The Spirit of South Carolina is a hard ship to forget if you’ve ever seen her. 140 feet of hand-built wooden schooner, modeled on an 1879 Charleston Harbor pilot boat, originally constructed in Ansonborough Field in front of anyone who walked by between 2001 and 2007.
Then she went quiet. Financial trouble. Insufficient maintenance. The ship sat out of the water for years.
Within days, that’s set to change.
Where she’s been.
For the last few months, a team of shipwrights from Maine has been parked at Stevens Towing Company’s shipyard on Yonges Island, working alongside local volunteers. Planks devoured by seaworms got replaced. Rotting wood at the top of a mast and along the rudder got patched. Worn metal hardware got refabricated. Hull got fresh paint. Masts got fresh oil.
Wooden boatbuilder Rachel Bergquist, working on the rudder patch, summed up the ship’s bones in the Post & Courier: “She’s very stoutly built. Nothing was reduced or sawed down to save a buck. She can sail around the world no problem.”
The rudder patch alone weighed 300 pounds. They cut it from local live oak with a chainsaw, then craned it into place. Bergquist called it a “death piñata” mid-flight. (No casualties.)
Who’s running the show now.
Adam Reed has volunteered aboard the Spirit of South Carolina for three years without ever sailing on her. He’s now the executive director of the nonprofit that owns the ship.
His operational plan: re-establish the educational sailing programs the Spirit was originally built to deliver. Real students operating a real tall ship. He’s targeting schools with predominantly low-income students and schools located far from the coast.
“There shouldn’t be a barrier to entry,” Reed said.
The new board.
Hank Hofford chairs the new nonprofit board. Pierre Manigault, chairman of Evening Post Publishing (which owns the Post & Courier), sits on it. Tommy Baker and Michael Bennett — the businessmen who bought the ship at foreclosure auction in 2017 — have exited.
The calendar.
A soft launch is planned for June 1, marking 25 years since the keel was laid in Ansonborough Field. Then on June 28, the Spirit of South Carolina will play the role of a British warship attacking Fort Moultrie in a re-enactment of the Battle of Sullivan’s Island — part of America’s 250th anniversary programming.
Picture that for a second. A wooden Charleston-built schooner, restored from near-grounding, plays the part of an enemy ship attacking the fort that started its existence two and a half centuries ago. It’s a hell of a comeback storyline.
This is a summary of an article published in the Post & Courier. Click here if you’d like to read that article.
