Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Center

The Bowdoin Boys took this photograph on their first day at sea. Their ship, the Julia A. Decker, left Rockland on June 27th, 1891.

The schooner, built in Keyport, New Jersey, in 1860, proved to be steady and reliable. However, Rupert H. Baxter's report in the Portland Weekly Advertiser suggests the expedition members might have hoped for a swifter vessel.

On July 2nd, Baxter wrote of their run from Rockland to Halifax, "The Julia A. Decker has demonstrated quite satisfactorily that she is not the ‘Flying Yankee,’ and some of the party claim that they could easily have walked from Rockland to Halifax in four days."