You need to be in the moment, and there aren’t a lot of opportunities like this in the way our culture has evolved. The landlubbers must agree to one condition: no cellphones. For a fee, high-school, college and adult students can join expeditions lasting from a day to three weeks to study underwater archaeology and maritime history, while learning the ropes and taking the helm under the direction of a 13-member crew.

The nonprofit group building the Perry has an educational mission. And while it’s the first vessel of its kind to be built in the United States since 1903, it’s also fitted with 21st-century technology, such as twin six-cylinder backup engines.

Navy's pluck and resourcefulness would inflict punishing setbacks on its larger opponent. Six years and more than $10 million later, the three-masted, 20-sail tall ship will launch this summer from the Newport Shipyard. The Naval War of 1812 Britain's navy began its war in North Atlantic waters with a crushing advantage over the United States in numbers of both ships and sailors, but events were to prove that the U.S. But when the Canadian group behind the venture ran out of money, enthusiasts in Rhode Island bought the unfinished 138-foot-long steel hull and named it after Perry, an Ocean State native. An extraordinary new sailing ship was supposed to be a replica of a British warship that his flotilla captured. Oliver Hazard Perry, the U.S naval officer who won a decisive victory against the Royal Navy on Lake Erie during the War of 1812-“We have met the enemy and they are ours,” he declared-would have appreciated the irony.

War of 1812 navy