Peg Leg Pete now stands now outside the Amelia Island Museum of History. | Dan Scanlan, Jacksonville Today
Published on November 10, 2025 at 4:58 pm
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A fundraising campaign has begun to help restore the Peg Leg Pete statue in Fernandina Beach after it was shipped off its former spot downtown.
In a post Saturday on Facebook, Mayor James Antun promoted the Peg Leg Pete Restoration Fund to to “help bring him home” to the stone base where he used to stand on Centre Street’s historic waterfront.
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The fund seeks to raise $23,000 to restore the wooden statue, which has been damaged by weather, eager fans and insects in its 47 years of waterfront display, most of it in front of the Amelia Island Welcome Center downtown.
An engineering report requested by city officials deemed the statue unsafe for public display. City crews and members of the Fernandina Beach Pirates Club moved Pete early last month to the Amelia Island Museum of History.
Peg Leg Pete’s past
Artist Wayne Ervin used a single 10-foot piece of live oak to carve the pirate statue, which was placed on Fernandina Beach’s waterfront in 1978 then moved next to the visitor’s center. But the statute’s paint has cracked and faded, the hands have deteriorated and a hole has become visible on the right leg during more than four decades standing a block from the Amelia River.
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Weighing in at 600 pounds, the statue is too big to fit inside the museum, officials said. Pirates Club officials confirmed recently that the statute does contain cremated human remains — the ashes of club Vice President Paul M. Mathews Jr., who died in 2007.
The fundraiser does not state what kind of restoration would be done. But the mayor himself donated over $250, according to donations listed on the City of Fernandina Beach web page.
