Captain Daniel Webster Dudley was a globe-circumnavigating sea captain that lived on Elm Street in Kennebunkport from 1849 until 1929. In his time, the house was like a museum of treasures he acquired on his sea voyages to China, Japan, Java, New Guinea, New Ireland, the Soloman Islands, etc.. Captain Dudley commanded many vessels but his best-known was the barque Hannah W. Dudley. She was of his own design, built in 1877 by Shipbuilder David Clark of Kennebunk Lower Village.

Dudley retired from the sea in 1901. In the years that followed he granted several national news interviews that included detailed accounts of his long exotic career. (Ask for a link to one if you are a member of the Historical Society)

He also became close friends with local author Booth Tarkington, who used Dudley’s seafaring stories in his novels.

One of the captain’s proudest post-retirement achievements was making a 4-foot fully rigged ship model that took him eight years to build. That model still on display at the Louis T. Graves Memorial Library carries the name “H.D. Dudley.”

Captain Dudley’s son Ralph moved him to Texas for his final years. Shipbuilder Bernie Warner bought the house with some of its contents. Booth Tarkington purchased the 4-foot ship model to keep it in town. When Booth Tarkington died in 1946, he bequeathed the model of the H.D. Dudley to the Graves Library. Susannah Tarkington, who wasn’t a maritime expert, misidentified the model as the Hannah W. Dudley or the Hannah D. Dudley when she handed it over to the library. I believe Maritime Historian Charles Morgan was the first to notice that the model was not of a barque.

Bernie Warner’s grandson Rich Woodman, builder and captain of the schooner Eleanor, also mentioned the discrepancy to me when he donated some Dudley items to the Kennebunkport Historical Society last January, including several published interviews of Captain Dudley conducted just after he finished building the model.

Captain Dudley named the model ship he built in honor of his two deceased daughters, Helen & Dolly (H.D.). He did not associate it with any of the life-sized vessels he had sailed.