When the replica of the Susan Constant leaves the Jamestown Settlement for restoration at the Mystic Seaport Shipyard in Connecticut this month, it will sail past a spot in Norfolk’s Ocean View where the original Susan Constant stopped to weather a storm on its arrival in Virginia in 1607. The current ship replica replaced an earlier iteration created for the 350th commemoration at Jamestown Festival Park in 1957. The new ship, commissioned in April 1991, has served as the flagship for Virginia’s official fleet of 17th-century vessels for 33 years.
Over 19 million visitors have crossed her planked decks to experience a bit of maritime life. For more than three decades, Capt. Eric Speth, director of maritime operations for the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, has commanded the vessel and implemented its water-borne ambassadorship.
“I love what I do, and I feel so fortunate to be able to work with the people I work with, the volunteers and the staff here at Jamestown Settlement,” Speth said. Today, the bayside park in Ocean View is called Sarah Constant Beach Park in tribute to the flagship Susan Constant, the largest of three chartered English ships (Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery) that brought the colonists who established the first permanent English settlement in the New World at Jamestown. On the grounds of the beach park near a cluster of live oak trees, a Virginia historical highway marker memorializes the ships and colonists who founded the English settleme.