[alberg30] Re: Tancook Whalers,

[Tom Sutherland]

From: Tom Sutherland <tomsu at uky.campus.mci.net>

Gordon,

Thanks for sharing this with us !

Tom S
A30 # 412

Gordon E. White wrote:

>      No, my schooner had a Primus stove to cook on. There was a
> charlie noble and a smokestack but no Shipmate. I suppose it
> disappeared earlier in the boat's life - she was built in Nova Scotia
> in '28.
>
>     I checked with the Coast Guard four or five years ago and she was
> still registered as of then, somewhere on Long Island Sound. I'd kinda
> like to know if she's still afloat & where. She was strip-planked over
> typical Nova Scotia basket frames, all inside ballast. (rock,
> originally, but iron blocks when I found her) Traditionally she would
> be dark green with a yellow stripe but we painted her white. An owner
> before us added a very nice cabin over the original open well with
> tiny cuddy for'ard
>
>     The story I got from Fawcett was that a Norman Binnie, a
> French-speaking Canadian, was shot down over France during World War
> II and, with an American flier, Jonathan Pearson, was helped to escape
> to Spain by the Maquis.
>     After the war the Canadian went home and with his brother decided
> to sail to Venezuela, bought the schooner from the Strathcona Canadian
> Sea Scouts who had gotten her from the Canadian Navy, which had
> supposedly used her in some way during World War II, named her Binnie
> B and started out. Sometime in 1948 hey came down the canals and lakes
> to the Hudson, and thence south. Around Troy, New York, they  had run
> out of cash. They got in touch with Pearson, by then director of
> admissions at Union College in Schnectady, who, with a friend named
> Kirkland, joined them for a few drinks.
>     The sailing to South America thought had paled a little already
> and the wine flowed freely. By morning the Kirkland had bought the
> boat. (I have correspondence with him in my files)
>     Kirkland took her to Annapolis where Art Fawcett bought her and in
> 1959 sold her to me.
>     Eventually the cost of keeping up a wooden boat exceeded my
> finances and my wife had twins in 1964. I sold her to Tom Nichols of
> N.Stonington, CT who took out the Atomic 4 (or its predecessor) put in
> a diesel, and over eight years re-planked her in cypress. We sailed
> once with Nichols in about 1972.
>     Nichols is now dead and his son does not know who bought the boat.
>
>     If anyone along the Connecticut shore sees Brigadoon I, a 34 ft
> Tancook schooner, I'd love to know where she is. Official number is
> 286521 which I had carved on the main beam. She was listed in the
> Customs Service's Merchant Vessels of the United States, now the USCG
> registry.
>                                     - Gordon White A-275






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