Deck of the Pilgrim
It was hoped that the Pilgrim would launch in time to participate in Operation Sail, a grand parade of over 200 sailing ships held in New York Harbor on July 4, 1976 to commemorate the bicentennial. Unfortunately, delays prevented the ship from sailing to New York. Subsequently known as the Pilgrim of Newport, she eventually launched in Newport Harbor in November 1983 (according to one newspaper article “the family later bulldozed the home to get the big ship on its way to water”). In 2001 the ship was acquired by the Ocean Institute, an ocean educational organization in Dana Point, California. The Pilgrim of Newport was renamed the Spirit of Dana Point. In 2022 the Spirit of Dana Point underwent a costly renovation (two years earlier the Ocean Institute’s other sailing ship, a brig also named the Pilgrim and originally built in 1945, sank and was later demolished).
