The South Street Seaport Museum has met its goal of raising $250,000 to restore the 120-year-old schooner Lettie G. Howard.
Singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash played an important part in the fundraising efforts by giving a special performance in April at the New York Academy of Medicine. Susan Henshaw Jones, director and president of the Museum of the City of New York and president of the South Street Seaport Museum, said, “Thanks to $80,000 in proceeds from an unforgettable night of great music with Rosanne Cash, income from a recent Warner Brothers movie shoot for the film Winter’s Tale aboard our Wavertree, and the generosity of many donors, including a challenge grant from Anne Beaumont, we hope to soon have Lettie under sail once again.”
Cash’s interest in the historic fishing schooner is in part tied to her ancestors arrival in Salem, Mass., aboard the ship Good Intent in 1643; many of them where fishermen and whalers.
In recent years, Lettie G. Howard has served as a sailing school vessel for the New York Harbor School, the New York City public high school on Governors Island that trains students for maritime careers. The schooner has developed rot in its keelson and the museum is now soliciting qualified shipyards to bid on the work.