THE SCHOONER BERTHA L. DOWNS

This work by Basil Greenwill is fully dedicated to the famous schooner and contains various plans, drawings and general technical/non-technical info on this ship. Bertha L. Dawns was one of those large schooners constructed in England at the end of XIX - beginning of XX century; almost all of such vessels were mostly employed in the coastal trade, mostly dealing with the coal transportation from Virginia to New England. The ship addressed in this publication, was launched in 1908 and was later sold to Danish owner - she was given a new name - "Atlas". Like all other vessels, her contemporaries, Bertha L. Dawns managed to make a very good profitable living through the early twentieth century before getting broken up in Germany after 42 successful working years under five flags.

The type to which this vessel used to belong, differs a lot from any other one. Those ships were able to operate quite economically, having a small steam engine on board, used to hoist the sails. This, in turn, required much smaller crew in comparison to the conventional steam ships. However, the speed of these vessels was relatively low, since they were fully dependent on the wind, so the cargoes they used to haul were mostly stone, coal and lumber...