Tag Archives: Blackjack
Blackjack – Oldest Friendship Sloop re-launched in Rockland
Over the past three years, the folks at the Sail, Power, and Steam Museum have been restoring a 118 year old vessel, Blackjack. Museum Founder, Captain Jim Sharp helped bring Blackjack back to life. The vessel was originally built by Wilbur Morse in Friendship, Maine. Sharp says sloops are symbolic of Maine’s fishery. “Everybody owned a Friendship Sloop. Wilbur Morse built more than 500 of them right here in Muscongus Bay, so they were used for everything at that time; all the fishing, it carried a man’s supplies out to the islands, and it would come to shore to attend church on Sunday’s,” explained Sharp. Video >click to read<14:55
Blackjack “Her keel is bent, her decks are rotting and her rigging is in tatters. But we will restore her for the state of Maine,”
A crowd of boating enthusiasts welcomed the arrival Dec. 2 of the newest addition to the Sail, Power and Steam Museum — a circa-1900 Friendship sloop. Noel March, the newly elected commodore of the Friendship Sloop Society, said the Blackjack may be one of the two oldest Friendship sloops in the world. Read the rest here 12:46
