If you have never visited the Long Island Maritime Museum in West Sayville, you are missing a real experience, especially if you love boats and bay history. It sits on land with a great bay view and various historic buildings for displays and active boat restoration workshops. There is a huge building crammed with restored historic vessels. They also have many educational and entertaining programs for adults and children alike and their famous Seafood Festival and Halloween Boating Burning. But my main goal here is to talk about the restoration of the sloop Priscilla, as I discussed with the museum’s hard-working director, Terry Lister Blitman.
At this time, the Priscilla is being completely overhauled and refitted. She was originally built by Elisha Saxton in Patchogue and launched in 1888 for George Rhinehart, who used it to seed his oyster beds in Jamaica Bay. That’s 137 years ago. Though she has gone through many permutations in her long life, she is now a rare, completely functioning artifact of a long-gone era. She has been giving educational tours of the beautiful Great South Bay from her dock at the Snapper Inn in Oakdale for years.
2024-25 was chosen as the time to haul, examine, and refit her so that she could be back in the water to the delight of a new generation of passengers. You can see in the pictures accompanying that Priscilla has had most of her structure opened up and any problematic components restored or replaced to keep her in pristine sea-worthy condition.
It is important to keep in mind here is that Priscilla is a living sailing ship rather than a static onshore exhibit. You can see the team of professional shipwrights, under the direction of master shipwright Josh Herman who has restored and built replicas of historic boats including the Ida May, restoration work on the Christina, both of which sail in Oyster Bay, and the antique racing class yacht Ventura in Patchogue a new replica of a former vessel that sailed the Great South Bay. All these vessels are living educational tools.
While the parts of Priscilla lay out like a puzzle with pieces bound to get lost,(There’s always one missing!) I can guarantee it’s not so. I have watched Josh over the years as he worked his magic when I was on the crew of the Priscilla years back. Safety is always his concern and he is very methodical. A major component of the restoration is the replacement of the mast. The old mast was removed and a beautiful new mast is already on site. A section of old mast was cut into round slices to be decorated by known Long Island artists to help raise some funds to complete the restoration, but not nearly enough.
Every sailor knows to expect the unexpected and in the case of this historical treasure, the unexpected has occurred. With the tariffs imposed on Canadian lumber, there is a huge unexpected and dramatic rise in the specialized woods needed the complete the restoration properly, along with rises in the costs of every other component needed to complete the project. The government pull back cut back the availability of grants needed to complete Priscilla, all these unexpected government pullbacks couldn’t happen at a less inconvenient and heartbreaking time for Priscilla. It comes down to this. $80,000 must be raised to get her back to where she was meant to be,
sailing the Great South Bay with a group of guests learning about the history and environment surrounding them.
We beg you to help by donating via
“GoFundMe” to complete this necessary work!
Here is the link:
https://www.gofundme.com/
f/help-preserve-priscilla-national-historic-oyster-sloop
Open the link and you can donate right there. You can also stop by or send donations to “Long Island Maritime Museum, 88 West Avenue, West Sayville, NY, 11796.”
“Hey, we’re both beggin’ here!”
Mark C. (Sea) Nuccio AND Captain Eddie Smith (Retired) Famous writers for LI Boating World.
Copyright 2025 By Mark C. (Sea) Nuccio
All rights reserved.
Send comments or curses to “mark@designedge.net”