8/25/25, we just got confirmation that the ship will be here! We’re excited about this because Norwegians were a big part of Red Hook history – and many were crew on our ship Mary A. Whalen.
Join the team creating the public program related to this by emailing chiclet(at)portsidenewyork.org.
We hope to be interviewing the crew via Zoom during the voyage to ask them what they think about their fellow countrymen making this trip 200 years ago to add to our Norwegian section of RedHookWaterStories here.
Tours of the ship will not be possible, so programs will be on the Mary Whalen where we can look down on the ship.
On July 4, the replica Restauration set sail from Stavanger, Norway to memorialize a trip across the Atlantic 200 years ago which is regarded as the first organized emigration from Norway to the USA, sometimes called “the Norwegian Mayflower.” Follow their voyage here. She is due to arrive in NYC on October 9, and would come to PortSide around October 16 or 17 and stay several days before sailing back across the Atlantic with another crew.
The Restauration is a very small ship to have made this voyage 200 years ago, especially carrying 52 passengers! And they arrived with 53 because a woman gave birth aboard. She is 52’ 7” long, beam (width) of 17’ 3” and draft of 5’ 11”. Compare that to another replica sloop which visits us, a type that would have been sailing at the same time, the Clearwater, at 106’ long, beam of 25’ and draft of 8’ 11”.
According to Wikipedia, “For a vessel of her size Restauration had far more passengers on board than were allowed by American law. This resulted in a severe fine, confiscation of the ship and the arrest of the captain, L. O. Helland. The situation was solved when President John Quincy Adams pardoned the captain on 15 November, released him and the ship, and rescinded the fine. The people who made this voyage, who are sometimes referred to as the "Sloopers", moved onward to their first settlement in Kendall, Orleans County, New York.”
This visit is pending approval from landlord EDC and their dockmaster DockNYC, but we expect no problems as the ship will have been at another EDC pier before us.
