ROANOKE RAPIDS — When the group First Coast Tea Party, of Jacksonville, Fla., wanted a stage they turned to Glenn Lord.

Roger Bell | Daily Herald Glenn Lord stands next to his creation, a replica of “Dartmouth,” Wednesday afternoon in Centennial Park. Advertisement

Lord, who manufactures roofs, went a bit beyond the norm in the execution of the task, as anyone driving on Roanoke Avenue Wednesday could attest.

“My first idea was a flat stage,” Lord said. “But then I thought, why not do something special?” That something special turned out to be the Dartmouth, a 37-foot replica of one of the three original ships involved in the Boston Tea Party. The Dartmouth sailed into Roanoke Rapids on Wednesday afternoon in Centennial Park, on its way to the nation’s capital for the Sept. 12 tax march. The eye-catching creation served to draw attention to the rally held by the Roanoke Valley Patriots in the park and serves as a symbol for citizens groups which dislike the current administration’s spending practices.

The ship rose from Lord’s mind and found realization in materials he already had. Lord describes Dartmouth as “a pile of junk. The base is an old ice machine, the wood is left over and the frame is scrap iron from a roofing job.”

Lord chose to replicate Dartmouth because he says, “it’s the most famous” of the original ships. He brought the ship to Roanoke Rapids for an event hosted by Roanoke Valley Patriots, a grass roots organization sharing many views and goals with First Coast Tea Party, particularly a distaste of government spending practices.

“We’re not getting any notoriety,” Lord explained. “So it was to get the attention and to galvanize people” he built Dartmouth.

For organizations dedicated to getting the word out about wasteful government spending, perhaps Dartmouth serves not only as an eye-catching symbol of their goals, but also an example of effective spending, or so Lord believes. Most of the money he spent went for screws and paint.