Here you see LADONA lazing Friday morning in Great Cove with her sheltering tarp up and most of her sails down. Sailing classes from the renowned WoodenBoat School there flit around her like small butterflies around a big flower that is about to open. The beautiful schooner soon took down the tarp, raised her sails and left the Cove before noon:
LADONA (usually pronounced “Lah-DOE-nah” here) is a relatively small schooner with a relatively big history and a mysterious name. She runs 105 feet from the end of her bowsprit to her stern (82 feet long on deck) and can accommodate 16 or 17 guests. She reportedly was designed as a racing yacht by the prolific naval architect William Hand and launched out of East Boothbay Harbor, Maine, in 1922.
Her original owner is said to have named her after the Union ship on which his father had served during the Civil War. That ship apparently was the captured British iron-hulled vessel LODONA, named after an ancient river-nymph in a popular Alexander Pope poem. She was converted into the USS LODONA, a gunship, after which the schooner LADONA (note the different spelling) reportedly was named.
We may have here a historic maritime typo. As far as I can tell, the name LADONA is meaningless, except as the name of a single, beautiful schooner that has an interesting past and has had several names, according to the many reports on her.
During World War II, the schooner LADONA was a U.S. Navy submarine patrol vessel out of New York Harbor. After the war, she was renamed JANE DORÉ for some unreported reason and repurposed as a fishing vessel out of Stonington, Connecticut. In 1971, she was renovated as a training vessel for sailors and named NATHANIEL BOWDITCH, after the famed 18th century navigator. Thereafter, she entered the Maine windjammer fleet to take tourists cruising under that name.
From about 2014 to 2016 new owners restored her to her original glory and original enigmatic name, LADONA. She now hails from Rockland, Maine. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on July 10, 2026.)