I stepped into the shop of The Boothbay Harbor Shipyard to see how their replica of DISCOVERY was coming on. I walked around her at floor level. She looked massive with double-sawn frames of angelique and two-inch planking of wana. She is partly planked from the deck down and from the garboards up. I could see men inside setting up bulkheads. Her stem was a huge piece of angelique. David Stimson, General Manager, observed that in a confrontation, a dock would have a very hard time. Her bows are bluff. She would push the whole Atlantic ahead of her, but her stern tapers to a clean run. She would drag no quarter wave behind her.
I climbed the staging and went on deck. She looked much smaller than from below, partly because her topsides curve inward and she is narrower on deck than at the waterline. Because she is flush decked without heavy “castles” fore and aft, I could see the whole 48′ 10″ of her. I have been on yachts and fishing vessels bigger than that.
DISCOVERY’s spars are being made by Jim Elk in Southwest Harbor, and Nat Wilson in East Boothbay will do her sails and rigging. No definite date has been set for a launching.
As I watched her replica growing, I wondered what the original DISCOVERY had been doing in Chesapeake Bay in 1607, 13 years before the Pilgrims established Plymouth. With her larger consorts Godspeed and Susan Constant, she was setting up the first permanent English colony in America.
Earlier colonies had failed for at least four reasons:
On Dec. 20, 1606, DISCOVERY, Godspeed and Susan Constant sailed from London, all three under the command of Commodore Christopher Newport. John Ratcliffe was captain of DISCOVERY. The fleet spent miserable weeks rolling at anchor in the English Channel, eating up their supplies. Finally, in February 1607 they got a fair wind and ran south to the Canaries for food and water and a trade wind passage to Dominica in the West Indies, where they arrived on March 24. This was paradise to men who had been eating scantily off ship’s food, drinking stale water and living in the crowded `tween decks of small vessels. Fresh fruit, fresh meat, clean water and clean air cured dysentery and scurvy. Morale improved exponentially.
They sailed north through the islands and on April 26 made Cape Henry at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. Here they opened their sealed orders and found their Governing Council of seven included Captain Newport, Captain Ratcliffe, Edward Maria Wingfield, whom they elected president, and Bartholomew Gosnold, who in 1602 had led a colony to Maine and explored south to Cuttyhunk. Especially important was Captain John Smith, experienced campaigner on land and sea and remembered for having been saved by the Indian princess Pocahontas. He it was who saved the colony in the next two years.
The Council sent out exploring expeditions to find a suitable place to settle secure from Spanish attack and with deep water close to the shore. DISCOVERY undoubtedly had a part in these explorations along with shallops brought knocked down in the ships’ holds. Finally, the fleet tied up to trees off what became Jamestown and the voyage was over. DISCOVERY was used on coastal exploring and trading expeditions until she became lost in the mists of unrecorded history.
Her replica will lie at a wharf at Jamestown as an historical exhibit and make occasional voyages to towns and cities with interests in history.
Roger F. Duncan’s credits include A Cruising Guide to the New England Coast, Eastward, Dorothy Elizabeth and other books.