The legendary former owner of the topsail schooner Shenandoah will receive the prestigious Creative Living Award for 2020-2021, the Martha’s Vineyard Community Foundation announced Wednesday.
Shenandoah
2013
September 5, 2013
This week concludes Capt. Robert Douglas’ 50th summer skippering the Shenandoah, what amounts to the longest-running relationship between a captain and his boat he’s ever heard of.
“To my knowledge, no one has ever been tied up to the same boat, without interruption for 50 years,” he said this week on the porch outside his office in Vineyard Haven.
2012
July 9, 2012
Robert S. Douglas, captain of the topsail schooner Shenandoah, received the Walter Cronkite award Saturday at the 21st annual Sail Martha’s Vineyard Seafood Buffet and Auction at Tisbury Wharf. The award is bestowed to those who have distinguished themselves above and beyond, following the precepts of Sail Martha’s Vineyard’s own goals, to enrich the lives of others.
July 2, 2012
On Saturday, at the bow of the historic schooner Alabama, Capt. Ian Ridgeway addressed a group of Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School fifth and sixth grade students who had just returned from a five-day sail at sea.
“This is a bond that the 20 or so of us will all have together for the rest of our lives,” he said. “You are now ambassadors for this boat.”
2010
June 17, 2010
When the topsail schooner Shenandoah goes sailing this summer, credit for some of the work this spring in preparing the beautiful wooden vessel for another season goes to a 26-year-old West Tisbury resident. Working in his shop in the woods, Myles Thurlow built and restored several important spars on the 47-year-old Shenandoah.
2009
July 16, 2009
After more than a decade of wrangling which threatened to see the historic tall ship the Shenandoah removed from Vineyard Haven harbor, the ship’s owners and the Steamship Authority have reached an agreement which will allow the vessel to stay.
In deference to concerns held by SSA captains that the old ship presented a collision hazard to ferry operations, the owners, Black Dog Tall Ships, have agreed to move Shenandoah’s mooring within the harbor, to which it has added picturesque maritime charm since 1964.
February 12, 2009
Shenandoah, the graceful 108-foot topsail schooner that has long been a landmark in the Vineyard Haven harbor, is laid up at a Fairhaven shipyard, her majestic hull stripped bare and her ribs exposed as she undergoes extensive work to reverse a botched restoration job performed by a shipyard in Maine last year.
Robert Douglas, who is both captain and owner of the Shenandoah, has sued the Boothbay Harbor Shipyard for the apparently shoddy work that left his schooner taking on seawater last summer while she was filled with school children.
