Bagheera is a wooden-hulled auxiliary schooner, measuring in length with a deck of . Her beam is , and she has a draft of . Her frame is white oak, with pine planking, flooring, and ceilings. Her rails are mahogany, and her bowsprit and spars are sitka spruce. The deck is fiberglass (a replacement for the original teak), laid on oak beams. The outside of the hull is painted black. Her present rigging, similar to the original, is gaff rigging. The auxiliary power is provided by a c. 2000 82 horsepower Westerbeke diesel engine. The interior retains substantial woodwork and equipment, including its original wheel.
Bagheera was built at the Rice Brothers Shipyard in
East Boothbay, Maine, in 1924, to a design by
John G. Alden, by then already a well-known designer of sailing ships. Her design is of a class known as Malabar schooners, although she is both longer and wider than most instances of the class. She was built for Marion Eppley, and was originally called
Beacon Rock, after her estate in
Newport, Rhode Island. Eppley berthed her at Newport, and sold her in 1928 to Robert Benedict. He renamed her
Bagheera, and moved her to
Chicago, where she embarked on a successful racing career on the
Great Lakes, which lasted roughly until 1938. She was used as a training vessel during
World War II, and was shipped to the
Mediterranean Sea in the 1950s and sailed back to the United States. In 1948 her gaff rigging was replaced by a Marconi rig. By the 1980s she had been sailed to the west coast, and outfitted for passenger trade. ==See also==