Pilot cutter exponent Luke Powell is getting together a project to rescue and rebuild the 1868 109ft merchant schooner Rhoda Mary, which has lain on mud at Hoo on the Medway for many decades.
She was financed by the old 64-share system in which communities shared in the profits of building a ship, and built near Falmouth in Cornwall by a shipyard owned by John Stephens of Devoran, and designed by William Foreman Ferris.
The plan is to salvage the vessel this spring and move her to Cornwall, where the work will begin.
Author, researchwer and director of the National Maritime Museum Basil Greenhill said that: ‘This vessel, a relatively large schooner of 130 tons gross, was to be famous for her speed along all the west coast of England as long as she remained afloat. Her speed came from her narrow beam, for she was less than twenty-two feet wide, from her fine run and her raked and flaring clipper bow. She had a rake on her stem of over twenty degrees. The Rhoda Mary was a work of some genius.’
I think it sounds like a great idea. Read more here, here and here.