From collection Elmer Montgomery Collection
Schooner BENJAMIN THOMPSON & DIRIGO FIRST
Bow view of BENJAMIN THOMPSON with DIRIGO FIRST in foreground. Both rigged as dory trawlers. BENJAMIN THOMPSON built in 1923 in Essex, Ma. owned by John Willard Jr. [included in the exhibit "Working Waterfronts"]
Details
LB2008.15.183
[included in the exhibit "Working Waterfronts"] Schooners BENJAMIN THOMPSON & DIRIGO FIRST LB2008.15.183 Two dory trawlers lie along the Rockland waterfront with Owls Head and the Rockland Breakwater Light in the distance. BENJAMIN THOMPSON was built in Essex, Ma. in 1923 by the A.D. Story yard. Designed as an auxiliary schooner by Thomas McManus for Portland's William Thompson, the THOMPSON was often a high liner in the Portland market. DIRIGO FIRST was built in South Freeport, also in 1923, for Henry W. Gallant of Portland. Here they are rigged for winter dory trawling, but summers they rigged for sword fish and gill netting. Rockland was in the process of transformation from a lime town to a fishing port in the late 1930s, but it would have been unusual for a couple of Portland based vessels to stop in. M. Elmer Montgomery Collection LB2008.15.183
