Kinkajou

Kinkajou (#223927) (1924-1949+) 90-foot steel-hulled schooner designed by famous naval architect John G. Alden and built in Essex, Massachusetts for William Witman, Jr. of Marblehead, Massachussets. Originally named Saracen, the vessel was acquired in 1929 by anthropologist and Explorers’ Club member, Leonard Outhwaite who renamed the vessel Kinkajou.

Kinkajou was acquired by oilman/ornithologist J. R. “Bill” Pemberton, and he used her to host collecting trips to the offshore California Channel Islands and Mexican islands. Her home port was Los Angeles. The boat was eventually sold by Pemberton, and Kinkajou was chartered from her new owner and allegedly used on a South Pacific cruise announced as having scientific intent, but with a real mission to secretly map Japanese island fortifications. After Pemberton sold Kinkajou, the name was twice changed in the vessel’s later years to Quebec, then Ptarmigan.

• 1941. Bailey, Alfred M. Cruise if the Kinkajou. Birds and Beasts of Mexico's Desert Islands National Geographic 80(3):338-366, September 1941.