NEWS "Delighted at the Privilege, Awed at the Task" The 1927 fishing schooner Evelina M. Goulart, raised in Fairhaven Harbor, Massachusetts, last June, will finally make her way to her birthplace in Essex, Massachusetts, in early November. Captain Robert Douglas of the Coastwise Packet Company, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, which sails the famous topsail schooner Shenandoah, raised the sunken vessel last summer and has since sought to return her to Essex. His inspired plan to establish the last of the fleet as an onshore shipbuilding exhibit has now broken through local bureaucratic obstructions. The project has won the enthusiasm of the ship preservation community led by Karl Kortum, Chief Curator of the San Francisco Maritime National Hi storic Park. In a recent letter of encouragement to Essex Shipbuilding Museum director Diana Stockton, Kortum sought to allay fears that the vessel might become a financial burden on the fledgling museum with the observation: "It is museums that have difficulty in making money . A ship properly set up as a museum will outdraw a museum ten to one at the ticket counter." The Shipbuilding Museum has prevailed over a broadside of doubts and objections to the project. It is no small project to move a 160-ton, 93-ft overall, 23-ft broad, deteriorated vessel to new quarters. But with fears about her seaworthiness for tow and the possible import of contaminants from Fairhaven Harbor to the clam beds of Essex now dismissed by experts , the Town Board has approved the temporary lease of a portion of land (land first deeded by the Crown for shipbuilding in 1668) to haul out and store the vessel. The land is adjacent to the vessel ' s construction site. Diana Stockton described the museum as "delighted at the privilege" of using the land though "awed at the task. " The task involves the completion of a marine railway , a frame to haul her out, and a plan and impact analysis of the onshore exhibit prior to her planned towing from Fairhaven on the high tides of November 2 and 3. The final result will be a shipbuilding exhibit-the badly wormed starboard side cut away to show her massive framing and the port side in sea-ready condition. Just where else can she go but to Essex? The Goulart wi II be the only fishing schooner to return to the town that built some 6,000 vessels in a 300-year period. KH SEA HISTORY 54, SUMMER 1990
PHOTO, TEESSIDE DEVELOPMENT CORPORA TION
Trincomalee Restoration The fri gate Trincomalee, formerly the training ship Foudroyant, is at the start of a major restoration program in Hartlepool, on the northeast coast of England. Built for the Royal Navy in 1817 at the Bombay Shipyard (atacostÂŁ23 ,642!) to the Leda class, a heavy class designed to match the American frigates of the Constitution class, she was constructed of Malabar teak , one of the reasons for Trincomalee' s remarkable survival. The original plans for her construction were lost in the way to India in the sinking of HMS Java in 1812. The vessel which sunk Java was USS Constitution. Trincomalee was put into ordinary (laid up) in Portsmouth on her return to England in 1819, during the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, and was not recommissioned until 1847 , when she was sent to the North American and West Indies station, mainly being involved in anti-slavery duties. She returned to England in 1850 for refit. In 1852 Trincomalee once again set sail for North America, this time to the Pacific, where she was based at Esquimalt. She reached England for the last time in 1857 to become a RN training ship for nearly 20 years. R~scued from the shipbreakers in 1897 by the Victorian philanthropist G.Wheatley Cobb, whose boys' training vessel Foudroyant (Nelson's old flagship) had recently been
wrecked, she was renamed Foudroyant and served as a youth training ship for the next 90 years. In 1986 however, the Foudroyant Trust, which had managed the ship since 1959, decided it could no longer continue the increasingly expensive training in a deteriorating historic ship. She was taken by barge in 1987 to Hartlepool, the site of the Warrior's recent restoration. After a year-long study, the Trust resolved on December 1, 1989, that Trincomalee should be restored here in Hartlepool, as the centerpiece of the ambitious revival programme for the Hartlepool and Teesside area. A new dry dock is to be constructed in Hartlepool Docks for what are likely to be major hull repairs. The Trust's long-term objective is the complete repair and restoration of the ship to her 1817 state. Unlike many historic ships, Trincomalee has never been seriously altered or repaired, and the interior and structure is estimated to be 90% original timber, although how much of this is sound remains to be seen (there is no point in being optimistic!). For more details, contact the Foudroyant Trust at Jackson Dock, Hartlepool, Cleveland UK; 0429 223193. A.G. BROADWATER, Director Trincomalee Restoration
The Little Ships of 1788 In 1788 , as each state ratified the Constitution, the principal American cities staged enormous and elaborate parades to celebrate. For a centerpiece in these parades, the rage at the time was miniature warships, mostly built at quarter size. The New Hampshire ship paraded through Portsmouth was a 20gun frigate called Union and it was
probably a miniature of John Paul Jones' s Ranger. In Boston there were two ships. One was called the Federal Constitution and was large enough to accommodate a captain and 17 crew and required 13 horses to drag her. Research by Heritage Square-Rigged Ships of Williamsburg, Virginia, has uncovered no fewer than l 6 of these ships from 1788 and hopes to 37