“August Glory” Delivered to the US Navy

“August Glory”, the 32′ Cornish Pilot Gig built by students of the class of 2015, was delivered to the US Navy at the Charlestown Naval Yard in Boston, MA. It was an eventful trip that included a stop at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, CT to be shown at GLBBS’s annual WoodenBoat Show display.

The project was based on the Cornish Pilot Gig “Treffry” built at Saint Mawes on the Cornish coast in 1842. The lines of the original boat were reproduced and a history of the pilot gigs and their construction well documented in John Gardeners book “ Building Classic Small Craft”. This same boat was recently finished for the “Come Boating” organization of Belfast Maine and they supplied a new table of offsets to compliment the information in the Gardener book.

The “Treffry” gig is thirty-two feet in length with a beam of four feet eight inches. The six rowers sit opposite of their oarlock, each man with a twelve foot sweep. The original construction employed mostly local wood, narrow leaf elm was used for the backbone, planking and frames. A combination of elm and oak was used for the many knees and rails that finish out the boat. Traditional fastenings of clench nails at the plank laps and rivets for the frames were used.