Ernestina/Morrissey CampaignErnestina/Morrissey CampaignPeople concerned for the future of the Schooner Ernestina ex. Effie M. Morrissey and anxious to see her sailing and educational programs revived have started the Ernestina/Morrissey Campaign. It will publicize the ship's plight and seeks to raise public and private funding for the ship and programs. Reflecting the schooner's history, the group includes people with ties to ship building history, tall-ship sailing, commercial fishing, Arctic exploration, WWII Cmdr. Alexander Forbes, the Cape Verdean community, maritime history, music and art, education, economic development, and tourism.
We need your voice, help, ideas, and, yes, your donations as well. We appreciate anything you are able to do. If you wish to participate actively or need additional information, please, feel free to contact us at campaign@ernestina.org.
Read below about our petition drive, progress in the legislature, return of volunteers to the ship, funding for a haul and keel work, the need for your contributions, why we started this campaign, and how this situation developed. Become inspired once again by the call to preserve this heritage for all generations.
Thank you for caring.
Petition drive
The petition urges the Massachusetts Legislature and Governor to provide immediate and ongoing capital and basic operating funding for the preservation and maintenance of the Schooner Ernestina and the restoration of programs on and connected to the ship. Your execution of the petition will show the Legislature and Governor that Schooner Ernestina has value to many people within and outside the state, voting age and younger. The petition also urges Congress and President to recognize the national and international significance of the ship and provide appropriate help. Please, sign the petition form page online or download the petition PDF file so you can print it and circulate it to others for them to sign. Send them to the P.O Box whenever you have more than a few signatures or have held signed petitions for more than 14 days.
Progress in the Legislature
As of the second week in May, the Massachusetts House of Representatives had adopted a budget for the Fiscal Year 2007 (July 1, 2006 to June 30, 2007). The budget contains a so-called earmark authored by Rep. Antonia Cabral for $175,000 in the State Parks budget line, 2810-0100. It also contains an earmark authored by Rep. Eric Turkington for $185,000 in the Tourism, Cultural Development and Arts line, 7007-0900. The latter provision has potentially important significance because it recognizes, as does the Schooner Ernestina Commission enabling legislation, that the ship has important cultural and tourism value to the people of the state.
The Massachusetts Senate Ways and Means Committee will announce its own budget proposal on Monday, May 15. The Senate will debate this bill beginning on May 22. The results in the House and Senate will then be combined in conference committee and sent to the Governor. Continued support throughout this legislative process is important. Anyone can contact or email legislators, but is especially important for those residing in Massachusetts to do so.
Volunteers back on the ship
Through the good offices of the National Park Service and Celeste Bernardo, Superintendent of the New Bedford Whaling National Historic Park volunteers were allowed onto the ship on Saturday, May 13. Much needed preventive maintenance and cleaning was done under the guidance of former crew and staff members and Annie McDowell, sole remaining member of the staff. Brian Shanahan, DCR's Southeastern Region director worked alongside the others.
Funding for a haul-out and keel work
A private individual and friend of the Schooner Ernestina has contributed $80,000 to the State which the State through DCR has agreed to match in Fiscal Year 2006. Subject to availability of the yard, the ship should be hauled during mid-June so that the crucial third phase of keel work can be done. Survey and certification inspection of the ship may reveal additional work which is needed and warranted. Some items are already known to us. It is very possible that additional funds will be needed to achieve Coast Guard certification and to restart sailing operations and programs. Your contributions as well as support for the petition will be needed.
Contributions
The Ernestina/Morrissey Campaign is collecting contributions in support of the repair, maintenance and operation of the ship and its programs. These contributions may be made through the Community Foundation of Southeastern Massachusetts. Go here to find out how to make your contribution. Beyond the immediate needs for repair of the ship and restoration of programs, the ship and programs will need future private contributions. As any educational, cultural or historic resource, it is not possible to collect all need funding from program and event fees. We can not expect public funding even if regularized to fill the entire gap. Your continuing monetary support is needed. We urge contributions through the Community Foundation to assure control of the funds remains outside of government strictures until a clear path to operations develops.
Since the fall of 2004, Schooner Ernestina ex. Effie M. Morrissey has sat at its New Bedford berth unrigged, without Coast Guard certification, unable to sail, and largely unused. Without ongoing maintenance and regular use, the ship is in danger of serious deterioration. Worse in some ways is the loss of staff, crew and the value of educational, cultural, and other programs the ship supports when sailing.
The diverse history and recent program delivery described throughout this web site evidence the immense value which Schooner Ernestina can produce in her second century. Take a look at the Calendar for August, 2004, to see young people in the ECHO Program learning the heritage and excitement of being on a fishing schooner, a ship which brought some of their grandparents to the United States, which had explored in the Arctic Ocean and Greenland, and which could take them to explore marine life,science and the environment in Buzzards Bay. Look at earlier years to see overnight transit sails, festivals with thousands visiting the ship daily, day sails, special events, and onshore educational and cultural programs throughout the years.
Operating support from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts dropped starting with Fiscal Year 2003. There has been no capital funding for Fiscal 2005 and 2006 and operating funding only to maintain a core staff of two and minimal maintenance operations. In FY 2003, foundation and private giving exceeding $210,000 picked up the slack. In 2004, the New Bedford Whaling Museum and the New Bedford Oceanarium used an existing ECHO grant to fund the second part of a three-phase rebuilding of the timbers supporting the ship's keel and to run highly successful programs for 5,723 persons, mostly youth.
State support fell from a combined annual average of $454,000 in the five fiscal years before FY2004, to less than $250,000 that year and $150,000 in each of the following years. The uncertainty in funding made planning for programs and completion of capital maintenance impossible. As a direct result, the third program year of ECHO grant activities had to be done on another ship brought from outside Massachusetts. Program fees, grants and contributions averaging more than $300,000 per year have been lost.
Schooner Ernestina is unique among the surviving Grand Banks fishing schooners. The Ernestina is one of the oldest Essex-built schooners afloat, the oldest remaining Grand Banks schooner built in the U.S., a prime example of the schooner-based dory fishing fleet which played a key role in the commercial fishing industry and economy of the northeastern United States and maritime Canada, a coastal packet in Newfoundland and an Arctic Ocean explorer under Capt. Robert Bartlett, a naval supply and charting vessel in WWII under Capt. Bartlett and Cmdr. Alexander Forbes, a trans-Atlantic and inter-island packet from Cape Verde and the last sailing vessel in regular service to bring immigrants to this country, the Official Vessel of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, proven platform for cultural and heritage community support, tourism, environmental, cultural, arts, music, and science education, and a living example of the challenge and craft of constructing and sailing wooden tall ships.
At the 1982 ceremony marking the gift of Schooner Ernestina from the People and the Republic of Cape Verde to the People of the United States, Laura Pires Hester, a staunch supporter, said, "It has human history, universal history," a message that is "trans-national, trans-ethnic. What it can tell us about is the possibility of what people can do together." The Cape Verdean Ambassador added a wish that the ship may, "forever sail on the winds of hope, ever to remind us of the boundless possibilities of human understanding and cooperation." What better way to summarize the value which the public, especially young people, can gain by sailing on this ship.
We need your voice, help, ideas, and, yes, your donations as well. We appreciate anything you are able to do. If you wish to participate actively or need additional information, please, feel free to contact us at campaign@ernestina.org.
Ernestina/Morrissey Campaign
P.O. Box 294
Fairhaven, MA 02719