A replica of the boat George Washington used in ‘Crossing of the Delaware’ is coming to Bucks County

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The Friends of Washington Crossing Park and Independence Seaport Museum are partnering to bring to life a key piece of history, the Durham boat, for park visitors.

By next year’s Semiquincentennial celebrations, visitors will be able to climb into a replica of the boat that General George Washington and his troops used to cross the Delaware River on Dec. 25, 1776, in what proved to be a turning point in the Revolutionary War.

Each December, the Washington Crossing Historic Park hosts two reenactments of the crossing, complete with Durham boats, said Jennifer Martin, executive director of Friends of Washington Crossing Park.

For “logistics and safety” reasons, the park can’t take visitors out on boats on the river, she said.  But her organization wanted to find another way to allow students and the roughly 750,000 recreational visitors to experience the piece of history.

The newly commissioned 40-foot-long replica will be stationed on dry land, where visitors can climb in and take photos with the Delaware River visible in the background.

It will be, Martin said, “a gateway into history.”

The organization’s partnership with the museum’s Seaport Boat Shop dates to 2018, when Martin first reached out to shop director Dave Dormond to talk about maintenance work on one of the Durham boats used for the crossing reenactment.

Martin saw a boat created by Independence Seaport on display at the Museum of the American Revolution and it became a “motivator” to bring their own replica boat to Washington Crossing Historic Park.

“I was very moved with the work that Independence Seaport Museum has done,” she said. “Just doing the wooden boat building, that old style of craftsmanship, it was really important to us to partner with someone that not only really valued and understood our educational mission, but also had the ability to make this as historically accurate as possible.”

Dormond, who is also the director of waterfront operations at Independence Seaport Museum, said the shop has already begun designing the boat. Museum visitors can get a behind-the-scenes look by attending monthly “Table Saw Talks,” which will explain and demonstrate the process. The public can also follow along online via a series of YouTube videos the museum plans to produce.

Dormond said the shop is focusing on incorporating historical materials and methods into every step.

“It’s always challenging to build a boat in a traditional fashion, but have it still be able to hold up in the elements and sitting on dry land,” Dormond said, noting that there aren’t a lot of documents that show how Durham boats were built at the time.

Dormond said the team has chosen to use white oak for the framing and cedar for planking, both of which are materials that would have been available and used at the time.

They’re also working to build the boat in sections that can be easily transported and put together onsite at the park.

“At 40 feet long, it’s the longest project that we’ve done in the shop, and our shop is somewhat limited in how we can get boats out, and so it’s actually a little bit tricky for us to get something of that size out,” he said. “And so we’re looking at building it in a fashion that we can take it apart at least partially and then bring it up to the site and install it on site.”

Dormond said the project aligns with the museum’s goal of highlighting Philadelphia’s often forgotten place in boat history.

“Philadelphia was one of the premier boat building cities in the country back at the start of the country, and we’ve gotten away from that with changes in how things are shipped and produced and all that,” he said. “And so it’s really important for us and and for me, to make sure that we’re keeping those traditions alive and highlighting specifically in this region, how these boats were being built, and the importance of their existence on the Delaware.”

The Durham boat will be onsite at Washington Crossing by May 2026, with the goal of everything being ready for the public by the Semiquincentennial.

But Martin said the Semiquincentennial is “not the end game, it’s the start.”

“By immersing people in the story of the crossing, in the story of the Revolution, I think that we’re hoping to create excitement that really goes on in perpetuity where people really think about the park and conserving these places and telling these histories long after 2026,” she said. “It’s really about inspiring that next generation.”