Close-up of the bow of the schooner BAKER PALMER at Waldoboro, Maine in 1901

Close-up of the bow of the schooner BAKER PALMER at Waldoboro, Maine in 1901

Close-up of the bow of the five masted coal schooner BAKER PALMER at Waldoboro, Maine in 1901 William Palmer's schooners got the jump on Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet of 'round-the-world battleships when this entrepreneurial Massachusetts schoolteacher began building five-masted wooden schooners and painting them white. They came from shipyards in Bath, and Rockland as well as from Waldoboro where, in only four years, George Welt built six of these giant Palmer coal schooners. Local wood was gone, so southern yellow pine, Virginia white oak and West Coast fir were imported as the primary materials.