Mystic —Mystic Seaport Museum will host a special event on Saturday to honor first responders and celebrate the 85th birthday of the iconic boat Fire Fighter.

Visitors to the Firefighter Festival will be able to watch the Life Star helicopter land, explore emergency response vehicles, see police and fireboats and antique firetrucks among many other opportunities.

Demonstrations include Newfoundland dogs performing water rescues and various types of fire rescues, but the star of the event is the famed boat, a National Historic Landmark, which will conduct water displays with its eight water cannons, capable of pumping 20,000 gallons per minute.

Fire Fighter, owned by the Fireboat Fire Fighter Museum since 2012, was the largest fireboat in the world and the first diesel-electric fireboat when it was built in 1938.

During its service in New York Harbor, Fire Fighter fought countless fires including one aboard the French ocean liner Normandie in 1942, which killed one and injured approximately 275, and spent three weeks pumping water to firetrucks at the World Trade Center site after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack.

Fire Fighter was retired and replaced with Fire Fighter II in 2010, after 72 years in service with the New York City Maritime Fleet of the Fire Department of New York and is the most decorated fireboat in the world.

Today, the Fireboat Fire Fighter Museum maintains and operates Fire Fighter with a mission to preserve and protect the fully functioning piece of maritime history and provide educational programming through partnerships with the FDNY and museums like the Seaport Museum, where Fire Fighter has been since early 2021.

The organization depends entirely on grants, donations and approximately 15 volunteers to operate. For the fireboat museum’s President and Founder, Charlie Ritchie, the boat is a labor of love.

Ritchie, with a background in experiential education and years working with the Police Athletic League, stumbled into his position as restorer, preserver, and steward of the boat.

Through his work, he helped develop a maritime adventure program which used historic vessels in an educational afterschool program.

His work on historic vessels connected him with members of the Fire Department of New York where he learned about Fire Fighter. Ritchie founded the nonprofit museum, and the department gave Fire Fighter to the museum for historic preservation and education.

Since the museum took possession of the boat, Ritchie has overseen two visits to shipyards for maintenance and extensive hull work, with a third visit coming up in the next six weeks.

The organization has repainted the boat in white, black and gold to match the original colors and restored its interior to the way it appeared in 1938. But there remains a never-ending list of ongoing maintenance and repairs.

“We would like to run the boat more, do more displays out in the harbors,” Ritchie said, although antiquated equipment and funding are major impediments to those goals.

Ritchie said that diesel fuel and insurance cost the nonprofit organization approximately $60,000 a year, and grants for historic preservation of the boat are highly competitive.

In fact, as an entirely volunteer organization, Ritchie does not earn a salary and continues to work full time in addition to caring for the boat.

Recently, the museum received a Save America’s Treasures grant through the Department of the Interior and another through the Gardiner Foundation totaling approximately $900,000 to replace all the piping that pumps the water for the cannons.

Additionally, the direct current power plant on board, which converts diesel fuel to electricity is an antiquated system and engineers with the experience and knowledge to operate it are becoming more and more rare.

Ritchie said most people with that level of knowledge are now in their 70s and 80s, and most can no longer do the strenuous work of operating the vast system comprised of two massive diesel engines, generators, four motors that run the four water pumps, two 1,000 horsepower propeller motors, and a “Frankenstein Board,” the nickname given to a massive control panel that controls all circuits on board.

“Our mission is to be a visiting museum,” he said, explaining the hope for the future is to visit more ports to share the history of the fireboat as broadly as possible.

“That’s the whole idea—for more people to see it,” he said.

Fire Fighter will be open for tours during the first responder’s event, which runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, and visitors can also purchase items at the fireboat’s onboard gift shop.

More information about the event including a schedule is available at www.mysticseaport.org.

People interested in donating, volunteering or learning more about Fire Fighter can visit www.americasfireboat.org.