Book launch for Phoenix of the Seas, by Chester Brigham

Book launch for
Phoenix of the Seas, by Chester Brigham

The saga of the Gloucester schooner
Ernestina-Morrissey, State Ship of Massachusetts

The Cape Ann Museum is pleased to welcome author Chester Brigham to the Museum on Saturday, June 13 at 3:00 p.m. Brigham will be reading from and signing copies of his latest book, Phoenix of the Seas (books will be available for purchase in the Museum Gift Shop). This program is free for members or with Museum admission.

Phoenix of the Seas recounts the journeys and travails of the Ernestina-Morrissey, State Ship of Massachusetts. The schooner, repeatedly written off as doomed, is now undergoing complete restoration thanks to a combination of state and private funding,

The Ernestina-Morrissey’s story is one of wide-ranging maritime adventures, lived by a remarkable cast of captains, crews and voyagers. Launched in Essex in 1894, she sailed to the Grand Banks from Gloucester for cod in the 1890s, voyaged to the Arctic every year for almost two decades on scientific expeditions, served under both the U.S. Army and Navy in the Arctic during World War II, crossed the Atlantic a dozen times as a packet ship, linking Cape Verdean-Americans in New England with family members on their home islands, then back in America under sail out of New Bedford she was a floating schoolroom where boatloads of school children learned about the wonders of their ocean environment.

Behind it all has been the ship’s indomitable spirit, sensed by all who have sailed her: Gloucester fishing captains Bill and Clayton Morrissey, Arctic navigator Bob Bartlett, Henrique Mendes on Cape Verde, round-the-world captain Dan Moreland. And by those whose lives she has touched: dory-trawling fishermen on the Grand Banks, hardy field scientists, Inuit hunters, GIs at remote weather stations, Atlantic islanders, volunteers who have sacrificed much for love of the ship.

Gloucester author Chester Brigham has written three other books relating to the maritime and cultural history of Cape Ann: On Opposite Tacks (2011), Gloucester’s Bargain with the Sea (2007) and The Stream I Go A-Fishing In (2003).