The carousel opens for its 142nd consecutive season on Saturday, April 15, when the Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust will unveil panels newly refurbished by artist Margot Datz.
An old wooden powerboat from Chilmark named Souvenir is being rebuilt this winter at Gannon and Benjamin Marine Railway. Souvenir is a 32-foot wooden Brownell powerboat with a diesel engine that was built in Mattapoissett in 1962. She is getting a whole new bottom: a new keel, below the waterline planks and ribs and a fuel tank. She is powered by a five-year-old 225-horsepower Cummins diesel.
Since 1843, the Old Whaling Church, with its familiar white exterior, six grand columns and regal clock tower, has stood watch over Edgartown’s Main street.
But inside the Greek revival church, built during the town’s whaling heyday, was another feature that architect Frederick Baylies viewed as an integral part of the completed project: trompe l’oeil paintings graced the walls and the ceilings, and the church’s interior architecture was built with these sweeping features in mind.
Wooden Whaleship Restored
Shipwrights have installed the last plank in the Charles W. Morgan, the last wooden whaleship of the 19th century housed in Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. The wooden ship that began its 80-year career hunting whales with an Edgartown whaling captain, Thomas A. Norton, and many Vineyard crewmembers, is undergoing a $5 million restoration.
Last Friday afternoon shipwrights installed the shutter plank on the 106-foot vessel, which is expected to sail again in 2014.
