Eleven-year-old Tyler Garrett would have jumped onto the Godspeed 400 years ago and sailed to Virginia without a second thought.

He would have liked to have seen the vast waters of the Atlantic Ocean and feel the wind—that is, when there was wind.

“It would have been a cool adventure,” he said after touring the 65-foot reproduction with his brother, Dale, his mother, Cindy Garrett, and friends.

“What if you had fallen off the boat?” asked his friend Lauren O’Reilly, 7, who also toured the Godspeed and the Lady Maryland with her 11-year-old brother, Sean, and mother, Nancy O’Reilly. The O’Reillys and Garretts live in Mechanicsville.

“That would have been the end of my adventure,” Tyler answered without hesitation.

Touring the Godspeed and the Lady Maryland ships to get an idea of what the original English settlers went through as they sailed to Jamestown and then arrived in Richmond on May 24, 1607, proved popular for about 3,000 people yesterday at the kickoff of the three-day Rock the Boat event at the Richmond Intermediate Terminal.

The activities began with a welcoming ceremony at 11 a.m. featuring performances by Virginia Indians, the Richmond Symphony and the Richmond Police Choir.

Today, the Pride of Baltimore, the Schooner Virginia and the Kalmar Nyckel will be open to the public in addition to the Godspeed and the Lady Maryland from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. The Fuzz Band and The Roots will perform from 8-10 p.m.

Event organizer Tracey Reed Leverty said that people should follow the signs leading to the parking area. Many people are stopping short of the Intermediate Terminal and walking as far as a mile when plenty of parking is set aside closer to the event, she said.

The Garrett and the O’Reilly families had a hard time imagining how 52 men, boys and crew members made the trip on the Godspeed.

“I think that if it had had two more men it would have sunk,” Lauren O’Reilly said.

Cindy Garrett said she took the children out of school for the living history trip.

“I think this is pretty awesome,” she said. “I think this is a wonderful addition to what they are trying to do with the waterfront.”

Bernice Chu and Jared Halpio, students at Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School, sat comfortably on the Godspeed. Chu wore a T-shirt with “Thank you John Ratcliffe” written on it. Halpio wore one that said “Thank you John Rolfe.”

Chu and Halpio said they had studied about Ratcliffe, who was captain of the Discovery, and Rolfe, who married Pocahontas, the Powhatan Indian princess.

“I’m glad I lived an interesting life,” Chu said, speaking as Ratcliffe. “I had a puppy. That’s the only thing I’m proud of.”

Later at the Richmond Day festival at Libby Hill Park in Church Hill, people enjoyed food, performances by Virginia’s Upper Mattaponi and Chickahominy Indian tribes and 17th-century sea chanteys by The Press Gang.

Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder and Marc Cranfield-Adams, mayor of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in England, along with Chickahominy Chief Stephen R. Adkins and Upper Mattaponi Chief Ken Adams were special guests in a ceremony celebrating the naming of Richmond.

They stood in front of a crowd at the park’s zenith with their backs to the panoramic view of the James River’s curve and the park’s steep slope, which are the same features found along the Thames River in England, which inspired the city’s name.

“You must do all you can to preserve this special [view] because it’s too precious to lose it,” Cranfield-Adams told Wilder.

Contact staff writer Juan Antonio Lizama at or (804) 649-6513.