Gloucester is home to the oldest seafaring support business of its kind, and the oldest continuously operating marine railway in the country. The Gloucester Marine Railways, a shipyard at the tip of Rocky Neck that hauls large boats onto drydock for repairs, maintenance and storage, has been of service to thousands of schooners, commercial and pleasure boats for 152 years. Owned by five of the city's fishery founding families, it has been managed for the past 13 years by Viking Gustafson.
Those timeless tasks have been performed on boats from Captain Cook's that explored the Arctic in 1907, the Nantucket Lightship, and, right now, the Boston Tea Party Museum's replica of the Beaver, which has been in Gloucester drydock for restoration since October.
Gustafson said she and the corporate owners — descendents of the Brancaleone, Parisi, Novello, Lovasco and Maceri families that bought the yard in 1953 — have hunkered down to streamline their business and adjust to the declining fishing industry, while fighting the regulations that hurt the fleet.
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.