FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 24, 2008
Contact: Molly Dannenmaier
Director of Marketing and Public Relations
molly.dannenmaier@galvestonhistory.org
409-765-7834

Six Weeks after Hurricane Ike, Texas Seaport Museum Reopens

Visitors will be able to walk the decks of the restored 1877 tall ship Elissa this weekend for the first time since Hurricane Ike inundated the piers and buildings of the Texas Seaport Museum (TSM), the vessel’s home base.

A new 42-foot gangway provides access across heavily damaged piers. Basic electrical service was reconnected on Friday. The newly painted and carpeted gift shop offers retail items that escaped damage. A mandatory inspection by U. S. Coast Guard officials pronounced the vessel ready for the public.

Volunteers will alternate between clean-up and repairs and learning the ropes of the sailing ship as this year’s Seamanship Training program continues, having missed only the session planned for the day of the storm..

“The Seaport Museum was hit hard by the storm surge, as was the entire waterfront,” said Dwayne Jones, executive director of Galveston Historical Foundation, which restored Elissa in 1982. “It will require great expense to bring the piers, the workshop, and the museum back where they need to be.

“But the ship herself got through it virtually undamaged. We are tremendously fortunate to be able to open her to the public this quickly, and fortunate in the dedication of more than 100 volunteers whose hard work over the past weeks has made it possible,” said Jones.

Elissa’s damage in the storm was limited to the loss of one of her square sails, a cracked lid on her wheel box, and minor damage to other woodwork. As intended, she rose on an even keel with the 12-foot surge of bay water, yet remained securely attached by multiple sets of heavy mooring lines to specially designed steel pilings driven 125 feet into the harbor bottom.

“Our hurricane preparation plan was put into place, and it worked,” said John Schaumberg, Waterfront Manager at TSM. “She is an ocean-going ship, after all, and designed to take what the sea can give her. The main thing is to keep her here.”

The wooden workshops on the pier, however, were flooded by as much as seven feet above the decking, causing extensive damage to tools and machinery, as well as structural damage, especially to the tide station at the end of the pier. Much of the wooden decking of the pier was displaced, and some of the brick paving at the landward end of the site was undermined.

The Jones Building, which contains TSM’s gift shop, exhibit hall, theater and offices, was structurally undamaged, but had about five inches of water on the main floor. Carpeting and wall board has been replaced.

“Cleaning up the site, salvaging tools, removing rubble . . . it’s all involved a tremendous amount of hard and really nasty work,” said Schaumberg, “but our volunteers and staff have really come through. We’ve had half a dozen volunteers almost every week-day since the Island opened up, and as many as a hundred on weekends. That’s what it has taken just to get to the point where we can invite the public aboard the ship, and there’s a lot more work to come.”

Elissa is a 200-foot iron square-rigged sailing ship, built in Scotland in 1877. During her career as a wind-powered British cargo vessel, the ship called at Galveston twice in the 1880s, bringing in bananas and leaving with cotton.

It was this connection that inspired the Galveston Historical Foundation to rescue the ship, long since converted to a motor vessel, from a Greek scrapper’s yard. She was towed to Galveston for her restoration to sailing condition, a complex task that was completed to great acclaim in 1982.

Since her restoration, the vessel has been open to the public as an attraction at her berth at Pier 22 and Harborside Drive, kept ready for sea by small staff and a large cadre of volunteers, who learn to sail her and take her to sea on a series of “sea trials” at least once each year.

Ike is Elissa’s second hurricane in Galveston; in 1983, just days after the system of steel pilings was installed, her preparedness was tested by Hurricane Alica. As with Ike, she came through with negligible damage.

For the time being, Elissa will be open on weekends only, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $5. For information about joining the volunteer effort at TSM and Elissa, call (409) 763-1877 or visit the Galveston Historical Foundation online at www.galvestonhistory.org.