1984 Re-Voyage of the Godspeed

The Jamestown Foundation’s 1984 re-creation of the 1607 Voyage of the Godspeed from England to Jamestown will be presented by one of her crew, Mr. Joe Gowdey, at the January Speaker Meeting of the Mathews Maritime Foundation.

On April 30, 1985, a replica of the 1607 ship Godspeed departed London to begin her journey across the Atlantic in commemoration of the original voyage some 379 years earlier. The replica vessel was as close a representation of a 17th-century sailing ship as was possible.

Mr. Gowdey was an Electrical Engineer who worked for NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) for 30 years, in a number of capacities. He is one of around 5,000 people who have their autograph (in 2 places) on the surface of the planet Mars, as one of the many who worked on the Viking-Mars Landers of the 1970’s. He retired in 1993 as Head of the LaRC Electrical Systems Section, which was occupied at the time in designing and building special purpose computers for both aero and space experiments.