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FEBA
From:	<Rustysch@aol.com>
To:	<feba@concentric.net>
Sent:	Monday, April 24, 2000 11:39 AM
Subject:	More Emilio Cue
I looked through my notes a bit more and found that the schooner Ellen Cue was owned by Emilio Cue at least through the late 1890s. Her register dimensions were 68.2 feet long, 23.8 feet wide, and 4.5 feet depth in the hold.
The Ellen Cue was a two masted gaff rig schooner with a centerboard. The two masts were typical for American schooners. They were economical to build, relatively easy to sail and maintain and were thus very popular in the American coastal trade.
The centerboard was a device that was pretty much an American invention and used widely in coastal fishing and freight schooners. It was a flat board mounted along the centerline of the boat that could be dropped through a slot in the keel so that part of the board would act as a fin under the keel, giving the schooner better ability to sail to windward. Because coastal schooners operated in shallow water, they had to be of a very shallow design.
To give them stability, the hull had to be very broad for its length. To get a broad shallow hull to sail well to windward (toward the direction from which the wind is blowing), the centerboard was used to give a little extra stiffness under the hull. I hope that does not confuse you too much.
in 1893, she was mastered by Captain Alexander Wooten, a mulatto schooner captain from the Pearl River. Wooten was bom in born in the Pearl River region in 1836 and was one of the more senior black schooner captains in the lake trade. He was married and was literate, an interesting quality for a black man in the lake trade. Most were illiterate. Captain Wooten continued as captain of the Ellen Cue for several years.
In 1897, she was mastered by another black schooner captain named Walter Murray, also from the Pearl River region.
I don?t have any notation on the Ellen Cue until 1907, when she was owned by the Herlihy & Haas Sawmill near Kiln. The owners of record were Elisha N.
Haas and Timothy H. Herlihy. She was still under the hand of Captain Murray.
During the period 1907-1914, she had at least seven different captains.
Although her fate is unknown at this time, she dropped off the list of registered US merchant vessels after 1914. This means she was wrecked, abandoned, or sold to a foreign flag. I'll check further and see if I can't nail that down. There were several storms in 1915 and 1916, and it is possible that she was wrecked by a hurricane. It is equally possible that she was abandoned somewhere in the Jourdan River area and her hull is still out there waiting to be found.
The Ellen Cue was a regular lumber carrier to New .Orleans. She averaged about 40,000-45,000 board feet of lumber per voyage. ThiS?4^ a typical load for a schooner of her size. She generally made one or two trips to New Orleans every month by way of Lake Pontchartrain.
I'll see what else I have later on.
4/24/00