Pioneer

Pioneer. , Pioneer was originally built at Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania in1885 to carry sand from the mouth of the Delaware Bay, to an iron facility in Chester, Pennsylvania. She was re-rigged as a schooler ten years late when the sloop rig lost favor, primarily because the large single sail took more crew members to handle than the small sails of the two-masted rig and was therefore less economical., In the days before paved roads, two-masted schooners were the delivery trucks of their era, carrying various cargos between coastal communities: lumber and stone from the islands of Maine, brick on the Hudson River, and oyster shell on the Chesapeake Bay., Almost all American cargo sloops and schooners were wood, but because she was built in what was then this country’s center of iron shipbuilding. Pioneer has a wrought iron hull. 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 was no longer using sails. She was eventually abandoned. In 1966, she was sold to Russell Grinnell, Jr. of Gloucester, Massachusetts. He rebuilt her hull with steel plating, restored the schooner rig, and used her in his dock building business. He died in 1970 and that same year Pioneer was donated to the museum, where, manned by a crew of professionals and volunteers, she takes the general public, private charters, social service and school groups on tours of New York Harbor and on spring and fall coastwide tours.,

Extreme length: 102’ – Construction: Iron and steel hull – Rig height: 79’ , Length on deck: 65’ – Draft: 4’ 6” – Displacement tonnage: 77 , Length at waterline: 58’ 11” – Draft centerboard down: 12’ – Gross tonnage: 43 , Beam: 21’ 6” – Rig: Gaff-rigged schooner – Net tonnage: 37