Launched from a Trinity Bay shipyard in 1945, the early years of the Newfoundland schooner Norma & Gladys encompassed the shipbuilding tradition, the Labrador floater fishery, and coasting. She was purchased for a floating museum by the Newfoundland Government in 1973; her legacy soon included blunder, cover-up, mutiny, a stowaway, and perhaps, the coast of a sealing captain.   In 1975, Canada's External Affairs appointed Norma & Gladys as a roving ambassador to promote fisheries management within a 200-mile coastal limit. But she was unseaworthy: Clarenville Shipyard had installed the wrong masts and her original round-the-world itinerary was scrapped.   After being ravished by the Newfoundland media, she lifted her skirts and caught the winds blowing east. Forgivingly, she nevertheless promoted Canada and Newfoundland to 78,900 visitors in 19 European ports, to return with her virtue restored, her signal flags flapping like a hundred gypsy scarves on the breeze.   Sold to the highest bidder, she started her final voyage on October 27, 1984, and never returned. Today she rests on the bottom of Placentia Bay.   Here is the story of her early obscure years, and the saga of her 22,000 mile voyage, set against the background of Newfoundland's favourite blood sport: partisan politics.