It took a decade longer than anticipated to build, but come spring 2024 a replica of the historic Oyster Bay shellfish dredge Ida May will be carrying paying passengers on New York’s Oyster Bay so they can learn about its ecology and maritime history.
The effort required a dozen years, about $1 million, 35,000 hours of mostly unpaid labor by 70 volunteers and a few professionals, plus a lot of perseverance in the face of fundraising difficulties and Covid 19 complications. But the project finally came to fruition last spring when a special trailer slid Ida May into Oyster Bay, New York. The boat was constructed in a shed on the southern edge of the harbor by the Christeen Oyster Sloop Preservation Corp., which previously restored the 1883 sailing oyster dredge Christseen.
The volunteer group has turned over the vessel to a nonprofit, The WaterFront Center, located just to the west of the shed where the Ida May was constructed, where she will be used for marine education. The center also now owns and operates the Christeen.
The volunteers’ initial plan was to restore the original Ida May. It was launched in Oyster Bay in 1925.
“It was built by Frank M. Flower on the beach in Bayville, New York,” said George Lindsay Jr., president of the volunteer group. “The story is he did it after he thought he had lost his three sons on a smaller boat when they were making a routine trip to the Fulton Fish Market in Manhattan. They almost sank the boat and had to put into City Island. For four days Frank Flower didn’t know where his sons were. So he decided to build a bigger boat. It was the first oyster dredge built to be motorized as far as we know.”
Constructed with bent oak frames and cedar planking, Ida May would dredge oysters and clams and then transport them to the city fish market, usually with a crew of up to three.
It was designed with a broad beam and shallow draft. “A lot of the oystering is done in fairly shallow water,” Lindsay explained. “They were dredging clams up in Mill Neck Creek and in the corners of Oyster Bay and Cold Spring Harbor. It was wide to make a stable platform. Virtually the entire hull was just a hole for clams. Everything forward of the pilot house was just cargo. There were a couple of berths on either side of the diesel engine so two or three people could spend the night there, but it wasn’t designed for cruising.”
The boat was retired by the Flower company and brought ashore in September 2003. But the dredge would not have been able to carry paying passengers under current Coast Guard regulations. And it deteriorated beyond repair while the restoration effort was being organized. It was demolished in 2010.
With the new goal of building a replica in place, volunteers worked part-time with a professional shipwright as money became available in November 2011. The original Ida May was 45 feet long and 15 feet, 6 inches wide. The replica is a foot wider.
Construction got underway with a $125,000 contribution from singer-songwriter Billy Joel, who owns a harborside home on Centre Island in Oyster Bay. As a teenager growing up on Long Island, Joel worked on a dredge owned by Flower & Sons.
The 32 frames were made from two layers of 3-inch white oak, some of it left over from the Christeen project and the rest obtained in Virginia. The 36 planks are 1 ¾-inch white oak. The pilothouse frame is white oak and the exterior is red cedar. The interior is black walnut paneling with cherry trim.
Several weeks after the final hull plank was installed, the Ida May was ready for launching. On a breezy morning, with the Christeen and Bay constable boats standing watch, the widow of Clint Smith, a former town harbormaster who organized the Christeen group, smashed a bottle of champagne against the bow before Ida May was backed into the harbor and tied to the dock. In celebration, a fire engine sprayed water into the air, and accidentally on town officials and other people watching from the dock.
“It’s very exciting because for me it’s been a seven-year commitment,” said Lindsay. “It’s been a tremendous learning experience. And it’s been really fun. But the goal was always to get the boat finished and launched, and here we are.”
Lindsay volunteered three months after he retired as general manager of the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts at Long Island University’s C.W. Post campus. After the launch, the engine still had to be started up and some other equipment installed, Lindsay said. “There’s a few things that haven’t quite made it on the boat yet.”
The final steps—sea trials and Coast Guard certification for carrying passengers—are currently under way.
“The plan initially is to introduce her to the community to get people familiar with the vessel,” said George Ellis, executive director of the WaterFront Center. “We also expect her to be an active participant in the current resurgence of oyster farming. So, we’ll do educational cruises and perhaps get involved in research. We hope to partner up with universities and other groups engaged in oyster farming.”
Jack Hoyt, vice president of the Christeen group, acknowledged that it’s been a long haul to get Ida May to this point. “There’s no question about that, but we’ve kept at it.”
Hoyt has been on the board of the Christeen Group since it was reconstituted in 2009 after the Christeen was refurbished. He is the only volunteer left from that year. The new board started when Building J on the Western Waterfront was converted to a boatbuilding shop. That’s where volunteers began working on the Ida May.
“The fact that we kept it going week after week was key. Even just working one day a week allowed us to keep the project alive, despite the interruptions in funding,” Hoyt said. Those interruptions included the recovery from the Great Recession and the Covid pandemic.
Doug Nemeth of Syosset worked on Ida May since the keel was being fashioned. “I did whatever they thought I was capable of,” he said. “I like boats, I like to build things, and the work was interesting.”
Shipwright Josh Herman, a Huntington resident who has been involved with the project on and off since the beginning, said, “I always thought we were going to get here. This is what I do for a living.” Herman said he’s been involved in other projects that dragged on because of funding issues.
Nobby Peers is an Englishman who owns Whitworth Marine Services in Patchogue. He served as the contracted project engineer who designed all the mechanical systems. His work isn’t done yet. He still needs to finish wiring the wheelhouse and handle a lot of loose ends. But for the most part, Peers was pleased that there were no big surprises during construction. “That could be because I’ve been doing this a long time,” he said. “If there was one hiccup, it was designing the shaft run.”
Once the replica was afloat, Herman oversaw the handling of the lines to secure her to the dock. After checking below deck, he smiled with pride. “It’s not leaking at all,” he said.
A few months later, in mid-September, the crew had completed sea trials with representatives from John Deere aboard to check the engine. “She’s very maneuverable,” Lindsay said. “Her steering worked out very well. She cruises very comfortably at about 6 and a half knots and we got her up to about 9 knots.”
The last step remaining for the volunteers and their paid advisors is the installation of the fire suppression system. Then the Coast Guard will conduct a final sea trial before signing off on certification to carry three crew and 49 paying passengers on Long Island Sound and New York Harbor.
According to Lindsay, Ida May “is the only wooden oyster boat in Oyster Bay. She will be preserving both visually and functionally the history of the commercial shellfishing industry in this area.”
This article was originally published in the December 2023 issue.
