Few, if any, vessels have been photographed so completely 'from cradle to grave' as the four-masted schooner Purnell T. White, built in Sharptown, Maryland in 1917. She was one of the more successful and colorful sailing schooners that ranged the east coast and occasionally made trips to South American, the West Indies, the Gulf and Transatlantic voyages. She sailed commercially until 1934 - one of the last sailing schooners in the coasting trade. Robert H. Burgess, as a young man, became interested in the Purnell T. White on first sight and over the last 40 years, while she was still active and later as a hulk, he photographed and documented her religiously. By searching far and wide and utilizing his own photographs, he has assembled a rather complete photographic history of the career of the schooner Purnell T. White. The detailed treatment in picture and text is unusual in that it not only deals with the ship but with the day-to-day life on board. Reproductions of provision lists and invoices, gear and slop chest invoices and many other papers dealing with the ship's stores and supplies, repairs and shipyard accounts, help to make this a most interesting and unique biography of a ship, her officers and crews, and the socioeconomic aspects of her commercial sailing career.
