ROCKPORT – Nearly 400 years ago, the first permanent English settlement in North America took root on a spit of land at the mouth of the James River in Virginia.

Despite overwhelming hardship and a devastating death rate, the Jamestown settlers made a go of surviving in the New World, 13 years before the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth.

A Rockport boat-building shop is playing a part in telling the story of those settlers by constructing a replica of one of the three ships that carried them from England.

Rockport Marine landed the contract to build a replica of the Godspeed for the Jamestown Settlement’s living history museum. The settlement is run by the state-run Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation.

Work began in mid-October, and the boat is scheduled to be completed in March 2006, Rockport Marine owner Taylor Allen said last week.

The Godspeed taking shape in Rockport Marine’s shop will be the third replica of the 17th century ship featured at the settlement, said Eric Speth, director of maritime programs for the Jamestown Settlement, who was at the boatyard Thursday reviewing the progress.

The $2.2 million cost of the construction was raised privately, Speth said.

To mark the 350th anniversary of the settlement in 1957, the fort, buildings and three ships – replicas of the Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery – were built as a temporary attraction.

Attract they did.

“More than a million people visited” that first year, which persuaded Virginia officials to make the settlement a permanent historical fixture.

Those early ship replicas were replaced in the 1980s. Speth joined the settlement in 1988, overseeing the building of the second Susan Constant replica. Those replicas did not fare well in the hot, humid climate at the mouth of the James River, and again needed replacing.

Rockport Marine responded to a bid request for the project, and based in large part on the company’s reputation for expertise in wooden-boat building, landed the project. In 2001, the Maine company completed a $2 million construction of the Lynx, a 122-foot-long, 98-ton replica of a ship used during the War of 1812.

John England, the project manager who leads a crew of nine on the Godspeed, is a veteran of historical boat building. He worked on a replica of the Elizabeth II, the ship that brought Walter Raleigh to what is now North Carolina in an earlier, failed expedition.

The Jamestown replica is not historically faithful to the original, but rather a “historical representation” to re-create “the essence of the ship,” Speth said.

The Jamestown organization won a grant to pay for researching and designing the latest replica.

Little is known about the original Godspeed. “There are no surviving lines, blueprints or paintings,” he said.

So researchers unearthed period design manuals, perhaps the same ones used by those who built the Godspeed.

Using the period’s design standards, researchers “plugged in” the Godspeed’s known numbers, such as Capt. John Smith’s documentation that the three-masted ship was capable of carrying 40 tons of cargo and passengers.

“We think there were 39 passengers and 13 crew,” Speth said. That also informed the design.

The result will be a Godspeed that is about 20 feet longer than its 1980s predecessor. The new version is 64 feet long on deck, with an overall length of 88 feet, a beam of 17 feet, and a draft of 6 feet 10 inches.

All three vessels were probably built as standard merchant ships capable of handling cargo and passengers, Speth said. The original Godspeed frame would have been built with English white oak, and its deck and rigging with Danish and Norwegian pine.

“We’ve chosen not to use those materials,” he said, because the oak and pine are prone to rot. Angelique, a tropical wood from Surinam, replaced the oak, and bronze fasteners and modern coatings and sealants will be used to make it easier to maintain, and to ensure the vessel outlasts its predecessors.

Other changes include the addition of a diesel engine and extensive electronic systems to enable the ship to sail to various East Coast ports – and to pass safety inspections. And lead will be bolted onto the ship’s keel to lower its center of gravity to keep it stable in high winds.

The Godspeed is expected to tour the East Coast extensively in 2006 as part of the lead-in to marking Jamestown’s 400th anniversary in 2007.

“We like these unusual projects,” Allen said. Still: “Rarely do we do the same thing twice here.”

Speth said the best testimony to the level of Rockport Marine’s craftsmanship is that the yard is building the Godspeed and a replica of a mid-19th century Bermudian schooner, using vastly different techniques and materials.