An eight-foot all-wood dinghy with exceptional provenance has been given to the Mathews Maritime Foundation, which supports the Mathews Maritime Museum and the Gwynn’s Island Boat Shop through the sale of donated boats.

According to a news release prepared for the foundation by Carolyn August, the dinghy was built around 1970 by well-known English boatbuilder Norman Newell. The dinghy is powered by sail and by oar.

“It represents a disappearing era of traditional wooden boatbuilding and the extraordinary skills of craftsmen who shaped vessels entirely by hand,” August said.

She said the Newell worked in Seaview on the Isle of Wight, England, and “widely respected in the local community for building and maintaining elegant traditional wooden boats at a time when fiberglass construction was rapidly taking over the marine industry. He became particularly well known for building 10 of the famed Sea View One Design dinghies and for his work on the classic vessel ‘Luccomber Shanklin.’”

The dinghy given to MMF was commissioned by a Swiss customer who put down a deposit but never claimed the boat, August said. Newell eventually sold the dinghy to an American visitor and it found a home in Baltimore.

She said that sales through the boat donation program support restoration projects, educational outreach, vocational training, museum operations and maintenance of the history century-old buyboat Peggy of New Point and the Green Heron.

August said the dinghy and other current boat listings can be found at www.mathewsmaritime.com; the boats can be inspected 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.