Friday, March 29

Maine’s First Ship Launched – Again

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Maine’s first ship, a reproduction of the first boat built by colonists in America, is floating again.

Last Saturday, thousands of people gathered on the Bath waterfront in Maine to watch the christening and launching of the 51-foot pinnace Virginia, a reproduction of the original Virginia that was built at the Popham Colony in 1607. The  new boat was built over more than a decade by some 100 volunteers at Maine’s First Ship, a non-profit organization. (A pinnace is described as a light boat, propelled by oars or sails, that was originally carried aboard merchant and war ships.)

The building was complicated because there are no precise plans of the original Virginia. We do know it was built at the mouth of the Kennebec River by the 120 men and boys of the Popham Colony, near today’s town of Phippsburg, in 1607. At the time, the Popham Colony rivaled the Jamestown Colony in Virginia, but the Popham colonists abandoned it after just 14 months.

Historians think the Popham Colony didn’t last because of the frigid Maine winter, the absence of any women, and the colonists’ failure to establish relations with the native Abenaki people.

In any event, the colonists climbed on the Virginia and sailed back to England. The boat then re-crossed the Atlantic to supply the Jamestown colony, but there are no records of what happened to it after that.

For the reconstruction, the design team in Maine scoured the records of early pinnaces, and contacted Fred M. Walker Associates of Tenterden, Kent, England, to produce concept drawings. The new Virginia is 51 feet long with a beam of 14’ 5” and it draws 6 feet when fully loaded.

It has a single flush deck with high sides that taper back to a square stern, and it’s totally open below deck. For propulsion it carries a fore-and-aft rig with a sprit mainsail. The rudder is huge.

The volunteers in Maine tried to use original materials for the reproduction, including white oak from New England for the hull and frames and white pine for the deck and masts. The paint contains linseed oil and pigment and was used to create a pattern of white and black arrow shapes along the bulwarks.

A crew now will spend the summer rigging the boat. Read more:

http://mfship.org

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