❖ Schooner LOTTIE BENNETT ❖ Packing a Utopian Dream? (Updated)

Lumber Schooner
LOTTIE BENNETT,
Laying San Francisco, 1933.
Original photo from the archives of the S. P. H. S.©

The Hall Brothers built 170 ft schooner LOTTIE BENNETT, launched in 1899 at Port Blakely, WA, was one of three sister ships built for the account of the yard owners. 
      She was purchased by Capt. L. Ozanne of Papeete, in 1924 for serving under the French flag as schooner NORMANDIE.
      When the above photo was taken in San Francisco in 1933, she had her birth name restored and was being prepared for a trip to Panama. 
      A Utopian group of forty people wanted to establish a cooperative colony headquartered on two islands in the Bay of Panama where they dreamed about replacing money with barter. 

Mrs. Frank Harris
of the California Cooperative Colony
at the wheel of the LOTTIE BENNETT

Original photo from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

Members trimming the LOTTIE's
deck equipment
preparing for what was to be a sail 
 their new colony.
Circa forty members had to deposit
money for their share, before
joining the ship from
from San Francisco to
the Bay of Panama.
Original photo from the archives of S.P.H.S.© 

      Those plans fell through and she ended up involved in the motion picture industry before she was used as a floating cannery for Dr. Ross Pet Foods Co., operating for a time in Mexican waters.

Tacoma historian, Gary M. White, has included two photos of 

the LOTTIE BENNETT in his Hall Brothers Shipbuilders, published by Arcadia Press.