She was the last Queen of her kind to sail out of the Miramichi River, quite possibly the last anywhere in the Atlantic Provinces. When she made her last voyage in March of 1937, the Avon Queen was one of a dying breed, a cargo vessel powered entirely by sail. When she foundered off the US coast and had to be torpedoed by a passing American war ship, an epoch in maritime history sank to the bottom of the Atlantic with her.
Built in Hansport, Nova Scotia in 1917, the Avon Queen was a four-masted schooner with an overall length of 252 feet, a height from waterline to top mast of 132 feet, a beam of 39.2 feet, and a net tonnage of 1035 tons. She was eventually purchased by a strong, stoic man who was to share many adventures on her decks. Captain RA McLean of Escuminac, New Brunswick was an old salt in the true sense of the description. Tough, resilient, and totally self-reliant, he sailed the Avon Queen, for his entire tenure as her master, with himself as the only person aboard capable of navigation. "If something had happened to him, we would have been in serious trouble," Joe Duffy of Miramichi, a former crewmember on the Avon Queen, remarked. Captain McLean had intimate knowledge of the sea and his ship. With a sexton, chronometer, and compass as his only tools, he plied the waters between the Maritimes and the Caribbean during his years as the ship's owner and master, and managed to guide his vessel home safely each time. His story and that of the Avon Queen are so closely entwined as to seem one, their adventures inextricably mingled.
A Nova Scotia newspaper story, written in the early 1930s, described one of the first of Captain McLean's harrowing experiences aboard the Avon Queen.

"Tossed for days as her crippled crew fought against the elements, the four-masted Avon Queen yesterday crept into sheltered Shelburne Harbour with four of her crew injured, two suffering from frostbite in their battle. With provisions short and seas entering the drinking water tank, they had been short-rationed for days."
The story goes on to explain that Captain McLean, although found suffering from hip and shoulder injuries when motor boats met his crippled craft in the outer harbour to take her in tow, had never once left his post of command.
"You were expected to stay hail and hearty aboard. The Captain wasted no money on medical supplies," Duffy said, recalling that first aid equipment consisted of a small rusted box containing a few water-stained bandages.
Duffy remembered an incident, however, when Captain McLean's frugality presented him and his crew with some unique and totally pleasurable opportunities.
On September 28, 1934, the Avon Queen sailed out of the Miramichi River with a cargo of laths. The trip was routine, but once the load had been discharged in New York, Captain McLean couldn't find anything to fill his ship for the return voyage. Rather than sail "light," he decided to put his ship into dry-dock-and have his crew of eight scrape and paint the Queen and repair her massive sails.
Much to his chagrin, he discovered the commercial facility was full. The only berth open to the working lady from New Brunswick was at the New York Yacht Club. It was a posh facility, where such notables as the Morgans, the Fairchilds, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. kept their yachts. Captain McLean didn't hesitate. He was proud of his ship and felt no qualms about berthing her beside the best.
He was unprepared, however, for the reception he and his crew would receive at the hands of the rich and famous. The arrival of the magnificent working tall ship powered entirely by sail created a sensation among club members. The Avon Queen was an enthralling novelty, her crew intriguing "old salts," genuine "deep water men." They insisted on hosting the Captain and his men royally.
"They gave us the yachting jackets right off their backs," Duffy chuckled. "We had more gold braid on us that winter than most admirals."
They also insisted on showing the Captain and his crew the town. Duffy recalled being taken to Madison Square Garden to attend a World Heavyweight Championship fight as guests of yacht club members.
The following year, however, Captain McLean and his men were a long way from the luxuries of New York, when the Avon Queen ran aground at Mud Island off Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. A newspaper account described the incident.
"With her hold almost half-filled with water and with a list of 15 to 18 degrees, the four-masted schooner, Avon Queen, believed to be one of the last and largest vessels of her type, put into Halifax yesterday, her keel believed to have been damaged when she struck at Mud Island. Although the run to Halifax was made with seas sometimes almost at a level with her deck, Captain McLean brought the ship into port without assistance."
This was only another of numerous articles touting Captain McLean's resourcefulness and resilience. Described as thoroughly wise to the ways of ships, the sea, and his men, he was a genial man on land, but held himself aloft from his crew while on board his vessel. He was an absolute authority on the Avon Queen, an attitude that he believed was essential in a position of command.
"Never get familiar with your men aboard," he once advised an aspiring master mariner. "It only leads to all kinds of problems."
Crewmembers remember him often pacing the deck alone at night without so much as speaking to either the helmsman or the sailor on watch.
"He worked his men hard, but he fed them well," Duffy said. "Aboard the Avon Queen, even though it was the era of the Great Depression, there were never empty bellies. The cook was the highest paid crewmember. 'There's no work in a hungry man, Joe,' I recall him telling me. He was stern, but an excellent seaman."
Stories to support Duffy's opinion abound. One tells of Captain McLean's penchant for having every inch of canvas up to catch a breeze, once putting the Avon Queen and her crew in jeopardy. It was winter, and a sudden sleet storm overtook the ship. Ropes froze to capstans, making it impossible to lower the ship's great sails. Captain McLean was forced to let his vessel race before the gale.
"That was a rough trip," Duffy recalled. "You've got to remember there was no shelter when you were working on deck. The wind got awful cold. A man couldn't stand more than fifteen minutes of it before going below. But the Captain got everyone back home to the Miramichi safe and sound in time for Christmas."
Married with three children, Captain McLean sometimes took his wife with him on his voyages to the Caribbean. For her pleasure, his cabin was lined with mahogany, and equipped with a hot air furnace. The trip usually took about 20 days, but it must have been well worth any hardships encountered to arrive in the beautiful tropical climate of the unspoiled Barbados of the 1930s.
At that time, there were no docking facilities for a ship like the Avon Queen. Her cargo had to be discharged over her sides to rafts rowed out to the ship by black workers. In the same way, these same men brought the return cargo of drums of molasses to the vessel. At Turks Island, native women came to the shore, balancing great baskets of salt on their heads.
Duffy recalled a Sunday taxi drive about the island, when he and other crewmembers of the Avon Queen collected coconuts, bananas, and sugar cane in a tropical paradise. A gallon of rum cost 75 cents; a case, an English pound; and a quart, a bucket of salted New Brunswick gaspereaux.
And when caught in tropical storms at sea, when the Captain's lady wasn't aboard, Duffy remembered the crew stripping and using the water sluicing down the Queen's great sails as a shower. But the Avon Queen's days of romance and adventure were drawing to a close.
In March of 1937, off the coast of the United States, carrying a load of salt bound from Turks Island to Saint John, New Brunswick, some of the cargo got into the pumps and the ship began taking on water. A passing American destroyer rescued the crew, then torpedoed her because, derelict, she would present a hazard to navigation.
Captain McLean watched as his ship was sent to the bottom.
He never fully recovered from the loss. Within two years, on a return trip from Barbados as master of another vessel, he fell ill, died, and was buried at sea with his ship.
These days, the proud old Queen is commemorated on the Miramichi waterfront with replicas of her four masts and paintings of her sails along dockside walls. She represents an era of romance and adventure that will not come again. It will not easily be forgotten, either.