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Visiting apprentices learn from Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum shipwrights

The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum recently had the opportunity to strengthen its international connections and share knowledge of traditional boatbuilding skills with an even broader audience.

Thanks to a partnership with Skol ar Mor, a maritime school in France, two shipwright apprentices—Martin Bogaerts and Emeline Marc—spent five weeks in St. Michaels under the tutelage of CBMM’s master shipwrights.

“There’s really a deficit of skilled boatbuilders today, and even fewer trained on Chesapeake Bay wooden boats,” said CBMM Boatyard Manager Michael Gorman. “We’re happy that we have the opportunity to teach those skills and keep them alive in future shipwrights, and on an international basis.”

Beyond restoration and public programming, CBMM’s Shipyard works to pass fading maritime skills on to a new generation of wooden boatbuilders. The Shipwright Apprentice Program provides the skills and experience of a working boatyard and bridges the gap for those coming out of wooden boatbuilding schools and programs.

While here, Bogaerts and Marc received on-the-job training, a chance to learn about traditional Chesapeake Bay boatbuilding, and the opportunity to assist with the historic restoration of 1889 bugeye Edna E. Lockwood. The team is restoring CBMM’s queen of the fleet and National Historic Landmark Edna Lockwood by replacing her nine-log hull, in adherence to the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Historic Vessel Preservation. Shipwright apprentices working on the project are generously supported by the Seip Family Foundation and RPM Foundation. All work takes place in full public view through 2018, when Edna will be placed on the marine railway and launched at CBMM’s OysterFest in October.

To learn more about the Edna Lockwood restoration, visit ednalockwood.org. For more on CBMM, the shipwright apprentice program or upcoming shipyard programs, visit cbmm.org

Emeline Marc, left, and Martin Bogaerts, two students from French maritime school Skol ar Mor, spent the past five weeks learning from shipwrights and apprentices at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Md.