Hand-painted Terra Cotta Majolica with cast pewter rim and turned wooden handles

She is America's midwife, in a sense.  Yankee ushered many thousands of new-born Americans from the wombs of immigrant ships at Ellis Island and cradled them across a bustling Hudson to New York's new world. 

Our great, great, grand fellows wobbled and toddled the gangplank with a wink to the "then" and blink to the "now" of a mighty Manhattan.  And whilst children riffled through satchels, sacks, and excitements to find their own, the Yankee turned from her berth, with a creek and a nod under her own steam, back, to fetch the rest...again, and again and again...

Born to a Portland shipyard in1907, her debut launch was in ferrying for Casco Bay and the Calendar Islands off Maine. Yankee was the fairest ferry of her day.  But it wasn't long till she was stripped of her crystal, soft kid and mahogany, to be painted Navy Grey. 

In "The War to End All Wars," she was put out as a packet ship to watch for torpedoes in the lonely waters off Boston.  Then, in the Second World War she stoically joined ranks again to do what she did best, ferrying hosts of American troops from inland waterways out to where young men mounted war ships with sights set for Europe. 

Squeezed between the wars, a switch from steam to diesel, and she was right in style again, ferrying folks across the wakes of the thriving port to adore our Statue of Liberty with a close-up click and a smile.

After an already long stint in service, she sailed out to sea-green pastures, ferrying families and friends to and fro from the balmy bluffs of Block Island to Rhode Island before her ailing end in a graveyard-shipyard in New London . . . or was it the end?

Yankee Ferry was not left to desertion, after all.

This tray has also been treated with Kintsugi.