ESSEX, Mass. — There was a time when a schooner a week was launched from local shipyards, destined for the Gloucester fishing fleet.

But in the last 11 years, there have been only three, the most recent in 2003.

“It has become such a rare occurrence in Essex that when it happens, it’s a big event,” said Courtney Ellis-Peckham, an archivist with the Essex Shipbuilding Museum, which tries to keep the town’s rich shipbuilding heritage alive.

One such big event will be Sunday when shipwright Harold Burnham of H.A. Burnham Boat Building and Design will launch the Isabella, a 38-foot, two-masted schooner.

The vessel was commissioned by William Greene of South Dartmouth as a private yacht. After it’s launched, the Isabella will participate in the Gloucester Schooner Festival, then depart for its mooring in South Dartmouth. Greene intends to cruise the coast with his 13 grandchildren.

Back in the 1800s, there were 15 shipbuilding yards in town and 50 launches a year, Ellis-Peckham said. By the 1920s, shipbuilding was in rapid decline and, by the 1940s, the industry was almost nonexistent.

In 1997, Burnham revived old Essex shipbuilding techniques and launched his first creation, the Thomas E. Lannon, a 65-foot Fredonia-style fishing schooner that now sails chartered trips out of Gloucester.

Burnham began work on the Isabella in November.

On Sunday, he and his “gang,” as he calls his crew, will use the traditional Essex side-launching technique to drop the boat into the Essex River at high tide about 3 p.m.

Burnham explains the technique in detail in an article posted on his Web site, www.burnhamboatbuilding.com.

There are three basic ingredients, he said: “grease, gravity and momentum.”

First, the vessel is tipped so the bilge rests on a short plank and wedges that it will ride down into the water. Then, greased slabs are wedged under the vessel’s keel in the spaces between the blocking on which it was built. Finally, as the tide rises, the vessel’s blocking is split out from under the keel.

When enough of the boat’s weight rests on the greased slabs, gravity pulls it down.

“It is hard to guess which block will start her,” Burnham said. “Sometimes, it takes a little jacking and jerking to get the vessel going, but once she starts, things get really interesting.”

He said once the boat begins to move, it takes less than 10 seconds for it to hit the water.

Ellis-Peckham said that to the untrained eye, the moment when the boat begins to move looks like the start of a disaster.

“It doesn’t look like they’re in control whatsoever, but they know what they are doing,” she said.

The last launch in town was 2003 when the Fame, a charter now sailing out of Salem, was launched from the Burnham shipyard. The Lewis H. Story, a 30-foot Chebacco boat built by Burnham for the shipbuilding museum, was launched in 1998. Essex was part of Ipswich and known as Chebacco when the boats were developed there during the Revolutionary War, according to the museum.

Burnham is the only schooner shipbuilder in the town where 4,000 schooners were built. He is the 28th Burnham to operate a shipyard in Essex since 1819.

“Every person who has been here for two generations traces family roots to shipbuilding,” Burnham said.



Julio Chuy writes for the Gloucester (Mass.) Daily Times.



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If you go

r What: Launch of schooner Isabella

r When: Sunday about 3 p.m., depending on tide

r Where: Harold Burnham Shipyard. The public can view the launching from the Essex Shipbuilding Museum across the creek.

r More information: www.burnhamboatbuilding.com, www.essexshipbuildingmuseum.org or 978-768-7541