Mayflower II at Mystic Seaport in Massachusetts in 2020. Plimorh Plantation is a living history museum that interprets the story on the sire of the original settlement of the Plymouth Colony. Mayflower II is owned by the museum and is homeported on the downtown Plymouth waterfront, where visitors can tour the ship and meet role players, who interpret the ship's history in period dress. Mayflower II was built in D evon, England, and sailed to America in 1957. Once restored , she will be able to operate under sail, just as she has until recently. (Plimorh Plantation, 137 Warren Ave., Plymouth, MA; Ph. 508 746-1622; www.plimorh.org) . . . In March, the New York City oyster barge that has been rotting away on the waterfront in Fair Haven, CT, for decades, was given a second lease on life. Alex and Miles Pincus, the two brothers who acquired the schooner Sherman Zwicker last year and turned her into a Boating oyster bar/museum ship at Pier 25 in New York C ity, agreed to rake possession of the oyster barge, dismantle it, truck it to Brooklyn, and rebuild it. What they' ll do with it afterwards is still up in the ai r, bur some sort of combination museum/restaurant, like what they have done with the Zwicker, is a distinct possibility. When the Pincus brothers set up their schooner-based oyster bar, aptly named "Grand Banks," they also set up a foundatio n to address their maritime preservation efforts and are intent on preserving the history of their historic vessels. The property on which the barge has been sitting since the 1920s was up for sale, and the Pincus brothers realized the value in saving what is assumed to be the last surviving New York oyster barge from the 19th century. In its heyday in the mid180 0s, the oyster industry in New York was based out of strings of these barges,
SEA HISTORY 151 , SUMMER 2015
rafted up to one another and moored along the Brooklyn waterfront. Oystermen wo uld steer their boats up to one end of a barge and offload their catch; on the other end, customers would line up on the pier to buy them from the barge operator. In 1920, when the oyster business in New York was in decline, this particular barge was b ro ught to Fair Haven and Boated up a can al, which was later filled in; the barge has been landlocked ever since. The oyster barge was the subject of an article in Sea H istory's "Historic Ships on a Lee Shore" series in 2004. (www.grandbanks.org)
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