In this world, there are big ships. And there are really,
really big ships.
To put the
name Wyoming in the same sentence as “the biggest wooden ship ever built” just
would not make sense to most residents of this state.
But it is
true.
The largest
wooden ship ever built was called the Wyoming
and the centennial of that event occurred about five years ago.
And as might
be typical of anything Wyoming, that ship’s entire existence had a lot to do
with coal. But not Powder River Basin coal, but eastern seaboard coal. But I
digress.
This giant
ship was launched from Bath, Maine in 1909 and this monster was more than 450
feet long. It was so gigantic, it would
have a difficult time fitting into War Memorial Stadium at Laramie.
This was one
of two gigantic ships launched around that time from Bath with Wyoming names. The first was the biggest at the time, called
the Governor Brooks, named for Wyoming
Gov. Bryant Butler Brooks.
His family
made a lot of money financing giant wooden ships that ferried huge cargoes of
coal along the East Coast, among other business ventures.
The Governor Brooks had five masts, which was unprecedented at the time
in 1907. But the Wyoming was much bigger with six masts and a size that was bigger
than even the legendary Noah’s Ark.
Hal Herron and
Joe Stanbury of Riverton discovered these facts about the Wyoming during a motorcycle trip a few yeas ago, which took them to
the Maine Maritime Museum near Bath
While touring
the museum there, they walked into a vast open field, which featured huge steel
statues at each end. These represented
the prow and the stern of the biggest wooden boat, ever. The space was 150
yards long, which is one and a half times the length of a 100-yard long
football field.
Upon closer
inspection, Herron was astonished to
read that the name of it was “The Wyoming.” The giant ship stretched out along
that field between the representations of the prow and the stern of the giant
vessel
So who were
these Brooks folks with the deep pockets and the love of shipbuilding and why
the Wyoming connection?
It was an
extended family that dominated business in the Northeast. One of the family’s sons headed west to
follow his love of cowboying. He ended
up with a 100,000-acre ranch in the Casper area at Big Muddy, WY. And he became Wyoming’s seventh governor.
Thus, it was
apparently a logical occurrence that ships reflecting this Cowboy State
connection came into being.
Every
statistic concerning the Wyoming was
huge.
It was 50 feet
wide and had a volume of 303,621 cubic feet. Unloaded, the ship weighed 6,000
tons. She could carry 6,000 long tons
of coal.
It was built
of six-inch yellow pine planking and there were 90 diagonal iron cross-bracings
on each side. It stood four stories high before you even reached the masts,
which stretched out another six stories.
The ship was
built in 1909 by the Percy and Small Co. and cost $175,000.
The members of
the Brooks family were smart businesspeople and later sold the ship in 1917 for
$420,000.
Ultimately, it
foundered in high seas near Nantucket in 1924 with all 13 hands drowning.
Herron thought
it would be nice to locate a huge Wyoming flag at the Bath site, which could be
featured near the sculpture. The folks there did not receive this with great
enthusiasm, so he worked with the Governor’s office to get a normal sized flag
lined up for it.
The 100th
anniversary of the launch of the ship occured in on Dec. 15, 2009.
I looked up
some of this information on the Internet through Wikipedia under the heading:
“Largest wooden ship in the world.”
It shows the Wyoming as number-one followed by a
377-foot long French ship, which was destroyed in 1874, and a huge Roman barge
built by Caligula. Another contender for largest ship was the Solano, a huge
tug that hauled steam engines across San Francisco bay.
Wyoming is
famous for many things – for our first national park, national monument and national
forest and for its location of the Oregon Trail and even for our consistently
high winds. Plus we are the energy breadbasket of the Western Hemisphere.
But who would
have thought that Wyoming would be famous as the namesake for the largest
wooden ship in the world built way off in distant Maine?
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