Smooth sailing for Pilgrim ship’s $7.5 million face-lift

PLYMOUTH, Mass. — If you’re a fan of the Mayflower II, here’s something that will float your boat.

A year after craftsmen embarked on an ambitious effort to restore the rotting replica of the ship that carried the Pilgrims to the New World in 1620, the work “is going really great,” project manager Whit Perry says.

Britain built the vessel and sailed it to the U.S. as a gift of friendship in 1957. Usually it’s moored in Plymouth Harbor, where more than 25 million visitors have boarded it over the past six decades. But over the years, the elements, aquatic organisms and insects took their toll.

It’s now in dry dock at the Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard at Connecticut’s Mystic Seaport, getting a $7.5 million makeover in time for 2020 festivities marking the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrim landing.

Whit Perry, director of maritime preservation and operations at Plimoth Plantation, said the ship now has more than 100 new frames and floor timbers inside its hold, and work is about to start on the outside of the ship.

Currently, he said the workers have been spraying the boat with salt water and an antifungal agent.

“As we put the ship back together, we try to keep the humidity up with misters so it doesn’t dry out too much,” he said. “We also have to leave a little play on the new planking beneath the waterline so it doesn’t buckle when the ship returns to the water and the wood starts to swell. It’s not an exact science.”

Perry also said the boat’s 20 workers found evidence of Teredo worms, a mollusk that can grow up to three feet long and eat wood.

“On the bottom of the keel, there’s something called a “worm shoe” — a 4-inch-thick piece of wood that runs the whole length of the ship,” Perry said. “It lets the worms have a field day but not get into the main structure of the boat. That’s where we found evidence of worms. The ship itself is OK.”

In the meantime, the makeover is on budget and the ship is scheduled to leave Mystic Seaport by late spring or early summer of 2019, Perry said.

“Sailing the Mayflower II back to Plymouth is going to be quite a spectacle. Seeing the ship back under sail is going to be a beautiful sight,” said Perry.