July 3, 2015 — MARYLAND — Faded, dusty boat paraphernalia littered a warehouse on the Eastern Shore as a small group of people worked Thursday to lift the anchor on an old fishing vessel and send it home.
For a decade, the skipjack George W. Collier lay at the end of a long road in Cape Charles, literally and figuratively.
The 72-foot-long boat was built in Maryland in 1900 and was once used as an oyster fishing vessel, able to easily navigate shallow waters. But when engine-powered boats replaced skipjacks, the George W. Collier was left on a mud bank. Fewer than 30 of the traditional boats remain today.
The Allegheny Beverage Corp. found and restored the vessel in the ’60s and in 1978 donated it to the city of Norfolk, where it was renamed after the city and used in boat parades and to train teens. It even made a journey to New York City for the 100th birthday of the Statue of Liberty.
But the Norfolk City Council left the boat, in disrepair, to a nonprofit in Cape Charles 10 years ago, when even a $110,000 donation was not enough to repair it.
Thus, the George W. Collier found its way to the back of a Wako Chemicals building in Cape Charles, where it sat on a bed of grass, slowly decaying while the nonprofit lacked the resources to restore it. Its sister, the E.C. Collier, lives at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.
On Thursday, the skipjack was finally sent to a shipyard, on its way to being restored in its birthplace on Deal Island in Maryland.
Read the full story at the The Virginian Pilot