The replica schooner Lois McClure will be in port in the Village of Brockport just prior to the beginning of the Brockport Arts Festival.
Brockport Deputy Mayor Bill Andrews says the McClure will stop August 9 in Brockport near the Visitors Center.
The Lois McClure will hold an open house from 5-8 p.m. “We hope to have Bill Hullfish and the Golden Eagle String Band perform canal songs during that time,” Andrews says.
Originally, the Lois McClure was to stop in Brockport in late June, but heavy rains and high water in the Mohawk River delayed the scheduled 2013 Summer Tour by several weeks. This year’s tour is being held to commemorate the War of 1812 Bicentennial and the 200th anniversary of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry’s Victory at the Battle of Lake Erie.
“The shipbuilding races and naval battles of 1813 helped to determine the outcome of the War of 1812, and left a legacy of shipwrecks beneath the waters of the Great Lakes, St. Lawrence River and Lake Champlain,” says Art Cohn, Special Project Director. “Our dynamic outreach program explores history where it happened, on the anniversary of the cross-border war that ushered in 200 years of peace.”
Many ports on the tour played significant roles during the War of 1812, officials say, and in recent years, a tangible legacy of shipwrecks from the War of 1812 has been discovered at the bottom of the lakes and waterways where naval history was made.
The Lois McClure was built by Lake Champlain Maritime Museum shipwrights and volunteers on the Burlington waterfront and is based on two shipwrecks of 1862-class canal schooners discovered in Lake Champlain.
Since 2004, the schooner has cruised Lake Champlain, the Hudson and St. Lawrence Rivers, and the Erie Canal System, and has visited over 115 communities.
