New London, Mystic shipyards awarded federal grants
May 2—U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, toured two southeastern Connecticut shipyards Tuesday, touting the federal government's investment in the region's maritime economy and heritage.
Thames Shipyard & Repair Co. in New London and the Mystic Seaport Museum's Henry B. duPont Preservation Shipyard will receive shares of that investment in the form of 2023 Small Shipyard Grants awarded by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration.
Thames Shipyard will receive $309,853, while Mystic Seaport Museum has been awarded $214,452.
Stopping first at Thames Shipyard's 2 Ferry St. Location, Courtney met with Adam Wronowski, the company's vice president, who described the equipment the company will purchase with the grant money. A device that prepares ship hulls for repainting by removing old paint and rust with high-pressure water, a dust collector system, a vacuum recovery system, and a compressed air treatment system will double the shipyard's capacity, enabling it to hire four or five additional employees, Wronowski said.
The only facility of its kind between New York and Boston, the shipyard services such commercial vessels as ferries, tugboats and barges. Its customers include the Steamship Authority that operates the Martha's Vineyard ferry and the New York City Fire Department.
The Wronowski family, which also owns Cross Sound Ferry and the Block Island Express ferry, acquired the shipyard in 1967.
The shipyard has now won a total of four Small Shipyard grants since 2011, including a $438,690 grant in 2021.
Courtney left New London and traveled to Mystic, where he was greeted by Peter Armstrong, the Seaport's president, and others involved in the museum's shipyard operations. While the Seaport is well known as a maritime museum and home of the Charles W. Morgan, America's last surviving whaler, its shipyard is renowned in its own right for its work maintaining and restoring wooden vessels.
The grant awarded to the Seaport shipyard will enable it to purchase a new sawmill and articulating boom lifts used in construction projects. The new sawmill will operate on electricity, making it more efficient and safer to operate than the gasoline-powered one now in use, according to Chris Gasiorek, vice president of watercraft preservation and programs at the Seaport.
Gasiorek described several projects currently underway and employing more than 20 people, including work on the Sabino, a vintage Seaport steamboat that's being equipped with an electric motor (the steam engine will be preserved), restoration of the Catherine Wedmore, a 100-year-old oyster boat that operates out of Norwalk, and maintenance of the Draken Harald Hårfagre, a Norwegian reconstruction of a Viking longship.
Inside the shipyard building, Gasiorek called attention to ongoing work on one of the dozens of spars, masts and other pieces the shipyard is building for the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum in Boston. He also revealed the shipyard has been commissioned to build new flag poles for Connecticut's State Capitol in Hartford.
The Seaport won its Small Shipyard Grant on its sixth try.
Courtney supported the Thames Shipyard and Mystic Seaport Museum applications with letters to David Heller, director of the Maritime Administration's Office of Shipyards and Marine Engineering.
Editor's note: Peter Armstrong is Mystic Seaport Museum's president. His last name was incorrect in an earlier version of this article.
