GLOUCESTER, Mass. — June 18, 2014 — If you’re going to restore the oldest commercial fishing boat in Gloucester, why not look into the possibility of purchasing the oldest operating marine railways in the country as a place to berth her?
The Phyllis A Marine Association, the nonprofit organization that has undertaken the restoration of the Phyllis A, is considering exploring the purchase of the 155-year-old Gloucester Marine Railways shipyard, where the 89-year-old gillnetter currently sits in dry dock.
“There is one other aspect to our insanity,” quipped Doug Parsons, the ubiquitous foreman at the Gloucester Marine Railways on Rocky Neck and president and a founding member of the Phyllis A Marine Association dedicated to repairing and restoring Gloucester’s oldest commercial fishing vessel.
The association, according to Parsons, has discussed purchasing the Gloucester Marine Railways, continuing to operate it as a for-profit, boat-repair yard while using it as the eventual docking home for the Phyllis A in her role as a sort of working maritime museum.
“We’d like to buy the place, take the tin buildings down and put the wooden buildings back up,” Parsons said Tuesday while standing next to the yard’s boat lift, adjacent to the cradle in which the Phyllis A has been resting in dry dock since last Friday.
Read the full story from The Gloucester Daily Times