Pictured: a built model of this ship — not the historical vessel.

Benjamin W. Latham

Type

Fishing Vessel

Period

20th Century

Nation

United States

Overview: The Benjamin W. Latham is a celebrated Grand Banks-style fishing schooner of the McManus type, prized by scale modelers as a representative turn-of-the-century American mackerel seiner and later dory trawler. She was designed by Thomas F. McManus and built by the Tarr & James shipyard at Essex, Massachusetts, in 1902, one of a line of McManus vessels credited with transforming New England fishing-schooner design for speed and safety. Specifications: The schooner measured about 84 feet in length with a gross weight of 72 tons and carried a crew of 15. She was first registered under sail but was fitted with a 48-horsepower gasoline engine in her second or third season, requiring the propeller shaft to be offset to avoid fouling the seine net when it was bailed to starboard. Naval historian Howard Chapelle's research noted roughly 21 planking strakes per side with little taper in the upper strakes and no stealers above the waterline, details that inform modern scratch-built reconstructions. Service History: Built for Captain Henry Langworthy of Noank, Connecticut, and launched October 30, 1902, she began as a Noank-based mackerel seiner. From 1906 to 1943 she operated as a mackerel seiner and dory trawler out of the Fulton Fish Market in New York City before foundering off San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1943. Documentation of her actual working career is thin, surviving mostly in scattered customs and registry records rather than continuous logs or photographs. Notable Facts: The vessel is a favorite modeling subject, with the Model Shipways 1:48 scale kit being especially well known, alongside numerous scratch-built interpretations by clubs such as the Hampton Roads Ship Model Society. The Cape Ann Museum holds a notable model built collaboratively by father-and-son modelers Erik Ronnberg Sr., a Gloucester-area master rigger, and Erik Ronnberg Jr., whose research and published reconstruction drawings have become a standard modeling reference for the type.