1000 Francs CFA Thomas W. Lawson

The Thomas W. Lawson was an American seven-masted steel schooner — the only one ever built — launched in 1902 and lost off the Scilly Isles in December 1907 with nearly all hands. Built by the Fore River Ship and Engine Company in Quincy, Massachusetts for the American coastwise coal trade, she was unwieldy in deep water and required an unusually large crew simply to manage her rig. The 1907 wreck spilled a cargo of oil, an early and largely forgotten instance of marine petroleum pollution in European waters.