Giving the Deliverance replica on Ordnance Island in St. George's an extreme makeover was no sweat for carpenter Michael Hooper.

The newly restored 41-year-old replica reopened to the public about a month ago, after nearly being destroyed due to severe deterioration and hurricane damage.

Mr. Hooper has been building boats like the Deliverance for years, but the boom on his previous boats weighed a couple of ounces rather than 800 pounds.

"I build model ships," he said. "I have probably done over 300 ships. I have done a lot of researching into rigging and how the ships were built. Working on a ship this size is easier, because you get to use bigger tools!"

The Deliverance replica was originally built in 1967 and opened in 1973. It was a popular tourist attraction for many years until it fell into disrepair. Former owner Nick Duffy recently donated it to the St. George's Foundation.

The Bank of Bermuda Foundation donated $300,000 to the restoration project.

"Nobody wanted to see it go," Mr. Hooper said. "It is a St. George's icon. One of my first summer jobs was leading tours on Deliverance."

Mr. Hooper said a certain amount of guesswork probably went into building the Deliverance replica.

"They knew the length," he said. "It was 40 feet long. But the rest would have been a guesstimate.

"At the time when the original Deliverance was built, there were no plans. Ship builders didn't start drafting plans until later. You just hired a bosun and he went about getting the boat built. He knew what to do."

But there would have been no plans anyway, because the Deliverance and its sister ship Patience, were built under crisis conditions after the Sea Venture wrecked off Bermuda's shores in 1609.

There were four men on the Sea Venture with actual ship building knowledge. Richard Frobisher, a shipwright from Limehouse, London, oversaw the building of Deliverance in what is now known as Buildings Bay outside of the town of St. George's. The entire group helped, sometimes unwillingly, with its construction.

They used sturdy cedar and salvaged the rigging and sails, nautical equipment and other supplies from the Sea Venture wreck offshore.

According to Kieran Doherty, author of 'Sea Venture — Ship Wreck, Survival and The Salvation of Jamestown', on May 10, 1610, at 10 a.m. winds were favourable for Deliverance to sail. Almost as soon as the two ships, meant for deep water, were prepared to sail through a channel to safe water, the winds died down. The ships had to be towed by long boats. The Deliverance ran aground once, but no damage was done.

The passengers sighted land again on May 18 and arrived safely in Jamestown not long afterward. They found the colony on the point of collapse. Supplies on the Deliverance and Patience rescued what was left of the colonists from certain starvation.

Mr. Hooper thought that when the Deliverance replica was first built in the late 1960s designers modeled parts of it, like the rigging, after the Mayflower, the ship that transported English separatists to Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620.

Mayflower and the Sea Venture left from the same steps in Plymouth, Devon.

Mr. Hooper said Deliverance fell into a bad state, partly because it had spent its life on land.

"The boat never turns like a normal boat would in the current," said Mr. Hooper. "The sun only hits one side of it.

"The starboard side just rotted from fresh water getting in. So the ribs on that side and the deck beams rotted out."

Over a period of two years, and starting on the inside, Mr. Hooper replaced about 40 percent of the original structure.

"Lumber was purchased locally, mostly pitch pine," he said. "The thing is the boat isn't going overboard, so it doesn't have to be seaworthy."

The replica was originally corked with cotton soaked with oakum oil.

"This would have been put on a real ship of the time," he said. "It is supposed to absorb the sea water and seal it.

"But this boat was never in contact with any sea water, just rain water, that rotted it.

"Now I have used a styrofoam plastic backing and modern cork. It is still a bit iffy whether that will work. But it certainly leaks a lot less than it use to. This is an ongoing project."

He said that one of the biggest challenges was the boom.

"The boom was originally a solid piece of lumber," he said. "It took seven people to lift it and the ends were bad. I made one now that is hollow and weighs 140 lbs instead of 800 lbs. The old heavy boom was made into the foremast."

He was assisted by Gerald Mello and also Keon Kirby and Jamar Wade who helped with clean up and painting.

"Keon did a lot of the climbing, because I don't do heights," said Mr. Hooper.

He is a sailor himself and has sailed across the Atlantic.

"I can't imagine how they would put 130 people into this space," said Mr. Hooper. "There would have been a few people on the Patience."

Passengers included William Strachey whose recollections inspired William Shakespeare's play The Tempest, and John Rolfe who later married Pocahontas.

Headroom on the passenger deck was four and a half feet. The passengers also would have shared the space with tons of supplies destined for Jamestown.

"Deliverance would have sailed slowly," said Mr. Hooper. "It took them 18 days to get to Jamestown. Nowadays, on a modern ship, it would take about four or five days."

The newly restored Deliverance includes a lecture by an animatronic William Strachey.

Brimstone Media handled this aspect of the fix-up.

"The tourists love it," said Mr. Hooper. "They kept trying to get on board while we were building. But in the beginning it was too dangerous. A foot could have gone right through the deck. When it got safer we allowed a few school groups on board to see what we were doing."

Mr. Hooper normally does maintenance and carpentry. After spending months working on Deliverance, he said it would be a bit of a shock going back to making cabinets.

"I would love to do this for the rest of my life," he said wistfully. "I have built a couple of small dinghies.

"A friend of mine just restored a 90-year-old sloop, so I am still involved.

"If anyone has another one like it in need of repair, they can just give me a call."

He said his dream would be to build a seaworthy Patience.

"The idea would be to put it overboard to use as a training vessel like The Spirit of Bermuda," he said. "Patience was actually a ship's pinnace.

"A pinnace was essentially, a big wide heavy rowboat that was completely open with one sail. It was used as a barge. It would be hard to get sailing ships like this alongside a dock. So the ship would be moored in the harbour, and the pinnace would be lowered.

"In this case Patience sailed along behind Deliverance. And most people would have been on the Deliverance rather than on the Patience."