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(erielack) Fwd: NYTimes.com Article: A Wooden Barge That Likes Its Water Dirty

A Wooden Barge That Likes Its Water Dirty
January 22, 2002 
By NICHOLE M. CHRISTIAN

David Sharps found a sunken piece of history and his life's
passion in the mud flats of Edgewater, N.J. 

In 1986, he bought a dilapidated, mud-soaked wooden barge,
the Lehigh Valley 79, for $500. A professional clown at
time, Mr. Sharps got lots of laughs when he told friends
that one day he would resurrect the barge as a floating
maritime and performing arts museum. 

The laughter grew louder when he decided to dock his museum
on the waterfront in Red Hook, a sliver of Brooklyn with
stunning vistas of the New York Harbor, but so isolated
that even people from the neighborhood had trouble finding
their way there. 

"From the moment I saw this old lady out there in the mud,
I knew she was something special," said Mr. Sharps, 42. "I
knew she deserved a chance to prove herself and to show
that she could sit out on the harbor with a purpose." 

Mr. Sharps's old red barge is now the Waterfront Museum and
Showboat Barge, a nonprofit organization that draws
children from local schools, for whom the barge becomes a
floating classroom; boat enthusiasts; and photographers and
artists captivated by the barge and the gritty old
warehouses that surround it. 

But the barge itself is now in jeopardy. Over the years, as
New York's waters have become cleaner, small wood-eating
marine borers have returned, chewing up hundreds of
millions of dollars in public and private waterfront
property. The borers, gribbles and teredos, have been
feasting on the hull for nearly a year, threatening to
destroy it unless the tiny museum can raise enough money
for a major overhaul. 

The 90-foot-long barge is a throwback to New York Harbor's
golden days. To step aboard the floating museum with its
wood- burning stove and seafaring artifacts is to be
transported back to a time when families made their living
and their homes floating cargo barges up and down the
harbor and to the Erie Canal. 

Mr. Sharps was born in the Appalachian Mountains and became
smitten with the sea after spending his youth working as a
clown on Carnival cruise ships. In his black fisherman's
cap, flannel shirts and work boots, he brings the harbor to
life with decades-old tales and faded photographs. 

"By saving it, he saved an important chapter in maritime
history and in New York's history," said Norman Brouwer, a
curator at the South Street Seaport Museum, who was hired
by the Army Corps of Engineers to chart the history of a
collection of barges abandoned in the New Jersey mud flats
during the 1980's. "The barge was originally operated by
the Lehigh Valley Railroad. It dates back to a time when
there was a real working waterfront." 

In May, the 88-year-old barge will be tugged up the harbor
to a dry dock in Waterford, N.Y. The New York State Canal
Corporation is giving Mr. Sharps use of the dry dock at no
cost, but he still needs to raise $185,000 to hire and
house a team of professional shipwrights to recaulk,
refasten and respike the boat. So far, the museum has
raised more than $60,000, through the modest fees it
collects renting the barge out for events, through a series
of grants and a campaign on its Web site,
www.waterfrontmuseum.org. 

"The worms really haven't left us much choice," Mr. Sharps
said recently, pointing out places along the outside of the
barge where the damage from the marine borers is visible.
"They have the capacity of eating through major timber in a
couple of years." 

Mr. Sharps discovered the borers while repairing leaks in
the hull, bow and stern. Initially, he thought the damage
was minor. But scuba divers learned that it was much worse:
the borers have begun gnawing at the wood below the
waterline. 

When Mr. Sharps found the barge, he spent nearly three
years in hip waders slowly removing more than 300 tons of
mud, trying to patch up the body and side planks with
whatever materials he could afford. 

"He was fortunate that it had a sound hull at the time he
found it," Mr. Brouwer said. 

But now the barge needs major repairs. "It's not just
scraping away the worms," he said. For long-term survival,
he said, it must be lifted out of the water, something that
has not been done in more than 40 years. 

"We could patch it up with paint, but that wouldn't solve
much over the long term," Mr. Sharps said. "What we're
talking about is having a crew of master shipwrights, the
same people who work on the historic tall ships, give this
old lady the kind of care that will preserve it not just
for another season or two but for 20 or 25 years." 

The museum's plight is the talk of Red Hook. A waterfront
without it, people say, is unthinkable. For Brooklyn
artists and musicians, it is one of the city's most popular
exhibition spaces. In the summer, the barge brings a circus
to the water, with acrobats, jugglers and clowns. 

"The outside world hasn't really known where Red Hook is,"
said Craig Hammerman, district manager of Community Board
6, which represents the area and has held meetings and
benefits aboard the barge. "But so many people have been
brought to the neighborhood because of something that
happened on the barge." 

For more than a decade, Greg O'Connell, a Red Hook
developer, has tried to develop the waterfront. Mr.
O'Connell, who owns several buildings and piers in the
area, has converted old warehouses into small business
spaces, envisioned a trolley system and open a supermarket.
But he says his smartest move was donating Pier 45 to the
Waterfront Museum. 

"I couldn't have planned for all that the museum has given
to the waterfront," Mr. O'Connell said. "There was no
reason to come down here, but look at it now. The barge and
Red Hook, we've struggled together." 

Many say the museum's latest struggle comes at the worst
possible time. "It's been much harder than it would have
before Sept. 11 to get people to look at this project,"
said Marilyn Gelber, executive director the Independence
Community Foundation, a Red Hook group that expects to give
the museum a $10,000 grant later this month. The foundation
had scheduled a fund-raising benefit on behalf of the
dry-dock campaign, but canceled it, fearing a low turnout.
"People just aren't ready to switch gears and think about a
small project like this which happens to have an urgent
need." 

Yet Mr. Sharps remains confident. "It took me two years to
pump out the mud, and people said that couldn't be done,"
he said. "They said I'd never get her to float again, and
it did. This is my life's work. One way or another, I'll
see that this old lady continues to survive."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/22/nyregion/22BARG.html?ex=1012705602&ei=1&en=4c43c216735c5a64

> Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company


=====
Gary R. Kazin
DL&W Milepost R35.7
Rockaway, New Jersey

http://www.geocities.com/gkazin/index.html

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