After a three-year search for the best site to build a replica of the VIRGINIA, a pinnace constructed by The Popham Colony in 1607, (WW …) board members of Maine’s First Ship have forged an agreement with Maine Maritime Museum to build the vessel at the museum on Washington Street in Bath.
The decision is bittersweet for many members of Maine’s First Ship – sweet because after six years of planning and research, they finally have a place to begin construction; bitter because they had originally hoped to build the pinnace in Phippsburg, possibly at the colony’s site, Fort St. George, in Popham. Colonists constructed the VIRGINIA there for use in coastal trade and exploration. In 1608, when the colony disbanded, the VIRGINIA transported settlers back to England.
The idea of building the replica on the site was appealing, but Bud Warren, president of Maine’s First Ship, says the board had accept the reality that Popham was too far from the mainstream and the road overcrowded in summer with beach traffic.
Other Phippsburg sites were considered, but given up primarily because of added cost to build infrastructure or inaccessibility. “What the project is really about is getting people aware of the VIRGINIA and interested in and involved in our maritime heritage,” Warren says. “We needed a place people can get to. The Maritime Museum is easily reached and has plenty of parking, and certainly, it makes sense from the shipbuilding heritage point of view. One hundred six schooners were built there, and we still have a competitive shipyard (Bath Iron Works) up the road.”
Building the 30-ton, nearly 50-foot seaworthy replica at the museum has many advantages, including rent-free space, but the museum director, Tom Wilcox, and Warren emphasize that financial responsibility for the project belongs solely to Maine’s First Ship. The organization’s fundraising committee, headed by John Morse, is working with a consultant to raise approximately $900,000 they believe will be needed to complete the project. They also want to develop an endowment that will support the educational activities of the VIRGINIA in the future.
The boat will be built in an area at the lower end of the museum’s Boat Shop, where Maine’s First Ship will construct a temporary shelter for the project. The shipwright who wins the bid to build the VIRGINIA will use the lowest level of the Boat Shop as his workshop. Visitors will be able to wander partway into the area and shelter to observe the boatbuilding process.
The builder will work from Coast Guard approved plans developed by Naval architect David Wyman of Castine, who based his work on a concept design by English naval architect Fred M. Walker. Maine’s First Ship commissioned Walker to continue extensive research begun in America and then create a concept design based on his findings. Warren hopes builders can include pieces of timber from every county in Maine somewhere in her construction.
Wilcox says museum educational staff will work with Maine’s First Ship education chairman Megan Henerlau, who teaches at Riverview Community School in Gardiner, to develop and schedule programming around the construction process. “We’d also like to build a lecture series around this,” he says, “rather than have the Maine’s First Ship people work a separate series of lectures around our schedule.”
Once construction begins, Maine’s First Ship, which has a membership of about 400 people, will be able to expand its educational programming to include field trips to the museum site. For the past five years, volunteers from the organization, including Warren, a retired schoolteacher, have visited scores of Maine classrooms to enlighten students about the Popham Colony and Maine’s First Ship. They take a Hawk’s-nest model of the ship created by Pandy Zolas of Brunswick, give a slide show about the colony and ship, work on map activities using the 1607 map of the colony, and use large trays filled with sand to show students how archeologists work to retrieve artifacts at Fort St. George. Afterwards, many students take field trips to the site.
A sampling of the activities that emerge from this exposure can be seen at Wiscasset Primary School’s web site, www.wpskids.net. The class web sites for 2002-03 show web pages created by Lynn Morissette’s fourth grade class about the different people who made up the colony, how the colony site would have been selected, and about spending the day with an archeologist at the Popham site.
Maine’s First Ship volunteers also have conducted summer workshops at the Popham Colony site for teachers, who spend one day learning about the history of the site and a second day developing lesson plans based on different aspects of the colony. These are geared to meet requirements of the Maine State Learning results and are shared on the Maine’s First Ship web site (www.mainesfirstship.org).
Maine’s First Ship hopes construction can begin in early 2004. The best case scenario, says Warren, would include a launch date sometime in 2006, to permit sea trials before the VIRGINIA takes part in grand festivities planned in 2007 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the colony’s year in Maine.
After the VIRGINIA has been proven seaworthy, she will sail along the coast of Maine. “We want her to visit every little port in the state that she possibly can,” Warren says, “because every kid who goes to school studies state history, and this is their boat.” The vessel may participate in 2007 celebration of her sister colony at Jamestown, Virginia, and perhaps go further.
A gleam appears in Warren’s eye as he contemplates the possibility of longer voyages. “After all,” he says, “she did sail from Maine to England.”