Dove Sails to a Young Purpose completed by 1984, the 350th anniversary of the founding of Maryland, among them the visitor center, which will introduce people to the full scope of the St. Mary's project. Other major installations will be a working 17th-century tobacco plantation, an achaeological exhibit centering on one important dwelling, a reconstructed State House/ inn complex, and a waterfront exhibit featuring a sailing reconstruction of the Dove with nearby exhibits on trade, immigration and patterns of settlement. Throughout, the Commission's emphasis is, in the words of the Executive Director, Mary Barber, on giving visitors "something they have had the pleasure to learn by putting their minds to work, something they can take away and think about afterwards." The second Dove will sail in active program, and around her it's planned to build smaller vessels representative of river life-including pulling boats in which visitors can go out on the river, the main highway of 350 years ago. A boatyard will maintain the vessels and build new ones, in public view so people can share in the acts that bring a wooden hull to life, and the routines that keep it in life. The Commission determined to build the Dove in 1975, and retained William Avery Baker as architect. James B. Richardson of Cambridge was chosen to build the resulting design for a 3-masted, 40-ton pinnace. Richardson, now in his 70s, has been building boats for 50 years, and came out of retirement to build this one. He describes himself as "hardheaded and independent." His building crew of eight young people, he says, just "gravitated" to the job. One of the young women has gone on to work as restoration carpenter for the shoreside project-the skills she acquired being otherwise unavailable today. An early example of the St. Mary philosophy at work! The decision to build a costly vessel early was a high-risk decision-but the money was raised, from over 500 contributors, and the decision has paid off in enormous public interest, interest that goes to the whole process of building and sailing the ship, the very lessons St. Mary's is after. Says Mary Barber: "By watching historians, archaeologists and craftsmen at work, visitors sense the excitement they feel for that work. And with that discovery may come the more important understanding that history is neither more nor less than students make ofit." .t
Master shipwright Jim Richardson (above) chose willing young helpers to build his ship. They learned so well that one (at right) became restoration carpenter for the St. Mary's project.
The Dove sails! In the fall of 1978, she crossed the Bay, a little underballasted, to take up the first Dove's career, interrupted when the 17thcentury ship was lost on a return voyage to England.