Article
9-9-01
Launching a Dream
by Stephanie Harvin of the Post and Courier Staff
The dream of a tall ship to represent the state and teach
sailing
to young people is coming true with the building of
a historically
based pilot schooner.
 "If you build it, they will come."
The line can just as easily refer to a tall ship as a baseball diamond. Like
the baseball field in the 1989 movie "Field of Dreams," the
plans for the schooner the Spirit of South Carolina have begun to attract people
from all walks of life.
For years, a group of local sailing and wooden boat
enthusiasts have gathered for "beer-thirty" on Friday afternoons
at Sea Island Boatworks on Shem Creek to talk about races, tall ships and
the value of wood vs. fiberglass. One topic that constantly resurfaced
was the desire for a ship to represent South Carolina and to teach sailing
to young people.
Then Tall Ships 2000 used Charleston as a port of call
last summer, and the enormous public response to the wooden sailing vessels
convinced Charlie Sneed, and Mark Bayne, owner of the Boatworks and an
accomplished shipwright, that it was time to start building the dream
instead of talking about it.
"Charleston
Harbor once had hundreds of these sailing vessels anchored here," says
Sneed, now executive director of the South Carolina Maritime Heritage Foundation. "Mark
had always wanted to build a tall ship, and I realized I could build a nonprofit
foundation to raise money. We knew we had the expertise to build the ship,
and we thought we could find the support for it once people knew about it."
It
didn't take long before sailors Bunky Wichmann, Richard Stoney and Rick
Hall signed on to the board of directors. The group made some important
decisions, says Sneed. It wanted a ship that would have a connection
to South Carolina history. It wanted to build it where the public
could see it and learn from it, rather than hiding it away until
it was built. It wanted it to be made of South Carolina materials
as much as possible. And the ship's purpose would be to serve the
youth of South Carolina and the region as a sail training vessel,
as much as it would represent the state of South Carolina in foreign
ports.
Bayne contacted the Smithsonian Institution and asked for ship plans
that might have a connection to South Carolina. The package that
came in the mail surprised him: line plans for an unnamed boat
built in Charleston in the 1850s at the Samuel J. Pregnall & Bros.
Shipyard. It looked like a pilot schooner, a type of fast workboat
that would have been used by pilots of the time, or a member of the
black skippers of the Mosquito Fleet.
 Rusty Fleetwood, a maritime historian and author of the book "Tidecraft," said
he thought the lines of the ship looked very much like a picture
of a boat, the Frances Elizabeth, that is recorded as having been
built in Charleston in 1879 and winning races in Savannah in 1889.
But no one had heard of the Pregnall Shipyard. Most of the historic boat-building
yards were thought to be at Hobcaw in Mount Pleasant. So Sneed got out the
phone book and looked for a Pregnall listing. He connected with Wally Pregnall,
who turned out to be the great-grandson of Samuel, and actually had a picture
of Samuel. An old fire map indicates the location of the original shipyard
was about 100 yards from the piece of property near the South Carolina Aquarium
that the city of Charleston has leased to the Spirit for $1 a year.
In another
stroke of luck, Dan Machowski, known as "the knot man" due
to his knowledge of and skills in knot-tying, was exploring an attic at Mystic
Seaport in Connecticut and came across a half-hull model of an unnamed pilot
boat, labeled "by Pegnall (sic) Charleston, S.C., circa 1855." Part
of the dream was coming true: The group had found its pilot schooner with
the Charleston connection.
A year and a month after the first meeting to assess
public support, the Spirit of South Carolina is close to becoming a reality.
Plans have been drawn, the keel has been laid. Donations of all sorts have
begun to come in, says Sneed.
The new Spirit will be two-thirds larger than
the original historic plans and will have an overall dimension
of 138 feet in length. It will carry 29 passengers and have a draft
of 10 feet. Its hull speed, estimated at about 12.5 knots, will
make it one of the fastest schooners afloat, says Sneed.
The working
blueprints have been drawn by Tri-Coastal Marine, the pre-eminent
tall ship design firm. Its most recent design is the slave ship
Amistad that was launched at Mystic Seaport in March of 2000. It
also built the Pride of Baltimore II.
The plans call for the Spirit
to require 30,000 board feet of yellow pine for hull and deck planking
and 25,000 feet of live oak for frames. Most of the live oak will
come from South Carolina, and the longleaf yellow pine will come
from Georgia. But the three 3-ton mahogany keel timbers have already
arrived in Charleston from Suriname and are waiting at the site
for the first ax strokes.
While the builders are striving for historical
accuracy where possible, the ship also has to pass U.S. Coast Guard
standards if it is going to take passengers aboard, says Sneed.
That precludes strict historical reproduction and means two engines
will be installed to maneuver the ship. Cummins Marine in North Charleston
has donated the engines, along with the expertise to install them
when the time comes. Hand tools, donated by Makita Tools USA through
Royall Hardware of Mount Pleasant, will assist in the building
process, but Bayne says that he will also use power tools whenever
necessary.
"Samuel would have used them if he had them," he
says with a smile. Bayne knows he is going to be working with some
huge timbers. The difference between this ship and a large shrimp
trawler is the size of the wood, says Bayne. "Everything
is bigger, heavier. It's going to be hot, heavy work, but it's
not particularly dangerous."
Bayne looks forward to building
the ship and doesn't foresee any major problems with construction.
The temporary Pregnall Shipyard that will be constructed around
the boat builders will have bleachers close enough so that people
will be able to see what is going on. Sneed wants to have guides
on hand to educate viewers, so that the shipwrights don't have
to take time away from work to explain the process.
As soon as
the designs for the shipyard are approved by city of Charleston
design committees, construction will begin on the modern design by
William Murphy of LS3P Architects. He has donated his time and design
expertise. It is expected to take about a month to construct the
tent, bleachers and fencing, although it has taken eight months to
get through the permitting process.
Bayne says about eight to nine
workers will be needed to frame the ship and after that is in place,
as many as 20 people may be working on the boat at any one time.
Volunteers have already been contacting the foundation wanting
to work on the ship. Bayne will use a trained crew and free-lance
boat builders for most of the construction.
"This is a great
opportunity to rediscover some of those early boat-building skills." says
Bayne. "In the sailing community,
there is this group of itinerant carpenters who travel from
boat to boat."
Sneed is optimistic about raising funds
and estimates that $3 million will be needed to build the
boat and $1 million to create an endowment for care of
the boat after it is launched. The Amistad Freedom Ship was built
for $3 million, although the Denis Sullivan, a lake schooner
that was launched last year in Wisconsin, came in at $4
million.
Jeff Phillips, executive director of the Wisconsin Lake
Schooner Education Association, says expenses ran about
$1 million over budget and although there were some major
benefactors, the majority of contributions came from smaller
donations: Everyone from schoolchildren to senior citizen
memberships. The problems on the Sullivan stemmed from
a lack of boat builders in the Midwest.
"We started
the Denis Sullivan project because of the tourism value
and to give people an opportunity to get people back on
the water," says Phillips. "It
was also a grass-roots movement because we didn't involve
government."
Much like the planners of the South Carolina
ship, organizers of the Sullivan sold organized tours during
the boat-building process and developed educational programs
to explain the history of schooners on the Great Lakes.
If donations slowed down, they slowed the progress of the
ship, but they never quit building it. Building the ship
took about 11 years from its inception to launch.
Now in
the first year of sailing operation, Phillips says that his local
convention and tourism bureau hasn't given him any figures to indicate
if the ship is bringing in the tourism dollars, but the boat has
been 83 percent full on all of its sailing expeditions.
The Pride
of Baltimore and the Pride of Baltimore II were originally built
for the purpose of bringing in tourism dollars and helping to revitalize
the Inner Harbor at the Baltimore port. Next year will be the 25th
anniversary of the Pride ships, and Dale Hillard, executive director
of the Pride of Baltimore Inc., says that the ships
are considered an important part of the image of both Baltimore
and Maryland.
"We have been all over the world
- to 40 countries and 24 states. We figure this year
we will have received about $5 million in press value
from our tours."
Hillard says tourism dollars are
figured by looking at the clippings generated by the
coverage of the ship in all forms of media and then
compared to the cost of purchasing the same amount
of advertising slots in those markets. It's an important
way to value the ship's progress.
"Last year, we
did a tour of Europe and went to a number of major
ports. If you divided up our costs by the number of
places we visited, there's no way the city of Baltimore
could pay for that much positive publicity."
On
the flip side, Hillard says that maintaining the ship
is a constant challenge. The average budget of the
ship is about $1 million a year, with about 30 percent
coming from state funding.
"You have to factor
in the cost of maintenance and support because you
really only have the one asset and you are sailing
that. The paradox is that when you have a sailing ship,
you are not in your home port if you are out doing
your job."
That the sailing ship has helped to
revitalize the Inner Harbor is evidenced by the competition
with the aquarium and art museum that the ship now
faces for space for storage. It doesn't own property,
although the city provides the dock.
"We have to
rent our own warehouse space for repairs and storage,
and we just lost our space because a Ritz-Carlton is
going to be built. The Inner Harbor has definitely
become a popular attraction."
Even with the challenges,
Hillard knows the ship has a place in the hearts of
the citizens of Maryland. When the original Pride of
Baltimore sank in May of 1986, it was the outpouring
of small donations from citizens from their cookie
jars and schools that convinced the organizers the
ship needed to be replaced. The Pride II was commissioned
in late summer of 1986 and launched in 1988.
Sneed says
the outpouring from people of every walk of life is already evident
in the donations coming in beyond the actual materials needed for
the ship.
Lionel DaCosta, a Florida painter, created and donated
a painting of the ship in Charleston Harbor; Tom Lathrop
of Oriental, N.C., created a sea chest with the Spirit
of South Carolina inscribed on it; and Kim Case of Irmo
sent in a small needlepoint token pillow of the state
flag for inclusion in the ship; and a guy who identified
himself as the "Scrimshaw Dude" sent a piece
of scrimshaw with the Spirit carved into it.
"People
who don't sail are some of the biggest supporters
of this ship," says
Sneed.
"They are people who are interested in history, in old ship building, in
art. They are coming from all kinds of interests."
Stephanie
Harvin is a features reporter. Contact her at 843-937-5701
or at sharvin@postandcourier.com. |
