Group tries to re-create Niagara success
by Robb Frederick October 19, 2009
Pity the boys of the HMS Detroit. Twice now they have lost their ship.
The first time was at the Battle of Lake Erie.
The Detroit fired the first shot on Sept. 10, 1813, lobbing a 24-pound cannonball toward the Lawrence, the flagship of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry.
It missed.
The second ball hit. It splintered the Lawrence's bulwark.
The Detroit had the advantage of longer, more accurate guns. By day's end, four of every five men on Perry's ship would be wounded or dead.
The commodore evacuated, rowing to the Niagara, which had been kept safely out of range. And that changed the battle.
The Detroit's captain panicked at the sight of the Niagara. He turned his ship, hoping to show a fresh bank of guns. But in the process, he struck the Queen Charlotte, another of the six British ships in the lake that day.
Perry took them both.
Modern history would add another insult. In 1983, a group of Canadian volunteers, led by a car dealer, decided to build a 130-foot working replica of the HMS Detroit. The original was built in the royal dockyard at Amherstburg, Canada; the committee believed a replica -- the tallest of the Great Lakes' tall ships -- would lure tourists to their small Ontario community.
The Canadian government provided a $700,000 grant. The Amherstburg mayor delivered $710,000 more. The Ford Motor Co. cast the cannons, and an airport donated oak trees, which were cut for the guns' supports.
The new ship has a steel hull. It cost the group $1.2 million. The woodwork and electronics were to cost $3 million more.
The group couldn't do it. They defaulted on their debts.
For six years, the steel hull sat at a Canadian shipyard.
It was sold in 2008. The buyer, the nonprofit Tall Ships Rhode Island, paid just $319,000.
The Rhode Island group wants to offer educational day-sails and college-level sea-based training. They plan to earn money by taking the ship to other ports.
"They want to copy the Erie model, which is to create an iconic structure that brings in tourists and tourism dollars," said Caleb Pifer, a board member of the American Sail Training Association. He also has worked with the Flagship Niagara League.
The new group had the steel hull towed to Bowen's Wharf, in Newport, R.I. They re-christened the ship, giving it the name of a famous naval hero educated and buried there:
Oliver Hazard Perry.
The Perry ship is far from finished.
The fuel and water tanks are in, and work on the bow thruster and rudder system has begun. But without the rigging, the masts and the 14,000 square feet of sailcloth, the ship is more barge than bottle model.
"We're basically in the same stage as when we got it here," said Bart Dunbar, the chairman of the board of directors for Tall Ships Rhode Island. "We have the hull, and we've done all the engineering and design work. When the time comes to bid it out, we know exactly what we want to do."
The Perry will have 18 sails spread over three masts. They will be anchored by 6 miles of lines, blocks and pins.
Twin diesel engines will turn the ship's propellers. Two generators will supply additional power.
The cost of operating the ship could top $1 million a year. To earn that, the Perry will need to be at sea at least 30 weeks of each year.
"The Perry folks are counting on their earned income and their business model to carry them through once the ship is built," Pifer said. "The trick is getting it built."
Construction of the Perry will cost $5.7 million. The ship's backers have just a third of that in hand.
Erie had an advantage, in that the state paid for the construction of the flagship Niagara, and continues to support the ship's operations.
The need for that money was never clearer than this summer: When the state cut its contribution, the Flagship Niagara League considered keeping the brig anchored for 2009.
The Perry, by comparison, will be privately owned. No lawmakers will feel pressure to fund it if the program slows.
"If we had all the money, we could do it in 14 months," Dunbar said. "But we don't. And this is not the best climate for raising private funds.
"We have to hope, as we get closer, that we will get some more support."
His group plans to finish the ship in 2011. That would allow the Perry to take part in the bicentennial events for the War of 1812.
"It's pretty critical that they get out for that," Pifer said. "They need to be seen out on the lakes, in Erie and at Put-in-Bay."
The change to Perry's name was a strange echo of the ship's original history. Dunbar, for one, would prefer a different ending: After its capture at the Battle of Lake Erie, the Detroit was added to the U.S. Navy. But the ship was so badly damaged that it never sailed again. It was brought to Erie and was sold in 1825.
ROBB FREDERICK can be reached at 870-1733 or by e-mail.
Source: GoErie.com