Qualla: Thomas W. Lawson

Thomas W. Lawson: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Georges Clerc-Rampal, Public domain. Her seven masts were a problem before she ever sank. The crew, the architects, and the harbour painters could never settle on names for them. At launch they were called fore, main, mizzen, spanker, jigger, driver, and pusher. Later it became forecastle, fore, main, mizzen, jigger, and spanker. Crew preferred numbers. Someone proposed the days of the week, so that the foremast would be Sunday and the spanker would be Saturday. None of it ever quite stuck. What was certain was the mathematics. She was 475 feet long. She carried 43,000 square feet of canvas. She was the only seven-masted sailing ship in modern times, the largest pure-sail vessel ever built, and from the moment her hull touched water in 1902 she was a magnificent, awkward bet against history.

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Image: Georges Clerc-Rampal | Public domain

Thomas W. Lawson: The Bet Against Steam

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. By the turn of the twentieth century, steam had won the freight argument almost everywhere it mattered. But Captain John G. Crowley of the Coastwise Transportation Company believed sail could still compete for bulk cargo if you simply built one big enough. He hired Bowdoin B. Cro...

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Image: Public domain

Thomas W. Lawson: A Different Kind of Cargo

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrewrabbott, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1906 she was refitted at Newport News as something stranger still: the world's first pure-sail oil tanker. Sun Oil Company put her under charter to haul bulk paraffin oil from Texas to the eastern seaboard. The seven steel masts, no longer used for staysails, now also served a...

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Image: Andrewrabbott | CC BY-SA 4.0

Thomas W. Lawson: Anchored at Annet

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No Swan So Fine, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 13 December 1907 - Friday the thirteenth - she made the worst possible landfall. Entering the English Channel, the Thomas W. Lawson passed inside Bishop Rock light, putting herself squarely among the Western Rocks. Captain Dow anchored between the Nundeeps shallows and Gunner'...

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Image: No Swan So Fine | CC BY-SA 4.0

Thomas W. Lawson: The Reef and the Oil

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrewrabbott, CC BY-SA 3.0. She drove ashore on Shag Rock. All seven masts came down together, throwing the men climbing them into the sea. The stern tore away behind mast number six. In the morning the upturned keel was briefly visible before sliding into deeper water. Sixteen of the eighteen crew, along w...

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Image: Andrewrabbott | CC BY-SA 3.0