Great news!  The Massachusetts of Department of Conservation and Recreation has signed a contract with Boothbay Harbor Shipyard for $6,048,025 for the restoration of the schooner Ernestina, ex-Effie M. Morrissey.   As we posted in July, private donors, Bob Hildreth and Gerry Lenfest, contributed $2.8 million, more than matching the State of Massachusetts’ $2.5 million contribution to the project.  The Schooner Ernestina-Morrissey Association has also raised a considerable sum toward the refurbishment of the schooner. The restoration is expected to start this winter and take around two years. The work will allow the 120-year-old schooner, a National Historic Landmark and Massachusetts’ official tall ship, to to sail for the first time since 2004.

As reported by the Bangor Daily News: Launched on Feb. 1, 1894, the vessel, originally called the Effie M. Morrissey and owned by Capt. William E. Morrissey and the John F. Wonson Co. of Gloucester, was named after Morrissey’s daughter.

Capt. Robert Bartlett, a Newfoundland-born seafarer and friend of North Pole explorers Robert E. Peary and Matthew Henson, bought the schooner in 1926.

Among its many voyages under Bartlett, the schooner regularly was used to carry Arctic explorers through icy northern seas. In 1940, the schooner sailed to within 578 miles of the North Pole — the farthest north any sailing vessel has ever reached, according to the website.

After Bartlett’s death in 1946, the vessel was sold to a pair of brothers who planned to sail her to Tahiti. But a 1947 fire in New York, which caused the vessel to sink under the weight of water used to douse flames, scuttled that plan.

In 1948, Henrique Mendes of the Cape Verde Islands bought the schooner and renamed it Ernestina after his daughter.

Since then, the vessel has undergone multiple restorations and participated in tall ship events in the United States and other nations.