Tall Ships Event Request Sails To Council

OSWEGO, NY – A request regarding the Festival of Ships event floated to the full council for consideration.

At Monday’s Physical Services Committee meeting, Justin Rudgick, Community Development Director, introduced the request from Mercedes Niess of the Maritime Museum regarding the tall ship event to be held on July 21-23, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the West First Street Pier.

“It’s a fantastic event,” Rudgick told the committee.

The visiting tall ships, the Viking ship visit and others have attracted thousands of people to Oswego’s historic maritime district, he added.

“We’re very excited to host this event,” Niess said. “It’s an opportunity to showcase Oswego and its great waterfront.”

This program is in part due to the Port City’s location on the canal.

The tall ships Niña and Pinta, replicas of Columbus’ ships, will visit Oswego for the H. Lee White Maritime Museum’s Festival of Ships, Niess said. The ships will travel the Erie Canal from Rensselaer to Oswego. From Oswego, they will sail across lakes Ontario and Erie to Ashtabula, Ohio, and several other Great Lakes destinations.

Both ships tour together as an enhanced ‘sailing museum’ for the purpose of educating the public and school children on the ‘Caravel,’ a Portuguese ship used by Columbus and many early explorers to discover the world.

Since 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage, the Nina has been traveling from port to port as the only touring ‘maritime museum’ of its kind.

Caravels are most closely related to Portuguese and Spanish explorers and were used to discover the world. The original ‘Nina’ traveled at least 25,000 miles under Columbus’ command.

The replica of the Nina and its design details, including the number of masts and rigging specifics, were derived from data from the discoveries of the 15th- and 16th-century Spanish shipwrecks in the Caribbean.

Ships of this time period were not built from a set of plans, but rather from the memory of the shipwright, who based the dimensions of the ship on a set of proportions. Different proportions were used for different types of vessels, but all were based on the length of the keel.

For the event, Niess requested use of public space at the FlexoWire site for off-street parking, the use of barricades/road closure on West First Street pier, would like banner attached to city lamp post near West First Street and Lake Street, use of shower facility at Wright’s Landing Marina, two barricades to block off access to West First Street Pier starting July 20, and would like trash containers during the event and trash pick up by the city.

The committee unanimously gave the request a favorable recommendation.

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