A two-masted brig taking shape at a San Diego boatyard is being built with an unusual currency: Bitcoin. The Pilgrim III, a roughly $10 million replica of a 19th-century merchant ship, is under construction at Driscoll Mission Bay Boat Yard & Marina, funded by an anonymous cryptocurrency donor; project workers say they do not know the donor's identity, with naval architect Doug Sharp an exception.
Project spokesperson Brian Thomas said the benefactor is covering the build with an amount equivalent to 120 to 150 Bitcoin, according to Axios. Thomas told the outlet that workers on the project do not know who the donor is, and naval architect Doug Sharp, who is designing the vessel, declined to comment on the benefactor's identity. GuideStar identifies the nonprofit overseeing the build, the Pilgrim III Foundation, and describes its mission, according to GuideStar.
The project currently employs 16 paid workers alongside a crew of volunteers, per Axios's reporting. Assembly is happening at the Driscoll family's San Diego shipyard, which has operated boatyards in the city since 1947 and is equipped with a 100-ton Travelift capable of moving heavy wooden hull frameworks, according to the Boatyard Guide.
A Floating Classroom Lost, Then Reimagined
The new ship is meant to replace Pilgrim II, which sank unexpectedly in its slip at Dana Point Harbor in March 2020. The vessel began taking on water sometime over the weekend, and the reasons remained unclear; it was later deemed unsalvageable and demolished by salvage crews, according to the Los Angeles Times. Workers worked to prevent hazardous-material leaks, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Pilgrim II had a long history before its sudden loss. It had a Danish wooden hull, was completed in Portugal, and later arrived in Southern California, where the Ocean Institute operated it as a hands-on living history classroom for overnight school field trips, serving over 400,000 students over four decades, according to Latitude 38.
Recreating the World of Two Years Before the Mast
Pilgrim III is designed to recreate life aboard the original 1830s brig Pilgrim, the ship made famous in Richard Henry Dana Jr.'s memoir Two Years Before the Mast. That original vessel was lost after a fire. The ship operated in the 1830s Pacific hide trade, when Boston merchant brigs traded manufactured New England goods for cow hides, as detailed by the Santa Barbara Independent.
The replica will be considerably larger than its namesake, stretching 149 feet long and 25 feet wide, with a tallest mast reaching 104 feet above the water and 8,692 square feet of sails, per Axios's reporting. Shipwrights are building the hull with Southern live oak, sapele, black locust, Douglas fir, and purpleheart wood from Africa, according to Pilgrim III Construction LLC.
Designer Behind San Diego's Other Tall Ships
Doug Sharp, the naval architect designing Pilgrim III, previously designed the 16th-century Spanish galleon replica San Salvador for the Maritime Museum of San Diego, a project for which he researched and provided plans and was knighted by the King of Spain, according to the San Diego Reader. The San Diego Reader also reported on the ship's construction. Once complete, Pilgrim III will join the Star of India and the San Salvador among San Diego's fleet of historic tall ships, per Axios.
Grounded by Design, Despite Its Size
Pilgrim III is planned to carry a Coast Guard Sailing School Vessel designation. Thomas told Axios the ship could theoretically sail across the ocean, though it is not intended to make transoceanic voyages. Thomas also said the vessel's future docking location has not yet been determined.
The question of where historic tall ships end up berthed remains open in San Diego County. For now, work continues at the Mission Bay boatyard, where the unusual pairing of centuries-old shipbuilding craft and an anonymous Bitcoin fortune is slowly turning timber into what backers hope will be Southern California's next floating classroom.
