Back when Tyler King was a kid leaving summer behind for the start of another school year, watching the massive wooden boats pull into the harbor for the Gloucester Schooner Festival made those seasonal segues a little easier. He weaved beneath their bowsprits in a single-cylinder diesel motor launch, watching crews run up the rigs and seeing the naval engineering he’d so avidly read about materialize before him. All the vessels at the festival looming larger than life—on the water as well as in King’s imagination—but the American Eagle, a 92-foot fisherman that was launched in 1930 in that very same harbor, stood apart.
“I always wanted to be part of that boat’s existence,” King says. “Not that I really knew how, but it was always a part of my goal.”
Three years ago, at just 25 years of age, Captain King acquired the American Eagle, marking a new beginning in the life of one of the last remaining original fishing schooners in the Gloucester fleet. In some ways, the boat is the apotheosis of the history and wooden boat traditions that found King early and never let go. Now, in sailing around Mid-coast Maine, Penobscot Bay, and points beyond, he aims to give guests a glimpse within a different world, connecting the threads of many different New England traditions.
“Having such a unique way to use these boats, and to be able to preserve the knowledge of using them alongside the knowledge of maintaining them, is really important—and very special,” says King, taking a break from finishing up a litany of spring maintenance projects a few weeks before the American Eagle’s sailing season begins.
Saltwater is in King’s blood. He grew up spending summers sailing in the waters around Cape Ann and Mid-coast Maine. No matter the season, he worked with his parents at River Boat Works, a boat yard specializing in maintaining and storing classic wood boats that began in the early 1900s that his family has run since the 1980s. He honed his skills alongside his dad in a workshop filled with the culture of wooden boats; the shop itself is constructed from old wharf pieces reclaimed from the waterfront, each corner filled with tools and hardware from so many different types of vessels. King says countless mentors and friends taught and guided him, and he absorbed all he could from a working waterfront that was an important locus for “centuries of evolution in naval architecture,” he says. “The importance of all these layers resonated with me and made me say to myself: this is worth holding on to.”
All along, King knew of the American Eagle, the last fishing schooner built in Gloucester. “The Eagle represents this interesting crossroads where the schooner, as a type, had reached its zenith and things were beginning to change,” he says. “The hull forms were very efficient under sail, but engines were quickly taking over. And this vessel design that finds this amazing balance point between speed, safety, and capability and usability was nearly lost.” The American Eagle fished for 53 years, landing millions of pounds of fish in Gloucester, Boston, New Bedford, and New York City under different owners; Gloucester always remained home, King says. Then, in 1983, Captain John Foss purchased the vessel from the Piscatello family and spent more than two years restoring the boat for a new trade: carrying overnight passengers along the coast of Maine.
King first approached Foss for a job aboard the American Eagle while still in high school. With no openings just yet, King spent the next four seasons sailing on other vessels in the Maine schooner fleet, working winters on boat projects back home and a few large schooner projects in Maine. In 2017, King began working for Foss aboard the American Eagle, all while helping in his parents’ shop, acquiring his captain’s license, and purchasing a 41-foot schooner. Captain Foss had been seeking to hand the reins of the American Eagle to a conscientious owner, and the two arranged to have King take ownership of the vessel in 2022.
Now, from June through October, King and his crew carry up to 26 passengers at a time from Rockland, Maine, to points ranging from the Canadian border to Manhattan, with the bulk of the scheduling comprising 3- to 6-day trips around Penobscot Bay and the islands beyond. “It’s the perfect place to use these vessels,” King says. “There is enough space where it doesn’t feel like you’re stuck in a bird bath with a submarine, and, no matter where you are or how the wind is blowing, there is a nice place to put your anchor down.” It’s an all-encompassing experience, with stately cabins, a local-first menu prepared in a galley equipped with a fisherman’s wood stove with meals, fresh breads, and pastries all suited to the season or the day, and a chance to take the wheel and steer a 70-ton schooner powered by the nothing but the wind. (To be clear, along with 12-volt outlets and hot running water, the boat’s amenities include an engine, just in case.)
For passengers, it’s a formula for new friendships and a chance to silence the noise of modern life. And for King, the American Eagle illuminates a piece of Gloucester’s culture—a thread that captivated him years ago and is still very much alive, moving on a southwesterly breeze.
“We’re not only talking about what these boats did: we’re talking about what they are doing,” he says. “They are objects from the past, alive in the present that have immense value for the future. It’s still a story that doesn’t have a period at the end of the sentence.”