It's a good thing the Eastern-rigged dragger Roann was well ballasted. After she was built in 1947, owner Roy Campbell of Vineyard Haven, Mass., would fish 120 miles off Cape Cod, all year. That's pretty far offshore for a 60-footer, but she was kept stable with 22,000 pounds of concrete and scrap metal.
Her stability was put to the test one early morning in 1953. With the captain in his bunk and the mate at the wheel, "a huge wall of water, a rogue wave, reared up in front of the Roann. She rode up one side and then dropped off into the trough. She fell over 90 degrees, pushing the mastheads under water and launching the sleeping cook across the fo'c'sle. But the Roann popped back up with the net wrapped around the spring stay," says Walter Ansel, senior shipwright for Connecticut's Mystic Seaport museum.
She survived that day and survives still, as one of the last remaining Eastern-rigged wooden draggers. These vessels fished off New England's coast in the mid-to-late 20th century before they were replaced by steel stern draggers.
The maritime museum bought Roann in 1997 but didn't begin restoration work until 2005. As Michael Crowley writes in the January issue of National Fisherman, the challenging work wouldn't have been possible without dedicated volunteers who spent thousands of hours retaining her original craftsmanship and repairing the wear from five decades worth of highliner-level fishing. Mike's story begins on page 28.
If you really like wooden boats — and many of our readers do — you can visit her in person too. The Roann is part of the historic vessel collection at the Mystic Seaport museum in Mystic, Conn. Learn more here.
Photo courtesy of Mystic Seaport
