Niagara at Boothbay, Maine. [NPR]

BOOTHBAY HARBOR, Maine – A day before USS Niagara is scheduled to go back into the water – after a nearly year-long refit and restoration – shipyard workers are still, quite literally, plugging holes.

Ross Branch, the lead shipwright at Bristol Marine, is installing a valved water intake in Niagara’s underside, using a marine sealant called Sikiflex. “The launch is tomorrow, and Sikiflex can cure underwater. So, it’s a good choice in this instance,” he says, holding the fitting from the bottom while another worker cinches it down flush and watertight.

It’s one of a long list of tasks that must be completed before Niagara slips back into the water, capping the extensive restoration at the Boothbay Harbor shipyard that includes work to the hull, deck and other structural parts.

Once completed, the two-masted, 20-gun brig — credited with a pivotal victory in the War of 1812 — will head home to Erie, Pa., just in time for America’s 250th anniversary celebrations.

Captain Greg Bailey first volunteered aboard Niagara when he was just 12, more than 30 years ago. He says that the preservation of such tall ships is important to keep nautical traditions alive. “If we aren’t actively working to pass on these maritime traditions, they just go away,” he says.

Likewise with the construction techniques. Bristol Marine’s Samples Shipyard is one of the few in the country that combines the kind of local expertise for restoring a historic wooden-hulled vessel with the facilities to dry-dock a vessel the size of Niagara, which is about 200 feet from the tip of the bowsprit to the transom.

“We specialize in this type of work. … This project is very much a job that’s right in our wheelhouse,” Branch says. It combines “traditional boatbuilding techniques with the need to achieve Coast Guard certifications.”

That sign-off from the Coast Guard is necessary because Niagara — normally berthed at the Erie Maritime Museum — is more than a floating exhibit. Each summer, the ship serves as both a training vessel used to teach teenagers to sail and a goodwill ambassador on the Great Lakes, sailing under a 15-star, 15-stripe American ensign — the version of the flag that inspired “The Star-Spangled Banner” — alongside Niagara’s famous “Don’t Give Up the Ship” battle flag.

To meet modern safety standards while preserving its historic character, Niagara incorporates contemporary systems and materials. The ship recently received new diesel engines, along with electrical generators, plumbing and modern galvanized fasteners securing replacement hull components in places where the original vessel would have relied entirely on wooden pegs known as treenails.

Technically speaking, the ship is a replica of the vessel that Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry commanded in his decisive defeat of the British at the Battle of Lake Erie in September 1813. The original was intentionally scuttled in the shallow waters off Erie a few years after the war to keep it from rotting and preserve it for possible future use. But it wasn’t raised until 1913 to play a ceremonial role in the battle’s centennial celebration.

After undergoing multiple extensive rebuilds over the years — including this latest one in Maine — little of the original remains. Bailey likens the today’s Niagara to the Ship of Theseus, the ancient philosophical paradox that asks whether something can still be considered the same object after all of its parts have been replaced.

“There are pieces of the original that are in there,” he says, but not many. What counts more is the people who sail Niagara and the vessel’s mission, he says. “It’s still very much the same ship.”

The year of careful work has taken longer than the approximately eight months required in 1813 to complete Niagara and its sister ship Lawrence, which was destroyed in the September battle that year. The two largest and most powerful ships in the American lake flotilla were built in extreme haste to meet an impending British threat.

The original Niagara was made from “all green wood” — not great for ship construction, but there was no time to season any timber, according to Bailey. “They only needed it for one summer. Whether it was going to be captured, destroyed or victorious.”

In fact, Niagara emerged victorious and helped secure the Great Lakes and America’s northern frontier against the British.

The ship will spend another two weeks at the dock in Maine before shoving off for the return to Lake Erie, the waters that made its name famous more than two centuries ago.

Boatnerd

Message History

Delivery option(s)