Emma C. Berry

Type

Sloop

Period

19th Century

Nation

United States

Overview: Emma C. Berry is a wet-well fishing sloop built in 1866 at Noank, Connecticut, and is regarded as the last known surviving example of the American well smack, also called a Noank smack or sloop smack. She is preserved and exhibited afloat at Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut, and was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1994. Specifications: The vessel is small and utilitarian, with a registered length of about 39.2 ft (11.9 m), a beam of 14.6 ft (4.5 m), a depth of hold of 5.7 ft (1.7 m), and a tonnage of roughly 15 GRT. As built she carried a sloop rig with a large mainsail, two headsails, and a gaff topsail for light weather, with her signature feature being an amidships wet well - a truncated pyramidal watertight compartment pierced with holes to let seawater circulate and keep the catch alive. Service History: Launched in June 1866 at the R & J Palmer Shipyard by builder James A. Latham for Captain John Henry Berry (who named her for his daughter), she worked as a fishing smack transporting live catch to market. She was re-rigged as a schooner in 1886, moved to Maine service in 1894, fitted with a gasoline engine around 1916, and later used as a coastal freighter carrying cargo between Maine and Massachusetts ports before being found derelict and restored to her original sloop configuration in 1931. Notable Facts: F. Slade Dale restored the vessel in 1931 and donated her to Mystic Seaport Museum in 1969, where she underwent further restorations in the 1970s that recreated her original sloop rig, wet well, deck, and spar ironwork based on period research and photographs. Her hull is painted black, a choice informed by comparison to other period Noank smacks such as the 1855 Rattler and the 1867 Mary E. Hoxie, since well smacks of her era were more commonly painted "bottle green." She remains a popular subject for scale modelers, with a well-known Model Shipways plank-on-frame kit based on Mystic Seaport's own restoration drawings, designed by Ben Lankford.