Shore or Boat

During the 1930''s, Mill Cove, a shallow backwater of Boothbay Harbor, was a popular layup location for large schooners. At least five large schooners, and probably several more, spent years in Mill Cove, awaiting their fates. The bones of two big schooners are still there.

Courtney C. Houck was a 1627 ton (GRT), five-masted schooner built in Bath, Maine in 1913. She was laid up at Boothbay around 1930, and never returned to service. Her rotted hulk was auctioned for scrap in 1937, selling for $255. She was stripped where she lay and the hulk left to rot. Edna M. McKnight was a 1326 ton four-master built in 1918 at Camden. She met her end in 1926, when she was caught by a powerful storm off the Virginia coast while heavily loaded with lumber. Her seams opened, her canvas was shredded, and she seemed in danger of breaking up. Her crew was taken off by a passing steamer on 7 December; the hulk was allowed to drift off. On the 28th of the month she was relocated, and tug dispatched to bring her into Bermuda. By September of the next year the hulk had reached Boothbay Harbor for repairs. However, she was judged not worth repairing and was cast away to rot in Mill Cove.

In 1945 both old schooners were set afire to celebrate the end of WWII. At least one of the hulks burned to the water, but the other survived relatively intact. Local lore indicates three hulks, not two, were burned in 1945. Research has not yet revealed the identity of the third vessel. The third vessel is reported to have been much smaller than the other two; it probably would have gone to pieces more quickly than the bigger craft. The bones in the harbor muck do show some signs that a third vessel might have been present.

Zebedee E. Cliff, Maude M. Morey and Freeman, all four-masters, were laid up at Boothbay starting in the late 1920''s. Morey and Cliff laid there until 1941, when they were towed to Portland for possible reactivation. However, the government purchased the hulks and scuttled them as a breakwater in the outer harbor. Both hulks were later burnt. Freeman stirred from the muck in 1940, only to become a barge operating from Halifax, Nova Scotia. She lasted through 1947 but was scuttled offshore soon thereafter.