Word: shipful
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...wooden ship will indeed get an occasional hand from satellites--as well as from twin diesel engines and onboard radios. Yet for all these nods to the modern era, the 129-ft., twin-masted boat is a decidedly vintage vessel, and one with a decidedly historic name: Amistad...
...past two years, shipwrights at the Mystic Seaport have been busily hammering together a $3.1 million re-creation of the Amistad, an otherwise unremarkable schooner that figured in a remarkable page in American history. In 1839 the ship was making a slave run in Cuban waters when the 53 kidnapped Africans it was carrying rose up in revolt. The mutiny was ultimately put down when the remaining crew secretly steered the boat to Montauk, N.Y., and the Africans were taken into custody. They eventually went free when the U.S. Supreme Court declared their enslavement illegal. More than a century...
Even before Spielberg's Amistad hit the screen, however, Mystic's Amistad was in the works. The ship had long been the stuff of maritime legend, and the folks at the Mystic Seaport--who maintain and exhibit more than 500 historic vessels--figured there was no better way to honor the Amistad story than to build the ship anew. On March 25, the reborn boat will at last be launched. Says Quentin Snediker, the project's coordinator: "This vessel will be part ship and part floating museum...
Since construction of the Amistad got under way, more than 170 blacksmiths, sailmakers and carpenters have worked on the ship, often using such traditional tools as sharp chisels and broad axes. Of these laborers, only 28 have been full-time professional shipwrights. The rest have been students, volunteers and part-timers from as far away as Milan and Liverpool. The work has taken more than twice as long as it took to build the original. One reason: today's shipbuilders don't keep the sweatshop hours common among the workers on the original Amistad. Another reason is that the first...
...ship is eased into the water this week, it will break a ceremonial chain, while its bell peals 53 times--once for each African. The ship is to be christened not with champagne but with a mixture of waters drawn from Connecticut, Cuba and Sierra Leone, the home of the kidnapped Africans. The Amistad's first stop after it leaves Mystic in July will be Operation Sail 2000 in New York harbor on July 4. Once that coming-out party is done, it will tack off into coastal waters, sailing from ports in the U.S. and perhaps Cuba and Sierra...