Down Easter (3m).
L/B/D:
223 × 43 × 26.7 (68m × 13.1m × 8.1m). Tons:
1,878 reg. Hull:
wood. Built:
William Rogers, Bath, Me.; 1882.
Named for a former governor of Maine, the Down Easter Abner Coburn was built by William Rogers, who put her in general trade chiefly between the East Coast and the Orient, usually via the Cape of Good Hope and the Indian Ocean. She also sailed on the Cape Horn route between New York and San Francisco. Except for three voyages, from 1882 to 1897 she was commanded by Captain George A. Nichols, who was killed in the Indian Ocean when a wave ripped away the wheelhouse and he was crushed. In the early 1890s, the ship had come under the management of Pendleton, Carver & Nichols, who sold her to the California Shipping Company. This firm sailed Abner Coburn in the West Coast lumber trade until 1912, when she was sold to Libby, McNeill & Libby who employed her in their salmon cannery operations around Bristol Bay, Alaska. In the late 1920s, she was intentionally burned in Puget Sound for the scrap metal used in her construction.
Lubbock, Down Easters. Matthews, American Merchant Ships.
