The Lucky Captain: The Story of George W. Dow, His Ancestors, and 40 Years at Sea

The first family named Dow in America landed in 1637, escaping from the persecution of the English kings and the Anglican Church as a part of the ‘great migration’ begun by the Pilgrims 17 years earlier.

Two hundred and seventy years later, descendent George W. Dow captained the only seven-masted sailing vessel ever built–the Thomas W. Lawson–on its maiden cross-Atlantic voyage. Encountering unfathomable weather, and monstrous winds, tides, and waves as it approached the English coast, the Lawson slipped her anchors and sunk among treacherous rocks in the Scilly Isles. The schooner, its cargo, and 16 sailors were lost, but ‘lucky’ Captain Dow and his engineer were heroically saved from the rocks the next day.

This story is an account of how Captain Dow was the culmination of the Dow family’s evolution from immigrants in a primitive, 17th century foreign land, to seafaring as an occupation, as a new United States and global economy began to emerge. And, his life also was the last of the Dow’s New England-based, sea faring existence, as the Captain’s descendants–already five generations and counting–spread from Boston to homes, careers and lives far-flung from Maine and New England.