Jim Bradshaw: Old story says ghost kept eye on lumber ship

According to family tradition, the Lehman, the first schooner used by pioneer Calcasieu lumberman Daniel Goos, was named after an old sea captain who he had known for many years.
The story is that the dying Capt. Lehman promised Goos that if he named the boat after him, he would watch over it from above.
Judging from his later life and success, Goos (pronounced Goss) was more likely to rely on common sense than superstition, but he followed the old captain’s advice, just in case.
Good luck and good schooners were important to the fledgling southwest Louisiana lumber industry.
There were no railroads until 1880, so millers had to transport their lumber to market in ships built for the trade.
According to a history of Lake Charles, “The Goos mill had a very important part in the building of the town. His old upright saw sliced the logs into strips with the bark adhering to both sides, which the carpenters could remove at their leisure. This kind of lumber brought eighteen dollars in gold per thousand feet, and as the only chance to reach the outside world was by water, it was natural that the old pioneer should extend his activities to schooner building.”
The first problem with that was that there were no ship builders in south Louisiana at the time.
Goos solved that by bringing five experienced men from his native Isle of Foehr, a channel island off the province of Schleswig-Holstein that is now part of Germany.
The Goos fleet eventually included a dozen or more boats that hauled lumber to Texas towns such as Galveston and Corpus Christi, and to Mexican ports on the Gulf.
According to the Lake Charles history, “Schooners ... carried lumber away and on their return trip brought goods to be retailed by the merchants. The freight charges on these return goods was so low that … people from the backwoods who had been accustomed to making a long trip to Opelousas to lay in their yearly supply of goods now turned their feet to [Lake Charles].”
The schooners remained important to the south Louisiana trade even after the coming of the railroad.
In August 1881, the Lake Charles Commercial reported, “There are at least forty schooners engaged in the lumber trade of the Calcasieu River, and [even] with the railroad facilities. It is still impossible to get the lumber away from the mills. … The demand for lumber … has been constantly increasing since the day that the first saw-mill was erected in Lake Charles, and this demand has … reached such proportions that our twelve sawmills are strained to their utmost capacity to fill one-half of the orders sent to them.”
The Goos schooners stayed busy and most of them stayed lucky.
The only one lost at sea that I know about was one named for Goos himself.
The Daniel Goos had sailed in early 1881 from Galveston with a load of iron for construction of the Corpus Christi, San Diego & Rio Grande Railroad when it foundered near Matagorda Island.
As for the Lehman, there may or may not have been divine intervention involved, but Goos eventually owned the Lehman II and then the Lehman III, and all of the boats carrying that name made a profit for him.
Two of the three were retired after outliving their usefulness.
But when he sold the Lehman III to someone else, it sank.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.