I

n the days before roads, people and their goods got around Georgetown and its outlying areas by traveling on the rivers and ocean, and now there is a new exhibit of what those everyday boats probably looked like.

Volunteer labor and love of marine history came together to create a new model of the Brown’s Ferry Vessel, an artifact some historians have said is the most important nautical discovery in the country.

The remains of the vessel, thought to be the oldest American-made boat ever recovered, are displayed in the Rice Museum on Front Street, along with an earlier model that was made in the first years after the ship was recovered in 1976.