Albert Cook Church (1880-1965) THE BARK WANDERER ON THE ROCKS AT CUTTYHUNK, MASSACHUSETTS, 1924. Vintage silver gelatin print, image size 485 x 385mm, signed in the lower right hand image, with Church's New Bedford blindstamp lower left image. Framed, frame size 525 x 420mm. The Bark Wanderer launched from the shipyard of J. H. Holmes and Sons on 16 April 1878, and was to be the last whaling vessel built in the Massachusetts town of Mattapoisett. The present photograph was taken some 46 years later, at the end of The Bark Wanderer's illustrious career. As the ship awaited more favourable winds to undertake its final voyage in August 1924, large gales from an approaching tropical storm snapped The Bark Wanderer's anchor chains. It ran aground on the rocks at Cuttyhunk, an island on the southern edge of Buzzard's Bay. Church took a series of views of the ship after it was was grounded on the rocks; the present image appears to have been taken by Church between 26 August and a storm that battered the hull in late September. During the intervening month, much of the ship's useful equipment was salvaged, as depicted here. At the time, the Vineyard Gazette published an article about the loss of the ship, reading: "Twenty-four hours after she had sailed bravely from New Bedford on what was to be her “last voyage,” the staunch old bark, Wanderer, last of New Bedford’s once glorious fleet of square-rigged whaling vessels, came to a tragic end off Cuttyhunk island late Tuesday afternoon, when mountainous seas and a shrieking northeast gale drover her on to the jagged teeth of Middle Ground shoals." Today, the ship's mast is displayed in the Mattapoisett Museum, which also holds a number of photographs of The Bark Wanderer. In 2013, Seth Mendell recounted the interesting history of this important vessel in the museum's publication The Crow's Nest. Literature: The Vineyard Gazette. Bark Wanderer Lost, published Tuesday, 26 August 1924. Rezendes & Mendell. Voyages of the Wanderer - With Overviews of New Bedford Whaling & the Shipyards of Mattapoisett. Published by The Mattapoisett Museum (n.d.)