In 1912, the Morrissey made a record run between Portland, Maine, and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia with Capt. Harry Ross aboard that inspired a ballad, sung by many a Grand Banks fisherman. Sailing in stormy darkness from Portland to Yarmouth, the ship logged two hundred miles in twenty hours, reaching at times a speed of sixteen knots and carrying only her foresail for the last eight hours.

Frederick William Wallace, a writer and photographer, was aboard the schooner on that cold December night. He wrote the ballad and an account of this voyage that appears in his book, Roving Fisherman.

Storm along! an’ drive along!
an’ punch her through the rips!

Never mind your boardin’ combers
and the solid green she ships!

Main and fores’l, jib and jumbo,
on that tough December day,

And out past Cape Elizabeth
we slugged for Fundy Bay!

Frederick William Wallace
written aboard the Effie M. Morrissey, December, 1912

1913 License is renewed for the fisheries on December 11 in Gloucester, MA
Capt. A.R. Baxter of Digby, NS

Capt. William E. Morrissey, the Morrissey’s original captain, died in Publico, NS, on January 28, 1913 at the age of 68. He had retired from the sea to run a hotel in Publico.

March 14, 1914 The $4,500 mortgage was surrendered at Southwest Harbor, ME by John W. Snow to Frank Swett who sold the Morrissey to a British resident of Newfoundland, Harold Bartlett, in Halifax who converted her to a freighter and mostly hauled up to 190 tons at a time of coal and salt from Sidney, Nova Scotia and also freighted on the Coast of Labrador.

Harold was first cousin of Robert Abram Bartlett who would later acquire the ship in 1924.