Pioneer

Built at Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, in 1885, Pioneer originally carried sand from the mouth of Delaware Bay to an iron facility in Chester, Pennsylvania. Ten years later she was re-rigged as a schooner when the sloop rig lost favor because its large single sail required more crew members than the smaller sails of a two-masted rig and was therefore less economical. Before paved roads, two-masted schooners served as delivery trucks for coastal communities, carrying cargos such as lumber and stone from the islands of Maine, brick on the Hudson River, and oyster shell on the Chesapeake Bay. Although almost all American cargo sloops and schooners were wooden, Pioneer was built with a wrought iron hull in what was then the country’s center of iron shipbuilding. She was the first of only two cargo sloops built in this country and is the only American merchant sailing vessel built with an iron hull still in existence. By 1930, when new owners moved her from the Delaware River to Massachusetts, she had been fitted with an engine and no longer used sails, and she was eventually abandoned. In 1966 she was sold to Russell Grinnell, Jr., of Gloucester, Massachusetts, who rebuilt her hull with steel plating, restored the schooner rig, and used her in his dock building business. After his death in 1970, Pioneer was donated to the museum and, with a crew of professionals and volunteers, carries the general public, private charters, social service groups, and school groups on tours of New York Harbor and on spring and fall coastwide tours.

New York, New York · United States