Lewis R. French (schooner)
1871 schooner launched in Maine
Lewis R. French is a gaff-rigged topsail schooner sailing out of Camden, Maine as a "Maine windjammer" offering 3 to 6 night cruises to tourists. Built in 1871, she is the oldest known two-masted schooner in the United States, and one of a small number of this once-common form of vessel in active service. The ship was designated a US National Historic Landmark in 1992.
Description and history
Lewis R. French was launched in 1871 in Christmas Cove in the town of South Bristol, Maine. The ship is 101 ft long, has 64.7 feet (19.7 m) of deck, a 18.8-foot (5.7 m) beam, and draws 7.5 feet (2.3 m) with a full keel. Sail is her only means of power. Her frame is of double-sawn oak and hackmatack and her planking is white oak. Fastenings were originally treenails, but were replaced during restoration by spiking.
According to the current owners' website and to researcher and author Virginia L. Thorndike, the schooner was built by the sons of Maine storekeeper Lewis R. French and named for their father. In Thorndike's book Windjammer Watching on the Coast of Maine, the author writes that the three sons had an agreement with their father that he would finance the building of the vessel, and yet he never did.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as 1871 schooner launched in Maine. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3237306. Authority coordinates are 44.211, -69.063. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1871 and 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lewis R. French (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.