Wreck Of The Schooner A. F. Davison

By James Donahue

A fierce Atlantic coast blizzard was blamed for the wreck of the four-mast schooner A. F. Davison on White Head Island, Grand Manan, New Brunswick on December 6, 1926. Miraculously the entire crew escaped alive in the midst of what was described as one of the worst winter storms to ravage the area in many years.

The Davison was under the command of Captain Innes Morrissey and sailing from Saint John, New Brunswick to New York with a cargo of spruce pilings when the storm drove the vessel into the rocks off Brown’s Point.

The Davison was just one of several ships that got in trouble in the storm. One news report said the schooner Carl Creaser was driven ashore that day near Lunenburg, Nova Scotia and an unnamed steamship was battling the storm so long it ran out of coal so the crew was breaking up the wooden superstructure to keep the vessel under power. The story said 140 vessels were trapped on the St. Mary’s River and “a score” of steamers were caught in the St. Lawrence.

The storm lashed the Maritime Provinces and New England, stranding trains and piling snow in ten-foot drifts across highways.

The Davison was a wooden-hulled ship built in 1909 at Annapolis, Nova Scotia, for Captain Robert Reed. A full description of this ship could not be found. That it had four masts suggests that it was a large vessel designed for ocean voyages.

The ship was declared a total wreck.