7 ports of call with guided excursion options at each
All onboard meals and our signature evening cocktail hour
Full enrichment package with guest speakers and nightly entertainment
All tips and gratuities
Delight your senses on this amazing journey along the Lower Mississippi River. From the French Quarter to Beale Street, be treated to the finest local flavors, including barbeque, bourbon, and the blues. Enjoy the simple pleasures and unique treasures found in the small towns along the way as you cruise in pure comfort aboard our fleet of new American riverboats.
PHOTO BY TAYLOR GREENWALT, BATTLESHIP TEXAS FOUNDATION
John S. Sledge
Photo by Hunter Miertschin, courtesy
NMHS Building a Maritime Network
As a historical society, we are used to confronting one of the toughest challenges facing any history-based organization: relevance. We do that by embracing the past and connecting it to our world as we know it today.
Leaning into Sea History ’s legacy of scholarship and storytelling keeps us true to the mission that our founders and early supporters embraced when NMHS began—saving a vanishing seascape of historic vessels, one ship or one story at a time. ey worked to ensure that our collective memory of bustling ports lled with sailing ships and seafaring people would never fade, even as the ships and ports changed across generations. See how that legacy continues with Christian Carte’s article chronicling the history of the storied battleship USS Texas and updating us on the Battleship Texas Foundation’s recent preservation work. (see pages 36–43).
Reminding people that we are a maritime nation and that there is much to learn from our seafaring past that can—and must—inform our lives and communities today is embedded in our mission:
The National Maritime Historical Society preserves and promotes America’s maritime heritage and its relevance in today’s world through education, preservation, and advocacy.
It is a mission that is impossible to undertake without a vast network of people across the country to support it. Building on and reinforcing a network that aggregates local and regional maritime stories, information, places, and expertise into a truly national forum is the crux of our work ahead. We hope you, our members, will help us identify the people, places, and resources that form that network.
e more comprehensive story we tell, the more connections we will make, and the more relevant it will be to audiences around the nation. Take Carnegie Mellon doctoral student Wyatt Erchak, whose dissertation research led him to the story of Hector Powell, a formerly enslaved Union Army soldier whose path to freedom depended on his securing work aboard ships. Erchak discovered that Powell’s
story, while extraordinary, was not unique. See pages 22–26 to learn how maritime work gave enslaved men opportunities for escape and free men employment in challenging times.
Advocating for the wider maritime community through elevating heritagebased organizations—museums, historic vessels, historical societies, shipboard education, traditional boatbuilding, youth sailing, academic programs, and coastal resilience programs—is also a role NMHS should play. Whether it is advocating for funding, highlighting best practices, or linking partners with opportunities, NMHS is the collective voice we all need to achieve our individual goals.
Connecting with a wider audience in the 21st century requires us to employ a range of tools and approaches. Like many of you, I enjoy receiving a hard copy of Sea History in the mail each quarter. While we also have a digital version of the magazine online, we need to expand our digital forums and our online presence to attract and retain more members. is does not mean we abandon that old-school idea of gathering in person for events, meetings, and activities. In 2025, NMHS is setting up regional programs, heritage travel opportunities, and national conference events. (See page 27 to reserve space on our upcoming NMHS maritime heritage cruise in Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands in March 2026).
is year, NMHS is taking the lead in organizing the Maritime Heritage Conference, last held in 2018 and put on pause during the COVID pandemic. We hope you will join us in Bu alo, New York, 24–27 September, as we revive this important conference, where maritime heritage organizations and individuals from across the country will gather to share ideas, current research, and plans, and to troubleshoot and brainstorm about the path forward. See page 11 for details, including instructions for submitting a presentation proposal.
In the meantime, we will keep connecting you with some of the country’s best authors, historians, artists, and maritime enthusiasts in the pages of Sea History and beyond.
With wind in our sails and a solid crew to do the work, we can navigate the course ahead.
—Catherine Green, President
Sea History e-mail: seahistory@gmail.com
NMHS e-mail: nmhs@seahistory.org
Website: www.seahistory.org Phone: 914 737-7878
Sea History is sent to all members of the National Maritime Historical Society. MEMBERSHIP IS WELCOME: Afterguard $10,000; Benefactor $5,000; Plankowner $2,500; Sponsor $1,000; Donor $500; Patron $250; Friend $100; Regular $45. Members outside the US, please add $20 for postage. Individual copies cost $5.99.
NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY
PETER
ARON PUBLISHER’S CIRCLE: Guy E. C. Maitland, Ronald L. Oswald, William H. White
OFFICERS & TRUSTEES: Chairman , CAPT James A. Noone, USN (Ret.); Vice Chairman , Richardo R. Lopes; President: Catherine M. Green; Vice Presidents: Deirdre E. O’Regan, Wendy Paggiotta; Secretary, Capt. Je rey McAllister; Acting Treasurer: CAPT James A. Noone, USN (Ret.); Trustees: Charles B. Anderson; Walter R. Brown; CAPT Patrick Burns, USN (Ret.); Samuel F. Byers; CAPT Sally McElwreath Callo, USN (Ret.); William S. Dudley; Karen Helmerson; VADM Al Konetzni, USN (Ret.); K. Denise Rucker Krepp; Guy E. C. Maitland; Elizabeth McCarthy; Salvatore Mercogliano; Richard P. O’Leary; Ronald L. Oswald; Richard Scarano; David Winkler
CHAIRMEN EMERITI: Walter R. Brown, Alan G. Choate, Guy E. C. Maitland, Ronald L. Oswald; Howard Slotnick (1930–2020)
FOUNDER: Karl Kortum (1917–1996)
PRESIDENTS EMERITI: Burchenal Green, Peter Stanford (1927–2016)
OVERSEERS: Chairman, RADM David C. Brown, USMS (Ret.); RADM Joseph Callo, USN (Ret.); Christopher Culver; Richard du Moulin; David Fowler; Gary Jobson; Sir Robin Knox-Johnston; John Lehman; Capt. James J. McNamara; Philip J. Shapiro; H. C. Bowen Smith; Philip J. Webster; Roberta Weisbrod
NMHS ADVISORS: John Ewald, Nathaniel Howe, Steven Hyman, J. Russell Jinishian, Gunnar Lundeberg, Conrad Milster, William Muller, Nancy Richardson, Jamie White
SEA HISTORY EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD: Norman Brouwer, Robert Browning, William Dudley, Lisa Egeli, Daniel Finamore, Kevin Foster, John O. Jensen, Frederick Leiner, Joseph Meany, Salvatore Mercogliano, Carla Rahn Phillips, Walter Rybka, Quentin Snediker, William H. White
NMHS STAFF: President and Executive Director, Catherine M. Green; Deputy Director, Susan Sirota; Vice President of Operations, Wendy Paggiotta; Senior Sta Writer, Shelley Reid; Business Manager, Andrea Ryan; Manager of Educational Programs, Heather Purvis; Membership Coordinator, Marianne Pagliaro
SEA HISTORY: Editor, Deirdre E. O’Regan; Advertising Director, Wendy Paggiotta
Sea History is printed by e Lane Press, South Burlington, Vermont, USA.
e Great Ohio River Freeze, 1918 (not 1819) I always look forward to reading Sea History as it has a nice mix of articles. e “Ship Notes” news section always has some great nuggets of information found nowhere else. I am writing to point out that the marine art article on inland waters and shipyards in the last issue (Sea History 189) has the wrong date in the description of the painting Ice Bound on page 49. e date of the scene depicted in the painting should be 1918, not 1819. e Great Ohio River Freeze happened in January 1918. Besides the steamboats that give it away, the suspension bridge between Covington, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio, seen in the background of the painting, was only opened to the public in December 1866. e sidewheeler shown snug up against the Covington side, the City of Louisville, was owned by the Louisville & Cincinnati Packet Company and had 72 staterooms and slept 160. She was built in 1894 at the Howard Shipyard in Je ersonville, Indiana, and ran an opposing overnight service with the City of Cincinnati between Cincinnati and Louisville, Kentucky. Both boats were destroyed in the Ohio River ice jam while docked at the Cincinnati Public Landing on 20 January 1918. e view in the painting is south of the Cincinnati Public Landing.
e sternwheel boat coming alongside City of Louisville is Hercules Carrel, which was used in Ohio River and Licking River harbor boat service at Cincinnati from 1891 to 1919. e Licking River enters the Ohio River some 100 yards upstream from where the bow of the City of Louisville is shown in the painting. e Hercules Carrel was originally built in 1871 as Champion No. 8, and was dismantled around 1930 under the name Janet
I would assume the scene was from early January 1918 and that the ice in
the Ohio River was just starting to build up at Cincinnati. Hercules Carrel, I suspect, is coming alongside City of Louisville to help her turn to face downstream before tying up to the company’s wharf at the Cincinnati Public Landing.
e Ohio River would freeze over before the end of the month, and the more daring citizens would walk from Cin-
cinnati to Covington using the ice as a bridge. Both City of Louisville and City of Cincinnati had steam up, and their paddlewheels were turning slowly when their hulls were crushed by the ice. All that was salvaged from the two boats were their boilers and engines.
Char&e( H. B )gart Frankfort, Kentucky
Ice Bound, oil, 32 x 52 inches, by Michael Blaser
Ohio River, 1918
Maine Lighthouses Added to Global Watch List
In my remarks at the NMHS Annual Awards Dinner last October, I made a reference to a pending nomination regarding Maine lighthouses that I had collaborated on. is was made public on 15 January 2025, when all 66 Maine lighthouses were named en masse to the Global Watch List of the World Monuments Fund. In the thirty-year history of the WMF Global Watch List, this is the , rst time an American site has been designated due to the threat of climate change and sea level rise. It recognizes both the seriousness of this crisis, as well as the special signi ,cance of Maine’s lighthouses as global cultural treasures.
The World Monuments Fund maintains this list of “heritage places of global signi ,cance that are facing pressure related to the most important global pressures of our time.” ese pressures include threats from climate change, military con - ict, and neglect.
e 25 sites on this most recent list were selected from more than 200 nominations in 69 nations, including sites in Ukraine, Gaza, Africa, and Maine.
e urgency of Maine’s rapidly changing climate was made clear when two winter storms hit our coast in January 2024. Although they were technically only moderate gales, they coincided with the highest tide ever recorded in Portland, Maine, and the damage was unprecedented, with extensive losses to commercial, residential, and municipal properties—as well as historic lighthouses. Of the 66 lighthouses along the coast of Maine, 23 su ered signi ,cant damage from storm surge.
Lighthouses were, of course, deliberately built in harm’s way to be as close as possible to shipping lanes and tra .c. e intensity and frequency of storms, along with the corresponding wave
action threatening these light stations, have changed since they were constructed—most over a century ago. With the weakening of the cold Labrador Current to the north and the strengthening of the warm Gulf Stream to the south, the shallow, bathtubshaped Gulf of Maine is especially vulnerable to these changes. Water expands in volume as it warms, and this localized thermal expansion contributes to the distinct levels of sea level rise currently a ecting the Maine coast.
Over the past 20 years, all but 18 of Maine’s 66 lighthouses have been transferred from the federal government to private owners. ese new stewards
are invariably small, single-purpose organizations and private parties, most of whom had no preview of the challenges that would be imposed by the rapidly changing climate. As goodintentioned as they may be, most lack the expertise and resources to provide the required protections.
Having Maine’s lighthouses recognized on the Global Watch List of the World Monuments Fund isn’t a , nal solution, but it represents an important , rst step. is will help draw attention and mobilize resources to prepare for a future of storms that are becoming more frequent and intense. Fortunately, some mitigation measures may prove
both a ordable and e ective if implemented promptly. is listing also serves as a warning to public policymakers that funding and regulatory changes will be essential to adapt these historic structures to face challenges that give new meaning to the phrase “in harm’s way.”
F)rd R e01he
Freeport, Maine
From Homeless to Chief Engineer: Opportunities in the Maritime Industry
If you met me in person, you might not guess that I was once homeless for about three years. At one point, I spent nights sleeping in bushes, a barn, and attics while attending high school. At 15, I found myself on my own. With only a small bag of clothes to my name, I made up my mind about one thing: I would , nish high school. Despite the challenges, I graduated on time with my classmates.
Fast-forward two years, and I was sitting on a couch with friends, complaining about world events and aimlessly drifting through life. It was then that something clicked—I was tired of
complaining, tired of doing nothing, and tired of not making a di erence. I cleaned myself up, started running (losing 40 pounds in the process), and eventually joined the US Navy. is isn’t a recruitment story—it’s about how I found my passion for ships and the maritime industry.
I began my naval career like most junior engineers—taking readings, cleaning, and performing basic maintenance. During that time, I learned two important lessons: gaining knowledge and consistently putting in hard work pays dividends, and, on a ship, your shipmates are your lifeline. After about ten years, while repairing a system in an auxiliary machinery room, I realized that I knew how to , x and operate
systems but didn’t fully understand the “why.” Why do pressures change? How are pressure and temperature related? Why is a gas turbine blade shaped a certain way? ese questions drove me to seek answers.
I knew I needed an academic engineering program to deepen my understanding. After leaving active duty, I found a position at BAE Shipyard Hawaii, where I met others who shared my passion for the maritime industry. While working on ship repairs, I noticed there was always one person who seemed to understand the whole plan: coordinating with chief engineers and captains, developing maintenance plans, leveraging trade knowledge, and getting ships repaired. at person was the port engineer.
One day, while working with a particularly exceptional port engineer, I asked how he got his job. He explained that he had attended a maritime academy, sailed in the industry, and then transitioned to a position ashore. I went back to my cubicle that day, looked up maritime academies, and made myself a ,ve-year plan.
When I applied to go back to school, I quickly realized that my math skills had atrophied. I enrolled in our local community college (at one point taking two math courses at a time), and rebuilt my educational foundation. After 18 months, I felt I was ready. At 33 years old, I was accepted into the Texas A&M Maritime Academy. ree and a half years later, I graduated magna cum laude, with a newfound appreciation for the industry. Soon afterward, I was hired as a port engineer in Norfolk, Virginia.
After six years of hard work and with the guidance of great mentors, I was promoted to class supervisor. In this role, I supervise a team of port engineers and manage the life cycle of Military Sealift Command Auxiliary Oiler (T-AO) class ships.
Portland Head Light, Cape Elizabeth, Maine
It has been a long and arduous journey, but along the way I developed critical leadership, communication, and strategic thinking skills. My career has taken me on incredible adventures: riding high-speed small crafts to transfer harbor pilots to submarines in Spain, overhauling massive engines the size of three-story buildings, rebuilding water puri ,ers and generators for communities devastated by guerrilla warfare, and navigating a container ship through the Atlantic surrounded by three waterspouts. Despite my long history in the maritime sector, I still feel a thrill every time I walk down the pier to board a ship.
If you’re like me and sitting here, staring at a screen, wondering how to improve yourself and your corner of the world, I challenge you to consider the maritime industry. It’s been the greatest honor of my life, and I wouldn’t change it for anything. See you on the deck plates.
Be23a402 M 02er
Chesapeake, Virginia
A Legacy of Rum-Running
First of all, thank you for all the wonderful articles. We may live in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but our hearts and our family history are in New England. I especially enjoyed the article about “importing” during Prohibition in Sea History 184 (“It’s the Real McCoy” by CAPT Daniel A. Laliberte, USCG (Ret.)). I have ancestors from Bristol, Rhode Island, who made a living trucking the goods after they landed ashore. My grandfather even managed to buy his little ,ve-year-old daughter a baby grand piano. When Mom grew up and married a sailor from Oklahoma, that piano was eventually shipped west. My siblings and I all learned to play the piano, thanks to Grandpa and “rumrunning.”
S5(a2 Gra6-M e&a5gh Tulsa, Oklahoma
Sail Aboard the Liberty Ship
John W. Brown
2025 Cruise Dates: May 24 & September 13
On a cruise you can tour museum spaces, bridge, crew quarters, & much more. Visit the engine room to view the 140-ton triple-expansion steam engine as it powers the ship though the water.
Reservations: 410-558-0164, or www.ssjohnwbrown.org
Last day to order tickets is 14 days before the cruise; conditions and penalties apply to cancellations.
Join Us!
12th Maritime Heritage Conference
24–27 September 2025 • Bu!alo, New York TWELFTH
The National Maritime Historical Society is thrilled to invite you to the 12th Maritime Heritage Conference (MHC), an important gathering for maritime enthusiasts, professionals, and historians. We are honored to continue the National Maritime Alliance’s tradition of bringing together the maritime community for our common purpose: to strengthen and promote our nation’s maritime landscape.
Embrace History at Bu!alo’s Waterfront is year’s conference will be held at the Bu alo Convention Center, co-hosted by the Bu alo and Erie County Naval and Military Park. As we celebrate the bicentennial of the Erie Canal, this conference conveniently coincides with the World Canals Conference, adding an extra element of signi cance and excitement. Attendees will have the unique opportunity to immerse themselves in both maritime and inland waterway histories.
Programming for Every Interest
Maritime Heritage
e MHC will o er an extensive program that caters to a wide audience, from seasoned professionals to passionate amateurs; sessions will cover a broad array of topics. Generally held every three years (but on hiatus since 2018), the MHC has earned its reputation as a pivotal event for exchanging knowledge, celebrating achievements, and establishing new connections.
CONFERENCE
alo, NY
September 24–27, 2025
Engage with the Maritime Heritage Community
e conference is designed to foster networking and collaboration among its participants. Various sessions and presentations will explore new research, innovative preservation strategies, and community engagement projects. is year’s emphasis will be on historic nautical milestones worthy of broader public attention. An assortment of roundtables and panel discussions will hopefully facilitate a rich exchange of ideas.
Explore Partner Events and Activities
is year, the Historical Naval Ships Association Annual Symposium will be held in partnership with the conference. is is a great opportunity to meet with the experts and guardians of our historic ships. Symposium presentations will be wrapped into the conference program, and anyone can attend. ere will also be a trade show for industry a liates to show o their products that support running a museum ship, and opportunities for behind-the-scenes tours of the Bu alo Naval Park and their historic naval ships: USS Little Rock, USS e Sullivans, USS Croaker and USS PTF-17.
Contribute Your Voice
e MHC encourages submissions from researchers and practitioners eager to share their work. Individual, panel and roundtable proposals will be considered. If you’re interested in contributing, submit an abstract of 250–400 words and a brief curriculum vitae by 31 May to mhc@seahistory.org. Details are online at www.seahistory.org/maritime-heritage-conference.
Register Now!
Join us for an unforgettable voyage through maritime heritage in Bu alo. Whether you’re an academic, a preservationist, or someone with a deep appreciation for maritime history, this conference o ers something for everyone. Early registration is encouraged, as space is limited.
Celebrate, learn, and share in a gathering that promises to broaden your horizons and deepen your understanding of maritime history. We look forward to welcoming you in Bu alo for an enlightening and memorable event.
24–27 September 2025 • Bu alo, NY
Gather with maritime heritage leaders from across the nation. Sectors include: maritime museums, historic vessels, tall ships for sail training and youth, lighthouses, small cra , marine art, sailing, naval and maritime scholarship, marine archaeology, maritime heritage resource management, advocacy, and more.
Call for Papers & Session Proposals Deadline: May 31, 2025
Priority will be given to session and individual paper submissions that highlight the presentation of original research, new interpretations, topics of immediate interest to the maritime heritage community, and cu!ingedge trends and subject ma!er. Submission of Roundtables is encouraged; but preference will be given to panels that present new, original research.
Papers and session topics include, but are not limited to:
• Inland Water Commerce and Seaport Operations (Erie Canal bicentennial!)
• Maritime and Naval History (2025 marks USN/USMC 250th Birthday)
• Maritime Art, Literature, and Music
• Education and Preservation
• Underwater Archaeology
• Trade and Communications
• Maritime Libraries, Archives, and Museums
• Marine Science and Ocean Conservation
• Historic Vessel Restoration
• Maritime Heritage Grant Program
• Maritime Landscapes
• National Marine Sanctuaries
• Small Cra
• Shipbuilding
• Marine Protected Areas
Get details at seahistory.org/maritime-heritage-conference
Please send all materials to the Program Commi!ee Chair Dr. David Winkler at: MHC@seahistory.org. Queries are welcomed!
ofers this spectacular signed and numbered limited-edition lithograph by internationally acclaimed artist John Stobart.
New York–The David Crockett Sailing From the East River
dimensions — 18” x 26”
The clipper ship David Crockett was launched in 1853 from the Greenman & Co. Shipyard in Mystic, Connecticut. Carrying three skysails, she became famous for her consistent fast runs between New York and San Francisco. She is the subject of the sea song “The Leaving of Liverpool,” a forebitter dated to some time between 1863 and 1874, when the ship was commanded by Captain John A. Burgess. Burgess was known as a tough master. He was lost overboard in 1874.
$495
+ $50 s/h within the USA only. A portion of each sale supports the National Maritime Historical Society.
To order, call 1-800-221-NMHS (6647), ext. 0. or visit our website at www.seahistory.org NYS residents add applicable sales tax.
Timothy J. Runyan (1941–2025)
Professor Timothy J. Runyan died unexpectedly on 8 January 2025 in Greenville, North Carolina. e son of a career Air Force pilot, Tim grew up on or near military bases in California, New Mexico, and Guam. After graduating from Capital University in Ohio, he went on to earn his master’s degree and PhD in history at the University of Maryland.
Tim was a professor of history at Cleveland State University for nearly thirty years, teaching courses in Western civilization and medieval studies and serving as chairman of the History Department and assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. During his years in Cleveland, Tim became passionate about the city’s maritime connections and took on roles such as president of the Great Lakes Historical Society, founder of the Association for Great Lakes Maritime History, board member of the National Museum of the Great Lakes, founder and president of the Great Lakes Science Center, and leader of the campaign to restore and establish the 618-foot Great Lakes steam freighter William G. Mather on Cleveland’s waterfront.
e author of numerous books ranging from European naval history during the 4th –16th centuries to the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II, he also wrote countless articles for journals and magazines, served as editor of e American Neptune, and was an editorial advisor for Sea History. In retirement, he lectured on dozens of cruise ship voyages all over the world for Seabourn and Holland America.
Tim held various leadership roles that furthered our understanding of America’s relationship with its oceans, lakes, and rivers, and promoted the maritime heritage community at large. He served a term as president of the North American Society for Oceanic History, and was the chair of the National Maritime Alliance, which has organized and hosted eleven Maritime Heritage Conferences since 1988. He was a tireless advocate for preserving our maritime heritage, as many members of Congress and their sta ers can attest. To many he was a familiar sight in the halls of the Capitol, working to rally support for the maritime cause from anyone who would listen.
In 1997, the Runyans relocated to Greenville, North Carolina, where Tim became the director of the Maritime Studies Program at East Carolina University after the retirement of the program’s founder, noted maritime historian William Still. A historian by training, he promptly signed up for American Academy of Underwater Sciences (AAUS) scienti c diver training so that he could participate in maritime archaeology eld projects alongside his students. Over the next twenty years, he participated in and led numerous underwater archaeological eld schools and projects in local North Carolina waters, the Caribbean, the Great Lakes, Alaska, and beyond. Between 2007 and 2011, he served as the manager of the Maritime Heritage Program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), working to preserve and support historic sites and museums nationwide, educating Americans about their maritime history.
With all his accomplishments and his decades as a leader in the eld, his most de ning characteristic was his unwavering support of his students. Tim saw every room he walked into as a chance to connect students with opportunities. He has been a mentor—more than that, an absolute central gure—in the lives of many of his students and colleagues. His positive attitude, boundless energy, and sense of adventure were infectious, which served him well when trying to rally support for the causes that mattered to him.
His death is a major loss to the maritime heritage community, but the best way to honor his memory is to step up and continue the mission.
Fair winds, Tim. We have the watch.
Cathy Green, NMHS President and Deirdre O’Regan, Editor, Sea History
e Indefatigable Howard I. Chapelle
by John S. Sledge
It is one of my most prized books— e History of American Sailing Ships by Howard I. Chapelle (1935). My father, who inspired and nurtured my love of ships and the sea, gave it to me in 1967 when I was only 10 years old. By the embossed stamp on the title page, I know that the book originally belonged to the library at the IngeBondurant Sanatorium, a Mobile, Alabama, institution where my physician grandfather worked during the 1920s. Doubtless, Pop, as we called him, gave the book to Dad, who passed it on to me.
I have always treasured the book for its family associations, of course. But I have also found lifelong pleasure in opening its tattered blue cover and browsing its foxed pages. ese feature dozens of sketches, plans, drawings, and photographs of everything from colonial privateers and early revenue cutters to n de siècle racing yachts, their sleek hulls dwarfed by massive canvas spreads. Chapelle’s cleanly rendered plans are especially attractive and beautifully communicate the design genius of our nation’s early shipbuilders. He often drew his plans based on in-
complete or imperfect existing evidence, using his own design skills to present plausible hull, deck, and sail con gurations. In the accompanying text, he helpfully explained how to interpret what to me then appeared to be an incomprehensible assortment of sweeping lines, angles, grids, and gures.
Only later in life did I realize that Chapelle had authored many other books about historic wooden boats and ships, pioneering the documentation and preservation of an invaluable store
of maritime knowledge. anks to his e orts, not only do we know about the astonishing variety of watercraft that once graced the nation’s rivers, lakes, sounds, bayous, bays, and open water, but we can also study detailed plans, models, and full-sized replicas of them. Chapelle assured his readers that, given a reasonable level of skill, a layperson could follow his drawings to successfully reproduce the associated boat.
An autodidact, he worked at a feverish pace to record and save what he could before it succumbed to weather or neglect. He especially gloried in the local and the small, and he documented such regionally distinctive vessels as the New Jersey Beach ski , the Block Island cowhorn, the Erie boat, and the New Orleans lugger. Oft praised, occasionally criticized, and certainly imperfect, he nonetheless left a towering legacy as a maritime historian, naval architect, author, and preservationist. Fifty years beyond his death, Howard Chapelle remains a household name among maritime historians and wooden boat enthusiasts.
Irving and Sarah Chapelle welcomed their son Howard, or “Chap,” as just about everyone called him, into the world on 1 February 1901. Shortly thereafter, the family relocated to New Haven, Connecticut, which boasted a booming maritime economy. e town’s assets included the famous Long Wharf, at 3/4 mile, the country’s longest, which
(above) The author’s personal copy of The History of American Sailing Ships Chapelle wrote his first book in 1930 and would continue to publish tomes on the history of American watercra throughout his career and retirement. (le ) Boatbuilding (1941) and American Small Sailing Cra (1951) are considered his most influential.
ngered out over the harbor shallows into deeper water, and 50 oyster companies lining the Quinnipiac River. Chap’s father owned one of the latter, and the youth grew up fascinated by the area’s waterfront culture.
At age twelve, he got his rst sailboat, a New Haven sharpie. ese inexpensive at-bottomed boats were particularly popular with oystermen and crowded Long Island Sound during the early 1900s. One can imagine young Chap zipping about New Haven Harbor as he learned the boat’s qualities. Not surprisingly, he later discussed sharpies in his book, American Small Sailing Craft (1951). at the type charmed him seems evident. “ e working sharpie, with two sails, was fast, handy, and surprisingly seaworthy, but required a skillful hand at the helm,” he wrote. He likely drew on direct experience when he described the boat’s utility for harvesting oysters: “ e round stern was a particular advantage, as the tonger standing there could work long-handled tongs without being interfered with by the quarters.”
Not surprisingly, given these inclinations, Chapelle resolved to study naval architecture after high school and in 1918 enrolled in the prestigious Webb Institute in Glen Cove, New York. Unfortunately, poor health derailed his plans, and he found himself at loose ends. Never one to lack purpose for long, he embarked on an extraordinary ten-year self-directed apprenticeship, working for several small boat designers and builders in Massachusetts and New York. His mentors, seaside habitués and old salts, included George Buckout (1864–1948), noted for his fast ice yachts; Charles Drown Mower (1875–1942), yacht designer; and John Alden (1884–1962), a talented naval
architect, whose boats to this day are sought after as classic yachts. In 1924, Chap paid his own way to London to examine ship plans, and during a brief Florida sojourn, he sailed aboard a Caribbean lumber schooner, learned a little marine engineering, and met masters like Ralph Munroe (1851–1933) and Nathanael Greene Herreshoff (1848–1938), the latter famous, of course, for designing and building several America’s Cup winners.
Chapelle’s knowledge of small boat and ship construction grew quickly during his apprenticeship. His mentors doubtless appreciated his interest in their carpentry skills, faded drawings, and shelved half-hull models. ese latter, representing a vessel’s hull as if cut lengthwise down the middle with-
out any masts or rigging, were invaluable shipbuilding aids. Usually to scale, they allowed builders to visualize a vessel’s sheer, or hull curvature. When not quizzing these boatwrights or rummaging in their workshops, Chap hunted for older boats, whether still on the water, settled into shoreline muck, or deteriorating under a shed. “As time passed and more and more material was found,” he later wrote, “the beauty, distinction, and practical good qualities of many types became apparent, and the matter became one of greater personal interest.”
In 1930 came Chapelle’s professional debut, when he opened his own shop and published his rst book. e business did not do very well, however, mostly because his designs were too
Chap enjoying a rare moment of relaxation.
imitative of older types; his occasional hastiness and inattention to detail meant that some performed poorly under sail. His distinction lay in his abilities as a maritime architectural historian and writer, qualities on full display in e Baltimore Clipper, published by the Marine Research Society, an organization founded in 1922 “for the purpose of collecting and publishing worthwhile material relating to the ship, its construction, rig and navigation.’’ Chapelle’s book ful lled this mandate admirably.
His topic was not the more famous clipper ships of the 1850s but rather the earlier topsail schooners built most notably in Baltimore and valued for their speed and maneuverability. eir popularity during the American Revolution and later among slavers and smugglers inspired the book’s most memorable sentence, “Sired by War, mothered by Privateering, Piracy, and nursed by Cruelty, nevertheless, the Baltimore Clipper will always remain
the type of the highest development of small sailing craft, as built by American builders.” Chapelle supported his text with historical imagery and elegantly drawn inboard and outboard pro les, body and half-breadth plans, as well as gures vis-à-vis vessel dimensions, mast heights, and spar lengths. Reviewers were impressed. In the January 1931 issue of the New England Quarterly, renowned naval historian Samuel Eliot Morrison opined, “ is work is so carefully done, and is so well illustrated...that no one need longer have any doubt as to what a Baltimore Clipper was.”
On the domestic front, Chap married Alice Zayma Connolly, a librarian and widow eight years his senior with a young daughter, Anne, on 16 July 1935. at same year, he also published two books, e History of American Sailing Ships and Yacht Designing and Planning for Yachtsmen, Students, and Amateurs, both under the W. W. Norton imprimatur. Again, reviewers
praised his work. John Haskell Kembel, a history professor writing in the Paci c Historical Review, called e History of American Sailing Ships “of real signi cance in maritime historiography.” Hanson W. Baldwin of the New York Times declared it “easily the most complete work of its kind yet done.” Of the yacht-designing book, less sweeping and targeted to do-it-yourselfers, Kirkus admiringly wrote, “ e new book is on yacht designing and planning—simple enough for the beginner to start from scratch, plan and build a seaworthy craft and advanced enough to enable the prospective yacht owner to plan intelligently and oversee the building of a yacht of more pretentious design.”
e Great Depression did not slow Chapelle’s singular trajectory. In 1936, he was appointed the New England Regional Director of the Historic American Merchant Marine Survey (HAMMS), a Works Progress Administration program to provide work for marine architects and engineers. HAMMS gave him an ideal perch from which to conduct detailed investigations, paying him to do what he had always done.
Busy as he was, he continued to design and write on the side. In 1941 he moved to Maryland and published one of his most popular titles, Boatbuilding: A Complete Handbook of Wooden Boat Construction. Within this accessible volume he provided guidance on plans, size, and design on everything from at-bottomed ski s to roundbottomed powerboats. He included lumber lists and instructions on tools, joinery, and spar-making, plus drawings of, among other things, cleats, grab
“Sail plan for a 24-foot sharpie,” Plate 7 from Boatbuilding (1941) by Howard I. Chapelle. Small boats especially intrigued Chapelle, and he documented hundreds of them during his career.
rails, hatch locks, mast tabernacles, planking scarfs, and galley staple ttings. Writing in the September/October 1988 issue of Wooden Boat magazine, Peter H. Spectre highlighted the book’s groundbreaking status, as well as some of its shortcomings. “Immediately upon publication it was hailed as a book to have,” he wrote, “and it has held that reputation ever since—even though critics pointed out that it was poorly organized, expert boat builders pointed out that some of the procedures described were a little dicey, and readers pointed out that more information was left out than was put in.” Still, he concluded, the book amounted to “an anthropological document, a road map to the past for those who might wish to go in that direction.”
During World War II, Howard Chapelle served stateside in the Transportation Section of the Army’s Research and Development Division, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. After the war, he rambled around the Great Lakes and Nova Scotia measuring and drawing older boats, traveled to England on a Guggenheim Fellowship to study Admiralty drawings, and served as a consultant to the Turkish government for the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, focusing on its shery and associated small craft.
Besides traveling and producing numerous journal articles and reports, Chapelle kept writing books. In 1949, W. W. Norton published A History of the American Sailing Navy, a 400-page masterwork featuring Chapelle’s distinctive mix of clear prose and copious illustrations. Walter B. Hayward, an editor at the New York Times Book
Review, compared the volume to a “74gun ship of the line”—massive and authoritative. But John Lyman, an oceanographer and historian, pointed out a troubling inattention to traditional scholarly apparatus. “Chapelle writes uently and briskly,” he wrote in e American Neptune, “ with a minimum of direct quotation from older texts and an entire lack of footnotes or reference sources. is style makes it di cult to disagree with his
opinions and interpretations.” Lyman also noted Chapelle’s tendency to ll in “doubtful or missing features” in his reconstructions of historical drawings. Undaunted, Chapelle released American Small Sailing Craft: eir Design, Development, and Construction two years later. “In the days of sail, particularly in the last half of the nineteenth century,” he wrote in the introduction, “about two hundred distinct types and sub-types of small boats were
Howard Chapelle excelled at finding older boats and inspecting them firsthand. Here he examines the hull of a Potomac River dory boat during the summer of 1960.
“A United States Revenue Cu er, 51 tons, 1815.” Fig. 31 from The History of American Sailing Ships (1935) by Howard I. Chapelle. Typical of Chapelle’s methodology, this busy drawing features three elevations: a body plan (le ), an outboard profile (or “sheer”) plan (above), and a half-breadth plan (below). Note the powerful pivot gun placed amidships.
USS Constellation in dry dock, 1904.
in use in North America.” In the chapters that followed, he explored this wonderful variety—bateaux, canoes, punts, scows, shallops, sharpies, skips, yawls, whaleboats, and wherries—all vanishing because of “standardization” made possible by steel and berglass construction and gasoline- and dieselpowered engines.
After decades of what amounted to piece work, Chapelle scored a prestigious full-time post in 1957 as Curator of Transportation at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. ere he coordinated the opening of the Hall of the American Merchant Marine in 1964, which displayed photographs, paintings, plans, and meticulously constructed ship models. Despite this achievement, Chap felt the pull to conduct more research and complained to a friend about the di culty of nding time for it: “From 9 to 5 we have visitors, correspondence, telephone calls, conferences and routine duties.” To gain quiet time, he came to the ofce around 6 a.m. to draw and write before the business day. Whatever the inconveniences, they did not hamper his output.
e same year that the Hall opened, the Smithsonian published Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America, a book based on his work with the archived materials of the deceased AmericanCanadian outdoorsman, Edwin Tappan Adney. In tting recognition of his status, the Smithsonian named Chapelle senior historian in 1967. In what had become a typical pattern of paired success for him, W. W. Norton released yet another of his books, e Search for Speed Under Sail, 1700–1855, the same year
Towards the end of his career, Chapelle spent considerable time and energy on a vexing argument as to the authenticity of USS Constellation, which Maryland and Baltimore boosters planned to restore and promote as the original 1797 vessel. He had rst expressed doubts in articles dating back to the late 1940s and in his book e History of the American Sailing Navy. e issue provoked further articles and correspondence during the following years and assumed greater urgency after the vessel (essentially a hulk) arrived at Baltimore Harbor in 1955. Fifteen years later, the Smithsonian published
e Constellation Question to examine the controversy fully and fairly, featuring Chapelle’s argument and a rebuttal by Leon D. Polland, a naval architect and chief of construction and repair for the Constellation Foundation.
By Chap’s lights, the question was simple: “Is the existing ship the original frigate, lengthened amidships and retopped as a corvette, or is she a vessel of entirely new design and construction built in 1853?” He argued the latter, pitching himself against a determined opposition that involved forged documents, the FBI, the Navy Department, a United States senator, and behindthe-scenes pressure tactics. Chap quipped: “God knows how the Constellation will end up but I don’t expect that my comments will stop public expenditures of money on the fake. Nobody wants to read all that stu and judge it.” Someone who did want to read it all was Lyman, who presented an informed analysis in the July 1975 issue of Sea History. His conclusion: “Neither in material nor in hull form is there any connection between the Constellation now in Baltimore and the Constellation launched at Baltimore in 1797.” Rather, as Chapelle contended, the restored vessel was an entirely different vessel, built 1853–1855, as she is correctly interpreted today.
Howard Chapelle retired from the Smithsonian in 1971. Freed at last of distractions, he consulted for a maritime museum in Singapore and published another book, his last, e American Fishing Schooners (1973). By any measure, he had enjoyed a remarkable career. Looking back on it all, he marveled, “I had no competition. When I started exploring the eld, I discovered that I was all alone... No one else was interested in the old sailing vessels, especially the smaller ones.”
He died after a stroke in 1975 in Lewes, Delaware. Appropriately enough, his ashes were scattered at sea. In a short
obituary, e Mariner’s Mirror praised his generosity, while the New York Times summarized his many achievements.
Phillip C. F. Smith, managing editor of e American Neptune, mourned, “By his death, we witness the passing of a generation of American maritime historians whose accomplishments may never again be equaled.”
Numerous marine artists, ship modelers, boat builders, naval architects, and maritime historians have commented on Chapelle’s signi cance ever since. Basil Greenhill, former director of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, declared, “Howard Chapelle was a great pioneer whose in uence has been profound on both sides of the Atlantic.” Erik A. R. Ronnberg Jr., a noted New England modeler, wrote, “Chapelle will be re-
membered for the volume of material he saved from oblivion and his splendid perception of the historical roles of American watercraft.” In response to an email inquiry for this article, Kurt Spiridakis, Director of Boatbuilding at the Maine Maritime Museum, replied, “I would say that Chapelle was and remains a (perhaps the) preeminent scholar of American large sailing craft, and his legacy is the preservation of the documentation of these vessels for contemporary study, whether that be for scholarly purposes, or for restoring and replicating classic American sailing craft.” Author and maritime archaeologist James Delgado added, “While later research has been done, his work stands the test of time and remains an invaluable resource for this and future generations because Chap literally drew
from not only models, but from surviving examples of now vanished ships and craft.”
Chapelle’s genius was to recognize and grasp his moment before the old wooden watercraft and those who built them disappeared and to bequeath their graceful lines and time-tested methods to us in 15 books, dozens of articles and reports, and hundreds of beautiful drawings, models, and reconstructions. Time spent well enough for anyone.
John S. Sledge is maritime historian-inresidence at the National Maritime Museum of the Gulf of Mexico and a member of the National Book Critics Circle. He is the author of eight books, including e Gulf of Mexico: A Maritime History and Mobile and Havana: Sisters Across the Gulf.
This oil painting by Samuel E. Evans, Chapelle’s son-in-law, highlights the interests and works from an eventful career.
“I Was on the Boat”
e Life of Hector Powell, Freedom Seeker on the Waves
by Wya Erchak
e Civil War o cially began on 12 April 1861, with the Confederacy’s predawn hurling of projectiles at Fort Sumter over the dark waters of Charleston Harbor—but this chronology does not t precisely for all incarnations of the con $ ict, nor for its many diverse participants. For the Union Army’s rst Black soldiers—most of whom had been enslaved prior to their service—the timeline was often radically di erent, with details still unknown to history. Among the least known is the role seafaring played in their movements from slavery to soldier: several served as sailors in between, and many escaped slavery onboard vessels they reappropriated or made for themselves, or on Union Navy vessels. is brief essay tells the story of one of the many remarkable pioneers who sought freedom on the waves.
Hector Powell was born about 1822 in Glynn County, Georgia. Like most Black people who resided there in the antebellum period, Hector and his brother, Isaac, were brought into the world as enslaved laborers. He recalled a life forced to work for a farmer named Richard Morris on his plantation in neighboring McIntosh County, a part of Georgia’s coastal region marked by islands, tidal rivers, swamps, and pine forests. In such places, the production of rice and cotton especially—along with lumber, indigo, turpentine, and
William Brailsford’s plantation at Sutherland’s Blu on the Sapelo River was about 40 miles from St. Simons Island. Many slaves in the region escaped to St. Simons, where Union troops had taken control of the island early in 1862.
salt—dominated an economy based on the captive labor and knowledge of Black people, both African-born and American. Isaac, however, described being born enslaved to William Brailsford at his Sutherland’s Blu plantation along the Sapelo River. “Some called me Isaac Brailsford,” he said, later taking the surname Powell after their father.
Based on memories of formerly enslaved people who knew them, Hector was probably enslaved by Brailsford before the brothers were separated, when he was sold or hired to Morris. He and his wife, Sarah (as well as Isaac and his wife Pender), remembered marrying
“in slavery days” at Sutherland’s Blu , wed by an enslaved Black preacher named Sam Miller (also known as Sam Brailsford).1
Life went on at Sutherland’s Blu in a cycle of forced labor and moments of pleasure, such as weddings, all constrained under Brailsford’s notorious violence and associations. For example, Brailsford was a close friend of Charles A. Lamar, the Savannah businessman who in late 1858 nanced the successful scheme to illegally smuggle kidnapped Africans on the penultimate slave ship, the Wanderer. ough many perished during the vessel’s Middle Passage from West Africa, about
St. Simons Is.
Sutherland’s Blu
four hundred were brought ashore at Jekyll Island, today a UNESCO Site of Memory. When the Civil War erupted, Brailsford immediately enlisted in the Confederate Army and eventually took charge of a cavalry unit that he named the “Lamar Rangers.” 2 For a year, Brailsford’s men monitored the coast, their primary objective being less concerned with the Union than the enemy within, the enslaved people who, more than ever, threatened to turn the world upside down.
All along the Georgia coast (and well beyond), enslaved people looked for opportunities to escape. For the Powell brothers and hundreds like them, this arrived when the Union Navy occupied nearby St. Simons Island in early March 1862. Sometime after that, “Isaac went o in the war,” Pender said, together with Hector. Most likely they left that April, when “a great many of the colored people left their owners,” as future soldier Isaac Mark recalled of his own $ ight. His was one of many stories mirroring the Powells;’ he $ed McIntosh County with his brother Samuel, making their way to St. Simons. Once there, Hector and Isaac would have been among the many who recounted their experiences to Commander John Goldsborough. “ eir tales of cruelty are too awful to relate,” he wrote his wife, “their manner of escape in several instances is truly wonderful.”
As freedom seekers streamed in, enslavers followed, and Goldsborough wrote in distress of regular nighttime guerrilla raids on St. Simons and other islands, some led by Brailsford, whose
(right, top) “The Escaped Slave in the Union Army,” Harper’s Weekly, 1864.
(right) The ship’s log from USS Paul Jones includes mention of a joint operation with the gunboat Madgie, where Hector Powell was working at the time.
brutality had meanwhile reached new depths. He raged at the escape of people he considered property and reportedly whipped a man to death who tried. When Sam, the man who had wed Hector and Isaac to their wives, eventually got away, he told an Army chaplain he had “received over three hundred lashes for refusing to inform on a few of his fellows.”3
On 3 July 1862, Hector enlisted on board the Madgie, a Navy gunboat manning the Union’s blockade around the island and protecting the colony of freedom seekers gathering at Gascoigne Blu . “I was on the boat about 4 months,” Hector recalled, serving with the rank of third-class boy. “I scrubbed the decks and did general salors work” [sic]. While the surviving records of the Madgie are incomplete and not extant for the period during Hector’s service on board, deck logs of vessels stationed in proximity give some idea of his odyssey. For instance, at 3:45 &m on 16 July, a group of ve “contrabands” came on board the gunboat Paul Jones, just under two weeks after Hector joined the Madgie. One of them, Benjamin Low, like Hector, went on to serve in the Army as a private after time on the boat, with the rank of landsman.
Two days later, the Madgie anchored nearby, and the vessels began joint operations. A detachment of eight Marines from the Paul Jones was taken ashore by Hector’s vessel, “to be stationed for the night as Picket Guard at Gaskins Blu ,” returning to the Madgie on 19 July. We can imagine that Hector was there, seeing it all as he did sailor’s work. While seldom recognized, this sort of service meant he would have witnessed or been aware of the frequent skirmishes the Marines
USS Paul Jones (1862–1867)
were engaging in with Confederate guerrillas like Brailsford, sometimes aided by the freedom seekers themselves. On 21 October, the captain “paid me up & said I could go home,” Hector recalled, but he knew home was not a place he could go as long as slavery existed.4
Just over a week after disembarking the Madgie, Hector joined the rst Black Union Army regiment, enlisting with a small company that had joined the defenses of St. Simons that August. Now Private Hector Powell, he and his new comrades embarked on a series of maritime actions en route to Beaufort, South Carolina, where the First South Carolina Volunteers (later the Thirty-third US Colored Troops) were being organized. Most notable among these early operations was the complete destruction by re of Brailsford’s plantation at Sutherland’s Blu , as the Army chaplain that accompanied them described in a letter published in several newspapers. “Our men went back nearly half a mile,” he wrote, “ ring cabins, outhouses, and nally the splendidly furnished mansion of Col. B., sparing only his sword and saddle.”
Back onboard, Sam Miller was said to have exclaimed, “I feel a heap more of a man,” while the men gathered on deck to pray and sing “with the lurid $ames still lighting up all the region behind.” ough Hector never directly spoke of this momentous event, an oblique reference years later may be detected in his explanation of why he and Sarah did not possess any record of their marriage in slavery. “All papers was burned,” he stated.
In December, Isaac followed Hector into the ranks. “My brother Isaac & (opposite page, and right) Documents from Hector Powell’s pension case file, 1900.
“A Detachment of the First South Carolina ‘Colored’ Federal Volunteers, Under Command of Colonel Beard, in the United States Transport Steamer ‘Darlington,’ Picking O Confederate Sharpshooters Concealed in the Trees on the Banks of the Sapelo River, GA.” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Famous Leaders and Ba le Scenes of the Civil War (1896).
myself eat & slept together all through the service,” Hector recalled.5 From his rst steps onboard the Madgie and his months “on the boat,” to the dramatic early victory over his own enslaver at Sutherland’s Blu ; through struggles for equal pay and hard ghts across South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida; Hector Powell led a remarkable life, even if things got much quieter after his discharge on 31 January 1866. He and Sarah farmed and worked a small piece of land worth about $60 or $75 outside of Darien, Georgia, where they eventually settled. Hector’s wandering days on the waves led him back home,
NOTES
1 Questionnaire of Hector Powell, February 10, 1898; A idavit of Isaac Powell, January 28, 1908, No. 652433, Hector Powell, Private, Company E, 33 rd United States Colored Infantry (USCI), Case Files of Approved Pension Applications of Veterans Who Served in the Army and Navy Mainly in the Civil War and the War with Spain, Record Group 15: Records of the Department of Veterans A airs, National Archives and Records Administration, herea er CWPF, RG 15, NARA; Deposition of Isaac Powell, June 16, 1903, No. 669618, Isaac Powell, Private, Company E, 33rd USCI, CWPF, RG 15, NARA.
2 Christy Sherman, “The Two Sides of Captain William T. Brailsford: Retreat Plantation, Bryan County, Georgia,” Reflections (2023), 42–45.
after all, following his captain’s direction only once the war was over. With his brother Isaac present as a comfort to his beloved Sarah, Hector Powell died on 25 November 1907.6 If his ending was humble, the path he undertook as a freedom seeker, sailor, and soldier was extraordinary. He sought his own freedom when he took those rst steps toward the sea, and he fought directly for it. Hector, his brother, and the many unsung gures like them were pioneers whose knowledge and motivation helped transform the Civil War into a ght that destroyed chattel slavery forever.
3 Report, George B. Balch to S. W. Godon, March 9, 1862, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol. 12 (Washington, DC: Government Printing O ice, 1901), 590–591. A idavit of Pender Powell, November 9, 1908, No. 669618, Isaac Powell, Private, Company E, 33rd USCI, CWPF, RG 15, NARA; Deposition of Isaac Mark, December 17, 1898, No. 881911, Wesley Lee, Private, Company A, 33 rd USCI, CWPF, RG 15, NARA. Mansfield French, “Brilliant Success of Negro Troops,” National AntiSlavery Standard (November 22, 1862), 3.
4 Slip, Auditor for the Navy Dept., March 22, 1900; Deposition of Hector Powell, [June 18, 1903?]. Log of USS Paul Jones, July 16–19, 1862, Logbooks of US Navy Ships, Record Group 24: Records of the
Wyatt Erchak is a doctoral candidate at Carnegie Mellon University and a dissertation fellow at the US Army Center of Military History. His dissertation, “Private Wrongs: A Hidden History of the American Civil War’s First Black Union Regiment” (forthcoming in 2025), is the rst bottom-up study of the First South Carolina Volunteers, its formerly enslaved Black ranks, and their allies, who together pioneered the destruction of slavery from below. His work has been supported by the Georgia Historical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Abraham Lincoln Institute, among others.
Bureau of Naval Personnel, NARA.
5 Questionnaire of Hector Powell, February 10, 1898; Deposition of Hector Powell. Mansfield French, “Brilliant Success of Negro Troops,” National Anti-Slavery Standard (November 22, 1862), 3.
6 Combined Military Service Record of Hector Powell, Company E, 33 rd USCI, Carded Records Showing Military Service of Soldiers Who Fought in Volunteer Organizations During the American Civil War, Record Group 94: Records of the Adjutant General’s O ice, NARA; Deposition of Hector Powell, [June 18, 1903?]; A idavit of Isaac Powell, January 28, 1908, No. 652433, Hector Powell, Private, Company E, 33 rd USCI, CWPF, RG 15, NARA.
Embark on a Journey Through History
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28 March - 4 April 2026 • Seattle, Washington
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American Steam Yachts at War:
Yachtsmen and eir Boats Commissioned for Wartime Service
This is the story of how rich men’s playthings became weapons of war. Steam yachts were the peacock-tail-feathered, musthave luxury item of the late 19th and early 20th century. When wars came, ! rst in 1898 and again in 1914–1918, they suddenly transformed into warships and often their crews became warriors, not servants.
Steam yachts became possible because of a concatenation of three factors: the development of a relatively small, reliable, and powerful marine propulsion plant as a result of the invention of the compound steam engine and the Scotch (multi-tube) boiler; the emergence of yachting and of the yacht club as a place of status and display, much favored and patronized by British and European royalty and American millionaires; and ! nally the very consider-
by Steve R. Dunn
able wealth of a small number of nouveau riche businessmen, especially in the United States of America, and of the British landed gentry. In the second half of the 19th century, this extreme concentration of wealth among a relatively small group of people facilitated steam yachts becoming the most striking personal possession ever produced by man to that date. ey were a visible sign of a uence, and there was scarcely an ugly ship amongst them.
e !rst American steam yacht was probably the 270-foot North Star, constructed for Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1853 and used by him to sail to Europe and back. It was 1864 before the ! rst steam-powered yachts, Clarita and Bijou, were admitted to the New York Yacht Club (NYYC). In the country that invented “conspicuous consumption,” the steam yacht began
to replace the private rail carriage as the must-have, show-o$ item of choice. In 1870, the NYYC had four steam yachts on its membership list; twenty years later, there were seventy-one. Hugely expensive to build and run and !tted out like waterborne palaces, they gave their owners privacy, the ability to travel wherever they pleased without let or hindrance, and membership in an exclusive stratum of society.
All the steam yachts of this era were luxurious in the extreme, with carved wooden paneling, ornate decoration, music rooms, dining rooms, and libraries; they were “a regular home away from home.” e level of interior ! nish and indulgence in many was scarcely credible. e Dreamer was constructed for Boston’s “Copper King,” omas W. Lawson. She was designed by the ! rm of Tams, Lemoine, and Crane of New York and built at the yard of Lewis Nixon of Elizabethport, New Jersey. According to the 28 April 1900 New York Times, “very few private yachts a oat or building will equal in convenience and luxury of appointment the steam yacht Dreamer.” e San Francisco Call detailed her beauties, describing her as “the most luxurious yacht in the world…. e deck boudoir is ! nished in white, with old rose-colored upholstery, while green is the prevailing color in the oak rooms, the frieze panels, and the sofa….Mrs. Lawson’s room is ! nished in ivory white, the panels and bed hangings being of pink
US Navy propaganda poster boasting the e orts of the steam yacht Venetia during WWI. “Rich and Poor Helped to Win the War and John D. Spreckels of San Francisco Turned Over His Yacht, the Venetia, to the Navy.”
silk with linen-lace applique. e furniture in Mr. Lawton’s room is old mahogany, with delft blue and ecru furnishings on ecru ground.”
Not all steam yachts were of such size and build, however. ose whose wealth did not permit a 1,000-ton vessel made do with smaller craft. In 1913, 236 out of 272 US-registered steam yachts were less than 500 tons ( ames Measurement).
Spanish American War
When war broke out between the United States and Spain over Spanishheld Cuba, the lack of investment in smaller craft for the US Navy meant
that there were not enough patrol warships to e$ect a blockade of Cuba and provide coastal patrols. So, the Navy turned to privately owned steam yachts. Commencing in March 1898, the US Navy bought (or received as donations) twenty-eight steam yachts. e purchase price was ! xed by the Navy Board. e Navy armed the yachts, painted them battleship gray, and put them under naval command. Some were given protective plating over the engines and boilers. Six of the yachts were larger vessels, over 400 gross register tons (GT), the remainder a mixture of smaller sizes. By far the largest (and the ! rst to be acquired) was the G. L. Wat-
son-designed May ower (1896) of 1,800 GT. She had been built by J. and G. ompson, of Clydebank, Scotland, as a luxurious steam yacht for millionaire Ogden Goelet, property developer and yachtsman, who died onboard her in August 1897. e US Navy acquired her from Goelet’s estate on 19 March the following year. J. P. Morgan’s (second) Corsair of 1891 became USS Gloucester on 23 April for a consideration of $225,000. Morgan publicly opposed the war against Spain—and he loved his yacht, which was furnished to the highest standards. He vigorously protested its forced sale when the Navy appropriated her.
USS Mayflower (PY-1) in dry dock at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1904. The yacht was decommissioned on 1 November 1904 in New York and subsequently converted for use as the presidential yacht. She was recommissioned during World War II as USCGC Mayflower (WPG-183)
The Great White Fleet being reviewed by President Theodore Roosevelt aboard the presidential yacht Mayflower, a er her service in the Spanish American War. The fleet then departed Hampton Roads, Virginia, on 16 December 1907, bound for the Pacific by way of the Strait of Magellan.
William Randolph Hearst handed over his ten-year-old yacht, Buccaneer, gratis in 1898; it was returned to him that September, after the war’s end. He had attempted to get a commission in the Navy in return but was told that he would have to apply through the normal channels; by the time he was made an ensign, the war was over.
e larger yachts were equipped with two or more 6-pounder guns. e smaller vessels were given only 3 pounders. e latter served as dispatch vessels and patrolled close to the coast, whilst the larger ones joined the blockade, a thin gray line of warships stretching along the northern coast of Cuba from Bahia Honda to Cardenas, and another o$ the port of Cienfuegos on the southern coast.
e yachts acquitted themselves as well as anyone could expect and took part in several actions, too many to detail here, but they included cutting communication cables, raiding the Cuban coast, attacking land defenses, and ! ring on the Spanish naval squadron based there when it put to sea (and was destroyed), later rescuing some of the survivors.
e short war ended on 13 August. All twenty-eight converted steam yachts survived the con ict. Four were handed over to the Army, and eleven were returned to their owners or sold. Mayowe r became the presidential yacht. e remaining 12 stayed in the possession of the Navy or were scrapped.
The First World War
e United States did not join the World War until April 1917, but before then some Americ an politicians were taking steps to prepare, including Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt, who had held the post in the Wilson Administration since 1913. Unlike his boss, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, Roosevelt was a strong supporter of the Prepared-
ness Movement and helped establish the United States Navy Reserve Force (USNRF) before America joined the !ghting.
Roosevelt and others recognized that U-boats presented a clear and present danger to the United States and that the means to defend against them was lacking. He tried to bring a degree of pre-planning to bear. When the American Motor Boat Club assembled at New York for a cruise in 1916, Roosevelt sent a team of naval o cers to inspect and register craft for potential military service. Boat owners with suitable watercraft took their vessels to the Brooklyn Navy Yard or to Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston for registration; by June 1917, there were 799 vessels listed.
When the United States joined the war in April 1917, the government promulgated an order allowing for the acquisition of private yachts:
e Secretary of the Navy may permit the enrollment of owners and operators of yachts and motor power boats suitable for naval purposes in the naval defense of the coast; and is hereby authorized to enter into a contract with the owners of such power boats and other craft suitable for war purposes to take over the same in time of war or national emergency upon payment of a reasonable indemnity.
Many yacht owners were willing to sell their vessels on the basis that they would have the option to repurchase their yacht at the end of hostilities. Other vessels were leased to the US Navy for free or on a “peppercorn” (for a token amount) basis. By a combination of such methods, the Navy boasted a total of 132 armed steam yachts by November 1918.
Much work was necessary to make the yachts !t for naval service. eir lavish furnishings and decorations were removed and stored in Brooklyn warehouses. Gray paint was slathered over white topsides and glittering brightwork. Guns were mounted fore and aft, while machine guns were installed on the upper decks. Below deck, cutlasses and ri es lined bulkheads of paneled oak or mahogany.
Not everyone in the Navy was delighted by the deployment of the yachts in war. In both quality and usefulness, the boats were a mixed bag. Secretary of the Navy Daniels wrote that he had accepted the yachts under protest, knowing “that they had not been constructed for the purpose for which we needed them.” e commander of US naval forces in France, Rear Admiral Henry Braid Wilson, was distressed at the lack of homogeneity of the ships he was sent; some could make only nine knots and would not endure heavy seas; some were designed as ocean-going watercraft and could attain speeds of eighteen knots when pushed. is meant that squadron patrolling was compromised from the start.
Indeed, it was not intended that Wilson would have yachts under his control. e original plan had them being used to patrol the Eastern Seaboard; but the acute need to protect American troopships arriving in France from U-boat attack saw some of them dispatched to French waters.
Yachtsmen and yacht clubs provided the more experienced sailors for operating these new auxiliary warships. Ninety-three New York Yacht Club members were commissioned into the US Naval Reserve in early 1917, and 300 volunteered for military service. Ninety club members donated or leased their vessels.
As an exemplar of the volunteering yachtsman, consider Robert Elliot Tod, who made his fortune in railroads and
banking. He served as president of the Atlantic Yacht Club, as well as the Indian Harbor Yacht Club and the New York Yacht Club, owned a succession of yachts, and participated in the successful defense of the America’s Cup. In 1911 he launched the Karina, reportedly the largest private yacht a oat at the time. When war came, !fty-year-old Tod joined the US Naval Reserve Force (USNRF), serving as third in command and navigating o cer of J. P. Morgan’s yacht Corsair III, redesignated during the war as USS Corsair, SP-159. is was not an uncommon situation; often the Navy got a yacht along with its owner.
In April 1917, James W. Aker of New York City was commissioned into the USNRF and brought with him on a free lease his 124-foot yacht Quickstep, (renamed USS Florence SP-173 during her wartime service). e 104 GT vessel was built in 1903 by yacht designer and builder Nathanael G. Herresho$ of Rhode Island. During the war, she served as a patrol boat in the 3rd Naval District. USS Florence navigated the waters of Long Island Sound on patrol service, guard duties, and target-range support, and as an escort for US Navy submarines.
Industrialist Maxwell Wyeth lent his 140-foot yacht, Emerald, to the Navy in July 1917; he and his boat were assigned to the 4th Naval District. She performed as a mine sweeper, convoy escort, and patrol vessel. Wyeth was awarded the Navy Cross for his service. William Kissam Vanderbilt II’s beloved Tarantula II went with him in April 1917 to the 3rd Naval District for patrol duty, again on a free lease.
In French Waters
On 4 June 1917, a collection of six rich men’s toys left the New York Navy Yard for France and steamed slowly down the stream. Collectively, they bore the o cial appellation of “1st US Patrol
USS Gloucester (ex- Corsair II ), 1918
Robert Elliot Tod
Squadron in European Waters.” USS Noma (1902), Harvard (1894), Kanawha II (1899), Vedette (1900), Christabel (1893), and Sultana (1889) made up the formation; they were to sail to Bermuda ! rst, and then continue east to the Azores, as it was not considered that they could withstand the rigors of a non-stop Atlantic crossing. Two other members of the squadron, Corsair and Aphrodite, took the direct route, as part of the escort for the ! rst major troop convoy dispatched from the US to France.
En route, Sultana got her introduction to war on the high seas when she and her crew rescued 37 survivors from SS Orleans on 3 July, inbound for Bordeaux from New York with general cargo, which had been sunk by UC-71. e merchant crew had taken to their lifeboat and asked the Germans to rescue those who were still in the water around their sinking ship. “Can’t help you. is is war. ey’ve no business to be over here,” said the U-boat commander and sailed away.
e six yachts arrived at Brest around 4 July, where they met up with Corsair and Aphrodite. On 14 July, they began operations under squadron commander Captain W. B. Fletcher, USN. e 2nd Squadron arrived between 29 and 30 August, having met dreadful storms on the passage across. It comprised Guinevere (1908); Carola IV (1885), originally Scottish-built for the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery; Alcedo (1895); Wanderer (1897); Remlik (1903), constructed in Hull and owned by patent medicine manufacturer, newspaperman, horse breeder and entrepreneur Willis Sharpe Kilmer; Corona (1905); and Emeline (1898). Some vessels arrived with badly leaking decks, damaged as they fought through the weather.
is latter grouping was known as the “Easter Egg Fleet,” owing to the riotous patterns of color used in creating a dazzle-type camou age pattern on their sides and upperworks. Known as the Mackay Low Visibility system, it was developed in 1917 by American
artist William Andrew Mackay, intended to reduce ship visibility at a distance and in varying light conditions. e yachts were charged with protecting convoys and hunting submarines, but only one was able to claim a sinking. By mid-1918, the Navy had seventeen converted yachts operating o$ the French coast. By far the smallest and oldest of these was the schoonerrigged steam yacht, Christabel (1893). e 164-foot yacht had been built for wealthy Scottish ironmaster Arthur C. Kennard, by D. and W. Henderson to the designs of G. L. Watson. Christabel was sold to New Yorker Walton Ferguson in 1910, and she eventually came into the ownership of Irving Ter Bush, son of Rufus T. Bush, who had made a fortune in oil and industry. e US Navy purchased her for $55,000 in April 1917 and armed her with two 3-inch guns and two machine guns.
On 21 May, Christabel was on escort duty, standing by SS Danae, a laggard about eight miles adrift of her coastal convoy out of La Pallice to
USS Noma rolling heavily during WWI patrol duty, circa 1917–18. In view are depth charges mounted on the ta rail.
US NAVY, NHHC
Quiberon Bay. Two miles outside the Île d’Yeu, a lookout spotted an oil slick to port. e yacht investigated it and saw nothing; but then at 1720, her lookout sighted the wake of a periscope 600 yards o$ her port quarter. Christabel altered course and headed towards its location at her top speed of 10.5 knots, whereupon the wake disappeared amidst a number of oil slicks.
Commanding O cer Lieutenant Millington B. McComb climbed aloft to con his vessel from the foretop. Believing he had arrived over the U-boat’s position, he dropped a depth charge. At 2052, still lagging behind the convoy, Christabel again sighted a periscope about 200 yards o$ her starboard beam. Maneuvering to where it had been spotted, at 2055 she dropped another depth charge and then a second one moments later. Nothing followed the explosion of the ! rst charge, but the second occasioned a third and violent explosion, which shot skyward between Christabel’s stern and the water column raised by the second bomb. e detonation was such that “the o cers thought at ! rst that the ship had been seriously damaged, and a couple of men were knocked sprawling on the deck.” Christabel turned, cruised in the vicinity and observed a quantity of heavy black oil and splintered pieces of wood, with very large oil bubbles rising to the surface. In a few minutes, the sea, for a space many hundred yards in diameter, was covered with dead ! sh, about ten times as many, the o cers reported, as could have been killed by a typical depth charge.
While this was taking place, some of the yacht’s depth charges had come loose and began to roll around the deck. Ensign Daniel Sullivan, USNRF, ung himself on them and secured the bombs, for which he later received the Medal of Honor.
Christabel could claim a U-boat sunk. On 12 September 1918, Admiral
Henry Wilson, Commander, US Naval Forces in France, wrote to McComb that “you are authorized to paint a white star on the smokestack of the vessel under your command as a mark to denote the fact that the USS Christabel has successfully engaged and put out of action an enemy submarine.”
e U-boat she had attacked, however, the minelayer UC-56 , although badly damaged, escaped and made a di cult three-day voyage to Santander in neutral Spain where she was interned, as were her crew. Not sunk, but still put out of the war by a rich man’s toy.
e yachts were far from perfect as warships but ! lled a gap and bought time for better escort vessels to be built.
(right) USS Christabel, circa 1919. The star was painted on the smokestack a er she was credited with sinking a U-boat o the coast of France.
(below) Corsair III’s crew spelling out the yacht’s name in semaphore code. In view amidships are two 3-inch/50caliber guns.
ey had many other actions and adventures than those narrated here. To discover them, read Steam Yachts at War !
Steve R. Dunn is the author of thirteen books on naval history. is article is based on research from his latest book, Steam Yachts at War: e Naval Deployment of British and American Armed Yachts 1914–1918 (Seaforth Publishing, 2024).
USS Texas Steeped in History and a Bright Future Ahead
by Christian Carte
On 17 April 1911, the keel for America’s newest battleship was laid down at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in Virginia. At a time when the rapid pace of technological advancement made warships obsolete within years of their construction, it’s hard to imagine that any of the workers driving rivets and raising her frames could have possibly conceived that the ship they were building would still be a oat nearly 114 years later.
On 18 May 1912, Miss Claudia Lyon broke a bottle of champagne across the bow of USS Texas, and shortly afterwards, the great ship slid down the ways and oated freely for the rst time. She was towed to the out tting pier to start the next phase of her construction, and, slowly but surely, came to life. As one of her many rsts, Texas and her sister ship New York carried massive
new 14-inch guns that could hurl a 1,400-pound high-explosive shell almost 13 miles, making them the most powerful ships in the world at that time.
After two years of tting out, Texas was nally commissioned on 12 March 1914. Except for a short period supporting American troops during the Veracruz Incident in Mexico, the next three years were fairly quiet for the new battleship. While the Great War was raging across Europe, USS Texas took part in regular drills and exercises with the Atlantic Fleet. In 1916, she became the rst US battleship to mount antiaircraft weaponry when she was tted with two “formidable” 3-inch guns, a far cry from the legion of 98 AA guns that would litter every square inch of her decks in 1945 that made her a oating fortress.
Texas was riding at anchor in the Chesapeake Bay in April 1917 when
the United States declared war on Imperial Germany. With a critical shortage of fuel oil in the British Isles, she was slated to join her sister New York and the three other coal-powered dreadnoughts of Battleship Division Nine for overseas service. Texas departed New York at the end of January 1918 to join the war, with the American division forming into the 6th Battle Squadron of the British Grand Fleet. For all her awesome repower, the chance to come to blows with German battleships in the very ght for which she was designed never came. e battleship spent the remainder of the con ict conducting exercises and escorting convoys. On 21 November, Texas sortied with the Grand Fleet to accept the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet. With the war over, her division returned home by the end of the year.
Expanding her record of rsts, in March 1919 Texas became the rst American battleship to launch an aircraft, when a British Sopwith Camel rolled down a ying-o$ platform atop turret 2 and took to the skies. Later that year, she successfully employed naval aircraft to spot the fall of shot during a gunnery exercise. Nevertheless, these rsts couldn’t delay her increasing obsolescence.
e Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 restricted the number of battleships that navies could possess, placing a ten-year halt to the construction of
The 573-foot USS Texas ready for launch, 18 May 1912. The storied warship is the only surviving ba leship that served in both World Wars.
USS Texas before her 1925 modernization in shipyard. Note the two original la ice masts, which were removed during that yard period and replaced with a single tripod mast that towered 104 feet above the main deck. Among other modifications: oil-fueled boilers replaced her original coal-fired boilers.
USS Texas (BB-35) firing her 14-inch guns, which could hurl a 1,400-pound shell almost 13 miles. Until July 1920, US Navy ba leships did not o icially have “BB” series hull numbers. They were, however, referred to by their “ba leship number,” which was maintained once the BB numbers were assigned. (Naval History and Heritage Command)
new battleships. Texas survived the cuts of the treaty, but her age was already showing. Her engines were still powered by steam from coal shoveled into the boilers by gangs of remen, her lattice masts were too weak to accommodate more ttings, and her torpedo defense system was inadequate. To keep her in service, she was brought to Norfolk Navy Yard in July 1925 for an extensive modernization.
Her fourteen coal- red boilers were replaced with six new oil- red boilers trunked into a single funnel. e two lattice masts were removed, and a mas-
sive new tripod foremast was installed that reached some 104 feet above the main deck. A smaller tripod mainmast was installed farther aft between turrets 3 and 4, and the original boat cranes were removed and replaced with new long-boom cranes to recover oat planes for a catapult installed on turret 3. For improved defense and stability, her hull was widened by the installation of massive torpedo defense blisters.
She emerged from modernization and shakedown in 1927 to become the new agship of the US Fleet. After several years in that role on the East
Coast, she was transferred to the Paci c to operate as agship of Battleship Division One for most of the 1930s. e nation was still rmly in the grasp of the Great Depression, so little was available in the way of funding for additional modernization e$orts. After years of eet exercises and routine maintenance, she transferred back to the Atlantic in 1937. As another rst, she became the rst ship to test a purposebuilt shipborne radar set in December 1938.
When Germany crossed the Polish border on 1 September 1939, Texas was
(above) USS Texas at sea, 21 December 1943. (opposite) Ba leship Texas in the Gatun Locks of the Panama Canal, en route to the Atlantic Ocean, 21 June 1937. US
operating as the agship of the Atlantic Squadron. President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared American neutrality three days later, prompting the US Navy to begin the Neutrality Patrol. Texas operated in this capacity for the next two years, moving to the newly re-formed Atlantic Fleet in February 1941.
Texas was anchored in Casco Bay, Maine, when news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor reached the ship on 7 December. at night, the ship’s deck lights were extinguished. War against Japan was declared the next day, followed by German retaliation with their own declaration of war on the 11th. With the Paci c battle eet decimated and most of the new generation of fast battleships still out tting or on the ways, Texas found herself at war as one of only nine active battle-
ships left undamaged and ready for service across both oceans.
She assumed duties patrolling and escorting convoys for the next year as a deterrent against possible Atlantic raids by German capital ships. In November 1942, Texas supported the American landings in North Africa alongside New York and the new battleship Massachusetts to provide naval gun re until the surrender of Vichy French forces. With her rst real combat operation completed, Texas returned to the East Coast.
She continued her patrol and escort duties until sailing for Scotland in April 1944 to begin preparations for Operation Overlord—the planned Allied invasion of Western Europe. By this time, the surviving battleships from the attack on Pearl Harbor had been raised, rebuilt, and returned to service
in the Paci c alongside the newest fast battleships to continue the advance against Japan, leaving Texas and a few veteran battleships in European waters to rehearse for the upcoming invasion. She conducted gunnery training exercises and other preparations untilnally steaming for Normandy in June. Just before 0600 on 6 June, Texas opened re on German shore batteries in the Omaha Beach sector. For the next nine days, she obliterated enemy positions with a terrifying steel rain of high-explosive shells. By 15 June, Allied troops had pushed so far inland that Texas’ s crew was forced to ood her starboard torpedo blister to induce a su cient list to elevate her guns high enough to reach the intended targets ashore. Soon afterward, she moved to bombard positions near the Port of Cherbourg. During that mission on 25
Ba leship Texas in dry dock on 7 January 2024, a few months before she was relaunched.
June, she engaged in a furious gun duel with Battery Hamburg. ough she won the ght, she took two direct hits, one of which detonated below the pilothouse and killed the helmsman. is was her rst and only combat damage, and the helmsman was the only fatality in battle throughout the ship’s entire 32-year career in the Navy.
Once further operations o$ France concluded, Texas departed for New York to prepare for her next assignment after nearly ve months in European waters. In November, she got underway for the Panama Canal, returning to the Paci c for the rst time since 1937.
After brief stops along the way, Texas brought her massive guns to bear on Japanese targets for the rst time o$ Iwo Jima in February 1945, and then took up station o$ Okinawa at the end of March for the opening bombardments. She spent the next two
months carrying out re missions called by the Marines ashore, smashing Japanese positions and defending herself from kamikaze attacks until the middle of May. She then made for the Philippines, arriving in Leyte, where she remained until the Japanese surrendered on 15 August 1945. at night, her deck lights were illuminated for the rst time in almost four years.
As her nal service to the nation, Texas made several round trips for Operation Magic Carpet to return thousands of victorious American troops home. In 1946, she transited the Panama Canal for the last time, bound for the East Coast, where yard crews would begin preparations for deactivation. On 18 June 1946, after more than 32 years in active service, two world wars, 728,000 nautical miles sailed, and thousands of shells red, the tired and worn old ship was nally placed in reserve.
When her crew struck her colors for the nal time, she no longer resembled the ship that had entered service in 1914. e sleek, uncluttered, rakish battleship was long gone, replaced by the oating fortress that she had become with towering tripod masts, massive superstructure, and decks covered in anti-aircraft guns and directors. One would be forgiven for seeing a picture of her in 1914 alongside one from 1946 and not recognizing them as the same vessel. Only the name TEXAS painted proudly on her quarters would signal the original ship beneath.
As one of the oldest warships left in the Navy, Texas seemed destined for the scrapyard. e old battlewagon would not be cut down so easily, though. ousands of Texas school children from across the state rallied together in the ghting spirit of their
20
Between
November 2022 and 25 February 2024, more than 4,300 people made a donation and, by doing so, got to see USS Texas out of the water at Gulf Copper Dry Dock & Rig Repair in Galveston, Texas. The donations came in at more than $800,000 for the ship’s restoration fund. In this photo, tour participants in yellow hard hats get an up-close view of the ship’s hull in dry dock, January 2024.
state’s namesake ship to donate their change to save her as a memorial. On 17 April 1947, the State of Texas established the Battleship Texas Commission. She was towed out of the eet of mothballed ships in Maryland to make the long passage to her namesake state, eventually making her way past Galveston and up the Houston Ship Channel for the very rst time. On 20 April 1948, USS Texas was brought into her new berth at San Jacinto State Park to rest in the shadow of the great monument nearby. She was turned over to the State of Texas the next day, and she began her new life as the rst battleship museum and memorial in the United States.
With her service to her nation concluded, Texas’s new mission in retirement was to serve her community. For decades, the decommissioned old warship hosted educational outreach programs and museum exhibits to connect new generations with the stories of the old. Veterans from across the nation visited her, and the imaginations of children were sparked during overnight stays onboard. In 1976 Texas became the rst battleship designated as a National Historic Landmark.
Retirement wouldn’t be easy, however. While many museum ships are relatively common and carefully managed today, the same wasn’t true in 1948. USS Texas was only the third
such vessel in the United States, and the rst not to be managed by a naval entity. Over the next 42 years at her berth in Houston, the already aged ship rapidly deteriorated without the shipyard periods and daily maintenance from the hundreds of sailors she once carried. Her limited team of sta $ and volunteers implemented many novel solutions, such as ooding compartments to stabilize her and replacing the pine deck with concrete. Unfortunately, these e$orts actually accelerated the deterioration. e long-term rami cations weren’t well understood at the time, and these solutions were chosen in an e $ort to preserve her with extremely limited manpower and funding.
Ba leship Texas is shi ed to Pier A at the Gulf Copper Dry Dock & Rig Repair on 22 August 2024. Currently, the Ba leship Texas Foundation is seeking a new permanent home berth in Galveston.
e battleship Texas was turned over to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department in 1983 and entered dry dock in 1988 for the rst time in over four decades. Despite the $130 million spent addressing the critical problems, they soon returned. She required further structural repairs from 2013 to 2018, when news articles and rumors spread about the possibility of her meeting the scrapyard if funds could not be raised to dry dock her again.
To save the historic vessel, in 2019 the Texas legislature set aside $35 million for repairs, and the Battleship Texas Foundation began operating the ship on behalf of the state the following year. e legislation also requires moving the ship to a new permanent loca-
tion where she will attract more visitors, and thus bring in more revenue.
With widespread media attention, the great ship left her longtime berth in San Jacinto for the last time in August 2022 and got underway for dry dock at Gulf Copper Dry Dock & Rig Repair in Galveston. A further $25 million was appropriated by the Texas legislature in 2023, and after a year and a half of extensive repairs, she oated freely once again in March 2024 to begin the next stage of her revitalization. e comprehensive scope of the repairs has ensured that she still has a long life ahead of her, and a brand-new maintenance plan has been created to preserve them. Plans are underway to nd the ship a permanent home berth
in Galveston, a major tourist destination. e Battleship Texas Foundation describes this new phase as a renaissance for the museum, with partnerships for new interactive exhibits to boost visitor engagement and drive tourism. Now that the storied battleship has overcome, perhaps, her greatest challenge yet, the future of USS Texas is brighter than ever.
Christian Carte is a graduate student in the Nautical Archaeology Program at Texas A&M University and is fascinated by naval history, warships, and all things seafaring. He’s a veteran of the US Coast Guard, having served aboard cutters James Rankin, Kimball, Shearwater, and Mako.
The mighty ba leship continues to inspire. Veterans and their families, students of all ages, tourists, photographers, and artists have visited the ship, studied her long career, and supported its restoration. This article was suggested by artist Peter Rindlisbacher, who submi ed this painting depicting BB-35 piercing the seas in rough weather.
A Maritime History of the United States
–TRANSPORTATION–
by Charles Raskob Robinson
The period around the turn of the 19th century was a transformative time in the evolution of ship design. e advent of steam power in the early 1800s revolutionized maritime travel, replacing traditional wind-powered vessels with steamships capable of faster and more reliable passages. No longer dependent on wind and weather, steamship travel grew rapidly in popularity for both passenger bookings and mail shipments. During the sailing ship era, passengers could expect a one-to-two-month Atlantic crossing in either direction. In 1838, SS Great Western, the rst purpose-built steam-powered ocean liner, made her maiden crossing in just fteen days and 12 hours. One hundred years later, RMS Queen Mary cut that time to under four days.
is was also a time of mass immigration across the Atlantic, with the bulk of these passengers traveling in steerage, while rst-class passengers enjoyed the luxurious parts of the ship. While the Queen Mary was making record-breaking crossings in the late 1930s, Pan American Airways launched the rst commercial transAtlantic service, cutting travel time to a matter of hours versus days and weeks. By the 1960s, the ocean liner fell to this competition, relegating commercial tra c on the high seas and inland waters to vessels carrying cargo. While it is estimated that 80% of the world’s goods still travel by sea, the modern cruise ship, where the vessel itself is the destination, is the only viable passenger ship on the high seas today.
(opposite page)
SS America in Southampton, England, watercolor, 19 x 14 inches, by Donald H. Stoltenberg (1927–2016)
Launched in 1939, SS America served as the flagship of the United States Lines before and a er World War II, during which she carried more than 350,000 troops to overseas ba lefields, more than any other ship.
illustrated by the American Society of Marine Artists
New York Harbor During the Steamship Era, oil, 26 x 40 inches, by William G. Muller
(previous page)
East River Tra ic, oil, 18 x 28 inches, by Donald Demers
The transition to steam is evident in this depiction of New York City in the early 20th century, where the New York pilot boat Joseph Pulitzer, No. 20, is the only sailing vessel in view among the busy maritime tra ic on the East River.
SS United States Return to New York oil, 12 x 15 inches, by Robert C. Semler (1942–2020)
SS United States, built for the United States Lines in 1950–51, was the largest passenger liner ever built in the United States. She was also the fastest, capturing the Blue Riband for the speed record across the Atlantic on her maiden voyage—a record she still holds. The ship is still afloat, but perhaps not for long. A er 30 years of trying to find a new owner who would restore her in some capacity, the SS United States Conservancy, which until recently owned the 990-foot-long ship, sold the iconic liner to the Okaloosa County’s Tourist Development Department in Florida. A er being evicted from her long-time berth in Philadelphia, the Conservancy faced selling the hull for scrap or transferring ownership to Okaloosa County, which has plans to scu le the ship and turn it into a dive site o the Florida panhandle. Before his death in 2020, Robert Semler was an active supporter of the ship and the Conservancy’s e orts to save her.
South Street, New York, 1875, oil, 18 x 24 inches, by John Stobart (1929–2023)
In the 19th century, South Street in Lower Manha an was a busy place, packed with ships in port with their headrigs towering over the cobblestone street. By day, the waterfront was crowded with people involved with all aspects of ge ing ships loaded and back out to sea. In this quiet winter scene from 1875, a few people are navigating the snow-covered street. By the turn of the century, the sailing ship gave way to the steamship and South Street was transformed into a very di erent place. Passengers looking to cross the Atlantic now boarded fast liners at the piers along the Hudson River, which later became known as “Ocean Liner Row.”
is article is based on the book, A Maritime History of the United States: e Creation and Defense of a Nation, written by Charles Raskob Robinson and designed by Len F. Tantillo. Robinson is a Fellow and charter member of the American Society of Marine Artists (ASMA), the nation’s oldest and largest not-for-pro t educational organization dedicated to promoting American marine art and history. In 2013, he directed the Naval War of 1812 Illustrated, a documentary produced by the Society in conjunction with the US Navy and dozens of museums. Len F. Tantillo is a Fellow and long-time ASMA member and board member. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, he is a licensed architect who left that eld to pursue a career in the ne art of historical and marine painting. His work has appeared internationally in exhibitions, publications, and documentaries, in addition to ne art museums and galleries. He is the author of four books and is a Fellow of the New York Academy of History.
To purchase the book or learn more about ASMA, visit www.americansocietyofmarineartists.com.
Save the Date!
Rather, save the month... In June, the National Maritime Historical Society will host the 2025 Art of the Sea online exhibition and sale, featuring original marine art from the American Society of Marine Artists. This will be a juried show; non-member artists may join ASMA and then apply for the exhibition. Artists can submit works for consideration at www.showsubmit. com. During the month of June, visit www.seahistory.org/arto!hesea2025 to view and purchase original artwork by today’s top marine artists. A portion of each sale will benefit NMHS.
Maritime Museum of San Diego
Walter E. Hadsell Collection
by Kevin Sheehan, PhD
The Curator’s Corner series in Sea History o ers maritime museums the opportunity to feature historical photos from their collections that, while available to researchers upon request, rarely go on public display. Each issue, we ask a museum curator to pick a particularly interesting, revealing, or representative photo from their archives and tell us about it. In this installment, we are invited into the archives of the Maritime Museum of San Diego. Enjoy!
In 2008 I received a call from an individual in possession of a decaying cardboard box of photographic negatives, which had been found in a garage during renovations and were on the verge of being thrown into a dumpster. e negatives were clearly old and about 4 x 6 ½ inches in size. Some depicted ships, and the nder thought they might belong in a museum. Hence, the call to my o ce.
What the donor had uncovered was a long-lost collection of images by the early 20th-century photographer Walter Elias Hadsell (1880–1967). A native of Ohio, in 1904 Hadsell graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in mining. He would eventually make his way to Mexico in 1906 to work for the El Oro Mining and Railway Company. His interest in photography brought him to Veracruz, where he became the proprietor of “La Kodak,” a retail store downtown specializing in photographic supplies.
Hadsell’s range of photographic interests was broad and included rural scenes showing in uences from the late 19th-century Pictorialist style, highly detailed panoramic landscapes, as well as individual portrait studies. Some of his most poignant images record the lives of the Mexican peasantry in the early 20th century. What he is undoubtedly best known for, however, was his chronicling of the seven-month American occupation of the port of Veracruz (21 April–23 November 1914).
As a photojournalist, Hadsell was well-positioned to observe and record these events. His store was located centrally on Calle Miguel Lerdo, giving Hadsell a privileged vantage point to observe the comings and goings in the heart of Mexico’s largest port. One photograph in the collection shows Hadsell himself, dressed in a dark suit and
tie, a white Panama hat on his head, leaning nonchalantly against the front counter of his store, his left hand casually holding a smoldering cigar. e front door is framed on three sides by dozens of his photographs showing scenes from Veracruz, many of them now conserved in the museum’s archive.
And so, to the undated photograph reproduced here. e steamer Sinaloa features in John Kenneth Turner’s Barbarous Mexico, rst published in 1910. Here Turner recounts the plight of Yaqui exiles, bundled on board the Sinaloa in Veracruz, bound for the port of Progreso on the Yucatán Peninsula. e exact timing and motive for the embarkation of the federal troops, nominally loyal to the regime of President Victoriano Huerta, are not precisely known. We know the Mexican Federal Army was o cially disbanded on 13 August 1914, so the picture must have been taken before that date. It’s possible that these troops were sent to Campeche in 1913 as part of the campaign by General Manuel Rivera that would ultimately see federal forces defeating those loyal to the assassinated President Francisco Madero. Or they may have been reinforcements for the already victorious federal forces. In either case, it is likely they departed Veracruz well before American troops arrived in the city on 21 April 1914. Eyewitnesses recorded the largely uncoordinated Mexican resistance. A naval bombardment targeted parts of the town and its defenses, and shore parties of Marines and sailors gunned down a few isolated snipers, one of whom was photographed dead on the doorstep of Hadsell’s La Kodak store.
e troop embarkation photograph captures a moment in time: the gaze of curious onlookers, skittish horses warily negotiating the gangplank, and dismounted federales
Kevin Sheehan is archivist, collections manager, and curator at the Maritime Museum of San Diego
Federal
Cavalry embarking on the Sinaloa for Campeche, ca. 1913–1914
gathered on the weather deck. e federales are strikingly uniformed with broad sombreros, crossed bandoliers, and stout riding boots. Some display expressions of outright amusement—there must have been something going on dockside to engage their attention. A light artillery piece is secured on deck and protected from the elements with a large cloth covering.
Resistance to the ill-conceived US intervention simmered, and following the nal departure of military forces on 23
November, resentment became more pronounced. La Kodak would be among the casualties. In 1915, anti-American hostilities reached a level where Hadsell realized his business was no longer tenable. He sold o his store and photographic supplies and moved rst to Honduras, and then Ajo, Arizona. Sometime between 1915 and 2008, part of Hadsell’s collection of negatives would make its way to Southern California, and, quite by chance, be saved for posterity.
“Some [of the photographic negatives] depicted ships, and the finder thought they might belong in a museum.”
The Maritime Museum of San Diego in California is home to one of the largest collections of historic floating ships and boats in the United States, featuring the museum’s flagship, the 1863 iron barque Star of India, the world’s oldest active sailing ship. The museum o ers world-class exhibits interpreting West Coast maritime history, sailing ship charters, educational programs, a research library, and an active volunteer program.
1492 North Harbor Drive, San Diego, CA 92101 • (619) 234-9153 • www.sdmaritime.org
WALTER E. HADSELL COLLECTION, MARITIME MUSEUM OF SAN DIEGO
Sailing a Submarine: Jury-rigging
and the Resourceful Mariner
MantheHalyards! LetGoandHaul!
Here’s a quiz:
Dive Dive Dive!
Which of these commands might you hear on a submarine?
Answer: All of the above.
. In May 1921, the US Navy submarine USS R-14 was at sea, about 100 miles southeast of Hawaii, searching for USS Conestoga, an ocean-going Navy fleet tug reported overdue at Pearl Harbor. While it was at the surface, R-14 ran out of fuel and lost all radio communications. Unable to call for help and unable to move, the crew’s options were limited. Their situation was that much worse because they only had enough food onboard to last for another five days.
The likelihood of being seen by a passing ship was almost non-existent, so they could either dri! helplessly o shore and hope for a miracle, or they could figure out a way to get back to port on their own. The sub’s captain and engineering o icer put their heads together and came up with an unusual means of propulsion—at least unusual for a non-sailing vessel. They could jury-rig a mast and sails and get back to Hawaii using wind power, just like in the Age of Sail.
Jury-rig: it’s a term that sailors from every century know well. One aspect of an o shore sailing voyage is that you can’t call AAA or 9-1-1 for help. This is something that mariners accept, and some even like being forced to be self-reliant. Jury-rig is both a noun and a verb and likely comes from the term “JOURNIERE mast,” which
Wait—what?!
translates to “mast for a day” (the French word JOUR means “day”). Sailors who found themselves at sea with a broken piece of equipment, including the loss of a mast, would try to make a temporary repair with whatever they had onboard at the time. A typical example is a sailing ship that has been dismasted o shore, limping into port with a makeshi! mast and sail, or a vessel with broken steering gear rigged with rope or chain tied to the rudder so that her crew can still steer.
But a submarine rigging a mast and sail? When R-14’s engine became unusable, the crew made a temporary mast by tying several bunkbed frames together and then securing them to the crane mounted on the foredeck that was used to load torpedoes. They made a sail out of eight hammocks hastily stitched together and soon found themselves moving through the water, albeit slowly. So, they made two more sails out of blankets and tied them to the radio mast. With three sails now rigged to catch the wind, USS R-14 picked up speed and made it safely back to Hawaii in 64 hours, with enough food to last them another 2½ days!
USS R-14’s commanding o icer, Lt. Alexander Dean Douglas, later received a US Navy commendation for his and his crew’s resourcefulness.
USS R-14 under sail in 1921. The sail in view at the top is rigged to the radio mast. Below it, towards the right in the photo, you can see the sail made from eight blankets billowing out.
R-14’s captain, Lieutenant Alexander Dean Douglas, is in view, si ing at the top le of the photo (the one not wearing a hat).
Alfred T. Agate, Ship’s Expedition Artist Maritime Careers*
Alfred Agate grew up studying art under the guidance of his older brother Frederick, who was an established portrait artist in New York. He was born in upstate New York in 1812, and by the 1830s was living in New York City and working as a portrait artist and miniaturist. Stepping out of his comfort zone of the studio, in 1838 he boarded a ship for the adventure of a lifetime, working as one of the two expedition artists on the rst scienti c voyage sponsored by the United States government, the United States Exploring Expedition (a.k.a. the “Ex-Ex”) under the command of Lt. Charles Wilkes. e artists were considered part of the scienti c crew.
Agate was just 25 years old when the expedition got underway, and he would spend the next four years sailing around the globe, visiting Polynesia, Antarctic waters, South America (including a passage around Cape Horn), Australia, the Paci c Northwest of the United States, and beyond. One of the main goals of the expedition was to document the ora and fauna, physical geography, and peoples they would observe along the way, not only via written description, but in sketches and paintings by those who saw them rsthand. When the expedition returned, Lt. Wilkes proceeded to publish a multi-volume report of the voyage, which included hundreds of Agate’s illustrations.
When the expedition concluded, Agate moved to Washington, DC, and married Elizabeth Hill Kennedy in 1845. He was in poor health after his long time at sea and died from tuberculosis only a year after his wedding at the age of 33. e shipboard artist has not been a position onboard scienti c research vessels for more than a hundred years, not since photography was invented and became mainstream. Today, research vessels rarely carry crew onboard whose speci c job is to photograph (or video) what they nd. For example, remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) used to explore the sea oor are equipped with high-resolution cameras. Trained ROV pilots not only maneuver the vehicle, but operate its cameras, and can document undersea items that artists would not have been able to a century ago and before.
Alfred T. Agate (1812–1846)
Tahitian Girl with Hau, by Alfred Agate, c. 1840.
Ficus or Banyan Tree, by Alfred Agate, published in Charles Wilkes’s Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, 1845.
ANIMALS IN SEA HISTORY by Richard J. King
“A seaman has to su!er,” wrote Vito Dumas in his book Alone Through the Roaring Forties (1944). He knew what he was talking about. Few people at sea have ever endured what he did—at least on purpose.
In 1943, before GPS, radar, modern outdoor clothing, and automatic steering of any kind, Dumas became the first person on record to sail alone around the entire Southern Ocean, the windiest, roughest waters on Earth. Along the way, he stopped at only three ports. He was also the first to sail alone around Cape Horn and survive. He did all this in a li le wooden boat without an engine or electricity.
With no weather reports or radio—in part because he was sailing during World War II and wanted to avoid being detected by German U-boats—Dumas became intimately acquainted with his surroundings, especially the sea state, the clouds overhead, and the marine life all around him. Seabirds were his most frequent companions. A er he departed his home in Argentina, he explained, “My solitude in the Atlantic was complete except for the albatrosses and some smaller birds with pre y check pa erns under their wings. These were pintado petrels or Cape pigeons. I o en saw them during my long hours at the helm.”
You’ve probably heard of an albatross, but a Cape pigeon?
These were not pigeons like the kind you see in a modern city. It was the sailors who saw these birds when navigating around Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope who gave them this name. They do look similar at a distance.
Cape pigeons, also known as the “pintado,” are a type of petrel, true seabirds that spend most of their lives out at sea. They only land on desolate islands in the Southern Ocean or along the coast of Antarctica to raise their chicks. All petrels, like albatrosses, have special glands and tubenoses (straw-like structures on top of their beaks) to excrete salt from their system, enabling them to hydrate with seawater.
area, near Cape Horn.
Cape pigeon in the Drake’s Passage
Vito Dumas on the cover of the July 1943 issue of El Gráfico, an Argentine sports magazine.
EL
Pintado translates to “painted” in Spanish and refers to their dramatic black-and-white speckled feathers, a pa ern almost entirely unique among seabirds. In 1699, the pirate-naturalist William Dampier observed thousands of these “pintado-birds” at sea, which in flight he described were “about the bigness of a tame pigeon.”
Cape pigeons have long been known to deep-sea sailors of the Southern Ocean because they occasionally follow a boat looking for food. Frederick Pease Harlow, a merchant sailor in the 1870s, wrote of how the “very beautiful” Cape pigeons liked to fly around a ship’s wake, especially in rough weather. “Suddenly it drops into the water,” Harlow wrote, “diving beneath for scraps and bits of food.”
Cape pigeons were especially fond of following whaleships. Aboard a whaleship in 1841, Francis Allyn Olmsted wrote
Sailor’s-eye view of a flock of Cape pigeons, near Clarence Island in the Southern Ocean, January 2011.
how the number of birds increased as they sailed closer to Cape Horn. One day a single Cape pigeon began “coming close up to the ship as she ‘lay to,’ and alighting upon the waves, or skimming along over the boisterous sea with his li le web feet.” When shore-based whaling stations were active in sub-Antarctic waters in the 1900s, Cape pigeons appeared by the thousands to feed on bits of whale blubber.
When Vito Dumas sailed the Southern Ocean during World War II, very li le whaling was going on, nor was there a lot of merchant shipping or commercial fishing. He was even more alone than a sailor usually would be in a small boat in these vast, stormy seas. His closest companion was a single Cape pigeon that paid a daily visit to his boat as he transited the Indian Ocean. “He used to arrive and fly around the boat every day and then disappear,” Dumas wrote. “Quite one of the family; he would fly ahead of the boat and alight, as though expecting scraps of biscuit as I passed. When the albatrosses came, they would drive him o!, and I would not see him until the next day, when he came regularly to be fed.” Dumas added that his Cape pigeon was “a great friend” and “I awaited him anxiously, and he must have felt as I did.”
You’re not alone if you’re wondering if Dumas was actually seeing the same bird, but Cape pigeon markings are pre y distinct, and, as another example, a British o!icer in the Royal Navy once reported that a Cape pigeon with a piece of red ribbon around its neck followed his ship for 1,500 miles.
Dumas continued across the Indian Ocean, encountering seas and winds in which he wondered how any living thing could survive. For weeks, he no longer saw his feathered friend. Then when he was stuck in a flat calm below South Australia, the petrel flew twice around his boat but le , only to return to continue its daily visits as Dumas approached Tasmania. A couple of weeks later, nearing Aotearoa New Zealand, Dumas began su!ering symptoms from scurvy. To make things worse, a storm was brewing, and by that stage of his voyage his rain gear was disintegrating. As he tried to figure out the direction of the weather, “Something delightful materialized out of this inferno; something that I had missed for several days: my Cape pigeon! The faithful bird had not abandoned me.”
Vito Dumas ducked below and got his bird some crumbled biscuit. This would be the last time he would see his Cape pigeon friend. He sailed into Wellington a er a passage of 104 solitary days on the tempestuous Southern Ocean: wind and seas fit only for the birds.
For previous Animals in “Sea History,” see www.seahistory.org, or the book Ocean Bestiary: Meeting Marine Life from Abalone to Orca to Zooplankton, which is a revised collection of more than 19 years of this column!
by Captain Michael Rutstein
This winter, Erin Desmond and Josh Rowan finished their five-year rebuild of the 1925 William Hand schooner Hindu. The schooner had been operating as a headboat seasonally out of Provincetown, Massachuse s, and Key West, Florida, until a freak accident in July 2020—hi ing an unreported submerged derelict boat at sea—accelerated their plans for a rebuild. We spoke to Erin shortly a er Hindu arrived at Key West a er a bi er cold winter transit from Maine.
Marlinspike: Congratulations! I assume you are in a hurry to get up and running…and pay some bills.
Erin Desmond: Oh yes! We have a bit of a laundry list before we can get started chartering, but we’re getting closer every day, and we’re back in our winter home here in Key West!
Marlinspike: Nice timing with the delivery, by the way. You were waiting for a cold snap and a couple of winter storms, no?
Desmond: It was a real hustle to the very, very end, and [the delivery crew] got out just in time, but they de! nitely did not miss those bitter lows that came through. ey had half an inch of ice on the hull on their trip from omaston [Maine] to Portland, and then it was 32 degrees all the way down to Northern Florida. It wasn’t until they actually got to Key West that they had a comfortable ride.
Marlinspike: Your plans to rebuild Hindu had to be brought forward very
quickly in 2020 when Hindu was heading north for the summer and struck a waterlogged derelict in Long Island Sound. Is that right?
Desmond: Yes. at vessel that had been sabotaged. It had holes drilled in the hull.
Marlinspike: You mean, sunk for the insurance money?
Desmond: Yes. So our long-term plan to rebuild the schooner became a short-
PHOTO BY PAUL BENSON
Erin Desmond and Josh Rowan recently completed a full restoration of the 1925 William Hand schooner Hindu, which operates seasonally out of Cape Cod and Key West.
term plan. At the outset, we were hopeful that it was going to be about a third of the scope of the project that we ended up getting into. We were hoping that repairs would be contained to the bottom third of the frames, that the double-sawn hockey-stick frames would come out, and we’d replace those with good wood. But in opening it up, we realized that, nope, it was going to have to be a full rebuild.
Marlinspike: When you have a century-old vessel in distress, there are always going to be people who ask, “Why does this particular boat need to be saved?” Building a new one from scratch is probably going to be quicker and less expensive.
Desmond: How does the quote go?
“A past lacking tangible relics seems too tenuous to be credible.”1 is schooner is an important piece of American maritime history. It’s one of the last William Hand Jr. schooners still sailing and has an incredible hundred-year history. Hindu was built in 1925 in East
1 David Lowenthal
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Boothbay, Maine, by the Hodgdon Brothers. She changed hands a couple of times early on, but mainly was spending time in New York City during the Depression. en the gentleman who owned her needed to make some money and decided to use her to go trade spices in India.
When she got back and World War II was underway, she was commandeered as a part of the coastal picket brigade. She patrolled the eastern seaboard looking for U-boats as “CG61006.” During that time, they added collision bulkheads, and that’s one of the reasons she was able to make a smooth transition from her time in the Hooligan Navy to a charter vessel.
She was brought to Provincetown in 1946, initiated the whale-watch industry there, and became one of the longest-running charter boats on the East Coast. She has a loyal following in Provincetown, and in Key West as well. We didn’t want to lose any of that history.
Marlinspike: You didn’t cut any corners in rebuilding Hindu: new keel, new frames, new planking, and you restored her lovely sheer. Some gorgeous wood, judging from your social media.
Desmond: De!nitely. We got the best quality at the best price that we possibly could through the whole rebuild, and we really relied on the village, putting the word out there to ! nd those materials at a time when things we needed coming into this country were few and far between. We were also able to get a grant for $70,000 from Provincetown from the town’s Community Preservation Committee. As part of that process, the ownership of the vessel was transferred to a non-pro!t, Sail As You Are.
Marlinspike: Will non-pro!t status change the way the boat is used?
Desmond: No. Hindu will continue to sail out of Provincetown and Key West. It will continue to o er day sails and sunset sails, private charters, and weddings, but it will also have an increased focus on maritime education. We just had our ! rst group of kids aboard in Key West. ey really enjoyed their time learning about this old boat that has a new lease on life, and learning about “ship-shipmate-self” and how to coil lines. at’s something that will continue, as well as o ering opportunities for diversity and inclusion in the sailing world.
Marlinspike: Will these be day programs, or might you be able to do overnights?
Desmond: Day programs. In the past, the boat had done overnights with Boy Scouts on the Cape, but we don’t have any intention of doing that right now.
Marlinspike: And people will be able to sail aboard the Hindu out of Key West as soon as March and April?
Desmond: Yes, absolutely.
Marlinspike: And what do you see your season in Provincetown being this year?
Desmond: June 1st through September 30th. In fact, people can visit our website [see below] right now to book public sails and private charters for the upcoming season.
Schooner Hindu operates out of Provincetown each summer and Key West in winter (see www.hinducharters.com for sailing dates and more information). Hindu Charters proudly partners with Sail As You Are, a non-profit dedicated to preserving maritime heritage and promoting diversity in the sailing community. Founded in 2022, Sail As You Are o ers educational sailing experiences, supports queer youth with internships, and advocates for sustainable ocean practices. Learn more about the organization at www.sailasyouare. org.
PHOTO BY MARK HEDDON
The schooner departed Maine on a cold December day, bound for the Florida Keys and warm weather. A er 31 ⁄ 2 weeks, her crew was very happy to shed some layers as they arrived at Key West, eager to restart her sailing schedule.
NMHS SEMINAR SERIES
Join us on the ! rst
ursday of each month at 7:00 PM ET for our virtual seminar series, showcasing the art, science, and adventure of the sea.
3 APRIL
JAMES DELGADO
Wreck Divers & Archaeologists: A History of Maritime Archaeology in California
1 MAY
PATRICK O’BRIEN Making a Maritime Painting
5 JUNE
AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MARINE ARTISTS
Art of the Sea—Winners of the online exhibition
Scan the QR Code to explore upcoming seminars or visit seahistory.org.
SHIP NOTES, SEAPORT & MUSEUM
USS John F. Kennedy (CVA-67/CV67) has arrived in Brownsville, Texas, where it will be scrapped. On 16 January, the attack carrier departed the US Navy’s Inactive Ships Maintenance Facility in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from where it has been kept since its decommissioning in 2007. !e Kitty Hawk-class carrier was laid down on 22 October 1964 at the Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company and launched on 27 May 1967. It was the rst US Navy vessel named for the 35th president, just 3½ years after his assassination. !e ship’s sponsor was President Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline. !e Kennedy conducted multiple tours in the Mediterranean, Tyrrhenian, Ionian, Ligurian, Aegean, and Adriatic seas. In the early 2000s, it was deployed in support of Operation Anaconda, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. !e attack carrier was decommissioned in 2007 and listed under “donation” status, indicating that it was available to become a museum vessel if a prospective
custodial organization could submit a proposal providing a new location and funding model to maintain the ship. As the last US aircraft carrier with traditional (non-nuclear) propulsion, it was the last one eligible to become a museum vessel. No proposals were submitted by 2017, and the carrier was slated for dismantlement. !e name
“USS John F. Kennedy” is now borne by the Gerald R. Ford -class aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), built by Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding. It was launched in 2019 in Newport News; Caroline Kennedy was also this ship’s sponsor. … e US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has selected the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse for its protection program and allocated $50,000 for a feasibility study to assess appropriate next steps to restore the landmark’s base . “The Army Corps’ approval of the feasibility study is an essential and monumental achievement to secure the funding to stabilize, restore, and preserve this historic landmark and priceless community and
state asset. !e lighthouse has stood as a beacon of safety but also of community identity for over 150 years, and with this federal investment, we will ensure that it will continue to shine for generations to come,” said Kristin Gamble, president of the HudsonAthens Lighthouse Preservation Society. Originally called the Hudson City Light, the light station was operated as a manned lighthouse from its construction in 1875 to the 1950s, when its
USS John F. Kennedy
function was automated and a live-in keeper was no longer needed. It is still an aid to navigation today, guiding ships around the Middle Ground Flats. !e name was o$cially changed to the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. In 1982 the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse Preservation Committee, under the auspices of the Columbia Community Foundation, signed a lease with the US Coast Guard, marking the rst such agreement between a government agency and a private group for a Hudson River lighthouse. Four years later, the HudsonAthens Lighthouse Preservation Society (HALPS) was incorporated and assumed operation of the lighthouse. HALPS has recreated the interior to represent life in the 1930s, when the family of its last keeper, Emil J. Brunner, lived there and operated the light. !e family later moved to a home in Athens, New York, and Brunner rowed to his station each evening. In 2024 the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed the lighthouse on its list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places to call attention to the fact that engineers estimate that the window to save it might be as short as three years. !e structure’s foundation consists of about 200 underwater wooden pilings driven 50 feet into the riverbed and surrounded by mud-packing and large boulders. !e toll of ice oes, shifting tides, and more recently, powerful underwater wakes from commercial vessels have eroded the mud-packing and dislodged some of the larger boulders that were protecting the pilings. Movement of the exposed pilings has caused cracks in the building. A 2022 structural engineering report recommended the installation of a sheet pile barrier around the lighthouse, driven deep into the waterbed, to stabilize and protect the foundation. HALPS has secured signi cant grants
from state, federal, and private sources toward making this project a reality. It is hoped the USACE-funded study will pave the way to the rest of the necessary funding. (www.halps.org ) …
In a ceremony on 22 November 2024 at Eisenhower Lock in Massena, New York, the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation (GLS) made o cial the transfer of ownership of the tug Robinson Bay to the Great Lakes Maritime Academy (GLMA). !e 1958 tug will serve as a training platform for the academy’s students. GLS Administrator Adam Tindall-Schlicht remarked: “By placing this iconic tugboat in the hands of an institution dedicated to maritime excellence, we are ensuring that the Robinson Bay remains an active part of the Great Lakes maritime community, contributing to both its legacy and its future. We look forward to witnessing how the Academy utilizes this vessel to promote stewardship and education on the Great Lakes.” Academy superintendent Jerry Achenbach said that the donation “provides our students with an invaluable tool for real-world learning. !e Robinson Bay will be a cornerstone of our training program.” !e
She is an iconic symbol of freedom, preserving the legacy of our civic ancestors. Everyone is a part of her story. For in many ways, America is the product of the events that happened here over four centuries ago—the choices made, risks taken, and the adaptation of community structures to new civic realities.
GLS
Robinson Bay
tug was designed by Merrit Demarest and built by the Christy Corporation of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, for the GLS. In 1991 she received an engine upgrade, and an upper house was added to her superstructure. !e Great Lakes Maritime Academy is part of Northwestern Michigan College, located in Traverse City, Michigan. (GLMA, 715 East Front St., Traverse City, MI; www.nmc.edu/maritime/ index.html; GLS, 1200 New Jersey Ave., SE W62-300, Washington, DC; www.seaway.dot.gov) … e Unicorn Preservation Society (UPS), based in Dundee, Scotland, announced that it has secured a £796,000 (about $993,700) grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. !e Society will apply those funds toward the total cost of a long-term endeavor called Project Safe Haven, multiphase plan to secure the future of HMS Unicorn, which the organization bills as the “most original old ship in the world.” According to the plans put forth in Project Safe Haven, East Graving Dock will be emptied, repaired, and
improved, including the installation of a supportive cradle for Unicorn, currently berthed at Victoria Dock. Once Unicorn is shifted to the new space, a shelter will be constructed over the ship and a temporary modular visitor center will be constructed dockside, while the ship will begin a controlled drying-out process. !ese steps will be followed by additional stabilization and repair
TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE – Great Lakes 2025
A eet of tall ships will race and sail their way through the Great Lakes this summer as participants in Tall Ships America’s TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE® Race Series. ! is will be the ninth time the series has visited the Great Lakes. Between June and August, twenty vessels will visit seven host ports: Brockville, Toronto, and Midland, Ontario; Duluth, Minnesota; Detroit, Michigan; and Erie, Pennsylvania. ! ree new ships will be participating this year: the newly restored schooner Ernesti na-Morrissey, the Boston-based schooner Liberty Clipper, and the schooner Wonder !ey will join (as of press time) Alliance, Appledore IV, Eco-Maris Empire Sandy, Fair Jeanne, Inland Seas, Lettie G. Howard, HMCS Oriole Playfair, Pride of Baltimore II, St. Lawrence II, and When and If, as they sail and race across the Great Lakes. Tall Ships America organizes the TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE® annual series of tall ship races and maritime port festivals to celebrate our rich maritime heritage and traditions and to inform the general public about the transformative power of adventure and education under sail. (www.tallshipsamerica.org)
—Erin Short, Director of Events and Communications for Tall Ships America
HMS Unicorn
of the dock and the construction of a permanent visitor center, and the ship will undergo further conservation work in the new cradle. !e Lottery Heritage Funds are the latest part of the fundraising package that UPS is assembling to address Project Safe Haven. !e organization is working to raise an additional £650,000 (about $810,000) by April of this year to unlock grants worth £10 million ($12.5 million) and is pursuing an additional £3.3million ($4.1 million) later in the year. !e 46-gun frigate HMS Unicorn was built at Chatham Royal Dockyard and launched in 1824. !e ship never saw action but spent three decades “in ordinary” (in reserve). She served as a training ship for the Royal Naval Reserves from 1873 to the 1960s. (UPS: !e Registered O $ce of the charity is c/o CGPM Consulting LLP, 40 Gilmerton Place, Edinburgh, EH17 8TP; www.hms unicorn.org.uk) … When it opens for its 343rd season in early April, the Oxford-Bellevue Ferry in Maryland will have a new captain/owner at the helm. Jim Andrews, who holds a 1,600ton master’s license and is owner of the Galveston-based company JettyLight, a marine operations management consultancy, purchased the business from Captains Judy and Tom Bixler, who have been the keepers of the ferry for the past 23 years. America’s oldest privately owned ferry service has been a vital link across the Tred Avon River since its establishment in 1683. !e current vessel, Talbot, has been in service since 1980 and o&ers a scenic and e$cient route that enhances local tourism and provides ferry riders with a unique experience. Its operation supports local businesses, contributes to the area’s charm, and serves as a tangible link to the region’s past. “ !e Oxford Bellevue Ferry is much more than just a means to cross the Tred
(continued on page 67)
Anchor’s Down!
Dr. Ray Ashley Retires from the Maritime Museum of San Diego a er 30 Years at the Helm
When Ray Ashley showed up on the San Diego waterfront in 1995 to take command of the Maritime Museum of San Diego, the museum was then 47 years old and entirely focused on the 1863 barque Star of India. According to long-time board member Ken Anderson, at that time, the museum was “a mess” and “on the verge of bankruptcy.” Ray’s work in transforming the museum and putting it on solid footing has allowed it to grow and thrive.
Star of India is still the museum’s agship, but during his tenure as president/CEO, Ray added a eet of historic and replica ships to the museum’s collections. In 1995 its collection of historic ships comprised Star of India, the 1898 steam ferryboat Berkeley, the 1904 steam yacht Medea, and the 1905 West Coast work boat and sailing sloop Butcher Boy, which was recently restored. He acquired the Vietnam Swift Boat PCF 816, a 1914 San Diego Harbor pilot boat, the topsail schooner Californian (a replica of a 19th-century US revenue cutter), a replica of the 19th-century frigate HMS Rose (since renamed HMS Surprise), USS Dolphin (a US Navy deep-diving, diesel-electric submarine), and the recently launched Block Island schooner Scrimshaw. To further his goal of having the museum represent 500 years of West Coast maritime history, in 2011–2015 he orchestrated the building (almost entirely by volunteers) of the 1542 Spanish galleon replica San Salvador. You could say that Ray really likes boats.
Sea History, and transformed the museum’s quarterly magazine, Mains’l Haul, into a peer-reviewed scholarly journal of Paci c Coast maritime history.
In 2014 Ray was recognized with lifetime achievement awards by both the Maritime Alliance in San Diego and the International Maritime Heritage Alliance for the construction of San Salvador. For his e&orts in building the San Salvador, in 2016 he was knighted with the rank of Knight Commander, Order of Isabella la Catholica by direction of his majesty, King Felipe VI of Spain.
!e Maritime Museum of San Diego is unique among maritime museums in that it has no real estate. !e museum in its entirety is housed on its ships and boats, with the steam ferry Berkeley anchoring the rest of the eet (except Star of India, which is berthed right next to the Berkeley along the downtown San Diego waterfront). Before he stepped down, Ray set in motion a major redevelopment plan in which the museum’s entire footprint along the North Embarcadero will be recon gured with new facilities housed in a two-story, roughly 14,000-squarefoot structure that will include spaces for galleries, an educational theater, a café, a museum store, public-access terraces, administrative o$ces, back-of-house functions, and a platform for a “dock-and-dine” for recreational boaters.
Not only has he acquired or built all these vessels for the museum, but as a licensed master mariner, he has also served as their captain for many an excursion, whether an afternoon daysail or a multi-week sailing voyage for which he arranged to have experts on a variety of maritime history subjects onboard with participants looking for an immersive, educational experience at sea.
Ray Ashley grew up in the San Diego area and holds a BA in anthropology from the University of California San Diego, an MA in maritime history and museum studies from East Carolina University, and a PhD in history from Duke University, specializing in the history of science, technology, and medicine. He has taught courses in history and archaeology at the university level and the history of navigation for the museum, has published numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals, advised and written for
Over the years, Ray has introduced and nurtured a dedicated and active volunteer community, which has proved pivotal in being able to maintain the museum eet and operate the vessels that are certi ed to get underway. His aim has been to have the Maritime Museum of San Diego attract and enhance the visitor experience for families and tourists, as well as for scholars looking to research subjects covered by the museum’s archives and collections and topics interpreted by the museum through its exhibits. After three decades at the helm, he has handed the watch over to Christina Brophy, formerly of Mystic Seaport Museum. While she has big shoes to ll, the museum is in good shape and is poised to take on its next chapter as a major attraction and educational facility in Southern California.
(Maritime Museum of San Diego, 1492 North Harbor Drive, San Diego, CA; www.sdmaritime.org)
Deirdre O’Regan, Editor, Sea History
PHOTO BY MAGGIE WALTON
(continued from page 65)
Avon,” said Captain Judy Bixler. “It’s a cornerstone of the community’s identity.” Captain Andrews and his family will split their time between Maryland and Texas. A graduate of the US Coast Guard Academy and 20-year USCG veteran, he commanded the Coast Guard cutters !under Bay and Dauntless. In addition to his BS from the Coast Guard Academy, Andrews has an MS in oceanography from the University of Rhode Island and an MBA from Rice University. Captain Andrews appreciates the ferry’s role as a living testament to the area’s history and is committed to preserving its legacy for future
Oxford-Bellevue Ferry
generations. !e Oxford-Bellevue ferry will open for the season on 5 April with weekend crossings and starting 26 April, will begin a 7-day-a-week schedule . (Oxford Landing, 101 East Strand, Oxford; Bellevue Landing, 5536 Bellevue Road, Bellevue; www.oxfordferry.com) … In autumn 2025, the 300-ton barque Picton Castle will set sail for the South Paci c Ocean. Berths are still available for those who want to pay for the experience of crewing a square-rigged ship on a major ocean voyage—a bucket-list item for many individuals of all ages Picton Castle returned from her eighth
Barque Picton Castle
circumnavigation in July 2024 and immediately began planning the next big voyage. !e idea was oated of doing another world voyage via the Great Capes, but the nal itinerary is more appealing in that it gives the ship and her crew more time in tropical waters. !e voyage is also timed to coincide with the upcoming Sail250 events along the Eastern Seaboard to commemorate the 250 th anniversary of the United
OSWEGO — “oldest US freshwater port” Open daily 1–5 pm
Offering dockside tours of vessels May thru October West 1st Street Pier, Oswego, NY www.hlwmm.org 315-342-0480
States. !e Picton Castle voyage will begin in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, and set a southerly course across the North Atlantic to the warm waters of the Caribbean, en route to the Paci c via the Panama Canal. Port calls include the Galápagos Islands, the remote home of the Bounty mutineers at Pitcairn Island, Tahiti, and the legendary islands of French Polynesia. !e ship will then return to the Caribbean by way of Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Once back in the Atlantic, the ship and her crew will join the Sail250 international eet of tall ships as they gather to sail along the East Coast of North America in spring and summer 2026. Picton Castle sails with a combination of professional mariners and crew who pay for the opportunity. No sailing experience is required. !ere are no passengers onboard; at sea, all hands steer the ship, handle sail, tar the rig, repair and make the sails, learn the way of a ship on the open ocean, and leave shore life behind. Everyone onboard learns navigation, small-boat handling, and rigging, and meets and befriends islanders, who have come to know the ship well from her past voyages. Picton Castle is
an inspected and certi ed sail training ship dedicated to deep-sea sail training, sailing the oceans of the world. (www. picton-castle.com) … In December, the Archaeology Unit Program Coordinator of the New York State Division of Historic Preservation announced that the steel-hulled steam yacht Seneca Chief shipwreck has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places !e vessel was built in Bu & alo, New York, in 1887 by master shipbuilder David Bell, and was subsequently transported by rail to Canandaigua Lake, a 16-mile-long waterway, one of the Finger Lakes. !e steamboat worked for more than nine seasons before being retired in 1896. At that time, the vessel’s wooden upper works were removed and likely repurposed, and her steam-propulsion unit was transferred to another vessel. It was then unceremoniously towed out and scuttled. (It should be noted, there were several 19th century vessels in New York State waters named Seneca Chief.) !e wreck site was discovered by Scott Hill in 2014 using Pictometry-aerial imagery. Hill later contacted New Yorkbased maritime archaeologist Joseph
Seneca Chief stern
H. LEE WHITE
Zarzynski for advice on how to create a shipwreck preserve. !e past director of Bateaux Below, Zarzynski co-authored several Lake George, New York, shipwreck National Register nominations: Wiawaka Bateaux (seven 1758 bateau-class vessels, listed 1992), the 1758 Land Tortoise radeau (a sevensided oating gun battery, listed 1995 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1998), the 1893 Cadet (ex-Olive) steamboat (listed 2002), and the 1906 Forward, a gasoline-powered launch (listed 2008). Zarzynski volunteered to write the National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Seneca Chief shipwreck site, assisted by Hill. Seneca Chief served Canandaigua Lake as an excursion vessel and also carried fruit, mail, newspapers, and other items around the waterway. It likewise supported marine-infrastructure construction along the lake’s shoreline. “ !e Seneca Chief was the little steamboat that could,” commented Zarzynski. “Because it was steel-hulled, unlike its competition, the 50-foot-long steamer could run on Canandaigua Lake earlier in the spring and stay longer on the lake, well into the autumn and sometimes even into the winter.” …
Explore the decks of the last Destroyer Escort afloat in America. 518-431-1943 ussslater.org
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Seneca Chief bow
Nauticus, the maritime discovery center in Norfolk, Virginia, welcomed visitors to a grand re-opening on 9–10 November to celebrate the completion of a $21.5 million transformation of 25,000 feet of museum space, showcasing all-new interactive exhibits, classroom areas, enhanced atrium and visitor spaces, and educational programming !e most recent spaces to be unveiled to the public were the Goode Family Atrium and three new exhibit spaces: the Design, Build, Sail! gallery; the Heart of the Navy gallery; and the Our Port exhibit, which explores the port of Norfolk
and Virginia’s maritime community. Two earlier exhibit spaces, Norfolk in Time and Aquaticus opened in 2023. Nauticus, an interactive science and technology center that explores the naval, economic, and nautical power of the sea, is run by the city of Norfolk and is supported by the non-pro t Nauticus Foundation. It is home to the Iowa -class battleship Wisconsin (BB64), the replica pilot schooner Virginia, and the Hampton Roads Naval Museum. (One Waterside Drive, Norfolk, VA; www.nauticus.org ) ... e World Canal Conference 2025 (WCC2025) kicks o $ on 21–25 September in
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Bu $ alo, New York, to coincide with the bicentennial celebration of the Erie Canal and to coordinate with the 12th Maritime Heritage Conference (24–27 September), also in Buffalo !e WCC brings together experts from various sectors, including canal managers, engineers, historians, and policymakers, to exchange ideas and shape the future of global waterways. !ey will focus on developing innovative solutions for the management, preservation, and growth of inland waterways at local, regional, and global levels. Hosted by the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor and the
FINE ART PRINTS OF SEA ROVERS & BUCCANEERS by award-winning ASMA Signature artist Don Maitz. Visit: www.paravia.com/DonMaitz.
83 -YEAR-OLD SHIPS’ BAKER SELLS PERSONAL COLLECTION OF 400 SHIP MENUS FROM THE 1900s AND ON : France, Germany, Italy, Britain, Holland, the US, etc. A Century of Continental Cuisine & Fine Dining on the High Seas! $6,000 Ph: 917 2878339 or email chrysedawn@gmail.com.
LIEUTENANT JACOB STARKE SERIES. Apalachicola Publishing. !e fth and nal novel, Lieutenant Jacob Starke at War, will be available late spring. Michael T. Ribble’s historically accurate series follows the steam bark Calypso’ s commission from inception to confront libusters supplying Cuban insurrectos until hostilities end with Spain. As it plays out, her young commander confronts Navy bureaus, politics, smugglers, storms, anarchists, the Junta, Spain’s navy, and more during late 1890s’ technological, social, and political change in the Caribbean, Washington, Norfolk, Key West, and Havana. Available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s, and others.
CIVIL WAR NAVY — THE MAGAZINE , the only Civil War magazine dedicated to the naval history of the con ict, published quarterly, 72-page issues. Subscribe at civilwarnavy.com or mail check for $37.95 to CSA Media, 29 Edenham Court, Brunswick, GA 31523. International subscriptions digital only.
UPPER TO’GALLANTS AND RUSTY
SCUPPERS Summer adventures and experiences of H. Peale Haldt Jr. working at sea during his youth as a deckhand aboard a freighter, schooner, ocean liner, and sailing barque Sea Cloud during the 1930s. Reviews and availability at www.rustyscupperbooks.com and Amazon.com.
TUGBOATS AND SHIPYARDS: THE RUSSELLS OF NEW YORK HARBOR, 1844–1962, winner of the Steamship Historical Society’s 2020 C. Bradford Mitchell Award. Hilary Russell recounts the full lives and remarkable accomplishments of the three generations of watermen and the often beautiful, sometimes original, evolving forms of the craft that objecti ed the family’s work. $31—order through AbeBooks, PayPal, or mail a check to: Berkshire Boat Building School, PO Box 578, She$eld, MA 01257.
CHESAPEAKE BAY ODYSSEY by Captain Michael J. Dodd outlines a fascinating exploration of 23 cities and towns. Dodd o&ers suggestions for sights to see, historical places to visit, and marinas. Dodd describes entrances to each port with tidbits of tantalizing facts. Who knew there was a German U-boat at the bottom of the Potomac River? We all know that Francis Scott Key wrote the “Star Bangled Banner,” while observing the bombardment of Ft. McHenry. But did you know that he was a temporary captive on a British ship when he watched the event unfold? Available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others.
THE LAST TRUE CLIPPER: WESTERN SHORE—THE OREGON
CLIPPER by Dick Wagner. !e last US-built clipper ship was constructed in 1874 in the small shipbuilding town of North Bend, Oregon. Hailed for its record-breaking speed from Astoria to Liverpool, its journeys ended a mere 4 years after construction under interesting circumstances. !e Last True Clipper details everything that we know about the last of these speedy vessels: detailed speci cations, construction, operation, and its eventual end. Available through www.bookshop.org.
New York State Canal Corporation, in collaboration with Inland Waterways International, Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp., and Visit Bu & alo Niagara, WCC2025 participants can expect: presentations by international leaders in waterway management, engineering, and heritage preservation; on-site visits and events designed to foster collaboration and innovation in waterway restoration and tourism; exclusive guided tours, community events, and commemorative activities; and opportunities to explore the cultural and historical landmarks of New York State. (www.wcc2025bu & alo.com) …
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Many of America’s National Parks are represented on these cards with interesting facts and images. www.ArcturusLLC.net.
PC PATROL CRAFT OF WWII by Wm. J. Veigele. A history of the ships and their crews; they sank U-Boats, blasted aircraft from the skies and led landing craft in invasions. See www.Amazon. com.
PIRATE PLAYING CARDS by Signature ASMA Artist, Don Maitz, National Geographic contributor and originator of the Captain Morgan Spiced Rum character. Full-color playing cards have di &erent watercolor images on each face. Prints present sea-rover adventurers. Order from: www.paravia.com/DonMaitz.
THE AUTHORITY TO SAIL by Commodore Robert Stanley Bates. !e fully illustrated authoritative history of US Merchant Marine licenses and documents issued since 1852. Co&ee-table size book, 12” x 14.” Order direct: !e Parcel Centre, Ph. 860 739-2492; www. theauthoritytosail.com.
THE 122 YEARS ON THE OLD BAY LINE by Jack Shaum is the winner of the Maryland Center for History and Culture’s 2023 M. V. Brewington Prize for maritime writing about Chesapeake Bay. It is the history of the Baltimore Steam Packet Company, better known as the Old Bay Line, perhaps the most famous steamboat line on Chesapeake Bay. It operated more than fty steamers carrying passengers and freight nightly between Baltimore and Norfolk and was noted for its outstanding service, exquisite cuisine, and ne accommodations. !e book features many outstanding photographs by noted photojournalist Hans Marx, most of which have not been published before. Softback, 160 pages, $25.99. Available from Arcadia Publishing, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and others.
THE LOST HERO OF CAPE COD by Vincent Miles. !e story of an elite mariner, Captain Asa Eldridge, and the nineteenth-century battle for commercial supremacy on the Atlantic. Reviews, availability, at www.vjmiles.com/ lost-hero and Amazon.com.
CUSTOM SHIP MODELS, HALF HULLS Free Catalog. Spencer White, 4223 Chestnut Dr., Center Valley, PA 18034.
PRESIDENTS PLAYING CARDS All 46 US presidents are represented on these playing cards with interesting facts and quotes. www.presidentsplayingcards.com.
FOR SALE—SIX ORIGINAL STATION BILLS FROM SS UNITED STATES, Signed by Captains L. J. Alexanderson & J. Anderson. Station Bills for every department and crewmember: Fire & Emergency Signal Bells, Man overboard, Abandon Ship, etc. Each document framed in red, matted in white with blue trim, protected by museum conservation glass. Framed size 30.5” x 29”. $12,000 for collection. Ph. 917 287-8339 or email chrysedawn@gmail. com.
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The latest book by Captain Michael J. Dodd
I NTER NAT IONAL JOU R NA L OF
Visit ijnh.seahistory.org for the latest edition of the International Journal of Naval History, now hosted by the National Maritime Historical Society.
March 2025: Volume 18, Issue 1
CONTENTS
• From the Quarterdeck
ARTICLES
• Howard J. Fuller, ‘The whole history of this ill-fated vessel’: HMS Captain, the American Civil War, and the Mid-Victorian Struggle for Naval Superiority
• Stephen McLaughlin, Navigating Uncharted Waters: The Russian Naval General Staf, 1906–1914
• Anselm J. van der Peet, Punching above its weight: The Royal Netherlands Navy within Allied Command Atlantic 1952 - mid 1970s
BOOK REVIEWS
• Michael Verney. A Great and Rising Nation: Naval Exploration and Global Empire in the Early U.S. Republic by Chuck Steele
• John Fass Morton. Sea Power and the American Interest: From the Civil War to the Great War by Joseph Moretz
• Nicholas A. Lambert. The Neptune Factor: Alfred Thayer Mahan and the Concept of $ea Power by R. James Orr
• Brian Lavery. Two Navies Divided: The British and United States Navies in the Second World War by Joseph Moretz
• Evan Mawdsley. Supremacy at Sea: Task Force 58 and the Central Pacifc Victory by Corbin Williamson
• Martin Stansfeld. Japanese Carriers and Victory in the Pacifc: The Yamamoto Option by John M. Jennings
For Permanent Sponsorship inquiries contact: IJNH@seahistory.org
Captain Paul Cu e, Yeoman: A Biography by Je rey A. Fortin (University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, MA, 2024, 240pp, ISBN 9781625348128; $30.95pb)
Paul Cu e stands out in American history as a remarkably complex character living in undeniably extraordinary times. e son of a manumitted former slave and a Wampanoag woman, Cu e grew up among Quaker residents on the south coast of Massachusetts, coming of age just in time to take part in smuggling runs to the Massachusetts islands under the cover of darkness during the American Revolution. He developed a taste for life at sea and took that passion to unprecedented heights for a Black man born in the New World in the 18th century.
Using rst-person narratives and other contemporary sources, author Je rey Fortin artfully illustrates the growth of a young man grappling with a well-known seaman’s plight—overuse of alcohol—away from his vice to become a fatherly gure who dedicated his business life to supporting numerous communities: his own extended family; the all-Black crews that sailed in the ships of his growing trading, whaling, and shing $eet; and the Black Americans he hoped would settle in Sierra Leone, escaping the racism and still extant slavery in the United States. He was celebrated in England and cheered at the docks for his tireless work ghting for emancipation, but treated with disdain and even hatred on a common coach ride through the major cities of the American Northeast just for being Black.
His epiphany came in 1808 when he o cially joined the Quakers and vowed to help potential settlers reach Sierra Leone. e timing is noteworthy. With the preliminary diplomatic shots red at the start of the War of 1812 and the new US government’s imposition of tari s and other legislation that
all but crippled seagoing trade in the Atlantic, Cu e found a potential revenue stream in this philanthropic work. ere is no doubt that his intentions were of the highest order; repatriation
became his life’s work. At a time when many ships were rotting at the dock, waiting for a better economic climate, Cu e’s business acumen and shrewd ability to make money while providing for himself and others made his philanthropic work possible and kept his ships underway.
e author demonstrates that, despite Cu e’s numerous remarkable successes—such as sailing into southern ports with an all-Black crew and consistently carrying on pro table trade— he still confronted countless challenges throughout both his business and personal life. British naval ships patrolled the African coast in search of slave traders. e US Revenue Cutter Service, during the War of 1812, checked cargoes as they landed. French and Spanish ships roamed the high seas, as did pirates. British press gangs found his ship to be an easy target. Not all allies and trading partners could be
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trusted, and at the peak of his fame, Cu e watched helplessly as an impersonator ran through the cities of the Northeastern United States, arranging for cash advances for bogus schemes and otherwise sullying his name.
Fortin portrays Cu e as a thinker, a planner, and a savvy businessman, someone who championed the rights of both sides of his heritage—Black and Native American—with eloquence and pride. He navigated the halls of government, whether in his South Coast communities or the federal capital, as he worked for a better world for all. Although his life’s work may have remained un nished at the time of his death, we know for certain that without Paul Cu e, the world would have been a much bleaker place.
Joh( G )llu,,o Hanover, Massachusetts
Is Anyone Listening? What Animals Are Saying to Each Other and to Us by Denise L. Herzing (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2024, 232pp ISBN 978-0-22635-749-2, $28hc)
Available at Amazon
We appear to be living in a time when, merely with a smartphone, we can communicate with nearly anyone on the planet or at least read and translate printed or recorded texts in most languages. So it seems reasonable that soon we will be able to translate the sounds that non-human animals are using to communicate with each other, or even that we could have a computermediated conversation with a chimpanzee or a raven. us, in Is Anyone Listening?, biologist Denise Herzing asks: “‘Google translate’ for deciphering other species—is it coming?” Her answer is, in short: not so fast. Herzing has been researching animal behavior for more than four decades, a sort of Jane Goodall of Atlantic spotted dolphins. As the founder and research director of Wild Dolphin Project, she has striven to get to know
a particular community of these marine mammals in the waters of the Bahamas. Her research team tries to locate the group, then anchors to allow the dolphins to approach if they want. As she has swum among and observed four generations of a particular pod, these dolphins will swim over to her specically to communicate—for example, appealing directly to Herzing if they’re displeased with a particular, if unintentional, invasiveness of one of her snorkeling colleagues. Herzing’s current work involves a wearable underwater computer—a sort of chest-strapped boom box with dials and buttons— through which she can listen to, record, and emit sounds. is computer translates in real time, such as the Englishlanguage name that her team has given to match an individual dolphin’s signature whistle, which the animals seem to also use among themselves as a name. Herzing spends little time in this book with extraordinary stories of dolphins saving sailors and that kind of thing, nor does she discuss animalanimal or animal-people communications learned by human hunters, shermen, or the millennia-long knowledge
Anne T. Converse Photography
Neith, 1996, Cover photograph Wood, Wind and Water
A Story of the Opera House Cup Race of Nantucket
Photographs by Anne T. Converse Text by Carolyn M. Ford
The story of three young sailors coming of age during the Second World War — sailors who crewed the engine room of an ocean-going tug. War changes people for those fortunate enough to survive it. Many who served in the U.S. Merchant Marine during the war did not.
of Indigenous communities. Is Anyone Listening? is foremost a compelling and essential story in the history of Western science, a book for marine biologists and lay readers interested in how far we’ve come in our understanding of animal communication, especially with respect to dolphin research. Herzing outlines the lessons of past and ongoing studies and o ers a perspective on historical, present, and future research methods, technologies, and challenges at this crucial moment.
“ e deciphering of an animal language could be one of our greatest feats,” Herzing writes. “What is more intriguing—the di ness? Will new insights about animal intelligence make us more distinctive, or bring us into a larger community of beings, of nature?” Just as the sounds of humpback whales did so much to inspire the modern environmental movement in the early 1970s, Herzing
explains that a greater understanding of animal communication might make us more attentive ecological citizens, living “in relationship with” rather than “in control of”—not to mention better prepared just in case we hear from extraterrestrial life.
Most signi cantly, Herzing explores the nuances of trying to understand animal communication, why creating a translation box that simply matches a given sound to “yummy sh” or “dangerous shark” is far more complex than one might think— rstly because we are regularly trying to un
those sounds. Translation, any interpreter will tell you, is not the same as understanding. Communication requires context: gender roles, age, relationships, individual traits and histories, and given situations. e way a dolphin swims under another means something entirely di erent in the case of a mother-calf than in the case of a mating pair. Even our de nitions of communication versus true “language”—such as evidence of grammar, structure, abstract concepts like past and future, and referential labeling—soon become blurry semantic arguments. If you rap your
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discuss the ethics of how and why they conduct this research. e Wild Dolphin Project has adopted “ eir World, on eir Terms” as its motto. e researchers try to learn from their mistakes and to move very slowly and respectfully in their interactions with the animals. Herzing and her team remain a long way from any sort of Google translate for animals, but they are recording and observing dolphins in the wild in their own environment, when the animals wish to be observed, with as much context as possible, in order to o er enough data for new computers to search for patterns. e study of healthy animals in captivity is rapidly becoming an outdated research method. “How can we restrict a large mind, in sterile and constricting environments,” Herzing writes, “without understanding these implications?”
R -.h)/0 J. K -(1 Santa Cruz, California
Midway: e Paci c War’s Most Famous Battle by Mark E. Stille (Osprey Publishing, Oxford, UK, 2024, 400pp, ISBN 978-1-4728-6206-8; $35hc)
When Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), directed the attack on the US Navy at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he predicted six months of Japanese control of the Paci c Ocean without interference. As though to reinforce his foresight, the US Navy drew blood in the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942 and then, in June, handed the IJN its rst taste of defeat at the Battle of Midway.
Considering the extent of the devastation of the US $eet at Pearl Harbor, the speed of the American response was remarkable and, perhaps, accounts for the equally remarkable attention the Battle of Midway has received from historians. e rst serious account of the battle appears in Samuel Eliot Morison’s History of United States Naval Operations in World War
II: Volume Four, Coral Sea, Midway and Submarine Actions, May 1942–August 1942 (1949), in which the Battle of Midway is described as the Battle of the Fourth of June, published threequarters of a century ago.
An internet search of books and articles reveals scores of books on the Battle of Midway, a few of which have garnered widespread attention. In Miracle at Midway (1982), Gordon W. Prange, Donald M. Goldstein, and Katherine V. Dillon argue that Admiral Chester W. Nimitz’s Paci c $eet was so outclassed by the IJN that the US Navy’s victory on 4 June 1942 was nothing short of a miracle. Historians, not about to let that claim go unchallenged, responded with volumes asserting the opposite. Craig L. Symonds, in e Battle of Midway (2011), and others argue that Nimitz’s navy was not at a disadvantage but was, in fact, an equal or greater force.
On the other side of the globe, Japanese historians—some of whom had participated in the battle—were publishing their side of the story. Midway: e Battle that Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy’s Story (1955) by Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya, places the blame for defeat on national character. “In the nal analysis, the root cause of Japan’s defeat, not alone in the Battle of Midway but in the entire war, lies deep in the Japanese national character.” The Fuchida and Okumiya analysis, not well received in Japan, was overshadowed in 2007 by a powerful study, Shattered Sword: e Untold Story of the Battle of Midway, by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully.
Enter Mark E. Stille’s latest book, Midway: e Paci c War’s Most Famous Battle, written with the bene t of the aforementioned studies, plus Japanese documents that were not available to earlier writers. Stille presents the standard story of the battle, starting with
the Japanese politics that fueled the planned attack on Midway Island and the associated seizures in the Americanheld Aleutians. He emphasizes the errors in planning and innumerable red $ags that warned of potential disaster. On the American side, successful intelligence that penetrated the Japanese naval codes set the stage for Nimitz’s ambush. Secrecy was essential for both sides. Yamamoto’s plan relied on catching the Americans napping, just as he had caught them at Pearl Harbor. For Nimitz’s ambush to succeed, the IJN had to think the US Navy was nowhere near Midway.
For several days, the Japanese $eet sailed in fog so heavy that men on one ship could not see any of the many others close by. at meteorological fog foreshadowed the metaphorical fog of war that enveloped both sides once the shooting began, as well as the fog of history that has plagued the events of 4 June ever since. Every account presents the same overview: the IJN attacked Midway Island; the poorly executed Japanese reconnaissance discovered the lurking American ships; the IJN was caught in a bad situation with aircraft
armed for a land battle while an air attack from carrier aircraft threatened; some of the American planes found the Japanese, attacked, and were routed. At this point the fog of history sets in. Before the Japanese could relax after what they observed was a supreme victory over poorly coordinated but brave $yers in inferior aircraft, the American dive bombers made a startling appearance and within a few minutes turned the battle into a victory, in what Stille calls the most famous battle of the war. In the fog of history, authors who were not yet born at the time of the ghting argue over how the Americans pulled victory out of defeat.
Stille reviews the argument and presents his view, but you will not nd de nitive answers to the numerous questions surrounding the battle. Nevertheless, readers already familiar with the Battle of Midway will nd Stille’s work worth their time. For new
readers on the subject, Stille’s well-organized and -analyzed study is a recommended introduction to what many historians consider the turning point in the war in the Paci c.
D)2-0 O. Wh-334(, P hD
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Wreck Divers & Archaeologists: A History of Maritime Archaeology in California by omas N. Layton and James P. Delgado (Society for Historical Archaeology, Germantown, MD, 2024, 408pp, ISBN 978-1-95740-2567; $44.99pb)
Wreck Divers & Archaeologists presents a thorough exploration of how maritime archaeology has evolved in California, primarily through the in$uence of both amateur wreck divers and professional archaeologists. With a combination of personal narrative and scienti c inquiry, the authors illustrate the complexities that cultural resource
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managers confront when interpreting and managing shipwreck sites. e authors leverage their extensive backgrounds in the eld to provide readers with an engaging narrative that spans decades of maritime exploration. Layton and Delgado’s combined expertise in archaeology and their passion for maritime history fuel their examination of the subject, giving the book both a strong academic foundation and a familiar touch. Yet it is the individual narratives of more than a dozen disparate voices that eloquently explain the multiple motivations, techniques, and perspectives that shape the saga of a single shipwreck site.
e book is broken into three parts. In Part One, Delgado presents a chronological overview of the development of maritime archaeology in California via his personal narrative. It’s a valuable perspective, as he has had a front-row seat—or, more often, been in the ring—as the eld of underwater/maritime/nautical/marine (the name an evolution in itself) archaeology progressed, “from divers looking for treasure to both a scienti c understanding of the past and a legal structure for historic preservation.” It is interesting
to remember that, as a eld of study, underwater archaeology has only been around for fty or so years. Its main players were and are passionate individuals, curious academics, and responsible state and federal agencies trying desperately to keep pace with fast-developing technology and evolving methodology. It is a fascinating story both for readers who are familiar with the study of shipwrecks, and those who are new to the subject.
In Part Two (“Touching the Frolic, Wreck Divers and Archaeologists”), the sweeping overview gives way to multifaceted accounts of di erent interactions with one shipwreck site: the transPaci c trading brig Frolic. It provides a case study that represents an important challenge we face in the eld today. e Frolic sank in 1850 o Mendocino County, yet the sinking date was not the end of its story, and there is much to glean from the 175 years since its sinking that illuminates the history of California, the early days of scuba diving, and the emergence of maritime archaeology.
e text does not shy away from addressing the tensions that can arise within the discipline, particularly between amateur wreck divers and professional archaeologists. e authors advocate for collaboration and mutual respect, recognizing that both groups have valuable insights and skills to offer. eir emphasis on the ethical considerations surrounding artifact ownership and preservation reminds readers of the broader responsibilities that come with historical exploration.
Selected photographs and charts throughout enhance the reader’s experience by providing illustrative context to the narrative. In Part ree, there are carefully assembled visual and detailed timelines and a comprehensive bibliography. e compelling images and contextual information check the academic boxes but also make the
complexities of maritime archaeology more accessible to a wider audience.
Ultimately, Wreck Divers & Archaeologists functions as both a historical account and a re$ective commentary on the state of maritime archaeology in California and beyond. Layton and Delgado encourage an ongoing dialogue about the future of the eld, calling for the integration of diverse perspectives and practices. is book stands out as
an essential contribution to the literature on maritime archaeology, inspiring readers to appreciate the stories hidden beneath the waves and the dedication required to uncover them. For anyone interested in maritime heritage, this work o ers a profound understanding of the interwoven histories of exploration, conservation, and discovery.
C )3h5 G/44( NMHS President
NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The National Maritime Historical Society is grateful to the following individuals and institutions who have so generously supported our work. We are also grateful to our many anonymous donors.
PETER A. ARON PUBLISHER’S CIRCLE: Guy E. C. Maitland • Ronald L. Oswald • William H. White
NMHS LEGACY SOCIETY IN MEMORY OF: Peter A. Aron • James J. Coleman Jr. • Jean K. & CAPT Richard E. Eckert, USN (Ret.) • Ignatius Galgan • D. Harry W. Garschagen • William J. Green • Robert F. Henkel • Charles R. Kilbourne • Arthur M. Kimberly • H.F. Lenfest • Pam Rorke Levy • Walter J. Pettit Sr. • CAPT Joseph Ramsey, USMM • Charles A. Robertson • Capt. Bert Rogers • Howard Slotnick • Peter Stanford • John Stobart
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• Mr. & Mrs. Andrew A. Radel • Nicholas A. Raposo • Charles Raskob Robinson • David & Susan Rockefeller • Mr. & Mrs. Lee H. Sandwen • Arthur Santry • George Schluderberg • Philip & Janet Shapiro Family Foundation • Douglas H. Sharp • Marjorie B. Shorrock • Gail Skarich • C. Hamilton Sloan Foundation • Richard W. Snowdon • Philip E. Stolp • David Stulb • Alix orne • Tomm Tomlinson • Steven J. Traut • US Navy Memorial • Andrew Jay Vinson • William R. Walsh • Kim Wickens
DONORS: Benjamin Ackerly • CAPT John E. Allen, USN (Ret.) • American Maritime Congress • Scott Altman • Charles B. Anderson • John Appleton • Association of Maryland Pilots • Carter S. Bacon Jr. • CAPT Scott Bailey, USN (Ret.) • John D. Barnard • Larry & Lucinda Barrick • Victoria M. Voge Black • W. Frank Bohlen • Capt. Jonathan Boulware & South Street Seaport Museum • Michael Bower • James Brandi • Henry Burgess • RADM Nevin P. Carr Jr., USN (Ret.) • Steve & Julie Chapin • Dr. Christopher Cifarelli • Benjamin Clark • Mark Class • Columbia River Bar Pilots LLC • Michael R. Conley • RADM Samuel J. Cox, USN (Ret.) • CAPT R.L. Crossland, USN (Ret.) • VADM Dirk Debbink, USN (Ret.) • June Delaney • James P. Delgado, PhD • Henry DePew • Janet Edson • Philip C. DiGiovanni • Michael Dugan • Richard H. Dumas • John W. Evans Jr. • Robert P. Fisher Jr. • Rip & Noreen Fisher Charitable Fund • Richard B. Flynn • Michele Gale-Sinex • Susan Gibbs • John Gladsky • Benjamin Green • Marc Grisham • Laura Grondin • MAJ Robert R. Haringa, USAF (Ret.) • Professor John Hattendorf • CAPT Dennis Hickey IV, USN (Ret.) • CDR Sarah Higgins, USN (Ret.) • Peter Hollenbeck • CDR Gerald Innella, USN (Ret.) • Joseph Jackins • Christopher P. Jannini • Andrew MacAoidh Jergens • David L. Kelsey • Robert C. Kennedy, Jr. • CDR Robert E. Kenyon III, USNR (Ret.) • Laurence & Omie Kerr • omas Kopczynski • K. Denise Rucker Krepp • Donald R. Kritsch • Nelson & Linda La ey • Hon. John Lehman • Jean Henri Lhuillier • Robert Lindmark • Dr. Jennifer London • Brooks Martin • Alan R. McKie
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• omas Wayne • Gerald Weinstein • Chase Welles • Nathaniel S. Wilson • William L. Womack • Christian I. Van Heerden
• David Zehler • CAPT Channing M. Zucker, USN (Ret.)
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e National Maritime Historical Society is a 501(c)(3) nonpro t organization founded in 1963 whose mission is to preserve maritime history, promote the maritime heritage community, and invite all to share in the adventures of seafaring.
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