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HISTORY
Our beloved Lettie
G. Howard is one of few surviving examples of the fishing schooners
once in wide use in the North Atlantic. She is a rare beauty with
classic fishing schooner lines, turning heads wherever she goes, and
is a designated National Historic Landmark. After an active life in
the fisheries of the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, Lettie G.
Howard arrived at South Street Seaport Museum in 1968. In 1994,
after an extensive two-year rebuild that restored her to her
original appearance, she was certified as a Sailing School Vessel by
the U.S. Coast Guard and began a new career carrying students of all
ages on life-changing voyages.
In 2013 she turned
120 years old and she’s as beautiful now as she was when she first
slid down the ways at Essex, Massachusetts in 1893. In celebration
of this milestone and with an eye to the future of this living
artifact, South Street Seaport Museum undertook a capital campaign
to raise funds for critical repairs and restoration—most
significantly her keelson, a structural element that runs from stem
to stern. Projects of this size and scope are periodic needs in the
maintenance of historic ships.
This project in
particular brought Lettie back into service as a Sailing School
Vessel, and working in collaboration with New York Harbor School, it
ensured her place in the lives of generations of student-sailors to
come. (Source: http://southstreetseaportmuseum.org)
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