Adventure (1926 schooner)
1926 schooner
Adventure is a gaff rigged knockabout schooner. She was built in Essex, Massachusetts, USA, and launched in 1926 to work the Grand Banks fishing grounds out of Gloucester. She is one of only two surviving knockabout fishing schooners – ships designed without bowsprits for the safety of their crew while underway.
Adventure was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1994, underwent a substantial restoration in 2012, and sails today in the tourist trade out of Gloucester.
History
Adventure was designed by Thomas F. McManus of Boston and built at the John F. James & Son Yard in Essex, Massachusetts, for Captain Jeff Thomas of Gloucester. She was one of the last wooden sailing vessels of her kind built for the dory-fishing industry that once thrived on the Grand Banks.
Adventure is a spoonbow knockabout schooner, designed without a bowsprit as a safety measure, as the bowsprit was where a significant amount of deaths at sea occurred. The McManus knockabout design was regarded by maritime historian Howard I. Chapelle as "the acme in the long evolution of the New England fishing schooner." Launched on 16 September 1926, Adventure measured 122 feet (37 m) overall, sported a gaff rig and carried a 120 horsepower (89 kW) diesel engine, and a crew of twenty-seven. Named for one of the fantasy fleet of ships drawn by Captain Thomas's young son, she fished the once-bountiful Grand Banks of the North Atlantic from her home port of Gloucester from 1926 to 1953 under Captain Jeff Thomas, and later, Captain Leo Hynes. Adventure was the biggest money-maker of the time, landing nearly $4 million worth of cod and halibut in her fishing career.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2323226. Authority coordinates are 42.616, -70.654. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1926, 1994, 2012 and 1953.
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This entry incorporates text from “Adventure (1926 schooner)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.