MACLEAN, ROBERT ALEXANDER (1872-1941)

MACLEAN, ROBERT ALEXANDER, deep sea mariner; b. 1872, s/o Robert R. MacLean and Christina MacDonald; m. Mary Nowlan, sister of James Gregory Nowlan; d. at sea, 21 Jan 1941.

Although the sea captain R. Alexander MacLean was said to have been born at Buctouche, N.B., his parents were from the Miramichi, and he grew up in Hardwicke parish, where his father was enumerated as a farmer in the census of 1881.

The Chatham press invariably employed romantic language in its reports concerning MacLean, a "mariner of the old school" who "plied the seven seas" with four-masted windjammers long after the advent of the age of steam, and was "well-known in ports throughout the world." The W. S. Loggie Co.'s schooner Baden-Powell was bound for New York under his command in 1906 when a gale came up off West Point, P.E.I., which stripped her of "every stitch of canvas," other than a trysail, with which he steered her into harbor at Buctouche. The Baden-Powell went to the bottom in St Mary's Bay, off Newfoundland, two years later, while enroute from Barbados to St John's loaded with molasses. A telegram from MacLean stated that the crew was safe at Trepassey on the Avalon Peninsula.

In a later period MacLean was owner and master of the schooner Harry A. McLennan which was built in Campbellton in 1918-19 and first put to work carrying coal from New York to Italy. In 1923 she cleared customs at Saint John with a cargo of 400,000 laths for New York. It was reported in 1924 that MacLean was sailing her from Havana to Gulfport, Mississippi, to pick up a load of pine wood for La Guaira, Venezuela, and Dutch Curaçao. This schooner and another, the Avon Queen, were wrecked in a gale while at anchor in Meteghan Harbour, N.S., in 1930. The McLennan was a complete loss, but the Avon Queen was repaired and returned to service under MacLean's command.

Built at Hantsport, N.S., in 1917, the four-masted Avon Queen was 252 feet in length and thirty-nine in width and was registered at 953 tons. She was powered entirely by sail and was "an enthralling novelty" in the harbors in which she anchored. In 1934 she came into port at Shelburne, N.S., under "temporary canvas," being "storm wracked" and "bearing a weakened and injured crew." It had taken her nineteen days instead of the usual eight or ten to bring a cargo of salt from the Turks Islands in the West Indies to Lockport, N.S. Her end came in March 1937 when she sank northeast of San Salvador. Before she went down, MacLean and his crew of seven were picked up by the US Navy Destroyer Fairfax and landed at Norfolk, Virginia.

MacLean soon purchased a replacement vessel, the Rennie Marie Stewart, of Portland, Me, origin, but she foundered off Yarmouth in April 1938. He was sixty-six years old at this time and decided to retire. He soon grew restless, however, and went to sea again. Details concerning his death in 1941 were scarce, but it was thought he was master of a freighter out of the West Indies when he fell ill and died. The Commercial and The World stated that his death and burial at sea, "amid the elements which he loved to face" was "a fitting climax." A Chatham man who sailed in his ship described him as "a good seafarer" but a "very stern" man. Another stated that he was "a genial man on land" but held himself aloof from his men at sea and was "an absolute authority." He was survived by his wife, Mary Nowlan, a daughter, and two sons. His son Roy MacLean became a Catholic priest and teacher at St Thomas College.