ST MICHAELS, MD – The public is invited to help the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum celebrate its construction of the new Maryland Dove with a dock party!
CBMM’s St. Michaels, Md., campus opens at 10am on Saturday, May 28, and the festivities start at 11am. Food, drinks, and live music will be on site for guests to enjoy and CBMM’s shipwrights will give talks on rigging and the construction process throughout the day. At 2pm, officials from CBMM and Historic St. Mary’s City will lead us in a toast to the ship.
This event will also mark the return of drop-in cruises aboard 1920 buyboat WinnieEstelle, which depart from CBMM’s campus at 12:30pm, 1:30pm, and 2:30pm on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays throughout the summer. Boarding passes, which are limited, cost $10 for adults, $5 for CBMM members, $3 for children 6–17, and free for all member children and non-member children 5 and under.
Entrance to the Maryland Dove Dock Party itself is included with general admission and is free for CBMM members.
In 2018, it was announced that CBMM had been selected to build a brand-new Maryland Dove for Historic St. Mary’s City. The ship, a representation of the late 17th-century trading ship that accompanied the first European settlers to what is now Maryland, is owned by the state of Maryland, and 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.
Since that first announcement, construction of the iconic state ship has been the central focus of CBMM’s working Shipyard. Work over the past few years, all done in public view, has seen the new ship move from concept to reality, and Maryland Dove will now remain dockside for the final steps in its construction, and throughout the summer. Visit cbmm.org to learn more.
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~ Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum