Appentices at Lowell's Boat Shop participated in every phase of building Adventure's dories.
ar Srrawberry Banke Museum in Portsmourh, New Hampshire, in rhe early 1990s, bur neirher time nor funds have been available in rhe lase rwenty-five years to sort rhrough and caralog its contents. "With some digging," McKay adds, "we were able to locate bottom, frame, and stem patterns that matched perfectly the measurements taken from the Mariners' Museum dory and were likely used to built it in 1935!" Also in the summer of2016, the project gained a third parrner in Captain Harold Burnham, master boatbuilder and president of the Essex Shipbuilding Museum. "The opportunity opened up as we finished restoring Lance Lee's double-ender Watermark at Maritime Gloucester, working with Mark Webster and the students from Topsfield Vocational Academy as part of the CREST collaborative. We were looking for a new project, and Adventure needed dories! Working with these students has been a whole lot of fun, and together we've harvested and sawn the wood, made the frames wirh natural knees, and been able to use fastenings from rhe museum's collection. It's exciting thar Graham was able to visit the Mariners' Museum and use that information to find the patterns in Lowell's loft." The construction of two of the dories is being undertaken ar Lowell's by eight high school apprentices who meer after school three days a week, and the third at SEA HISTORY 159, SUMMER 2017
the Essex Shipbuilding Museum with the high school students in the CREST Collaborative. At Lowell 's and in Essex, guidance is being provided by Jeff Lane, Lowell's boatbuilder and instructor. Both groups are taking great pains to ensure that the dories being built are true to the originals chat fished from Adventure when she was a working vessel. "In addirion to providing Adventure with new tools to cell her story better, we are reaching a new generarion how to build dories and build chem right." said McKay. "Like rhe dorymen themselves, unfortunately, the oldtimers who knew rhese derails firsr-hand
have passed, bur rheir work is telling us their story, and we, in turn, are working to perperuare ir." Adventure will be participaring in Sail Boston 2017, as well as fesrivals in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and Portland and Boorhbay Harbor, Maine, where thousands of visitors are expected to cross her decks. When rhey visit, her crew will be able to point to rhese dories and begin to explain the difficult and dangerous life of rhe dorymen and rheir vital contriburions to the New England fishery. Lacer in rhe season, rhe dories will be launched and used as part of educarional programming for students of all ages. In the coming months, more dories may be built as inrerest in the project spreads. "Ideally, we envision four to six dories aboard in order to be able to give a more fully realized view of what carrying a nest of them was all about," said Edick, "and the arrival of the first three is thrilling. All of us in the Adventure organization are grateful for the leadership of Graham and Harold in seeing these dories through, and we've promised both that their builders will be the firsr ones to launch and row chem. That will be the greatest reward of all." j:, For more information on Schooner Adventure, Lowell's Boat Shop, and the Essex Shipbuilding Museum, please visit them online: www.schooner-adventure.org; and www. lowellsboatshop. com; www. essexshipbuild ingmuseum. org. j:,
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