Shipbuilders will launch a Westbrook-built boat into Portland Harbor tomorrow afternoon for the first time in 172 years.

Unlike the last time in 1833, however, the shipbuilders are not professionals; they are students in Wescott Junior High School’s alternative learning program.

The students have been working on the boat, a 21-foot dory – a traditional open rowing boat powered by four sets of oars – since last September, said Patricia Ryan, executive director of the Compass Project, a non-profit organization that works with students to develop job and life skills through boat building and sailing.

“It’s a very, very nice boat,” Ryan said. She said the group of students, which was a rotating group of about eight to 12 kids, started with just a pile of lumber and built every piece of the boat.

Besides being a traditional Maine boat, Ryan said the dory was also a great boat to use for team building exercises once it is launched. Because the boat requires the combined efforts of four rowers working together, Ryan said the students have to learn to work as a team, or they go nowhere.

“They’ve learned some teamwork and practical skills,” Ryan said.

The students’ dory is named the Globe II, and Ryan said that name was chosen because of its historic link to the last boat built by Westbrook shipbuilders.

In 1833, the original Globe, a 93-foot sailing brig was launched. Ryan said the ship traveled with a company of missionaries in 1844 from Boston to the Hawaiian Islands (then called the Sandwich Islands). The Globe eventually ended up in San Francisco where it was used as a store ship as part of the Gold Rush fleet in 1849. Ryan said she believed the Globe was the last boat built in the city.

“We don’t know of another boat being built in Westbrook,” she said.

The Wescott students’ dory is part of the Three Year Dory Building Program, which partners the Compass Project with the alternative learning program to build dories. Ryan said the plans call for the Wescott students to build a dory each year for the next three years, and those boats would be used to start a community rowing center that would serve Westbrook and the rest of the greater Portland area. Plans for the center are still being formed, said Ryan, and a location for the center has not been selected.

The launching tomorrow afternoon marks the first time the boat has been in the water, Ryan said. Besides christening the dory, Ryan said the ceremony is a good way for the kids to be acknowledged for all of their work.

“The launching is to celebrate them and what they’ve done,” she said.

Working with the students during the construction of the Globe II, Ryan said she has seen firsthand how the project has affected the kids. “I think it’s been a great experience for the kids,” she said. “We’ve seen them blossom in doing this.”

The ceremony will have all the trappings of a traditional boat launching, with one notable exception. In a concession to the young ages of the builders, the traditional bottle of champagne will not be broken over the boat’s bow. Instead, Ryan said she has purchased a bottle of a different sort of bubbly, Perrier, for the occasion.

The public is invited to come to the East End Beach off Portland’s Eastern Prom tomorrow afternoon at 1:30 p.m. to help the Wescott students celebrate the launching of their boat, said Ryan.

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