Lettie G Howard

The South Street Seaport Museum is pleased to announce an exciting new program opportunity for our beloved schooner Lettie G Howard - later in 2018 she will voyage to Lake Erie, embarking on an 2018-2019 programmatic collaboration with U.S. Brig Niagara and the Erie Maritime Museum. In May, Lettie will voyage via the Erie Canalexpanding the Seaport Museum’s celebration of the Canal’s bicentennialand offer regular programming out of Erie, PA. In Erie, Lettie will offer day ...programs to the community, school groups, and museum visitors, while Niagara makes her training voyages within the Great Lakes. In 2019, a semester program is planned in which Lettie will voyage south along the Atlantic Coast to the Caribbean Sea with high school students. Combining their efforts, the two museums will offer programming aboard Lettie both in Lake Erie and in the Atlantic and Caribbean. She will be back at South Street periodically during these voyages, and will have regular opportunities for our volunteers and members to sail aboard. Stay tuned as these opportunities are developed. Continuing Lettie’s voyaging program and joining forces with our partners in Erie is a win for both organizations and for the vessel. As the Seaport Museum focuses its efforts on repairs from Hurricane Sandy, restoration of the lightship Ambrose, full activation of the ship Wavertree, and capital projects to bring the Museum back to full public access, Lettie will be actively sharing our mission in Lake Erie and the Atlantic Basin. Upon her return to South Street, she will once again offer her renowned and award-winning programming in New York and farther afield. This collaboration is one of two important initiatives South Street Seaport Museum will undertake in 2018 related to the Erie Canal Bicentennial, each of which will have one of our vessels voyaging in the Erie Canal corridor. The 1930 tug W.O. Decker will embark on a four-month voyage in collaboration with the Corning Museum of Glass, celebrating 200 years of the Erie Canal and 150 years of glassmaking at Corning, NY. Expect Decker back at South Street in September.

South Street Seaport Museum's schooner Lettie G Howard returned to Gloucester, Massachusetts (her original 1893 port of call) this Labor Day Weekend for the ann...ual Gloucester Schooner Festival! Having sailed brilliantly down from Maine with a Sailing Adventure program in collaboration with Tall Ships Portland, Maine, and teenage trainees aboard, a handful of volunteers from South Street and Gloucester joined the crew for the race weekend. The Friday and Saturday preceding, the hard-working crew practiced their sail handling and maneuvering outside of Gloucester Harbor having some competitive fun with the other schooners. Sunday's race was postponed for foul weather, and the crew and trainees took the opportunity to make a pilgrimage to Lettie's birthplace, the A.D. Story shipyard, now the Essex Shipbuilding Museum. The weather cleared up for great racing conditions on Monday and Lettie took off charging from the start line faster than any other boat in her class. As the wind laid down for a short while at the halfway mark, some other schooners were able to catch up and take the lead, and at the end, Lettie finished in third place for the famed Esperanto Cup this year. While a first place finish would have been amazing, the crew relished in praise and admiration from the residents of Gloucester and the crews of the other schooners, who have said they haven't seen the ship in such great shape and sailing so well in many years. Congratulations to the tireless crew, both on board and ashore, who work to keep this National Historic Landmark schooner sailing, and thank you to Maritime Gloucester for your hospitality!

A memorable look back to this summer in Narragansett Bay where Lettie G. Howard had been sailing for three weeks in a collaborative sail training program with S.A.L.T.Y. (Seamanship and Leadership Training for Youths) and the Rhode Island National Guard. The program, called Gold Star Teens, is specifically for teenagers from the USA and the UK who have lost an immediate family member in combat. While the teens share that common bond, they became immersed in a challenging environment and learned to take care of the ship and each other while developing new skills such as sailing, navigating, marlinespike seamanship, small boat handling, and more. At the end, the teens and crew went through a few hardships and many joys, finding themselves enriched and accomplished in a way rarely found these days.

Lettie G. Howard has just returned back to South Street Seaport Museum from another amazing five-day Sailing Adventure program, which took the crew and trainees all over Long Island Sound and back, taking them out of the ordinary and experiencing the extraordinary!

Sailing Adventures are designed for rising students entering grades 10 - 12. Check them out on the South Street Seaport Museum’s website! goo.gl/YzKZg9

Last Saturday and yesterday we had a lot of help from volunteers with building the framing for LETTIE's winter cover. This is an important step in getting the ship ready for winter, as it will allow work to happen on deck out of the wind and snow. Thank you to all who showed up to help with this important task!

Yesterday the crew and volunteers got the main topmast down to deck before lunch and after lunch floated the spar over to the Pier. All of LETTIE's spars, save for the main boom, were loaded in to WAVERTREE for the winter, and we doubled up all of LETTIE's dock lines in preparation for winter. A huge thanks to the volunteers who helped out yesterday. We really could not have done it without you! As the sailing season is done for us, we will be back to working on Saturdays, so if you couldn't make it down to help yesterday there will be more opportunities to help out on LETTIE.

The crew spent the day continuing with downrigging and getting the ship ready for winter maintenance. Tomorrow we will be sending down the main topmast and we NEED THE HELP OF OUR VOLUNTEERS to make it happen. Keeping with tradition, we use only the lines, blocks, and windless that we have on the vessel to help bring the topmast down. This is an interesting and exciting process and a great opportunity to learn more about rigging and moving heavy things around. We will be mustering at 0900 on WAVERTREE, so come on down and help bring the topmast down!

What a productive day we had today! We got the mains'l unbent and stowed; and downrigged and floated over to the Pier the jumbo club, fore boom and gaff, and main gaff. We are downrigging at a quick pace and should be taking the main topmast down next Saturday, for those volunteers interested to see how we take down spars from aloft with just the gear we have on the vessel. A big thanks to the volunteers who broke off from their other projects to help us move our massive mains'l. We are back to working for volunteer Saturdays, so come on down and get (re)acquainted with this fantastic schooner!

Photo by Paul White, @perpetualfootsteps on Instagram. Paul captured a great shot of us during the Connecticut Maritime Festival parade of sail.

On Saturday WAVERTREE was welcomed back after an extensive restoration to South Street Seaport Museum with great ceremony and fanfare. LETTIE had a group of freshmen from New York Harbor School who got to be part of this historic event by helping maneuver LETTIE before, during, and after the parade. We are glad to have WAVERTREE back at South Street and are looking forward to sharing her with New Yorkers and tourists alike. All photos, except where noted, were taken by LETTIE's bosun, Lisa Kolibabek.

On this day in 1968, our National Historic Landmark schooner Lettie G Howard found a home at South Street! Lettie is the last surviving "Fredonia model" fishing... schooner, a type of fisherman once widely used along the Atlantic seaboard from Maine to Texas. She was built in 1893 in Essex, Massachusetts, where the majority of the schooners for the fishing fleets of Gloucester, Boston, and New York were built. Beginning in 1901 she worked in the Gulf of Mexico, and in 1923 she was rebuilt and renamed Mystic C., after her new owner's hometown. When Lettie arrived at the Seaport she was originally thought to be a boat named "Caviare" but subsequent research revealed her true origins. The Historic Ships Association purchased her in 1966, believing her to be "Caviare." In 1968 she was sold to the Seaport Museum, after some years and much research later, she was properly renamed Lettie G. Howard. Between 1991 and 1993 the Museum extensively rebuilt and restored her to her original 1893 appearance. She was the first vessel to be restored to the new Secretary of the Interior’s Standard. Originally outfitted for fishing, she is now a certificated Sailing School Vessel, which allows her to sail with students of all ages on educational voyages. During her time with the Museum she has voyaged as far as Venezuela with students on board! Photo by Mark Krasnow Photography during this past 2016 Gloucester Schooner Festival.