History
The Governor Stone was built for Charles Greiner as a cargo freighter for his chandlery business. The vessel was named the Governor Stone, after Mr. Greiner’s friend John Marshall Stone, who was the first elected post Civil War Governor of Mississippi. This historic schooner is the last known survivor of a class of vessels once numbering in the thousands. Initially, she carried equipment and materials to deep-draft ships lying off shore, and hauled general freight between ports along the Gulf Coast.
For 60 years in the hands of Nathan Mulford Dorlon and Patrick and Thomas Burns, this schooner travelled the near shore waters of the Gulf and operated as an oyster buy boat, visiting the oyster tongers as they worked and transporting their catch to market. A successful terrapin farmer, Mr. Dorlon was 69 yrs old when he purchased the Governor Stone for $425. 'Mul', as his friends called him, had distinguished himself earlier in life by doing in Spud Thompson, the last of the Gulf Coast pirates. Mul called him out for disturbing his brother-in-law, and dispatched him with one blow, as the story goes.
At his age, Mul soon tired of the oyster trade and passed the labor on to his new partner Patrick Burns, whose son Thomas captained the vessel off and on during her career as a oyster buy boat. To the dismay of his wife, during Prohibition Thomas Burns added a 16 HP motor to the vessel and augmented his oyster buying income by bringing ashore contraband rum shipments from Cuba at $500 a trip. While he successfully eluded capture by the Coast Guard, the Governor Stone was searched several times and Mul had to jettison precious cargo at least once.
The vessel sank twice under the Burns ownership. The September 26, 1906 hurricane devastated the Gulf Coast and caught a fleet of schooners that included the Governor Stone in Heron Bay, Alabama. Twenty-one men were lost. Captain Burns (on the Ethel at the time) was saved by clinging to a skiff. The Governor Stone was washed on shore with $600 worth of damage. The fact that she was repaired for such a huge cost indicates the value placed on these vessels at that time. It is rumored that 2 skeletons were found on board when she was finally salvaged. If true, perhaps they guard the vessel to this day, as she has led a charmed life.
Thomas Burns operated the Governor Stone for 33 more years before she again sank in a storm. By 1939, the age of the wooden coasting schooner had past. Power boats, trains and pick-ups had replaced them, so this time Thomas did not save the vessel.
Fortunately, Mr. Isaac Rhea was seeking a day sailer for his luxury resort, Inn by the Sea, in Pass Christian, Mississippi. He salvaged the Governor Stone and had her rebuilt top to bottom. He named her the Queen of the Fleet after another vessel that lay nearby, and under the direction of Charles Merrick, she ferried tourists around the area from 1940 to 1953 with a noteworthy intermission. The U.S. War commission purchased the vessel for $1.00 in 1942. She operated as a Navy training vessel through that War. She was returned to Mr. Rhea in 1947 with a 110 HP Chrysler Marine engine installed.
Several names and owners later, the Governor was purchased by John Curry in 1965. He and his wife learned to sail and lived on the boat, which they refitted as a private yacht with a few modern conveniences. They literally sailed the history of the vessel interviewing people who remembered her past, researching in libraries and newspaper archives and discovering her original name and her astounding career. Mr. Curry also funded a restoration that made her a cargo freighter once more, all frills gone except the ever convenient head and an 80 HP Perkins engine. He gave the vessel to the Apalachicola Maritime Institute in 1991 where she served as a sail trainer for at-risk youth and a charter vessel in conjunction with the museum for 11 years.
In 1991, she received designation as a National Historic Landmark. This is the highest level of recognition by the National Park Service and the Bureau of the Interior.
In 2003, the vessel was deeded to the Friends of Eden Gardens State Park. Unfortunately, the waterfront in Choctawhatchee Bay could not be developed into a suitable port. In 2005, the Governor Stone passed to the newly formed Friends of the Governor Stone, which incorporated in 2007 as a non-profit organization. This all-volunteer group serve the vessel by fund-raising, repair, maintenance, sailing and sharing her. She has travelled the Gulf Coast from Navarre to Carrabelle.
In 2013, Panama City was designated home port where she could be seen by all at the St. Andrews Marina. In 2014, a major restoration was completed in the Bay County Boatyard. A generous grant from the Florida Department of State, Division of Historic Resources, made possible crucial repairs and attempted to return the vessel to an original 1877 look and feel. The Governor Stone will remain a working vessel, carrying local history instead of oysters along the Gulf Coast.
Unfortunately, in 2018 Hurricane Michael severely damaged the vessel, her 4th known sinking, and necessitated putting her ashore until rebuilt.
Rebuilding began in May 2022 and is anticipated to continue. Our goal is to return to sailing the Gulf Coast bays and visiting our waterfront communities in late 2025.
**NOTE: “National Historic Landmark” is the highest designation by the Secretary of the Interior. Only about 3% of items on the National Historic Register are designated as such.
Verifiable sinkings based on historical documents
1) 1906 hurricane
) 1939 unspecified sinking (storm, decay or lack of use?)
3) 1956 storm pushed her into bridge piling, holed her
4) 2018 Hurricane Michael
Design
Length Overall (LOA) - 63 ft Beam - 13’ 2” Deck Length - 39 ft
Draft: Centerboard Up - 3 ft / Down - 9 ft Tonnage: 14 GRT / 12NRT
Crew: Captain + 2 Passengers: 20 souls
Two masted, fore & aft gaff-rigged centerboard type schooner, constructed in 1877 in Pascagoula, Mississippi as a cargo freighter for coastal & bay travel.
Traditional wooden construction with heart-pine backbone and spars; sawn cypress frames; cypress planking; cypress/juniper decks; fore-aft gaff sail arrangement with wormed & parceled standing rigging and wooden blocks; worm-gear steering system. Equipped with a 2013 model Yanmar 4JH4-TE aux engine; late model sail inventory of Oceanus sailcloth.
Deck Arrangement: Heart-pine timber bowsprit at stem with whisker stays (chain) and bobstay (solid-rod), timber sampson post, bronze fairleads. Decorative (non functional) horizontal windlass with (non functional) fisherman type anchor lashed in sprit rigging. Fo’castle hatchway in foredeck. Next aft cargo hatches over hold with removable covers. Next aft deck box with PFD’s. Moving further aft is raised cabin trunk with companionway & mounted box over the worm-steering gear, with Edson wheel. Raised bulwarks are fitted, with bonze stanchions, pin-rails, “dogbone” type cleats for the spring lines, mooring bitts at each quarter. The masts are stepped into the keel timber forward and aft of the centerboard trunk, with substantial blocking and wedges around each mast at deck level.
Today & Tomorrow
October 10, 2018 - Hurricane Michael interrupted the vessel’s history for the near future. She is currently undergoing restoration at St. Andrews School in Panama City.
The Governor Stone embodies maritime heritage as a moving museum and a reminder of the slower-paced past and the 140+ year old labor-intensive traditions of the Gulf Coast. Restored several times and repaired constantly, as befits a wooden seagoing vessel, the Governor Stone endures and will recover to sail again.
Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1991 through the United States Department of the Interior, she is owned and maintained by the all-volunteer 501(c)(3) non-profit group Friends of the Governor Stone, Inc. The vessel sails as an enhancement to cultural, historical, and ecological education and community events along the Northern Gulf Coast. Maritime construction explanations are available as well as the history of the vessel, of the schooner fleet, and of the times and people that the fleet supported.
The extensive restoration undertaken in 2013-14, partially funded by the Florida Department of State, Bureau of Historical Resources, Division of Historic Preservation, not only preserved her for the future, but also restored distinctive features of coastal schooners.
Her home slip in St. Andrews Marina in Panama City, Florida sits empty for now until the rebuilding process is complete in late 2025. You can see her being restored at St. Andrews School Pavilion.
The Friends of the Governor Stone are committed to ensuring that this historic vessel will be rebuilt and she will sail along the Gulf Coast once again.