The main mast on the SSV Oliver Hazard Perry was stepped in a dockside ceremony on Wednesday at the Hinckley Company in Portsmouth, R.I. The 200′ tall ship is the first full-rigged ocean-going ship to be built in the United States in the last 110 years.
The mainmast towers 120’ above the deck of SSV Oliver Hazard Perry and is made up of three sections. The 65’ long lower section is made of steel. The upper two sections (called the topmast and t’gallant) are made of Douglas fir, which came from a private tree farm in Rainier, Oregon and was turned in Washington State on the largest spar lathe in North America. The ship’s foremast had been stepped earlier in the month and the mizzen mast was stepped Wednesday afternoon following the stepping of the main.
OHPRI has raised over $14 million toward the completion of SSV Oliver Hazard Perry and has $975,000 left to raise before the ship transitions into its operational phase for hosting education-at-sea programs next Spring.
SSV Oliver Hazard Perry, when completed, will be a Coast Guard-inspected and approved steel-hulled technologically sophisticated 21st Century ship. In addition to her three decks, modern galley and Great Cabin (where captains, in days of yore, entertained), Perry sports, among other things, high-end navigation and communication systems, a state-of-the-art science lab (designed under the guidance of the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography), and wheelchair accessibility (including accessible below deck staterooms, heads and a wheelchair lift). The Great Cabin will be used less for entertaining and more for education in its capacity as a classroom outfitted with monitors displaying real-time navigation and meteorological data. The other classroom space will house laptop computers (donated by Intel), interactive SMART boards (donated by Shanix Technologies, Inc.) and a well-stocked library.