Replica of Marquis de Lafayette's ship bound for Greenport

After 17 years of construction and a 3,700-mile ocean crossing, a replica of the ship that carried the Marquis de Lafayette to Boston in 1780 with news that France would aid America in the War of Independence arrives Monday in Greenport.

Joining five other tall ships, the 216-foot Hermione will be docked for two days of public visitation before continuing north to Nova Scotia and returning to France in August.

The $32 million, three-masted replica first traveled from the site of its construction in Rochefort on the west coast of France to Yorktown, Virginia. That's where, during the Revolution, the Americans and their new allies bottled up the British army led by Lord Cornwallis, forcing its surrender.

Before sailing to Chesapeake Bay, the original frigate, on June 7, 1780, encountered the HMS Iris southeast of Long Island and engaged in an inconclusive 80-minute battle.

The new Hermione, pronounced ur-me-own, docked at South Street Seaport in Manhattan on Wednesday morning, announcing its presence by firing a salute from some of its 34 cannons.

She was to serve as the centerpiece of a July Fourth maritime parade in New York Harbor to celebrate the long history of Franco-American relations before departing Sunday for the North Fork.

Capt. Yann Cariou said the vessel left Rochefort on April 18 and stopped at the Canary Islands and Bermuda before arriving in Yorktown on June 5.

"It was a great voyage," he said.

The 30-year French navy veteran, who has notched seven years aboard tall ships, said it was a challenge to sail a warship that required the services of more than 200 experienced sailors in the late 18th century "and sail the same ship with less than 80 young people -- and we did it."

The average age of the crew is 29 and a third are women.

Manhattanite and former Huntington resident Marc Jensen was among them. He first saw the ship in 2001, four years after construction began, while visiting relatives in France.

A sailor since the age of 9, Jensen said: "I was so impressed with it that I said, 'I have to follow this.' "

In 2011, the group managing the Hermione project asked him to get involved because he was a bilingual American. Jensen, who works for a health care communications company, called sailing the Atlantic "a chance of a lifetime."

At 57, Jensen acknowledged that the physical demands of the voyage posed a challenge.

"But I met that challenge, and I was very happy about that," he said. "I had never been on a square-rigger before, so I learned so much. I became very familiar with what it's like to sail an 18th-century vessel. It's very, very complicated. It's not at all like the daysailer I enjoy the rest of the time."

As for the conditions at sea, he said, "We were fortunate. The weather was bad at the departure. When we left it was pouring rain and when we got into the Chesapeake we got hit with a squall. But we only had one day during the entire 31 days of navigation when we had a bit of heavy wind and rain. The rest of the time we had beautiful, clear skies."

Jensen, an educator for 15 years at Westbury Friends School, said he felt it was important to get children between the ages of 12 and 18 involved with the ship, so he organized four webinars. Working with meteorological agencies in France and the United States, he arranged to release data buoys during the voyage that would measure salinity, water temperature and atmospheric pressure to study the relationship between the temperature of water in currents and its effect on weather.

And working with Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation, a Maine-based group investigating the impact of plastic microbeads on the ocean, the crew took water samples every 200 miles for analysis.

As a member of the crew, Jensen had to climb the rigging to set and douse sails.

"At first it was imposing, especially as you get that metronome effect with any kind of little sea. But after two or three days, you become very acclimated to it," he said. "By the end of the trip I was actually asking to go up just for the sheer exercise, and the views you get from up in the rigging are just so beautiful."