US Preservationists travel to Cuba to examine Hemingways boat

U.S. Preservationists travel to Cuba to examine Hemingway´s boat

03/26/2006
A team of preservationists will travel to Cuba on Sunday to examine
author Ernest Hemingway's fishing boat.

Members of the Boston-based Hemingway Preservation Foundation will
travel to Finca Vigia, Hemingway's Cuban estate, where they will examine
the Pilar. Hemingway sailed the 40-foot (12-meter) boat when he lived in
Cuba from 1939 to 1960, and is said to have conceived some of his
greatest works, including "The Old Man and the Sea,'' while aboard.

The group is working with the Cuban government to preserve the Pilar,
Hemingway's home and the thousands of Hemingway drafts, manuscripts,
letters, photographs and books stored there.

The home is considered of such importance that the National Trust for
Historic Preservation placed it on its 2005 list of America's 11 Most
Endangered Historic Places even though it is not in the United States.

The fear is that the warm, humid conditions will eventually damage the
papers, which include the never-published epilogue of "For Whom the Bell
Tolls." The Pilar is stored under a metal roof on a former tennis court
on the estate.

Hemingway bought the Pilar, a Wheeler Playmate, in 1934 from a shipyard
in Brooklyn, New York. In his will, he left the vessel to his boatman,
who gave it to the Cuban government.

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