South Street Seaport Museum Announces Historic Schooner Pioneer To Visit Haverstraw

South Street Seaport Museum announces that the historic schooner Pioneerwill visit Rockland County from September 24-28, 2018. Pioneer will sail with groups of local students, each of which will participate in Pioneer's award-winning shipboard education program. Students will haul on lines to raise sails; learn the science, math and technology of sailing; measure water quality; and experience the river from a new perspective. Pioneer has the unusual distinction of having been a working vessel for her entire life. Originally built to carry sand, she now sails with a different cargo: students. In her role as floating classroom, she will offer an engaging laboratory on the water experience to local youth. Pioneer will also be available for public sails and charters during her visit.

Pioneer will visit Haverstraw on September 24-28, 2018, with sailing trips available to the general public on Wednesday, September 26 at 3:30pm, Thursday, September 27 at 6:00pm, and Friday, September 28 at 6:00pm.Tickets are $25 for adults and children, reservations recommended. For more information or reservations, visit https://southstreetseaportmuseum.org/pioneer-visits-haverstraw-marina/. Private charters and education sails are also available; contact charters@seany.org or call 212-748-8568 for more information.

ABOUT PIONEER

Pioneer was built as a sloop in Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania in 1885 to carry sand mined near the mouth of the Delaware Bay to an iron foundry in Chester, Pennsylvania. Ten years later she was re-rigged as a schooner. In the days before paved roads, small coastal schooners such as Pioneer were the delivery trucks of their era, carrying various cargoes 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 had wrought-iron hull. She was the first of only two cargo sloops built of iron in this country, and is the only iron-hulled American merchant sailing vessel 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. In 1966 she was substantially rebuilt and turned into a sailing vessel once again. Today she plies the waters of NY Harbor carrying adults and children instead of cargo in her current role as a piece of "living history."

ABOUT SOUTH STREET SEAPORT MUSEUM

The South Street Seaport Museum, located in the heart of the historic Seaport district in New York City, preserves and interprets the origins and growth of New York City as a world port, a place where goods, labor, and cultures are exchanged through work, commerce, and the interaction of diverse communities. The Museum houses exhibition galleries and education spaces, working nineteenth century print shops, and an active fleet of historic vessels that all work to tell the story of "Where New York Begins."