State ship launched after three-year build

Nearly three years after beginning the largest construction project they had ever taken on, shipwrights at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum watched the roughly 43-tonne Maryland Dove being craned into the Miles River on 28 March, the biggest vessel to have been launched in St Michaels since 1904. It’s a major milestone in the project, which is due to be complete this spring. Maryland Dove, a two-masted vessel of 57ft (17.4m) is a representation of the late-17th-century trading ship that accompanied the first European settlers to what is now Maryland. The ship is owned by the state of Maryland and will be operated and maintained by the Historic St Mary’s City Commission. An earlier version of the ship, built in the 1970s by Cambridge’s Jim Richardson, was nearing the end of its useful life and decades of new research meant that a new ship could be designed to be a more historically accurate representation of the original Maryland Dove.

“I am incredibly proud of my team’s accomplishment” said CBMM’s lead shipwright, Joe Connor, who has managed the build from the start. “We have assembled some of the most talented shipwrights I’ve ever worked with, and we’re all looking forward to seeing the ship sail away.”