Here are some highlight photos from the trip:
On the replica Philadelphia at the Champlain Maritime Museum in Vergennes.
This is an easy stop, either in Basin Harbor (docks, $$$) or North Harbor (moorings, could be free if visiting the museum, this photo was taken in North Harbor). It includes glassblowing workshops, iron working workshops, and a whole slough of historical artifacts, displays and movies. Well worth the $40 or so for the whole family to see. We were the first and only ones there this past Sunday, and that resulted in a "private" screening of a short movie, an animated tour of the Philadelphia with us and the docent only, and one on one interactions with the glassblower and blacksmith. Amazing.
And if anyone didn't see my recommendation on a different thread to look up the battle of Valcour Island, it's certainly worth the time to do so.
BTW, that Gunboat Philadelphia was 53 ft long and had a crew of 54. The canvas roof was held up by the oars. It had a firepit down low in the bilge for cooking, and pretty much no cover anywhere other than the canvas. My boys were curious as to where everyone would sleep, and the answer was "everywhere". Apparently they would sleep up on the canvas roof, exposed to weather. Tough people. The docent said that the museum tried an experiment of loading 54 men onto the boat to spend an overnight out on the lake, and that was apparently an incredible exercise in patience and tested many a friendship. Would be like having 25 people on the mac, more or less. And some cannons.
Those small cannons were called "swivel guns", and they could be lifted up out of their mountings on the side rail and installed on the appropriate side to fire on the enemy. The big cannons were more or less fixed and relied as much on maneuvering the ship as adjusting the cannon itself. The ship was square rigged and couldn't go to weather, or even across the wind at all under sail; it relied on the rowers.
That's the real "igniter" thingy son 3 is using to fire the gun that son 2 is aiming at me. Forget what it was called.