Arts & Entertainment Community

All hands on deck for Harbor History Museum’s new Maritime Gallery

Posted on April 21st, 2025 By: Chapin Day

With just days remaining until April 26, Harbor History Museum staff and volunteers are scrambling, often working behind a blue curtain.

For the past two months, the dense fabric has barred public access to some museum favorites.

The curtain opens this weekend, when the museum stages a grand opening of its new Maritime Gallery. The gallery, featuring the historic fishing boat Shenandoah, officially opens at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, April 26, at the museum at 4121 Harborview Dr.

The Maritime Gallery at Harbor History Museum, featuring the century-old fishing vessel Shenandoah, opens on Saturday, April 26. Photo by Chapin Day

Grand Opening

The event combines fulfillment of a 25-year dream while providing a permanent indoor homeport for the 65-foot Gig Harbor-built fishing boat Shenandoah, centerpiece of the gallery and 100 years old this year.

How “grand” the opening will be was hard to detect in the gallery space during a Gig Harbor Now walkthrough on the afternoon of April 17.

Cluttered, makeshift workbenches fought for space with piles of tools, ladders, sawhorses, electric cords, construction scraps, still-boxed video monitors, and an array of other displays to be completed and fastened.

On the other hand, all but one of the new gallery’s seven boats were in position. Shenandoah, the star of the show, seemed ready for her close-up.

The engine room of the Shenandoah. Photo by Chapin Day

By another walkthrough Friday evening, much of the clutter had vanished and the outlines of a completed gallery were emerging.

Among other gallery features, for the first time since Shenandoah was donated to the museum in 2000, docent-guided tours will take visitors below decks to the purse seiner’s engine room, fish well and crew quarters.

‘We’ll be ready’

Museum officials expressed confidence in their progress.

“We’ll be ready,” promised Stephanie Lile, Harbor History Museum’s executive director and curator .

Smaller boats hang on the walls of the new Maritime Gallery. Photo by Chapin Day

On Thursday, not everyone was so sure.

Volunteer Ken Hoy, 76, calculates that he has spent about 10 hours per week for the past 10 years working on and around “Shenandoah.” Even Gig Harbor Now’s limited math skills figures that to be more than 5,000 hours.

He seemed to be looking for something when Gig Harbor Now stopped him for a chat.

“I’m looking for the to-do list,” he explains, moments later adding, “It’s starting to get a little tense.”

By participating in the project, the amiable Hoy says, he’s carrying on his “lifelong love of boats and boating.”

Hoy, a retired shipyard industrial planning and design engineer, first saw Shenandoah a decade ago in its roofed but open pavilion behind the museum.

Passing by on a nearby trail during a walk with his wife, he says he commented, “Doesn’t seem like they’re making much progress on restoring her.”

His wife’s response, “So why don’t your help?”

“I think she was just trying to get me out of the house,” he adds.

Stephanie Lile prepares an exhibit at Harbor History Museum. Photo by Chapin Day

Volunteers contribute mightily to project

Hoy, like other volunteers, works under the direction of Riley Hall.

Hall was raised in Gig Harbor and has been the museum’s shipwright since being hired in 2018 after training at the International Yacht Restoration School in Newport, RI.

Shipwright Riley Hall and volunteer Ken Hoy work at Harbor History Museum last week. Photo by Chapin Day

Director Lile is his aunt. She waves off any suggestion of nepotism in Riley’s hiring.

He was fully qualified and hired by the board of directors, she notes, “after a nationwide search.”

Watching him at work, it is apparent that Hall’s skills and focused and calm demeanor have won respect from the volunteers he supervises.

He’s more than aware of the looming deadline. Gig Harbor Now asked him Friday afternoon, “How do you feel about getting the job finished in time for the public?”

“We’ll do it,” he responded before adding, with a trace of a sly smile, “Anything missing, they won’t know its missing.”

Also watching the calendar, museum Administrative Assistant Amy Crews.

“The next few days are going to be chaotic,” she told Gig Harbor Now. “I am head of the party planners.”

Shipwright Riley Hall, left, and a volunteer consult under the stern of the Shenandoah in the Maritime Gallery. Photo by Chapin Day

Big crowd expected

Those duties include getting everything set up to handle an invitation-only preview party Friday night and the public event Saturday.

She remains uncertain about how big the Saturday turnout will be, as does Director Lile.

“It could be 100,” Lile says “It could be 1,000.”

For Lile, this Saturday’s event marks a major milestone in a capital campaign that has raised almost $3 million in donations and grants during her near nine years at the museum.

“We’re still about $45,000 short of the three million,” she says hopefully while thoughtfully leaving the door ajar for future donors to cover the gap.

The event also will be a milestone for Chris Erlich, one of the people at work Friday afternoon installing audio/video displays in the new gallery.

Chris Erlich, former executive director of the Gig Harbor Historical Society, helped negotiate acquisition of the Shenandoah. Photo by Chapin Day

At the turn of the 21st century, she told Gig Harbor Now, she was executive director of the Gig Harbor Historical Society (DBA Harbor History Museum) and helped negotiate the gift deal that transferred Shendoah from its last private owners to the society.

As a self-described “one woman shop” history display designer by profession, she tinkered with the job at hand while recalling some of her long relationship with the historic craft.

With palpable fondness, she offered, “It’s nice to see it as I visualized it originally … as a teaching tool for future generations.”

Preparing to open

The museum will be closed Friday, April 25, for volunteer training, final details, and celebration preparations.

On grand opening Saturday, the museum will be open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. A ribbon-cutting ceremony begins at 11:30 a.m.

Admission, as usual, will be free, though donations are encouraged. The following week, the museum resumes its regular schedule, open 11 to 4, Wednesday through Saturday.