A Manual for Small Craft Preservation Thanking all our hosts in New York City , Elizabeth, Stamford, Kingston , Albany, New Rochelle, Fairfield, Milford, and Fall River for a great summer of '89.
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Now planning an exciting 1990 schedule. The new Coast Guard Certified"HMS" Rose, largest operational wooden sailing ship in the world, embarks on educational voyages. Diverse programs range from grade school age through executive development workshops for business and industry.
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' For information write or call:
ROSE is a US documented vessel.
"H.M.S~'
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1 Bostwick Ave. •Bridgeport, CT 06605 • 203-335-1433
Ship and Boat Plans The Museum's boat plans list includes dories, Whitehalls, peapods and canoes as well as some larger craft - about 100 of the Seaport's collection of more than 400 watercraft. Write to Mystic Seaport Curatorial 1
M;tl~ &;;n (i}. Mystic, Connecticut 06355 • (203) 572-0711
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by Paul Lipke, Museum Small Craft Association The Museum Small Craft Association's Union List of Museum Watercraft and soon-to-be-published Boats: A Manual for their Documentation are critically needed tools in the fight to save and nurture historic boats. The Union List is being developed as a comprehensive computer data base detailing all watercraft (with no size limitation) in North American Museum collections. Constantly updated and improved, it is rapidly becoming a substantial tool for research, collections management and guiding future watercraft preservation efforts. The Field Manual will provide stepby-step direction to those who need to document a boat, whether in words describing its role within the community, or in measured drawings detailing the lines, construction, builder's details, and wear marks that form the evidence
We are apprenticed to the past and our apprenticeship will never be over. -GREGORY FOSTER
Whaler Bay Boat Yard for reconstructing a boat's working life. The best documentation shows how the details of recorded hull form and structure reflect the clearly spelled-out context of a boat: the what, when, where, who, how, and why. Ultimately it reaches full flower in precisely copied (plank for plank, nail for nail) replicas subjected to scrupulously measured sea trials. An aggressive offense in boat documentation is the best defense when a boat cannot be saved, when a replica is needed for a seamanship program , or when restoration, modification or repair threaten the history recorded in its timbers. That the words and drawings can transmit much of the power of their subjects is proven by the sampling of programs covered in this issue of Sea History. Most of these have been inspired and flourished specifically because certain boats were " saved" on paper. It is no exaggeration to say they live and breathe by the grace of historians and boat documentation pioneers Howard Chapelle and John Gardner. The MSCA gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, National Maritime Initiative of the National Park Service and the Council of American Mariw time Museums in these projects. SEA HISTORY 51, AUTUMN 1989