A lively and attractive portrait of the fast American two-masted fishing schooner, MARY B. DYER. She has other ships ahead and astern, sailing through a brisk wind and cutting easily through the small waves.The painting is in a fine mahogany frame.
MARY B. DYER was designed and built in 1860 in the yard of Donald McKay of East Boston for a group of owners in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. She measured 88 feet in length , 25 ft. breadth and was about 150 tons. She was one of a group of four schooners built for Boston owners and destined for the Cape Cod fishing fleet. They were so fast that one of her sister ships was used by Boss Tweed of New York to escape the New York police on his way to exile in the Caribbean.
McKay schooners were said to be "without rival" and "would outsail any vessel belonging to Cape Ann or Cape Cod". This painting is reproduced at p. 161 of the Smithsonian's book 'The National Watercraft Collection' by Howard I. Chapelle, where the ship is called Mary 'D' Dyer. That book's credit indicates that the painting's photograph was courtesy of the Mariner's Museum of Newport News, Va.; indicating that this was either on loan to or owned by that museum in the past.
