❖ A PORTRAIT OF A SHIP ❖

BENJAMIN F. PACKARD
ON 3270
Full-rigged, 2,156 G.t.–– 2,013 N. t.
244.2' x 43.2' x 18.2'
Crew of 25.
Built by Goss, Sawyer & Packard at Bath, ME, in 1883.
Photo back-dated 18 March 1925
Original photo from the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society.©

Paul C. Morris, A Portrait of a Ship. Lower Cape Publishing Co., Orleans, Massachusetts, 1987.
Bibliography, index, 180 photographs, including four color images, 16 pen-and-ink drawings executed by the author as well as a painting of the BENJAMIN F. PACKARD on the dust jacket, book size 9 x 12.5-inches, 200 pages.

      "This fine book is one-of-a-kind for sailing ship historians, model builders, and armchair readers. One reason is that it contains probably the most complete set of photographs ever published about any full-rigged American sailing ship. The vessel is the 'Down easter' BENJAMIN F. PACKARD, that spent 17 years registered on Puget Sound. Morris' book is the life account of a true 'hell ship', one of the latter-day sailing ships, that did not have a good name among Cape Horn sailing ship men, primarily because of the way many of the captains and 'bucko' officers treated them.
      The PACKARD was a well-known vessel on Puget Sound, first as a lumber carrier, sailing from such ports as Port Blakely, Port Townsend, Bellingham, and Tacoma, and later as an Alaska salmon cannery ship sailing out of Seattle.
      The brutalities practiced aboard the PACKARD are recounted by the author from eye-witness accounts and presents a different picture of the days of 'wooden ships and iron men' than some of the romanticized accounts about the days of sail. Shanghaiing, deaths at sea, etc., are all documented in this well-written history of the BENJAMIN F. PACKARD.
      As a thorough photographic record of one of the last down-east square-riggers, A Portrait of a Ship is a must for readers of northwest maritime history covering the period of approximately 1890 to 1925. Moreover, direct quotes from the detailed correspondence of Sewall Company, the PACKARD's owners from 1887-1908, give an insight into the commercial aspects of operating a sailing ship."

The above review was written by historian Michael Jay Mjelde for The Sea Chest, quarterly membership journal of the Puget Sound Maritime Society, Seattle, WA. March 1988.
      
1925: BENJAMIN F. PACKARD was retired from cannery service of Booth Fisheries Co. 
      She was sold to Hansen & Nieder Lumber Co of Seattle & dispatched to the east coast where it was planned to use her as a coal barge. She was taken over by Theodore Roosevelt Pell of New York, who hoped to keep her afloat as a museum, and for a time she was moored at the foot of 129th Street, New York. 
      One of her longtime masters was Capt. A. A. Aas.