Whitehall Award

With the Whitehall Award, Rocking the Boat is proud to recognize exemplary community leaders and prominent individuals and organizations with a demonstrated commitment to experiential education, the environment, and youth development. The honor is named for the distinctively elegant and practical wooden boat design that forms the majority of Rocking the Boat’s hand-built fleet. The Whitehall represents a “golden period” of maritime design and craftsmanship, its reliable and beautiful form remaining largely consistent since 1690.

John Brady started sailing on New Jersey’s Barnegat Bay as a boy and came to enjoy working on boats as much as sailing them. He has worked rebuilding tall ships and has built and designed small boats, many reflecting the traditional craft he sailed as a child. He began his museum career as a shipwright at South Street Seaport. After a move to Philadelphia, John brought his talent and experience to Independence Seaport Museum‘s boat shop, the Workshop on the Water, which he ran for 25 years-working closely with students and volunteers, discovering that sharing his skills as a sailor, rigger, and carpenter was as much fun a practicing them-before being named the Museum’s CEO in 2011. In the past decade, John has designed three boats in Rocking the Boat’s fleet, offered advice on the construction of many others, including a 29-foot whaleboat currently in process, and has hosted students and Apprentices on many visits to his boat shop and museum as well as on thrilling sails on the sandbaggers Bull and Bear and the catboat Silent Maid. A master boatbuilder, inspiring teacher, preserver of a lost art, and nonprofit leader, John is the quintessential Whitehall Awardee.

Rocking the Boat empowers young people challenged by severe economic, educational, and social conditions to develop the self- confidence to set ambitious goals and gain the skills needed to achieve them. Students work together to build wooden boats, learn to row and sail, and restore the Bronx River, revitalizing their community while creating better lives for themselves. The organization serves upwards of 3,000 young people and community members annually. Kids don’t just build boats at Rocking the Boat, boats build kids.

photos from the 2011 whitehall award honoring majora carter

benefit committee