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Thursday, May 3, 2007

By TOM BELL

Staff Writer

Four hundred years ago, the English settlers at Popham Colony began building a ship, a 30-ton pinnace they christened the Virginia.

The colony at the mouth of the Kennebec River would be abandoned the following year. But the ship they built would later be celebrated as the first ocean-going vessel built in the Western Hemisphere. Or the first one built in America. Or the first one that the English built in North America.

But each one of those claims is false, said Earle Warren, a maritime historian who lives in Topsham. "It's not that people have been lying," he explained. "But everybody loves superlatives -- the first, the biggest, the fastest, the most expensive. Everybody would love to have the first ship built in their backyard."

Truth be told, he said, Christopher Columbus built a 50-ton ship in 1495 on Santo Domingo. Warren has documented numerous other ships built by the Spanish and French in North America before 1607 -- and on land that is now part of the United States.

Warren will present his research this weekend in Bath at a symposium sponsored by the Maine Maritime Museum.

The program will also feature lectures on Indian watercraft and European vessels of the 17th century.

Maine's legacy of shipbuilding and the 400-year anniversary of the Popham Colony prompted the museum to offer the symposium, said museum curator Nathan Lipfert

Speakers will also talk about canoes developed by American Indians.

Before the arrival of the English, Indians used birch bark canoes to travel long distance on the open ocean, Lipfert said. In 1620 when the Pilgrims arrived at the tip of Cape Cod, they met an Indian who had just canoed there from Monhegan Island.

"We sort of know that Native Americans were very mobile people, but we don't think about what that means and what sort of lifestyle that represented," Lipfert said. "They were almost always in temporary quarters."

Warren, who has spent 10 years studying the early history of boatbuilding in the New World, said the Virginia can lay claim to some firsts. It was certainly the first ship built in Maine, he said. Also, it was the first ship the English built on continental North America.

Before 1607, the English had built ships on two North American islands, Puerto Rico in 1583 and Newfoundland in 1585.

Speakers at the symposium include John Bradford of Yarmouth, who will describe a plan for ship construction as it would have been represented in 1607; Steve Cayard of Wellington, a builder of birch bark canoes; and Barry Dana, former chief of the Penobscot Nation.

The symposium, "Watercraft of the 17th Century: Wabanaki Craft and European Vessels," will take place Friday through Sunday. The opening and traditional Fish House Punch reception will begin at 7 p.m. Friday. Presentations will begin Saturday morning in the Museum's Long Reach Hall and will continue until noon Sunday.

Registration includes the Friday night reception and lunch Saturday; there is also an optional and extra Saturday evening meal. The cost is $80 for nonmembers and $70 for members.

For more information, call 443-1316, extension 0.

Staff Writer Tom Bell can be contacted at 791-6369 or at