Renewing History, With Slightly New Quills

Hello fans of BMC and the Porcupine Project,

Each step of the Porcupine Project draws the plan closer to actuality by some measure, large or small. As one of these steps, the recently received accommodation plan is more of a bound forward. It represents the convergence of physical space and philosophical plan into a tangible form. And it confirms that our donated hull and our envisioned programming will join almost seamlessly into the Schoolship for Presque Isle Bay we’re striving to create.

No official historic document exists detailing how the original Porcupine was laid out. While that gave Team Porcupine no clear starting point, it’s allowed us to create the schooner as want in order to best suit her programming. This makes our Porcupine a representation instead of a replica, affording us the freedom to create a traditionally evocative schooner without being bound to authentic exactitude. She might break from history in places both on deck and below, but that’s the point—Porcupine won’t be a shrine a ship that was, but a channel for bringing history to life in the present.

Robinson Jeffers, a Pennsylvania native who wrote poetry along the foreboding Central California Coast, once decreed, “Lend me the stone strength of the past and I will lend you/The wings of the future, for I have them.” Here at BMC, we’re making the same deal with this little schooner. Drawing on the sturdy foundation of her rich history, we’re hoping Porcupine will sail Erie students into a new era for Presque Isle Bay.

Captain Jamie Trost