Tall Ship Peacemaker
Tall Ship, Peacemaker, is currently docked at Central Wharf in Salem, MA. The Peacemaker is open to the public for free from August 10 to 22, 10am to 7pm on weekdays, and 10am to 9pm on the weekends. It’s a great opportunity to go aboard a working barquentine vessel and get a feel for how life may have been.
Photo courtesy of HipSalem.com
About the Peacemaker
According to wikipedia
The Peacemaker, originally named Avany, was built on a riverbank in southern Brazil using traditional methods and tropical hardwoods, and was launched in 1989. The original owner and his family motored in the southern Atlantic Ocean before bringing the ship up through the Caribbean to Savannah, Georgia, where they intended to rig it as a three-masted staysail Marconi rigged motor sailer. The work was never done, however, and in the summer of 2000, it was purchased by the Twelve Tribes, a religious group with 50 or so communities in North and South America, Europe, and Australia. They spent the next seven years replacing all of the ship’s mechanical and electrical systems and rigging it as a barquentine. The refit vessel set sail for the first time in the spring of 2007, under the name Peacemaker.
About the Twelve Tribes
The owners of Peacemaker are almost as interesting as the ship. While the name “Twelve Tribes” may imply a Jewish connection but this religious group claims to be nondenominational. Created by Gene Spriggs, a hippie Jesus Freak in the early 1970′s when cult movements were as prevalent as Volkswagen micro buses, this church has endured for almost 40 years.
Spriggs and his hippie followers started recruiting in 1972, soon micro churches started popping up in the South. Each church complete with communal living for is members, was funded by a restaurant chain called “The Yellow Deli” where it’s members worked. In 1976, a Yellow Deli sprung up in Island Pond VT, owned and operated by The Northeast Kingdom Community Church. During the 80′s the church experienced some legal issues, including a raid where the government seized 112 children from their compounds. The raid was later deemed unconstitutional and by the late 80′s their legal troubles had come to pass.
Through the 1990′s the church went global setting up shop in Canada, Australia, Brazil, Spain, Germany, Argentina, and the United Kingdom. Still clinging to the communal lifestyle, home schooling, cottage businesses (with a reach into organic farming) and secretive wedding rituals (not unlike what is portrayed in the HBO series Big Love) the church again found itself in various legal troubles involving child labor, kidnapping shenanigans and failure to follow government mandated home schooling requirements.
Currently the ship is used as a promotional tool, educational vessel and method to transport its founder to the various locations owned by the church.
