Maine-built downeaster which is remembered for her long service to the Port of San Francisco, SINTRAM once posed for this working portrait by Blount. Her long record is one of capable stability and good performances under a number of different tasks set to her crews. Blount has memorilized one such contingent onboard, working in uniform and unison at the labors required to handle such a large ship.
SINTRAM was built in 1877 in Freeport, Maine at the Soule Brothers Yard, then run by Captain Enos C. Soule. She was the largest of the more than 30 ships the yard built throughout the 1800s, weighing 1674 tons and measuring 215'4" in length, 42'9" of beam and 24'2" of depth. The five topgallant yard ship sailed in the builder's service for years under Captain Woodside. As such she performed on a great variety of routes the world over, including several Cape Horn sailings.
Sold in 1898 to Eschen & Minor of San Francisco, her west coast duties were mainly in the coal trade between British Columbia, Puget Sound and San Francisco, a necessity for the advancing cargo and passenger steamers, who would pay $20 to $50 a ton for fuel. Even in Blount's portrait, where SINTRAM is set on an artistically mature sea and sky, she couldn't escape the omnipresence of steam, with her path crossing that of a late steam-sail ship. SINTRAM's final runs were for the Nanek Company in the Alaskan fisheries until 1915.
