What the Heck is a Periauger?
Here's a hint. It was an extinct species, 30 feet long, until a team of more than 30 volunteers with a $100,000 budget brought one back to life in Beaufort (and no DNA was involved).A group of craftsmen at the NC Maritime Museum have been hand-building a type of boat that used to be seen plying the coastal waters of Eastern North Carolina, but is now "extinct".
The periauger was a two-masted open sailboat about 30 feet long, and was commonplace on pre-revolutionary war waterways near the crystal coast, but there are no known surviving examples. But former Maritime Museum director Michael Alford made it his mission to reconstruct one, based on descriptions found in documents dating from the 1700s. The resulting full-sized replica was christened in Beaufort in June 2004. Resembling an oversized dug-out canoe, the vessel's keel, hull and masts were cut from North Carolina cypress.
| Craftsman at work on Periauger |
You may be able to catch a glimpse of the periauger on Taylor's Creek in Beaufort, or at one of these other port cities that will be visited during its sea trials, with this itinerary:
- Aug. 15, 2004 - leave Beaufort
- Aug. 15 - Oriental
- Aug. 16 - New Bern
- Aug. 19 - Oriental
- Aug. 22 - Washington
- Aug. 25 - Bath
- Aug. 27 - Bellhaven
- Aug. 31 - Manteo
- Sep. 4 - Hertford (permanent home at the Newbold-White house)
For more information, see The Periauger Project.
