The Glory of the Seas Foundation
Sep 29, 2022
A community tall ship for the Salish sea.
The Glory of the Seas is a wooden coasting schooner - a working ship, designed to transport lumber and fish up and down the American coast. Renown Lake Union shipwright Frank Prothero launched the Glory in 1985, a replica of the 1870’s coastal trading schooners his family used to build. Although the vessel (87 ft loa, with topmasts reaching up 77 ft.) is only 35 years old, it is the culmination of four generations of wooden boat building and maritime community tradition in the Pacific Northwest.
When the Lake Union shipwright Frank Prothero launched the Glory in 1985, Seattle was still a logging and fishing town. In 1995 when the vessel was commissioned, the city was turning into a technology hub, and wood schooners had long gone out of fashion.
A group of friends formed a foundation to save the historic vessel. Countless hours of volunteer labor buoyed by creativity and luck got the ship back into the water and up to Lopez Island months later, only slightly delayed by the pandemic. Now we are raising funds to ready the tall ship to carry cargo and passengers around the Salish Sea.
The Glory of the Seas sails on the un-ceded ancestral waters of the Sooke, Saanich, Songhee, Lummi, Samish and Semiahoo people. This acknowledgement serves as just the first step in honoring these indigenous communities.
Our mission is to use the Glory of the Seas to build a sustainable cargo shipping and trading business while simultaneously providing coastal communities access to the Salish sea for education and exploration related activities.
When the Lake Union shipwright Frank Prothero launched the Glory in 1985, Seattle was still a logging and fishing town. In 1995 when the vessel was commissioned, the city was turning into a technology hub, and wood schooners had long gone out of fashion.
A group of friends formed a foundation to save the historic vessel. Countless hours of volunteer labor buoyed by creativity and luck got the ship back into the water and up to Lopez Island months later, only slightly delayed by the pandemic. Now we are raising funds to ready the tall ship to carry cargo and passengers around the Salish Sea.
The Glory of the Seas sails on the un-ceded ancestral waters of the Sooke, Saanich, Songhee, Lummi, Samish and Semiahoo people. This acknowledgement serves as just the first step in honoring these indigenous communities.
Our mission is to use the Glory of the Seas to build a sustainable cargo shipping and trading business while simultaneously providing coastal communities access to the Salish sea for education and exploration related activities.
