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Pilot History

    Pilotage, namely the guiding of vessels by mariners familiar with local conditions, is an ancient profession, but as Captain W. Hilton Lowe wrote in his State Pilotage in America, "At just what point in the long history of early water transportation the first pilot appeared on the scene would be pure conjecture. There are references to pilots in Homer's Iliad, the Bible, and in more recent literature, Coleridge's Ancient Mariner was met by a pilot boat near the end of his harrowing voyage. Even the origins of the term "pilot" are somewhat obscure. Whether it derives from a Greek noun for an oar or the Dutch term for taking a sounding, Captain Lowe states that "it has become firmly fixed that the little country of Holland, whose intrepid seafarers were so prominent in ocean navigation a few centuries ago, was the originator of the term." Pilotage remains among the most important services forming the infrastructure that supports modern navigation."

    For a variety of reasons the schooner rig was popular among the pilots who waited offshore for incoming vessels, and such a craft appears in an engraving by the Dutch artist Van deVelde, who died in 1707. In any case, two definitions of pilotage, written not quite a century apart, fairly well define the calling. In 1780 William Falconer called a pilot "the person charged with the direction of a ship's course, on, or near the sea-coast, and into the roads, bays, rivers, havens, etc., within his respective district." In 1867 Admiral W.H. Smyth wrote that a pilot was "an experienced person charged with the ship's course near the coasts, into roads, rivers etc., and through all intricate channels in his own particular district." Both definitions stress two key points: experience and detailed local knowledge.

Although Trinity House, Britain's body having charge of pilotage (among other maritime functions) was established in 1514, the first "professional pilot" is said to have been Holland's Frans Naerebout (1748-1818), to whom there is a monument in Vlissingen. The origin of regular pilotage in American ports is obscure. It is conjectured that early on in ports such as New York there was such a system, "though these pilots may not have been organized as a body of men under government or local control."

In Boston Harbor the first official action apparently came in 1783 when a law was passed authorizing the Governor, with the advice of his Council, to appoint "suitable persons as pilots" for various ports in the Commonwealth. Initially the trustees of the Boston Marine Society, founded in 1742 as an educational and charitable body, acted as Boston's Pilot Commissioners. As the system has evolved over the years, Boston's Pilot Commissioners are nominated by the trustees of the Society, appointed by the Governor, and oversee and manage the day to day operations of the pilots."'

Many pilot boats were not built with pilot service in mind.  Many pilot boats were purchased to replace schooners taken over by the army, or navy.  In Boston this was a long tradition. Over the years the Boston pilots had used a mixture of schooners purpose-built for that use and well-designed yachts which appeared to have desirable characteristics. As Howard I. Chapelle has remarked, "Taking all types of commercial schooners into consideration, the pilot boat most closely approaches the yacht in her requirements, since she carries no cargo and has to be fast and seaworthy." In, the nineteenth century, for example, the Boston pilots purchased the schooners Coquette and Belie, both designed as yachts by the Dane, Louis (or Lewis) Winde. These went into pilot service "after the yachtsmen grew tired of them." One characteristic much sought after in a pilot boat was easy motion. "Pilots attached a great deal of importance to this quality for they had to live on their vessels for long periods and an uneasy vessel would have exhausted them to such an extent that their efficiency would have
been impaired.

 Historically there were twenty-four Boston senior pilots with a six to ten year apprenticeship for would-be replacements. Apprentices worked their way up, learning navigation, seamanship, pilotage regulations and "the location of all beacons, buoys or possible obstructions to harbor shipping." Until 1958, when they were replaced by outboards, pilots were rowed to their ships in eighteen foot "yawl boats" crewed by apprentices. In 1954 a pilot and an apprentice were lost when a yawl capsized, though another apprentice was saved. After a suitable length of time working his way up to First Boat keeper, and assuming there was a vacancy due to death or retirement, an apprentice might sit for the necessary examinations. Having passed these he spent a year as a Warrant Pilot, allowing him to pilot vessels up to eighteen feet draft. For the next year he might handle up to twenty feet draft. "At the expiration of two years from the date of his first commission, if all goes well, he became a full Branch Pilot and thenceforth was addressed as "Captain.Unlike Portland, Maine and New York, which have separate Harbor and Docking Pilots, qualified Boston Pilots handle vessels all the way. Recalling his roughly ten years aboard both Pilot (Pilot Boat No. 1) and Roseway (Pilot Boat No. 2), both products of the James yard in Essex, Boston pilot "Skip" Frye preferred Roseway. He liked her because she was "comfortable to live aboard and easy to handle. " As has been noted above, the wheelhouse seems to have been installed during World War II and was accessible from below. "We didn't have to go outdoors to go from the cabin to the wheelhouse. The Roseway was always warm, but the Pilot was cold in the fo'c'sle. The wheel on the Pilot had something like 11 turns from hard over, and the last two or three turns you had to do with three men. The Roseway did everything with half the work."

(US Dept. of the Interior National Parks Service - Researched and Prepared by Nicholas Dean, Wiscasset, Maine, 4/97) "