The Sailing of the Sultana

One man's dream becomes the mission of an entire town

The schooner Sultana, an 18th-century sailing ship, once policed the waterways around Chesapeake Bay for Britain’s Royal Navy, enforcing tea taxes and searching out smugglers.

Nearly 250 years later, a replica of that ship still hoists its sails to cruise the bay, this time as a floating classroom, its crew frequently elementary-age children learning about Colonial history and sailing.

And persistence. And making dreams come true.

Indeed, the new Sultana began as a dream; first of one man, then of an entire town—Chestertown, Md.—which decided to build a reproduction of the 18th-century sailing ship, marking its ties to the sea. Three years, 150 volunteers, and about $1 million later, the Sultana stretches 97 feet in length, weighs 50 tons, and is a grand model of community spirit and dedication.

Drew McMullen, project director, remembers when John Swain, who had been building boats for 30 years, first proposed the idea in 1997.

“One day during lunch, he rolled out a picture and said, ‘Do you want to help me build this?’” McMullen says. “He had a vision of a teaching ship. I thought the idea was crazy, but intriguing.”

Swain’s plan had a specific boat in mind: a replica of the schooner Sultana, one of the most thoroughly documented sailing vessels from the Revolutionary period. “There was so much documentation on the Sultana that I knew it would be relatively easy to reproduce,” Swain says.

McMullen quickly agreed to help with fund raising and found an enthusiastic donor in Chester River Craft & Art, a private nonprofit organization based in Chestertown (pop. 4,746). Soon, volunteers from the town and beyond signed on, and the Sultana Project was born.

Dusting off the blueprints

All that remained of the original Sultana was paperwork: blueprints, captain’s logs, and the like. Pieced together, the paper trail told of a cargo schooner built in Boston in 1767 and purchased the next year by Britain’s Royal Navy to enforce the newly enacted tea taxes on the North American coast. For four years, the Sultana policed the waterways from Halifax to Chesapeake Bay, but her small size and light armaments put her at a disadvantage against American merchantmen, so the Sultana was retired from the Royal Navy in 1772 and eventually sold. Her eventual fate remains a mystery.

More than two centuries later, the dust was shaken off her blueprints, which had been stored in a London filing cabinet, and the Sultana began her unique resurrection.

Volunteers began gathering at a downtown Chestertown dirt parking lot in June 1998, transforming it into the Sultana shipyard. By October, construction was under way by professional shipwrights and volunteers who did everything from harvesting trees for the hull frames to painting.

“The shipyard was actually right in the middle of town, so a lot of people would just walk up and watch what we were doing,” McMullen says. “And a lot of them stayed on doing whatever jobs they could do. We ended up with an awesome bunch of people volunteering.

“Three quarters of the labor was all volunteer,” says McMullen, adding that workers came not only from Maryland, but from Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and beyond. “We had one guy come from Virginia and even a guy who flew in from Ohio to work with us.”

Indeed, volunteers gave about 75,000 hours, and more than 4,000 schoolchildren participated in raising the ship’s ribs, organizers estimate. (Ribs are the timbers that branch out from a ship’s keel to support its hull planking.)

Lorraine Whitehair of Chestertown volunteered from the beginning, at the urging of her granddaughter. “My granddaughter, Aly, lives in Westminster (a neighboring town), and when she found out they were looking for volunteers on this project, she volunteered us both,” Whitehair says with a laugh. “It’s been very rewarding. I am spending so much time with my granddaughter on a project that many people will benefit from.”

Her granddaughter, Aly Conran, now 11, has spent two weekends a month for three years working on the ship doing everything from hammering and sanding to painting. “I bugged my grandmother every time I talked to her about working on the Sultana. Finally, she gave in,” Aly says. “I wanted to meet new people, have fun, and to learn things about the bay, sailing ships, and how to work with other people. I wanted to tell people that I helped build a ship. How many kids can say that?”

Even before Sultana’s first rib was in place, the ship began to fulfill its educational mission by hosting more than 3,000 schoolchildren for hands-on instruction at every stage of the building process.

Up and running

In March 2001, Sultana gently was hoisted and lowered into the Chester River to begin her life as a floating classroom for Colonial and maritime history, environmental science, and sailing. The seaworthy ship welcomes folks young and old for teacher seminars, one-day programs, dockside programs, and even overnight adventures for up to five days.

Most of the volunteers who helped build Sultana now donate their time as crew and helpers under the direction of full-time paid crew members Capt. Gioia Blix, an experienced sailor, and Chris Cerino, director of education.

Sultana also takes part in Chestertown’s longtime tradition of re-enacting its own smaller version of the Boston Tea Party, in which Colonists dumped tea from three ships into Boston Harbor in protest of unfair taxation.

A handful of Chestertown residents likewise boarded the ship Geddes in 1774 and dumped its tea cargo into the Chester River to protest Britain’s closing of the Port of Boston following the Boston Tea Party. Chestertown’s modern day tea party, which attracts thousands from across the country, now features its own tall ship, much to the relief of Karen Smith and other tea party organizers.

“Do you know how hard it is to find a tall ship that can come to Chestertown on Memorial Day weekend for the role of the Geddes year after year?” Smith asks. “It’s not easy. The tea party committee always talked about how nice it would be if we had our own ship, and now thanks to Sultana, it’s a reality.”

With the ship finished, Aly stands aboard the deck of Sultana, watching the gentle roll of the river rise and fall against the hull. The probability that, as the youngest member of the crew, the time may come when she may be the only living person left to recount firsthand how the ship came to be, is not lost on young Aly.

“Being part of this project has been so exciting,” says Aly thoughtfully. “It will be something really cool for me to tell my grandchildren.”

Tracy Leinberger-Leonardi writes frequently for American Profile.

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