Schooner Welcome was commissioned to be built by Arthur Snyder. She was begun in 1972 by Concordia Company in South Dartmouth, Massachusets and completed in 1975.
Snyder named Welcome after William Penn's boat that carried both Penn and Snyder's ancestors to America in 1682.
Welcome was designed by the renowned naval architect Nelson Zimmer as a replica of the United States Revenue Cutters using Howard Chapelle's historical drawings as reference.
These were schooners built by George Washington and Alexander Hamilton in 1795 for the purpose of collecting customs duties, the only source of U.S. revenue at the time.