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

Miss-Lou (Biloxi Schooner)

Type

Schooner

Period

20th Century

Nation

United States

Overview: Miss-Lou was one of the celebrated Biloxi schooners, a distinctive two-masted, gaff-rigged fishing schooner type developed for the Mississippi Gulf Coast seafood packing industry. She was built by noted Biloxi boatbuilder Anson Holley for Charles B. Foster's C.B. Foster packing company and worked in oystering, shrimping, and freight hauling. Specifications: As a Biloxi schooner she would have shared the type's defining traits: a broad beam, shallow draft, and retractable centerboard suited to the shoal waters of the Mississippi Sound. Builders constructed the schooners out of indigenous lumber, using cypress from Louisiana for the frame and planking and longleaf yellow pine from Mississippi forests for the keel, masts, and spars, with completed boats ranging from twenty-nine to sixty-seven feet and carrying three working sails. Service History: The heyday of the Biloxi schooner lasted just four decades, bookended by a hurricane and the rise of gas-powered boats, with the type's emergence coinciding with the expansion of the Biloxi seafood industry at the end of the nineteenth century. The primary impetus for adopting the design came in 1893, when a hurricane devastated most of the fishing fleet, and vessels like Miss-Lou would have taken part in the region's famous schooner races between packing houses during the summer off-season. Notable Facts: No original working Biloxi schooners, including the Miss-Lou, are documented to survive intact today; the type disappeared as marine engines and changing oyster-harvesting laws made the sailing schooners obsolete. The Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum in Biloxi keeps the type alive with two 65-ft two-masted replica schooners, the Glenn L. Swetman and the Mike Sekul, which now carry passengers on educational sailing charters from the Schooner Pier Complex. A hobbyist RC build log of a "Miss Lou" Biloxi schooner model, based on a circa-1930s prototype, exists on a German ship-modeling forum (Wettringer Modellbauforum), the only documented depiction of this specific vessel found during research — no verified historical photograph of the actual Miss-Lou was located.