Photo of the Air Pheasant from an article in the 1964 Bahama Handbook by Michael Mardon entitled “A Passage to Inagua,” page 38 – 46, c/o Dupuch Publications, copy thanks to Capt. Paul Aranha.
MAILBOAT NAME: M/V Air Pheasant
PAST NAMES: USS PC-1015 (30 Aug. 1942 to April, 1943), SC-1015 (April 1943 to 11 Oct. 1945), USCGC Air Pheasant (WAVR 449) (11 Oct. 1945 to 14 Jan. 1948)
He lost his sister, brother-in-law and wife in a collision between the Robert Luckenbach, an American Liner, off Castle Island Light on 7th June, 1931. They had been married only 6 months.
* Luders Marine Construction was founded in 1908, in Byram CT, but moved in 1912 to the end of Dyke Lane, in Stamford Harbor. It became well known for its fine custom-built yachts, but closed in 1968. The yard is now operated by Brewer Yacht Haven Marina: see it from the air on Google here.
Sources: Tim Colton, http://shipbuildinghistory.com/history/smallships/wavr.htm, and http://shipbuildinghistory.com/history/smallships/pc2.htm
http://www.navsource.org/archives/12/151015.htm, Joe Ratigan,
There is a reference to the Air Pheasant in the Wesley Methodist Church history page, Matthew Town, Inagua:
“It was the month of December 1952 that Rev. Edwin Taylor working the Windward Mission, was making a visit to Binnacle Hill on the mail-boat “Air Pheasant”. The weather was so bad that the boat could not stop at Landrail Point.”
Source: http://www.bahamasmethodist.org/index.php?p=inagua
Her family boarded a slow mail boat called the Air Pheasant, in the summer of 1959 and sailed off to Nassau, the Capital of the Bahamas.
Source: http://ednataylorbooks.com/author.html
Source: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00084249/03471/8j
On page 50 it says “one-way passage to San Salvador [from Rum Cay] is five dollars, and $17.50 to Nassau, which includes a room and meals on the two-day trip. Almost everyone on Rum Cay has relatives in Nassau who still visit the island, and the boat carries these visitors, who could not afford to charter a private plain. But when visits are inconvenien, relatives send mail and parcels on the boat, and sometimes even livestock. …thee previous mailboat was the M/V Jeanette Walker, which used to be the “San Salvador Express”. Then came the “Maselles” which must have been the “Marcella”, with substitute service by the “Lady Moore.” In January 1976 the “Air Pheasant once again holds the contract”.
Tierney in 1976 (page 15) says “The Air Pheasant is all right now, too, till they get ready to complain” – page 54.
“Now we have the “Air Pheasant”. And where is she this whole week? In dry dock in Miami.”
Referenced in Silverstone, Paul H. The Navy of the Nuclear Age, 1947-2007. New York: Routledge, 2009, Source: http://www.shipindex.org/ships/air_pheasant
http://www.uscg.mil/history/webcutters/docs/FlynnPatrolCraft2012.pdf
Other sources:
http://www.themaritimeguardians.com/coldfusion/patrol_ships_photos_output.cfm?RecNum=45
http://semperparatus.com/cutter_names_a-c.htm
See another post with trivia on the Air Pheasant from an article in the Bahama Handbook by Michael Mardon entitled “A Passage to Inagua,” page 38 – 46, c/o Dupuch Publications