Since publishing my personal testimonial about Niagara, I have heard from old shipmates, friends, volunteers, and people who generally love the ship. Their support has meant more to me than I can say.
I had originally planned to write a more detailed anthology about the positive impact Niagara had and that story still deserves to be told. But the number of people reaching out to ask some version of “Is there anything I can do to help?” has been overwhelming in the best way.
So before looking at lessons from the past again, I want to turn toward the question a lot of people have been asking right now:
“What do we do now? What comes next?”
I do not pretend to have the definitive answer. Niagara’s future is complicated because the balance between the different aspects of her mission are complicated. Reasonable people can disagree about what the best structure should look like.
But I do have one firm conviction:
Niagara’s future should be shaped by what kind of public mission the people of Pennsylvania want their ship to fulfill.
Niagara is our ship, the citizens of Pennsylvania own her. But Erie has a special civic claim on her. She is not just stored here. She is homeported here. Her silhouette is woven into the city itself: on signs, murals, logos, storefronts, festival posters, souvenirs, public art, and the shared memory of the waterfront. Nearly everywhere you turn in Erie, some echo of Niagara appears.
That does not mean Erie owns her to the exclusion of Pennsylvania. Niagara should serve the whole Commonwealth. She should voyage, train, inspire, and carry Pennsylvania’s story outward.
That mission exists because people fought for it. The last time Niagara’s active sailing future was threatened, Pennsylvanians spoke up. They made clear that they wanted their flagship to sail, train, educate, and serve as an ambassador for the Commonwealth. That public insistence helped write Niagara’s sailing and ambassadorial mission into Pennsylvania’s History Code.
So asking for public input now is not radical. It is a return to the public stewardship that helped protect Niagara before.
Erie has a special role in that conversation. Erie is her home port. Erie sees her masts on the bay, sends its children aboard, welcomes her home, volunteers on her decks, fills her festivals, and has carried her story for generations. Erie should not be treated as an audience for decisions made elsewhere. Erie should be at the table.
Niagara’s future should not be decided by fiat from Harrisburg. It should be shaped through public stewardship, with Erie’s home-port community heard clearly and the people of Pennsylvania invited once again to answer:
What do we want Niagara to be?
A dockside exhibit?
A sailing ambassador?
A training vessel?
My personal answer is clear. Niagara should be a living vessel.
She is at her best when she is sailing, teaching, training, welcoming volunteers, inspiring students, and carrying history out of the museum and into the real world. Her story should not only be described. It should be felt: in the roughness of manila line, the smell of tar, the cadence of a working crew, the shudder of the hull as she comes about onto a new tack, and the thump in your chest when she fires one of her guns.
Most of all, it should be seen in the wonder of students and visitors when they realize that human beings did all of this… and still can.
If you want the background for why I feel this so strongly, I encourage you to read my longer Testimonial: Don’t Give Up the Ship. That piece covers some of what Niagara can accomplish, how we got here now, and some of what I hope we can avoid.
This piece is about what we might build next.
My hope is that Niagara becomes her best self again: a living public mission that sails, teaches, trains, welcomes volunteers, serves Erie, represents Pennsylvania, and changes lives.
But hope alone will not build that future. We need a structure that makes the work possible.
So this is the ask: convene around Niagara’s programming again. Ask for a public forum in Erie. Ask legislators to help create a durable legal partnership model. Ask for a structure that protects public access, voyage programming, school sails, volunteer participation, maritime expertise, donor trust, and independent advocacy for the ship.
And if Niagara changed your life, tell that story. Protect Brig Niagara is one small forum for public conversation and advocacy, but this cannot live only inside our circle of dedicated shipmates and supporters. If Niagara mattered to you, carry that story outward. Tell your community why she matters.
People need to understand that Niagara is not just a line item, a museum object, or a beautiful silhouette on the bay. The story of Niagara’s future should be carried by everyone who knows what she can do.
Editor’s note / companion resource:
This article is meant to explain why Niagara’s future matters and why I believe the public should have a meaningful voice in shaping it. For readers who already agree that Niagara deserves a real public forum, I have also prepared a companion action guide with contact information, suggested messages, and a letter template for reaching the Governor’s Office, PHMCThe Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) is the state agency that stewards the U.S. Brig Niagara and Erie Maritime Museum. The PHMC is responsible for the collect..., and regional legislators.
You can find that companion piece here.
Niagara changes lives
The case for Niagara is not only historical. Niagara can do something rare. She can reach into a person’s life and deeply change its direction for the better.
I know because she changed mine.
I came aboard as an awkward 17-year-old trainee, unsure of who I was or what I had to offer. Niagara gave me confidence, discipline, purpose, and shipmates. She taught me how to serve something larger than myself, and she showed me that I could do hard things when I had people beside me who counted on me, challenged me, and believed I could rise to the work.
Where Niagara is concerned, my story is not unique.
Former trainees have gone on to maritime careers, the Navy, the Coast Guard, public service, teaching, leadership, trades, and community work. Niagara gave young people from inland towns and landlocked places a way to discover that the maritime world was not some distant storybook thing. It was real. It was reachable. It could be a life.
I know trainees and crew members who had barely left Pennsylvania before stepping aboard Niagara and are now voyaging oceans, working ships, and carrying their stories into the wider world. That is part of what made the program so powerful. Niagara did not just show people history. She widened their horizon and helped them imagine a future they had never thought belonged to them.
The deeper impact was not only professional, but personal.
One young woman came to Niagara through Station Maine, a youth maritime program. The way it was told to me, she was so quiet in school that teachers often struggled to hear her voice at all when she was called on in class. But aboard Niagara, something changed.
Immersed in the strange language, rhythm, and responsibility of the ship over 2 weeks, she literally found her voice. By the end of the program, she could bellow commands and responses across the deck to shipmates many times her age, and those adults listened. They hauled together on the cadence she called. They trusted the voice that had found the courage to speak.
Afterward, her teachers were stunned when she proudly gave a presentation about her experience in front of her class. I have since been told that she is now working to bring maritime opportunities to troubled youth, passing forward the same gift her time with Station Maine and Niagara gave her: a new way to stand in the world.
That is one life changed among many, one small glimpse of the fruit a program like Niagara can bear when it is allowed to grow.
Niagara’s reach was never limited to one age group or one kind of person. Fourteen-year-old trainees, students, mid-career adults, and retirees could all find a place aboard her. Some went aloft to rig, stood watch, and helped sail the ship. Others shared her history through storytelling, repaired sails, sewed hammocks, tied whippings, welcomed visitors, helped in the gift shop, supported interpretation, or simply showed up wherever hands were needed.
That was part of the magic. Niagara did not ask everyone to contribute in the same way. She gave people many ways to belong and build something meaningful.
She did not simply teach people about history.
She gave people a place inside it.
Why doing it the hard way still matters
Interpretation matters. Museum access matters. Deck tours matter.
During my time with the League, I loved seeing docents, trainees, volunteers, and crew share Niagara’s story with the public, whether at home in Erie or in away ports across the lakes. There is something beautiful in watching someone step aboard for the first time and see the ship open up in their imagination. A good interpreter can turn wood, line, canvas, and iron into a doorway.
I especially loved watching new trainees give tours. After only a short time immersed in Niagara’s world, they suddenly realized how much they had already learned: the language, the habits, the history, the strange logic of the rig, the culture of the ship. Then they would see that same wonder reflected in the eyes of visitors experiencing her for the first time. At that moment, the trainee was no longer just receiving the story. They were carrying it.
So I am genuinely glad that a larger place is being built for that kind of public access and interpretation to take hold in Erie.
But I also want to defend the voyage program.
A dockside tour can teach, spark wonder, and invite people into history. That is important. But a voyage asks something different from you.
You haul the line. You stand the watch. You get cold, tired, confused, and humbled. You learn that the work is too hard to do alone and so you learn to trust people, you learn to listen, you learn to follow, you learn to lead… You learn that “shipmate” means something more than coworker and something different from friend.
Shipmates do not have to be the same kind of people. They do not have to agree about everything. But they share responsibility for the ship and for one another.
Niagara teaches lessons worth preserving in any era, maybe especially now.
Captain William SabatiniFleet Captain William "Billy" Sabatini is the executive director and fleet captain of the Flagship Niagara League. Sabatini grew up in southeastern Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, and ... often reminded us that, “for much of human history, ships were how people, commerce, news, culture, and ideas moved through the world”. Before a message could cross an ocean in an instant, someone had to build the vessel, set the sail, read the weather, stand the watch, and carry the story across the water.
Today, so much is easy, instant, and abstract. A question can be answered in seconds. A message can cross the world in a moment. AI models can summarize, calculate, draft, sort, and solve at a speed that would have seemed impossible not long ago.
I love those tools. I use them. I believe access to information is a gift.
But the more routine work becomes automated, and the more knowledge becomes instantly available, the more important it becomes to ask:
What remains essentially human?
What do we still have to earn through patience, courage, attention, skill, and care for one another?
Niagara offers one answer.
She gives people a place to deliberately do something the hard way because effort, attention, responsibility, and trust still forge human beings in ways no shortcut can. You cannot click past discomfort aboard a ship. You cannot outsource courage. You cannot defer responsibility. You cannot fake trust or grit. You have to show up, try, fail, learn, and pull together.
That is the kind of deep, meaningful education I believe we desperately need today.
It is the kind of experience that can stay with a person for the rest of their life and help make them someone new.
The state can succeed
I want to acknowledge something important: the state has succeeded with Niagara before, and it can succeed with her again.
PHMC Commissioner Caleb Pifer made this point in his own article, and I think it deserves to be taken seriously. He argued that state operation can work, that increased investment from Harrisburg matters, and that Niagara’s future should include a balance between voyaging on the Great Lakes and day sailing from Erie. He also described Niagara and Presque Isle as central to Erie’s “heart and soul.”
There is real merit in those considerations, and I am deeply grateful that Caleb is using his voice and position to advocate for Niagara’s future. I am glad the state is investing in Niagara. I want the state to succeed. I want Niagara to succeed. I want Erie to see her back under sail.
PHMC has said many of the right things. It has spoken about sailing, education, public access, day sails, and bringing Niagara back to life. I welcome those goals. I want them to be real.
I do not doubt that people within the state care about Niagara in their own fashion. I do doubt whether the currently proposed model, by itself, has shown the capacity to grow the kind of living program Niagara needs.
Success will require more than funding. PHMC will have to find a way to bring experienced maritime talent back into meaningful roles and build a structure that respects that expertise. Niagara is not a normal museum object. She is a complex traditional sailing vessel, and her care depends on specialized knowledge that cannot be recreated by administration alone.
For many years, Niagara operated under state stewardship with extraordinary people involved, including Senior Captain Walter Rybka, whose influence shaped the vessel, her mission, and generations of sailors. When the state stepped back after the financial crisis, the League did not simply inherit operations of a ship. It brought aboard much of that professional crew, preserving the institutional knowledge, seamanship, and culture that made Niagara’s program possible.
Those sailors, volunteers, and staff helped build the organization I came to love.
When Senior Captain Rybka retired, PHMC decided that they did not require traditional maritime experience for the Erie Maritime Museum site administrator role. Later, when operations were brought back in house, the state actively avoided using crew whose experience had kept the ship operating and seemed to prioritize administrative control above operational continuity.
In my opinion, that has to change if Niagara is going to thrive. A ship like Niagara needs community, continuity, flexible support, volunteer power, philanthropic trust, local advocacy, maritime expertise, and a public that feels invited into the work.
Those things are not automatic.
They have to be grown.
The struggle for balance is real
Niagara’s mission has always contained competing needs. Museum access matters. Dockside interpretation matters. Day sails matter. School programs matter. Voyage programming matters. So do maintenance, crew development, public funding, and earned revenue. None of those needs can simply erase the others.
Under FNL’s operation, voyaging was emphasized as a necessity, not a romantic indulgence. It was part of how the ship stayed alive.
Voyages built public support, generated revenue, and represented Erie and Pennsylvania across the Great Lakes. They also did something that may be less obvious from an administrative or public perspective: They created new sailors.
Niagara became one of the premier sail-training vessels in the world and that programming helped her to build the next generation of crew. A Merchant Mariner CredentialA Merchant Mariner Credential(MMC), is a certification issued by the United States Coast Guard (USCG) that authorizes an individual to work aboard commercial vessels. This credenti... matters, but filling the legal requirements do not establish seamanship on their own. To command or safely crew a traditional square-rigged vessel requires experience, judgment, time aboard, and years of learning how a complex rig behaves.
That pipeline is increasingly fragile. Few people are legally qualified to command a vessel like Niagara, and fewer still have practical experience with her rig, size, history, and quirks. When the state ended its relationship with FNL, three such people with that rare command-level capability were still within the League’s orbit. Around them was an ecosystem of able seafarers, deckhands, shipwrights, educators, partner organizations, and maritime connections built through years of operating a real sailing program.
That expertise is not optional. Because of Niagara’s historical construction, stability, draft, and regulatory status, she cannot sail safely or legally without an extensive professional crew far beyond the norm for a vessel of her size. Those people are grown through seasons of work, voyages, maintenance, mentoring, and trust.
That is why voyage programming matters. It is not separate from preservation. It is how preservation becomes practice. It is how trainees become deckhands, deckhands become able seamen, able seamen become mates, and mates someday become captains. Without that living pipeline, the ship may be repaired, but the culture and capability needed to sail her will continue to thin.
As one shipmate put it in their reflection on Niagara, “ships are like sharks, if they stop moving they die.” A ship like Niagara cannot simply be admired into health. She has to be used, maintained, sailed, taught aboard, repaired, and loved through practice.
But that same reality created a knot in the old model. Erie deserves meaningful access to Pennsylvania’s flagship, and keeping Niagara home more often serves a real public need. But under FNL, reducing voyage programming also reduced one of the League’s main ways to fund the crew, sustain operations, train sailors, build donor energy, and keep the program visible.
The state taking on more of Niagara’s financial burden may create an opportunity to change that balance. If public investment can cover more of the fixed costs of operating and maintaining the ship, perhaps Niagara can spend more time serving Erie directly while still voyaging enough to train, inspire, fundraise, and represent the Commonwealth beyond her home port.
That is worth building toward.
But the state will still have to answer the hard operating questions. How will Niagara stay healthy? How will she remain crewed? How will new sailors be trained? How will dockside access, day sails, school programs, voyages, maintenance, and interpretation fit together without one slowly consuming the others?
The question is not which part of Niagara’s mission should win at the expense of the rest. The question is what kind of structure can hold the whole mission together.
That is why the old associate and management agreements deserve their own detailed article and discussion. Any serious conversation about Niagara’s future will have to examine what worked, what failed, and what pitfalls must be avoided in building a healthier public-private partnership.
One of those pitfalls became clear after 2020: the League was gradually asked to absorb more expectations without a realistic path to bring in the resources needed to meet them. Niagara was expected to be more available in Erie. The crew was expected to support more museum-facing interpretation. The League was expected to carry more operational burdens. At the same time, the museum sought greater shares of FNL’s revenue while restricting the League’s ability to operate, fundraise, communicate, and generate that revenue.
A future structure has to be honest about that math.
Niagara’s mission is evergreen. The current tailwind of funding, attention, and institutional urgency is not. We should use this moment while we have it, not merely to prepare her for a celebration, but to build a structure strong enough to carry her mission after the spotlight moves on.
Public funding is not guaranteed
We have been here before.
After the financial crash in 2008, Niagara’s active sailing program was threatened because public budgets tightened and sailing was treated as something the state might no longer be able to afford. That was not ancient history. It was the reason the 2009 framework with FNL was created.
The public stood up then. People argued that Pennsylvania’s flagship should remain active, not only as a symbol of history, but as a place where people could engage with that history in a living way. That insistence mattered. It helped create a structure that made Tall Ships Erie, school sails, voyage programs, volunteer maintenance, youth leadership, community partnerships, and educational programming possible.
It gave people like me a place to step aboard, get starstruck, and think:
“Wait… this is something people can do? And if this is possible, what can I do with my life?”
Right now, Niagara has momentum. There is money, attention, repair work, and national symbolism surrounding her as America approaches its 250th anniversary. That is an opportunity, and I am immensely grateful for it.
But moments pass.
The anniversary will come and go. The cameras will move on. Lawmakers and officials will turn to the next crisis, the next budget, the next priority. If we do not use this moment to build something durable, Niagara could once again become vulnerable when attention fades.
This kind of drift is not unique to Niagara. It happens to nonprofits, museums, historic sites, and public programs all the time when money tightens, attention fades, and the mission is not clearly defended.
A future administrator may not set out to diminish her. They may simply trim what looks expensive out of necessity. Manila line becomes too perishable, so synthetic line creeps into the gear. Day sails require too much crew time, so the season shortens. Voyages become harder to justify, so sailing is reduced to ceremonies and special events. Winter rigging becomes too burdensome, so the ship is simplified for convenience. Eventually, the old temptation returns to put her on dry land and make her easier to manage, easier to tour, easier to budget and ultimately less alive.
That is how a mission can be lost without anyone deciding to kill it. A living ship can be thinned by inches.
The answer is not just more money, though money matters. The answer is a connected public that knows what it wants Niagara to be and insists on it. If we want her to remain a living vessel, then we need to say so clearly now and build a structure that can hold that line after the spotlight moves on.
The danger now is that Niagara may not have the same fallback. In 2009, there was a community partner with volunteers, donors, and community trust ready to help carry the mission forward. If that civic infrastructure is not rebuilt, the next budget crisis could leave Niagara with fewer people, fewer resources, and less organized public capacity ready to protect her.
Pennsylvania’s budget picture is again uncertain. Recent budget reporting shows the Commonwealth spending beyond current revenues and relying heavily on reserve or surplus cash to bridge the gap. During the recent budget stalemate, schools, counties, universities, child welfare agencies, early childhood programs, health departments, nonprofits, and other public services faced delayed payments.
Whatever one’s politics, the basic reality is simple: public money is not infinite. When budgets tighten or stall, programs seen as “nice to have” become vulnerable.
So we should ask the hard questions now, while there is money, attention, and public interest available:
What happens after America 250?
What happens when the next budget crisis comes?
What happens if a future administration decides that a sailing program is too expensive, too complex, or too hard to justify?
A vessel like Niagara needs more than one source of support. She needs a structure strong enough to survive political cycles, budget stress, leadership changes, and the ebbs and flows of attention.
A better partnership is possible
I believe a public-private partnership is essential to Niagara’s future.
Not necessarily the old model. Not a return to every arrangement that existed before. And certainly not a structure where a nonprofit is demanded to raise money, provide volunteers, support operations, carry risk, and absorb burdens without meaningful authority, security, or independence.
The concern is not theoretical.
Fundraising Through Friends Groups, an early 2000s article on museum support organizations, specifically identified PHMC’s associate-group model as a cautionary example. It described a “command and control” structure where friends groups are expected to raise money, manage volunteers, employ staff, support operations, and carry liabilities while having little meaningful authority over the sites they served. It also noted that PHMC friends groups could be shut down at any time.
That is not healthy soil for the kind of program Niagara needs to flourish.
The state should continue to own, fund, preserve, and support Niagara. But an independent nonprofit partner should have the legal protection, authority, and stability to rebuild the public life around the ship: sail training, school programming, volunteer engagement, donor support, voyage programming, maritime education, and public advocacy.
That partner does not have to be FNL. But it would be a massive waste not to find a way to bring forward the talent, passion, volunteer culture, donor trust, maritime capability, and community memory the Flagship Niagara League represents after more than forty years of work with Niagara.
The old model should not simply be restored. A future partnership needs to be clearer, stronger, more transparent, and more durable. It should be grounded in a binding update to the governing framework so both parties are accountable and both can fulfill their missions.
The nonprofit partner cannot merely be a fundraising tool, volunteer labor pool, or legal pass-through for PHMC. It must be able to advocate for the ship and represent the volunteers, donors, trainees, educators, maritime professionals, former crew, and community stakeholders who make Niagara’s public life possible.
The lesson from the old model is not that a nonprofit partner needs less accountability. It is that accountability cannot mean subordination.
A future nonprofit partner should publish detailed financials, report on its programming, document its accomplishments, and show how donor money is used. But it must also have enough independence and governance to raise money honestly, represent volunteers and donors, advocate for the ship, and fulfill its own chartered mission.
Niagara needs public oversight.
She also needs independent advocacy.
Both things can be true.
Ask for the future you want to see
This article is a call to care, to speak, and to insist that Niagara’s future be shaped in public. A companion piece, What You Can Do to Help, points people toward the practical tools: who to contact, what to ask for, how to share your story, and how to help build momentum for a public forum and a durable partnership model.
For now, the ask is simple.
First, ask for a real public forum in Erie.
Not a closed-door meeting. Not a press event. Not a listening session with no follow-through. A real public forum where PHMC, legislators, maritime professionals, former crew, volunteers, educators, students, trainees, donors, community partners, Erie leaders, and the public can speak plainly about Niagara’s future.
Second, ask legislators to help craft and ensure a durable legal partnership model.
The state should continue to own, preserve, fund, and support Niagara. But an independent nonprofit partner needs enough legal protection, authority, and stability to rebuild the programming, volunteer culture, donor support, public advocacy, and maritime education that keep a living ship alive.
Third, tell your Niagara story.
Share it with Protect Brig Niagara. Send it to local media. Post it publicly. Tell your representatives, schools, churches, civic groups, neighbors, and friends what Niagara did for you or for someone you love.
The state should explain its vision.
Erie should be heard.
For anyone who wants to help but does not know where to begin, I have created a companion action guide with public contact information, suggested language, and a letter-writing template:
The public should be invited to say what kind of ship it wants Niagara to be.
That is not radical. That is fundamental public stewardship.
I believe Niagara can sail again. I believe she can teach again. I believe she can train again. I believe she can change lives again.
But that will not happen just because the ship returns.
It will happen because people who love her make clear what kind of future she deserves.
The public helped save Niagara before because people understood that she was not merely a cost to be managed, but a mission worth carrying.
Now we have to do more than remember what she was.
Now we have to do more than remember what she was.
We have to build the structure that lets people back in to do the work again, reconnects Niagara to her community, and gives the people who believe in her a real place to help carry the mission forward.
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