Schooner Lizzie Carr

A schooner is a sailing ship with two or more masts rigged with fore and aft sails. The photo below is of the Schooner Opal, a beautifully built schooner by Bodan-Werft in Ribnitz-Damgarten, Germany in 1951.

The Schooner Lizzie Carr, and the subject vessel of this post, was a 342 ton, 246 foot sailing ship, built by Walker , Dunn and Company in 1868. It was built to transport lumber and did so until it was lost off the coast of Rye, New Hampshire in 1905. The below photo is of the Lizzie Carr, seen in port some time before her demise.

Six of the seven crew members were rescued. Frank Treen, the first mate did not survive, having attempted to swim to shore before the rescue vessel arrived. See the Seacoastonline story here. The ship wreck has since been recovered in 1998 by a 10 year old boy. See the Seacoastonline story here.

I’m intrigued by this ship and the story of her service, transporting lumber over a hundred years ago. During my morning caffeination, I started to look for some old photographs of the Whale’s Tooth Pub in Lincolnville Maine, a property I help maintain.

I did find one very nice photo of the historic building which allowed me to glean some aspects of the structural components of the newer additions to the original property. As I examined the 1879 photograph, my eye was drawn to the ship, docked right on the estuary where I have spent some amount of time maintaining a pump system that draws in salt water to the restaurant’s lobster tank.

The beautiful schooner, sits quietly, her sails down, the crew out and about on dry land, taking leave until their next voyage.

The photo below, taken in 2022, paints quite a different scene at this location; however, the building, now a restaurant, The Whale’s Tooth Pub, continues to harbor and nourish those who serve and those who arrive from both the land and from the sea.