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Show The schooner Sultana , an 18th-cenru- iy Twapli ailing ship, once policed the waterways Mound Bay far Britains Royal Navy; enforcing tea taxes and searching out smugglers. Neatly 230 yean lam; a replica of that ship still hoists in sails to cruise the bay, this time as a flooring classroom, its ciew children learning about Colonial frequently elementary-ag- e ' history and sailing. And persistence. And making dreams come true. Indeed, the new Sultana began as a dream; first of one man, then of an entire town Chestertown, Mid. which sail-in- g decided to build a reproduction of the ship, marking its ties to the sea. Three years, ISO volunteers, and about $1 million lam; the Sultana stretches 97 feet in length, weighs SO tons, and is a grand model of community spirit and dedication. Drew McMullen, project dircetot, remembers when John Swain, who had been building boats far 30 years, fust proposed the idea in 1997. One day during lunch, he rolled out a picture and said. Do you want to help me build this?1 McMullen says. "He had a vision of a teaching ship. I thought die idea was cozy, 18th-centu- ry but intriguing. Swain's plan had a specific boat in mind: a replica of the. schooner Sultana, one of the most thoroughly documented sailing vessels from the Revolutionary period. Then was so much documentation on die Sultana that I knew it would be relatively easy to reproduce," Swain sayv McMullen quickly agreed to help with fund raising and found an enthusiastic donor in Chester River Craft St Ait, a private nonprofit organization based in Chestenown (pop. - 4,746). Soon, voluntcen from thetown and beyond signed on, and the Sultana Project was bam. r-' All that remained of the original Sultana was paperwork: blueprints, captain's Iggs, and the like. Pieced together, die paper nail told of a cargo schooner built in Boston in 1767 and purchased the next year by Britain's Royal Navy to enforce the newly enacted tea taxes on the North American coast. For four years, the Sultana policed the waterways from Halifax to Chrsapeakf Bay, but her small size and light armaments put her at a disadvantage against American merchantmen, so die Sultana was mired from the Royal Navy in 1772 and eventually sold. Her eventual fate remains a mystery. Mote than two centuries later, the dust was shaken off her blueprints, which had been stated in a London filipg cabinet, and the Sultana began her unique munection. Volunteers began gathering at a downtown Chestertown dirt parking lot in June 1998, transforming it into die Sultana shipyard. By October, construction was under way by professional shipwrights and volunteers who did everything from harvesting trees for the hull frames to painting. "The shipyard was actually right in the middle of town, so a lot of people would just walk up and watch what we were doing," McMullen says. And a lot of them stayed on doing whatever jobs they could do. We ended up with an awesome bunch of people volunteering. |
