Sherman Zwicker
At the Maine Maritime Museum waterfront, September 2013
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| History | |
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| Owner: |
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| Builder: | Smith and Rhuland |
| Yard number: | 190 |
| Launched: | 1942 |
| Status: | Museum ship |
| General characteristics | |
| Tonnage: | 180 GT |
| Length: | 142 ft (43 m) |
| Propulsion: | 320 bhp (240 kW) diesel engine |
| Sail plan: | schooner |
Sherman Zwicker is a wooden auxiliary fishing schooner built in 1942 at the Smith and Rhuland shipyard, Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Influenced by the design of the famous Bluenose, Sherman Zwicker was built to fish the Grand Banks. The schooner was built for F. Homer Zwicker of Zwicker and Co. Officially christened in 1942, the F/V Sherman Zwicker is the last operable saltbank fishing vessel in existence.
Sherman Zwicker is a 142 feet (43 m) wooden auxiliary fishing schooner. She was designed with a schooner hull similar to her famous sister ship Bluenose, but with a 320 brake horsepower (240 kW) diesel engine installed from the beginning. Both Sherman Zwicker and Bluenose were built at the same shipyard. Sherman Zwicker does not have topmasts or a bowsprit. She was built strictly as a working fishing vessel and did not race like Bluenose.
In her heyday, she was part of a fleet of hundreds of wooden schooners that fished the abundant but turbulent Grand Banks region of the North Atlantic. Less than five of her fleet remain in the world today, and the Sherman Zwicker is the only that is fully operational and fully restored.
Owned by Zwicker and Co., Sherman Zwicker was built to fish the Grand Banks of Newfoundland from dories from the ports of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. When it became too difficult to fill all 11 dories with crew, she fished from the port of Glovertown, Newfoundland (1959–1968). In 1959 she fished eight dories with a crew of 18, all from Newfoundland. Before ice and refrigeration were available, in order to preserve the fish they caught these schooners would salt their fish. In the 1950s and 1960s fishing trawlers were being built and became more lucrative. The number of Grand Banks schooners greatly declined from approximately a hundred to only fifteen still fishing. In 1963 the political upheaval in Haiti cut off one of the main salt fish markets and this left a huge decrease in the sales for salt fish.
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Wikipedia