MBTA christens 2 new ferries with names chosen by native college students

The MBTA on Tuesday christened two new ferry boats joining its fleet and revealed the names selected for the vessels by third and fourth grade students in Quincy and Winthrop.

The MBTA launched a competition in April, calling on students in Boston, Quincy, Winthrop, and Lynn to come up with names for the new boats it added to its fleet. The vessels came to the MBTA from New York and received an overhaul at Fairhaven Shipyard before being added to the transit agency’s fleet. 

“Acquiring these ferries allowed us to split up the existing Winthrop Quincy route into two separate routes on weekdays, a direct Winthrop to Boston route and a direct Quincy to Boston route,” David Perry, the MBTA’s director of ferry operations, said during Tuesday’s christening event. “We’re excited about these new routes, and we’re seeing great ridership on them already.”

MBTA general manager and CEO Phillip Eng said that it was clear from the outset that the new boats needed to be renamed to give them “that Massachusetts, Boston flavor.”

“As we prepared to integrate these boats into our service, we saw the opportunity not just to rename them, but to make them part of the local community, the spirit that we all have, for the riders who rely on our ferries each day,” he said. 

The response from the students was “extraordinary,” he said. 

Two of the new names selected from the competition were unveiled Tuesday: Harbor Gem and Abigail Adams. 

“We’re proud that this contest brought creativity and history together, and we’re more proud of these names that came from the minds of our youngest ferry riders,” Eng said. “Thank you to the students, to the teachers and families who took the time to participate.”

The name “Harbor Gem” was put forward by Onik Hashani, a student at Arthur T. Cummings Elementary School in Winthrop, while “Abigail Adams” was submitted by Hailey Sommers a student at Atherton Hough Elementary School in Quincy, WHDH reports. 

“I came up with ‘Harbor Gem’ because Winthrop is next to water and it’s beautiful like a gem,” Hashani told the station.

“I was wicked surprised because it was like a one in a million chance and I was really excited when I found out the news,” Sommers told WHDH.

Monica Tibbits-Nutt, the secretary and CEO of MassDOT, noted Tuesday that the MBTA’s newest vessels are joining a long history of ferries traveling through the “historic waters” of Boston Harbor. 

“We really want to not only wish and hope for them to carry forward this long tradition of safe, reliable and fast transportation across these waters, but also this being one of the first steps in continuing to invest in water transportation and continuing to invest in our communities and getting more and more routes as we move forward in the next several years,” she said.

Dialynn Dwyer is a reporter and editor at Boston.com, covering breaking and local news across Boston and New England.