By Frank D. Roylance , frank.roylance@baltsun.com|October 10, 2009
At first, things looked a bit dicey for the two ship's boats, launched Friday in Fells Point for eventual display aboard the 1854 sloop of war Constellation, moored in the Inner Harbor.
As the 26-foot cutters floated off the marine railway at the Douglass-Myers Maritime Park off Thames Street, their novice oarsmen - city kids who learned carpentry and life skills as they helped build the boats over the past two years - struggled to control the 10 unwieldy oars.
The boats rocked, oars collided. And in the stiff breeze, the pristine, half-ton wooden hulls drifted toward unforgiving steel pilings. Five mallards paddled away from the clatter and chaos.
But under the command of master shipwright Bruce MacKenzie in one boat and Capt. Chris Rowsom, director of historic ships for the Living Classrooms Foundation, in the other, the oarsmen began to catch on.
" 'Toss oars' doesn't mean throw them out of the boat, OK?" MacKenzie told his crew. In the 19th century, it meant raise all 10 oars to a vertical position, handles between the oarsmen's feet.
MacKenzie's crew responded. As they cleared the wharf, their oars dipped into the water, and in short order the boat was moving out into the Patapsco. Soon, oars in both boats were moving in rhythm, sort of. Inevitably, a short race ensued. MacKenzie's crew claimed victory.
Learning to take instruction and pull together toward a common goal is what the Living Classrooms Foundation's Fresh Start program is all about.
Funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, Fresh Start "works with young men who have dropped out of the school system and maybe picked up some charges," said James Piper Bond, president and CEO of Living Classrooms. "In 40 weeks, they get some skills, get their GED."
Three years after students leave Fresh Start, three-quarters of them are working or in school, Living Classrooms boasts.
Jarvis Joyner, 18, of East Baltimore came to the Maritime Museum's boat shop in July. He quickly graduated from doing line measurements to helping to boil quarter-inch planks for the cutters' hulls, bend them, glue them and nail them into place.
He plans to take his GED exam next week. "After that, I hope to extend my carpentry career," he said. He's also an apprentice in an east-side barbershop.
"I like to do both, because I like to work with my hands," Joyner said.
