Word: ackermans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...launching of the schooner John F. Leavitt was not a sentimental return to the past. It was an experiment to see if perchance the past has a future-and will work. In a sense "that Ackerman boy," who turns out to be Edward Arthur ("Ned") Ackerman, a bearded, moderately grouchy 36, is simply doing what most pragmatic Maine-landers are also doing these days: turning away from expensive fossil fuels as fast as they can. Wood is already stacked high against nearly every house, ready to be fed to wood-burning stoves and fireplaces this winter, when the temperature...
...three years Ackerman has worked in the Wallace Shipyards, helping build his 97-ft.-long schooner. Her hold can accommodate 150 tons of freight and haul it cheaply and cleanly along the New England coast, or south to Haiti, into the Caribbean, and back. As recently as the early 1900s, schooners carried most of New England's southbound ice, fish, lumber and granite, returning with molasses and coal. But not for 40 years has such a commercial vessel been built, and Ackerman intends to turn a profit with this one. "It better," he proclaims, "and it will." Like...
...John F, Leavitt, red and white, constructed from the oak and pine of the Maine forest, is the fulfillment of Ackerman's dream, but he resents that description. The very word suggests impracticality, something Ackerman wants no part of. "Would it seem like a dream to you if you bought a new truck?" he asks. Is he the forerunner, the leader in something new, something that could become a trend? "Nah," he sneers in a New Hampshire twang. "If a lot more schooners are built, it will be because a lot of people independently came by the same conclusion...
...John F. Leavitt is named after a maritime writer whose book Wake of the Coasters first inspired Ackerman's notion that the era of the wooden sailing ship might again be at hand. Ackerman gave up the pursuit of a doctorate in Middle English, Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman French at the University of Pennsylvania to build his ship. There is enough romance in the hard-nosed seaman that he sought out John Leavitt's widow, Virginia, and invited her to break the obligatory bottle of champagne over the ship's prow at the christening...
Once aboard, not even Ackerman could remain dour. Lovingly fingering one of the telephone polelike masts, which will carry 6,441 sq. ft. of sail, he allowed his eyes to drink in the full magnificence of the vessel. An understandable pride began to creep into his voice: "I'm personally responsible for every penny in this schooner. I've put everything I own into her. It's quite an investment. I've got to get it back." How much? "That's my secret." The Leavitt will use cotton sails, partly because they are cheaper, partly...