Vessel Name - Rosemont
Class – schooner-barge
Hull - wood
Masts -
Designed by –
Build date – 1895
Launch date -
Built by – Kelley, Spear & Co.
Built at – Bath, Maine.
Built for – Staples Coal Company, Fall River, Massachusetts
Named for –
Power – meant for tow
Gross tons - 708
Net tons – 951.84
Length – 174.3’
Beam – 35.4’
Depth – 14.2’
Crew – 2
Number – 111084
Disposition - Wrecked off Amagansett, Long Island, New York in 1903 while carrying coal on a tow by tug Eureka from Philadelphia to Boston.
"Crew of Barge May Be Lost
The Rosemont, with No One Aboard, Is Stranded Near Amagansett Life Saving Station
Eastport, L.I., April 8 – In a heavy gale and a tremendous surf the barge Rosemont of Bath, Me., coal laden, bound from Fall River, Mass., stranded on a bar one and a half miles west of the Amagansett Life Saving Station early this morning.
The life savers boarded the barge and found no one on the vessel. It is believed that the members of the crew were drowned. A watch is being kept for bodies along the beach. The vessel is rapidly going to pieces. The barge was noticed last night in tow of a tug opposite Montauk. She appeared to be manoeuvring [Sic] strangely. When darkness settled she was still moving westward." - New York Times, April 9, 1903.
"The Rosemont A Total Wreck
Fire Island, L.I., April 15 – Lone Hill Life Saving Station reports that the barge Rosemont, which, as before reported, went ashore at Amagansett, has gone to pieces. The Rosemont was coal laden, and left Philadelphia April 6, in tow of the tug Eureka, for Boston. The crew of the Rosemont was rescued by the tug." – The Brooklyn Eagle, April 15, 1903.
"Schooner Barges
The sailing vessels include craft built primarily to be towed, although equipped with sails which are used only to assist in steering. These craft, known as “schooner barges,” are thus described in the report of the Commissioner of Navigation for 1905: “A seagoing schooner barge is a vessel usually towed from port to port, but rigged with masts and furnished with sails, so that if in emergency she breaks adrift from the towing steamer, she may not be helpless at sea. Nearly all of the schooner barges before 1890 were square-rigged vessels or schooners which had outlived their usefulness as such and were dismantled and converted into barges. Shortly before 1890, and to a considerable extent since, such schooner barges have been specially constructed, some of them with steel hulls. The practice of cutting down square-rigged vessels and schooners into barges still continues.”…" – "Transportation by Water," United States Bureau of the Census, William Mott Steuart, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1908, p. 10.
