Shallop sails into Gloucester
Jun. 12—Justin Demetri, Maritime Gloucester's historian and a man who knows his way around vintage wooden sailing vessels, stood at the rail of the Harriet Webster Pier late Friday morning, gazing with something akin to adoration.
Roughly eight feet below sat the Fuller shallop, gently riding on the calm waters of Gloucester's Inner Harbor, yet another reminder that history seldom stays in the past.
"I've been waiting two years to see this thing," Demetri said to Capt. Whit Perry, skipper of the Mayflower II and the director of maritime preservation and operations for the Plimoth Patuxet Museums, who stood on the dock next to the boat.
Demetri clearly found it worth the wait.
The 33-foot shallop, just exiting a two-year restoration at Lowell's Boat Shop in Amesbury, is on its way home to Plymouth to be reunited with the Mayflower II, itself recently restored.
It left Amesbury on Thursday morning with Perry and a crew of eight and, following a 25-mile day of variable winds that made things choppy and required some rowing, made its way into Gloucester Harbor about 7:30 p.m.
And how did it sail?
"Good," Perry said. "Once we got around Thacher Island, it was amazing. We eased off and came right down past the Dog Bar and came into the harbor in perfect conditions."
The striking wide-beamed and heavy vessel is a restoration of the replica of the first boat of its kind that came to to America in pieces aboard the Mayflower in 1620.
The Pilgrims used shallops to explore — by sail and oar — the coastal waters of what became Massachusetts. The original shallop was the vessel from which the Pilgrims discovered Plymouth Harbor, not the Mayflower.
The project in Amesbury was the restoration of the original replica designed by famed marine architect William Avery Baker and built in 1957 in Plymouth to help welcome the Mayflower II after it was launched in England for America. Avery also designed the Mayflower II.
A couple of pair of hands from the Essex Shipbuilding Museum — Jeff Lane and Mike Brittan — were integral parts of the shallop restoration, Perry said.
The shallop is assembled from a variety of woods, including juniper cedar planking, ash for the 14-foot sweep oars, a single mast of Douglas fir, oak frames and live oak deck timbers. Much of it came from the original replica, as well as woods used in the Mayflower II restoration.
"They were pieces that were to small for the Mayflower II and just right for a shallop," Perry said.
The boat has rowing stations for 10, though Perry said the maximum complement of sweat equity might make things slightly unwieldy.
"We had six yesterday and I can tell you it would have been nicer to have had eight," Perry said.
The boat will spend Saturday in Gloucester — with the schedule of 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.— for public viewing, meeting the crew and asking questions.
Then it will set sail on Sunday for Hull for a couple days and then on to Hingham before the final leg of the journey to Plymouth.
History on the wind.
Contact Sean Horgan at 978-675-2714, or shorgan@gloucestertimes.com. Follow him on Twitter at @SeanGDT
