Upcoming Events

Crewing on the Rigged Unicorn

Crewing on the Rigged Unicorn: An insight into working and Sailing on a Square-Rigged Vessel.

Join John Philips at the Fort Plain Museum on Saturday, March 21st at 1pm. Members free/Non-Members $5-Not a member? This is a great opportunity to join. Refreshments will be served!

John will provide a presentation about his time on the Unicorn.  John will give a sense of what it was like to work on one of these vesels.  Although this is not particularly about the revolutionary war, the vessels haven't changed much.

John graduated from State University of New York, Oneonta in 1972 with a bachelor's degree in earth sciences.  John never took a draft deferment so after he graduated, he was waiting to get drafted but it never happened.  John's dad, who worked for Chase Manhattan Bank, used to take his lunch down at South St. Seaport and came home one day all excited about this old square rigger that sailed in from Europe.  Dick Koopman a partner in a boat with John on Long Island decided to check it out and then ended up volunteering to work on it doing various carpentry tasks.  One thing led to another with various promotional sailing trips and then a large trip was planned to go to the Falkland Islands.  His story sort of revolves around that.

As for John's collection, he started before he was 10 years old, collecting old bottles because that was something he could afford.  Then his dad and he had a small business buying and selling and reparing old guns.  John moved to Fly Creek in 1997 and continued his general contracting business that he had started on Long Island.  John a volunteer firefighter, met Pete Couster at a Springfield Center Parade, who introduced him to the Fort Plain Musuem for which he is forever grateful...