HISTORY NEWS
January 2010 -- The nonprofit Gundalow Company has been awarded $30,000 through funding from the New Hampshire Coastal Program at the NH Department of Environmental Services. The grants is in conjunction with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management. NHCP funds also supported increased education offerings in 2009. Today the Gundalow Company’s mission -- to protect the Piscataqua Maritime Region through education and action -- is more important than ever. (continued below)
Programs aboard the gundalow are held throughout the tidal towns of the Piscataqua. These programs dramatically connecti local maritime history to contemporary coastal issues such as water quality, habitat restoration, conservation, and stewardship. The Piscataqua watershed encompasses a 120 square mile area from York, Maine in the north. It continues down each riverway and water basin that leads to the Piscataqua coast: They include the York River and Brave Boat Harbor, the Squamscott, Lamprey, and Oyster Rivers, the Bellamy, Cocheco and Salmon Falls Rivers, Great Bay, Little Bay and the Piscataqua River, to Rye and the Hamptons in the south.
Gundalows are flat bottomed, shallow-draft vessels once common on local rivers and salt-water estuaries. These sturdy cargo carriers were common along the coast of New Hampshire’s Great Bay and southern Maine. Gundalows were among the very first vessels built by arriving colonists. The last commercial gundalows disappeared from our waters in the first decades of the 20th century. Today the Gundalow Company has transformed the only working replica of an historic Piscataqua gundalow into a dockside classroom. Her volunteer crew moves the Capt. Edward Adams among ten riverfront locations. Each summer the historic gundalow becomes a traveling stage for educational programs that celebrate the past and future of our fragile estuary.
The Gundalow Company 2010 season of programs will include "Contemporary Coastal Issues" presentations aboard the Gundalow and "Celebrate our Rivers" festivals on the Piscataqua, Squamscott, York and Salmon Falls rivers. School programs will be held late spring in partnership with the Museums of Old York, Old Berwick Historical Society, Strawbery Banke, and the Maude Trefethen School in New Castle. Summer programs are available for youth groups by reservation at Prescott Park and in Exeter. Fall group school programs are available by reservation in partnership with the Great Bay Discovery Center in Greenland. Contact the Gundalow Company office at 603-433-9505 for reservations.
The gundalow will be open to the public for dockside tours throughout its season May through October – tentatively scheduled to be at Dover, Exeter, New Castle, Portsmouth, South Berwick, and York in 2010. Go to www.gundalow.org for more information, and sign up for the monthly e-newsletter.
The New Hampshire Coastal Program is a federally approved coastal program authorized under the Coastal Zone Management Act and is administered by the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services. NHCP strives to maintain a balance between the use and preservation of coastal resources. Through partnerships, funding and science, NHCP works to improve water quality and decision making in 42 coastal watershed communities; supports maritime uses; and restores coastal wetlands and rivers.
