Historic Vessel Program Endowment
Skipjack Restoration Project

Preserving traditional skills while saving traditional boats
Under the supervision of master boat builders, the Museum’s Shipwright Apprentices are restoring the Bay’s historic skipjacks, the last remaining commercial sailing fishing fleet in the United States. In 2002 the Bay’s skipjacks were on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of “America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places”—a designation that garnered substantial attention for the Museum’s efforts to restore the fleet.

While preserving these vessels is important, the Museum is also recording and documenting the fascinating oral histories that relate the experiences of the skipjacks’ captains and crews, as well as their families and the watermen’s communities around the Bay. Our visitors, therefore, are exposed to a truly unique experience of observing our apprentices actually restoring historic Bay work boats. And while doing all this, we are also helping to perpetuate the Bay’s wooden boatbuilding tradition and the culture of “the working waterfront.”

To perpetuate the skills necessary for restoring historic wooden vessels, we have created our Shipwright Apprentice Program. Apprentices come to the Museum for one-year terms to gain hands-on training under the guidance of Museum shipwrights in our Boat Yard. The exchange of skills and stories among watermen, shipwrights, apprentices, and Museum visitors, creates a unique and effective way to pass along a rich, multifaceted culture to a larger community.

1. "At Play on the Bay" Exhibit
2. Historic Vessel Program Endowment & Skipjack Restoration Project
3. Marine Railway Upgrade
4. Information Technology
5. Old Point Restoration
6. Curatorial Acquisitions
7. Rosie Parks Restoration
8. Boat Shop Renovation
9. Chesapeake Encounters
10. Steamboat Building Expansion

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