Transportation
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Built in 1885, Wavertree is the last full-rigged three-masted iron sailing ship in the world. Rather than being a unique or elite vessel, she was one of the many bulk cargo carriers that for centuries moved cargo, carried migrants, helped build cities, and exchanged ideas across the world's oceans, making possible the global connections that shaped modern economic systems, cultures, languages, and nations. She represents the many sister ships that called at New York and sailed onward to ports such as Hamburg, Hong Kong, Callao, Calcutta, Antwerp, Algoa Bay, Sydney, and Singapore, linking New York to a rapidly growing global trade network that made it the busiest port in the world and helping build both the city and America. After most such ships were scrapped, sunk, or otherwise lost, Wavertree's life as a museum ship began in 1968, she arrived from South America in 1970, and after a City of New York-funded restoration in 2015-2016 returned her to near-sailing condition for the first time since her dismasting in 1910, with the goal of eventually sailing again in New York Harbor.
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New York, New York · United States
