In December 1773, colonists pitched chests of English tea off three American merchant ships moored in Boston Harbor in one of America's earliest tax protests.
Now, 238 years later, a Rockport shipwright named Leon Poindexter is working to bring the ships back to life.
Since 2004, Poindexter and crews at the Gloucester Marine Heritage Center and then at the Gloucester Marine Railways on Rocky Neck have been working to restore, refit, and build full 80-foot-long replicas of the three ships boarded during the Boston Tea Party.
Their work is part of the Boston Tea Party Museum's rebuilding effort, scheduled to carry through next June. The museum caught fire and closed in 2001, then was torn down in 2007.
The Tea Party Museum initially had only a replica of the Beaver, but as part of the rebuilding project, the museum commissioned Poindexter and crew to build the full three ships — the Beaver and the Eleanor for the June 2012 opening of he new museum, and a replica of the Dartmouth as an addition down the road.
There was a problem, however. Poindexter says no one knows for sure what the three ships looked like. But the restoration crew did a bit of research and found ships built on the same rivers and in the same areas as the three tea party ships.
Poindexter said he took designs of 1700s cargo ships, and inspiration from ships such as the USS Colombia and the London — built near and in the same time period as the three.
He said boats built for a specific purpose and built during the same time tend to look alike. Fishing schooners built in Essex during certain periods, for instance, share similar designs and features. The merchant ships, Poindexter said, were the 18-wheelers of the day, and thousands sailed the Atlantic.
"All 18-wheelers look the same," he said.
Poindexter drew the design for the museum's new replica Beaver — the old one had been a 103-year-old ship in its own right — from the Colombia. The Colombia, famous for braving the Pacific Northwest, carried the U.S. flag across the seas. And because of its unique role and national significance, the government kept documents of what it looked like. The Beaver was owned by the same family that owned the Dartmouth, and both ships were used as whaling vessels, as well as tea merchant vessels.
Poindexter used the London, a tea ship that landed in Charleston, S.C., and was later sold to the Royal Navy, as a model for the Eleanor.
The replica Eleanor is being built from the guts of the 1936 dragger the Vincie N., which fished out of Gloucester for 50 years until it was no longer seaworthy. The actual Eleanor was owned by John Rowe — the man for whom Rowe's Wharf in Boston is named.
Poindexter said his crew won't start work on the Dartmouth until the other ships are afloat and at the Tea Party Museum.
Poindexter said that the ships involved in the Boston Tea Party were built on American shores and were American vessels, not English ones. Each of the three stretched about 80 feet long, and had a crew of 8-12 men, who, aside from the captain, slept in the cargo hold.
Poindexter has restored historic vessels for more than 25 years, and he said the smallest boat he's worked on was 50 feet long.
Before turning his life to building boats, he worked as a photographer for the Christian Science Monitor.
The presence of the multiple ships, said Poindexter, will add to the Tea Party Museum's efforts to present re-enactments. With only one ship, museum officials said, people thought that only one ship was present the night of the actual tea party. The full complement, the museum believes, will provide viewers with a more complete understanding of the event.
"The visitors will see what they (the onlooking crowds) saw that night," said Poindexter.
Steven Fletcher may be contacted at 1-978-283-7000 x3455, or sfletcher@gloucestertimes.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevengdt.
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