This skiff replica was built by the CBMM Apprentice-For-A-Day Program under the leadership of Jenn Kuhn in 2013. It was sold upon completion and was donated back to the museum in July 2026.
CBMM Documentation of the Original Ed Leatherbury Skiff
Ghost
Sailing skiff
Built: 1916-1920, Shady Side, Maryland
Builder: Charles Edward Leatherbury (1863-1952)
Length: 15’9″ (4.8m)
Breadth: 5’10” (1.8m)
Gift of Mrs. Milton Offutt. Collection of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, 1966.22.1
Ghost, with its sail neatly furled, was moored on Gumbottom Creek, Maryland, alongside the family’s cruising boat, the bugeye Richard J. Vetra. Ghost’s smaller cousin, also built by Leatherbury, was tied up farther inshore.
Photograph, c. 1938, gift of John Boyden. Collection of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, 868.41
A tender for summertime cruising
Milton Offutt, a college professor from New York City, summered with his family near the Severn River in Maryland. The family owned two vessels for leisure, Ghost (a deadrise bateau inspired by a crabbing skiff) and Richard J. Vetra, a Chesapeake Bay bugeye formerly used for oystering. Offutt appreciated the design of Ghost so much, he commissioned the builder, Ed Leatherbury of Shady Side, to construct a similar vessel as a tender for Richard J. Vetra to carry “200 pounds of ice and a two-week supply of cruising groceries.”
Conservation Plan
Details coming.