Published: July 03, 2009 08:18 pm      

Sloop back at birthplace in Gulfport, Mississippi

GULFPORT (AP) — People who knew Albert Baldwin Wood said he had one great love, a 30-foot sloop called the Nydia (nih-de-yuh).

Wood spent much of the first half of the 20th century sailing around the Mississippi Gulf. On Thursday, his sloop returned to where it was built more than 100 years ago.

‘‘Wouldn’t Uncle Baldwin have been pleased,’’ Susie Seal said as she saw the boat arrive at The Dock restaurant in Gulfport by truck. The 30-foot sailboat hasn’t seen water for about 50 years.

When restored, it will get a place of honor at the Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum, which will open in Biloxi in 2011, said museum director Robin Krohn David.

Seal and her brother, Ralph Wood Pringle, are Wood’s great-niece and -nephew.

Wood died while sailing the boat out of the Biloxi Channel. He left a large bequest to his alma mater, Tulane University in New Orleans, with the stipulation the Nydia be displayed and protected for 99 years, and it’s been there since 1958.

‘‘It just belongs in Biloxi,’’ Pringle said.

Pringle got assistance from a group called ‘‘Friends of the Nydia’’ to steer the century old vessel back to Mississippi.

Friends of the Nydia is headed up by Peter Beer, a U.S. district judge in New Orleans.

The Nydia was built at a shipyard on Biloxi’s back bay around 1898. Wood bought it in 1904, and raced it in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.

‘‘What a great old boat she was, and still is,’’ Beer said.

When the boat was being loaded onto the truck for its trip from Louisiana to Mississippi, Pringle said the family found a 1942 document that allowed Wood to take it on pleasure trips during World War II.

The boat will be stored at the Seaway Marine Center in Gulfport, where it will be restored.

‘‘We’re just going to take our time and do it right,’’ Pringle said.

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Information from: WLOX-TV, http://www.wlox.com and The Sun Herald, http://www.sunherald.com.