It's probably best not to think about the flock of satellites that will help guide the great sailing ship being built in Mystic, Conn. Construct a 19th century boat according to 19th century plans, equip it with 5,200 sq. ft. of 19th century-style sails, and you'd like to think its crew will be steering by the stars, not by some 21st century machines flying high overhead.
But the big wooden ship will indeed get an occasional hand from satellites--as well as from twin diesel engines and onboard radios. Yet for all these nods to the modern era, the 129-ft., twin-masted boat is a decidedly vintage vessel, and one with a decidedly historic name: Amistad.
For the past two years, shipwrights at the Mystic Seaport have been busily hammering together a $3.1 million re-creation of the Amistad, an otherwise unremarkable schooner that figured in a remarkable page in American history. In 1839 the ship was making a slave run in Cuban waters when the 53 kidnapped Africans it was carrying rose up in revolt. The mutiny was ultimately put down when the remaining crew secretly steered the boat to Montauk, N.Y., and the Africans were taken into custody. They eventually went free when the U.S. Supreme Court declared their enslavement illegal. More than a century and a half later, director Steven Spielberg told the tale on film--modern America's equivalent of a marble monument to the event.
Even before Spielberg's Amistad hit the screen, however, Mystic's Amistad was in the works. The ship had long been the stuff of maritime legend, and the folks at the Mystic Seaport--who maintain and exhibit more than 500 historic vessels--figured there was no better way to honor the Amistad story than to build the ship anew. On March 25, the reborn boat will at last be launched. Says Quentin Snediker, the project's coordinator: "This vessel will be part ship and part floating museum."
The boat that took two years to build took two dozen years to plan. The idea of re-creating the Amistad was first floated by Warren Marr, former editor of the N.A.A.C.P.'s national magazine, during the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations. That summer, harbors around the U.S. were bobbing with tall ships participating in Operation Sail, and Marr couldn't help noticing the underrepresentation of African Americans in the event. Rebuilding the Amistad, he figured, might be just the way to remedy that.
For more than 14 years, Marr worked to stir up interest--and find the financing--to get the project going. In 1990 he at last approached the Mystic Seaport for help; by 1998 a combination of state money and corporate donations allowed building to begin. "He found very interested ears when he came here," Snediker says.