that the steamer
 is slowly but surely making the sailor
 obsolete; but now comes the modern sail-
 ing vessel and with the help of steam bids
 fair to enter into a competition with her
 rival with certain definite advantages in
 the way of economy and money-maldng
 that are not at all to be despised There
 will only be sixteen men required for the
 Lawson's crew, counting cook and cabin
 boy and captain, sailors and engineers.
 A steam freight carrier of equal size
 would require nearer 76 or 100; and men
 are expensive and steam is cheap. The
 Lawson has five engines on her deck, for
 hauling the anchors, for hoisting and
 lowering the sails. for doing stevedore
 work in ports, for pumping in and out the
 water that will serve as ballast in her
 double bottom, and for supplying the
 primary power for the electric plant that
 will give her light and telephone ser
 vice from stem to stern.
 Altogether the Lawson is about the
 most modern proposition. bar none. that
 has ever slipped into the Seven Seas.
 Nominally she is not so big as the great
 Hxya- ufa ahIn prAnG&Qn which Wa&
 launched a month or so ago at Geeste-
 muende, Germany, for a Hamburg firm;
 but apparently she is capable of carry
 ing more coal, for instance--and coal Is
 what she Is meant to carry, and carry
 ing capacity is more important than
 length of beam or depth of hold. Her net
 register tonnage-to give guess before
 she is regtstered-should be rising b,S0O
 tons, as against the next largest schooner afioat the six-masted wooden Percy, with S,4O0. Steam and steel have made her
 possible as steam and steel may one day make another scooner possible which will
 be almost if not quite as big as all but thu biggest ocean liners the difficulty of in.
 creasing the size being apparently not So much inherent in the schooner principle
 per se as in the fact that schoonefs on
 this coast are built with a very definite idea of making their profit from the. coast
 wise trade. and must be governed as to, their dimensions by the depth of water
 in the more profitable ports. s'
 The man who is mainly responsible for
 the Lawson Is Captain John G. Crowley,
 who has done more toward making the schooner a big modern institution than any other one man. His experience cov- CTS the schooner from the first stage of her construction to the last, although he is still in the prime of life-not over 45. He was born at historic Plymouth and has lived on the Massachusetts South Shore-where the Fore River yard is To- cated-ever since, although his business office is in Boston. When he was only II he went as cook on a two-masted schooner belonging to his father, Captain Thomas Crowley, who, followed the sea until he was 60 years old. When he was n Captain Crowley was the master of the three -masted schooner Florence Dean. Then he built three-master of his own, the Helen S. Caldwell. which was the first of ten schooners ending for the moment with the Lawson, which he has had main share in putting into the sea. In 1899 he built in Maine the third five-mast- ed schooner, at that time the largest of her class afioat, the John B. Prescott. A year later he was responsible for the first six-master. the George w. Wells-and now for the biggest schooner ever dream ed of, the first seven-master, the Lawson.
 But Captain John Crowley is not the only one of his family. The Crowley Boys" as they are known along the South Shore are three. The second broth CT is Captain Arthur L. Crowley, who has been in command of the Wells and Is soon to take out the Lawson on her trip south to Baltimor9 Philadelphia and Newport News. The third brother is Cap tain Elmer. who pretty soon will take out still another Crowley schooner-this time of wood-which Is now building on the Maine coast. It is a remarkable fam fly, and when there is another Prince Henry luncheon to successful Americans of accomplishment 1t Is not at all un- likely that the head of it will find him. self voted in as a genuine captain of in dustry, for no man has done more for the American merchant marine, so far as sailing ships are concerned. than he.
 The launching of the Lawson meant good deal sentlmentslly. too. Massa- chusetts used to be the typical shipbuild- ing State in the Union. But for gene ration the industry has practically died out. although there Is hardly boy in the old shipping towns along the shores of Massachusetts Bay who hasn't a | theory of how to whittle model and build a boat Yacht building, lingering in Boston harbor. was until year or so ago about all that was left. So that Is what largely interested almost every body at the Lawson's launching-the. re- | vival on this coast of shipbuilding on the 1 largest scale. Under the huge shiphouse l that lowered beside the big hull of the schooner were the frames of the first class battleships New Jersey and Rhode Island; the officers from the Charlestown navy yard watched the launching from the deck of the nearly coglpleted cruiser Des Moines, and in the Fore River itself lay the torpedo boat destroyers Law renee and Macdonough ready for their trial trips. For a first launching at a yard only two years old nothing could have been more appropri- ate than this great schooner. The first schooner In the world was built not many miles away, in Gloucester, almost 200 schooners are today the most distinctive portion of the Massachusetts sailing fleet. If one accepts the waning bark-carried whaling industry of New Bedford Every one knows the story of how the first two-master was named. As she slid into the water, a bystander called out: There she schoons!" and the owner. wondering what to call her, answered, "A schooner let her be-
 There was a little craft in Boston har- bor a couple of months ago which prac- tically was the same in build and size. in all likelihood, as that first Gloucester experiment. She was the Polly. the most historic American merchant boat afioat in the North Atlantic. The Polly was launched at Amesbury, on the Merrimac River in this State-where building bug