Sat. May 14 2016

1030 am Historic Bath Visitor Center,

Bath NC

By Gill Hookway- Jones and Bill Dunn, volunteers

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• British Colonial Customs

Service

•EXPLORATION AND

SETTLEMENT

• SHIPBUILDING in

• WASHINGTON 1760-1850

• THE CIVIL WAR & AFTER

• INTO THE 20TH CENTURY2

1585 Sir Richard

Grenville

sponsored

exploration of

present day

Beaufort & Craven

counties. Thomas

Harriott made the

first record of

Washington when

he published his

travels in1590

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Watercolorist John Waite went with Raleigh’s expedition

to Virginia in 1584, shows ships approaching and Indians in

canoes on Pamlico Sound. Painted 1585-86 John White

shows North Carolina’s native Americans fishing.5

The Queen Elizabeth II, the replica now in Manteo’s Festival Park on

Shallowbag Bay has sailed to Washington on the Pamlico before. It

was modeled after sailing vessels that were sent to Roanoke Island in

1584 and 1587. The Silver Chalice is its small workcraft

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Sloops were usually relatively small vessels fitted "with a single

mast, rigged with a fore-and-aft rigged mainsail and a jib

foresail”

Blackbeard’s Adventure,-a Jamaica Rigged sloop, EXAMPLE a Bermuda Rigged Sloop Privateer on the

Spanish Main, and Continental Sloop Providence . Artist: W. Noland van Powell . this configuration was

ideal for the Carolina coast and the Caribbean because sloops rigged with fore-and-aft-sails could more

easily beat against the prevailing easterly winds.

Labelled Sloop Sail Plan from Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language

(1908)8

BARBADOS PERIAUGER

COLONIAL SHALLOP WORKBOAT

HERTFORD REPLICA PERIAUGER

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As early as the 1760s, the construction of single-mast sloops gave way to turning out small

multi-mast schooners, most often two-masters. The town was a critical supply center for

the Continental Army when Wilmington, Savannah and Charleston were blockaded. By

1783, a visitor said Washington had 40 houses, and the chief occupation was "the building

of small ships and vessels." Alexander Hamilton and the Washington port collector Nathan

Keais funded building of one of the first ten Continental revenue cutters authorized by

George Washington. Diligence was launched in Washington in 1791, and from then until

the Civil War, its yards turning out at least two or three vessels each year. A free black

named Hull Anderson owned one of the shipyards there between 1830 and 1841 and owned

four slaves who were engaged in his shipbuilding activity. By 1850 Beaufort County was

probably the most important shipbuilding center in the state.

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DILIGENCE I was one of the first ten U.S. Revenue Cutters. Built in 1791 in Washington, North

Carolina, DILIGENCE I was commissioned and outfitted in New Bern, NC prior to moving to her

permanent homeport of Wilmington in October of 1792. DILIGENCE I distinguished herself by

seizing a noted French smuggler in the Cape Fear area. The cutter's original master, Thomas Cooke,

and his son, mysteriously disappeared in 1796 never to be seen again. Purportedly, the Cooke's

were killed in retribution for interdicting smugglers. The original Cooke home on 4th Street near

St. Mary's church in Wilmington is reportedly haunted by the soul of Thomas Cooke.

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THANKS TO rlm FOR ANTEBELLUM PORT VESSEL CLEARANCES!

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AKA THE RECENT UNPLEASANTNESS

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Two Fowle schooners in Barbados

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a floating classroom

based in New Bern.

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1998-2000 Castle Island Field work, Underwater Archeological Site Report BY Bradley

Rodgers and Nathan Richards, ECU Maritime Studies, Greenville NC. Online pdf download.

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Terrapin Smack

Pythagoras Schooner, 3 guns and 35 man crew, captured by the Bream

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Our museum project space is open today

9:30 – 1:30 and every Saturday so please

come by and see our current exhibits:

•Washington Riverfront Mural 1880-1910

•Port of Washington Permanent Exhibit

•Lifestyles of Washington 1900-1915

•300th Anniversary Port of Bath 1716-1790

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