The Vessel Kit Jones

Sapelo Island owner Richard J. Reynolds, Jr. commissioned the vessel Kit Jones in 1938 as the island’s ferry. Named after Reynolds’ friend Katharine Talbott Jones, Sapelo Geechee and other local residents built the vessel using native timber under the supervision of Danish shipwright Axel Holger Sparre. During World War II, the US Coast Guard used it as a fireboat. Following the establishment of the University of Georgia’s Marine Institute on Sapelo in 1953, the vessel was used by scientists including Dr. Eugene Odum, considered the “Father of Modern Ecology,” and Dr. Milton “Sam” Gray, namesake of Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary. The University of Mississippi acquired the vessel in 1985 for 28 more years of extensive research service. Nearly scrapped in 2017, concerned citizens purchased the Kit Jones, restoring and returning it to Darien. Erected by the Georgia Historical Society, the Friends of Kit Jones, and the McIntosh County Board of Commissioners