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CRUISE THE SOUTHEAST
SOUTHEAST SEA ISLANDS
On this enchanting 9-day cruise from Charleston to Amelia Island, experience the charm and hospitality of the South. In the comfort of our modern fleet, travel to some of the most beautiful historic cities in America. The fascinating sites you visit, the warm people you meet, and the delectable cuisine you taste, come together for an unforgettable journey.
Small Ship Cruising Done Perfectly
Navigating the Waters of History
At the NMHS Annual Awards Dinner in October, we honored three individuals with our Distinguished Service Award: Ford Reiche, Professor John Hattendorf, and Dr. Sylvia Earle, who has dedicated her life to learning about our oceans and to the global e ort to protect these complex ecosystems. In a poignant moment that evening, some of the cadets from the US Coast Guard Cadet Chorale had the opportunity to talk to her, noting that they had just been learning about her work in their oceanography and marine environmental science classes. Dr. Earle was equally honored to meet them and expressed her joy in knowing that this next generation is enthusiastic about carrying the mission forward. is is the kind of connection NMHS works for—the connection between the newer generations and those in the maritime community who have been expanding the frontiers of knowledge, between the people who have made history and those who will build upon it, and between people who are working to protect our waters and those who will be inspired to take up the ght.
NMHS members can contribute towards this e ort by learning about our maritime history and discussing it with others, by sharing their ideas about how the Society can best succeed at preserving our seafaring heritage and what topics
they think fall under that umbrella, and nding motivation to get involved in whatever way best ts their individual situations. Your feedback about what you read in Sea History and about the organization as a whole is not only welcome, but an important part of how we achieve our goals.
Some of the topics in this issue that you might be talking about concern themes of exploration, resilience, and innovation. One article examines the Coast Guard’s role in the War on Drugs through a major cocaine bust at sea in the 1980s. A second takes you on a visual tour of inland waters and shipyards—as seen through the eyes of contemporary artists—and highlights the roles they have played in our national story.
e resolve of those who have navigated through tempests, whether literal or metaphorical, is poignantly captured in the account of RMS Queen Mary’ s near capsizing during World War II with thousands of troops onboard. It reminds us that courage and resilience are qualities that abound in our shared maritime heritage. Similarly, the history of the dominant but short-lived California Shipping Company delves into the ambitions that fueled the shipping industry through the rapidly changing maritime landscape in the rst half-century after California became the 31st state.
Dr. Sylvia Earle’s life’s work as a pioneering scientist and advocate for protecting the marine environment has been impactful and a powerful influence across generations. She was this year’s honoree at the NMHS Annual Awards Dinner in New York, where US Coast Guard Academy cadets in the Cadet Chorale performed for our guests. How thrilling it was when this young woman, Emma Deery of the Class of 2025, got a chance to meet and speak with one of her heroes. They discussed her studies in marine environmental science and the challenges she will face in her upcoming role protecting the oceans as a Coast Guard o icer a er graduation next spring, and in the years to come.
Taken together, these stories of intelligence, ambition, and grit are not merely tales of a bygone age. ey are a profound re$ection of who we are as a people. As we engage with these gripping narratives, we also honor the contributions of pioneers such as Irene A. Wright, who immersed herself in contemporary documents to chronicle Caribbean maritime history based on primary sources. Ms. Wright’s work highlights not only how important it is to keep the stories of our history alive, but also how important it is to get the story right.
So, enjoy this end-of-year issue. Together, let us set sail on this exploration expedition, looking forward to the adventures that await. With respect for the waters that shape our world, may we chart a course toward understanding, appreciation, and stewardship of our maritime history.
—Catherine Green, President, NMHS
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.
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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; Treasurer, William H. White; Secretary, Capt. Je rey McAllister; 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; Timothy J. Runyan; 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, Steven Hyman, J. Russell Jinishian, Gunnar Lundeberg, Conrad Milster, William Muller, Nancy Richardson
SEA HISTORY EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD: Chairman, Timothy Runyan; 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, Catherine M. Green; 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.
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.
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: 31 May 2025
May 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.
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:
Papers and session topics include, but are not limited to:
• Inland Water Commerce and Seaport Operations (Erie Canal bicentennial!)
• Inland Water Commerce and Seaport Operations (Erie Canal bicentennial!)
• Maritime and Naval History (2025 marks USN/USMC 250th Birthday)
• Maritime and Naval History (2025 marks USN/USMC 250th Birthday)
• Maritime Art, Literature, and Music
• Maritime Art, Literature, and Music
• Education and Preservation
• Education and Preservation
• Underwater Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Trade and Communications
• Trade and Communications
• Maritime Libraries, Archives, and Museums
• Maritime Libraries, Archives, and Museums
• Marine Science and Ocean Conservation
• Marine Science and Ocean Conservation
• Historic Vessel Restoration
• Historic Vessel Restoration
• Maritime Heritage Grant Program
• Maritime Heritage Grant Program
• Maritime Landscapes
• Maritime Landscapes
• National Marine Sanctuaries
• National Marine Sanctuaries
• Small Cra
• Small Cra
• Shipbuilding
• Shipbuilding
• Marine Protected Areas
• Marine Protected Areas Get details at seahistory.org/maritime-heritage-conference
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!
Please send all materials to the Program Commi!ee Chair Dr. David Winkler at MHC@seahistory.org. Queries are welcomed!
UNESCO and the Case for Historic Ships
I am writing in regard to the article in the last issue of Sea History, “ !e Case for Historic Ships” by Ray Ashley and Timothy Runyan. !e two authors did a ne job talking about the importance of historic ships being preserved all over the world. !ey documented it well and provided a good selection of photos of these sites. !eir observations are
also based on the fact that the United Nations makes e orts to preserve important human cultural sites for our future generations, but for some reason, ships don’t qualify for designation as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
!e Convention Concerning the Protection of World Culture and National Heritage was an important e ort along these lines. As the authors noted, so far this Convention is missing one
of the most important cultural and historical components—ships.
Homo sapiens often settled along the shores of the world’s oceans and rivers for several reasons. Sea creatures provided food, a basic necessity, for one. And next came the development of transportation on the water. !e log canoe was probably the first boat built to transport people and whatever they needed to carry, followed by ever-
Independence Hall in Philadelphia (below right) was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979. Just down the street is the famous US Navy protected cruiser, USS Olympia (below le ), which is not, because ships do not qualify, despite the fact that “at the time of their creation...” ships were o en “the most complex architectural or technological works created by their respective societies.”
—Ray Ashley and Tim Runyan, Sea History 188
The maritime community needs a strong and unified voice.
The National Maritime Historical Society unites, connects, and advocates for us all.
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improving vessels. All this happened before the invention of the wheel. Very early in many civilizations across the world, people dared to go out further and further across open and unfamiliar waters. !e Phoenicians were one of the rst to establish long-distance trade by sea, followed by the Vikings. !en, of course, came the Age of Discovery! We have found, and are still searching for, some of these important remnants of that time. A great number of people invest money and time in furthering these e orts. I am sure there would be enthusiasm among the private or non-pro t organizations for a move by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee to include our historical activities along the waters of the world. Perhaps the National Maritime Historical Society could contact the committee and start a discussion.
H er&i( G. S)hu,-.er Lititz, Pennsylvania
From NMHS: !e National Maritime Historical Society was founded in 1963 as part of an e ort to save a historic ship (the 1899 barque Kaiulani). ! at e ort failed, but the experience showed those involved that there was a need for a national organization to advocate for saving other historic vessels and work to preserve our nation’s maritime heritage. Tim Runyan, one of the article’s authors, is a trustee of NMHS and is actively involved in seeking federal funding for maritime heritage organizations. Ray Ashley, the president and CEO of the Maritime Museum of San Diego (home of the 1863 iron barque Star of India), has been a longtime advocate for this cause. In September, he gave a presentation on this topic at the International Congress of Maritime Museums to maritime museum directors and leaders from around the world. Advocating for the preservation of ships, shipwrecks, and historic maritime sites is a key role these two
historians pursue as we speak; NMHS is a stalwart part of that e ort.
From the Editor: We received a lot of correspondence regarding the demise of the four-masted full-rigged ship Falls of Clyde and SS United States, much of it asking why vessels that are on the National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks are not getting nancial support from the federal government. !e answer is that these designations do not come with federal funding. !ere are federal grants they can apply for and other funding sources, but most vessels with these national designations are privately owned and it is the responsibility of the owners to maintain and preserve them.
City of Adelaide
A Preservation Success Story! !e article by Ray Ashley and Timothy Runyan (Sea History 188, Autumn 2024) made a persuasive case for historic ship preservation. A group of volunteers in Adelaide, South Australia would certainly echo it. It has been almost 160 years since the City of Ad-
elaide, the oldest surviving clipper ship in the world, left London on 6 August 1864, bound for Port Adelaide in South Australia, arriving on 15 November 1864. On 16 June 2024, she reached her nal resting place—a specially constructed dry dock in the same port. It had been a very long journey home from the depths of the River Clyde.
On her maiden voyage in 1864, City of Adelaide carried a mix of pas-
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sengers and cargo to a British colony that was then only 30 years old. Favorable weather typi ed most of this voyage, except for a hurricane o the Cape Verde islands “in which she behaved admirably,” according to her captain, David Bruce, a man who had done much to nance and design the new vessel.
A marker had been set down that was to be kept with few alarms for the
Miss Lou Biloxi Schooner 1919
City of Adelaide by Edward Walker
next 23 years. In that period, City of Adelaide built an enviable record of reliability and safety. In total, the ship carried more than 1,000 passengers to Adelaide. Today, there are about a quarter of a million people in South Australia who can trace their ancestry to a relative who emigrated from the UK aboard City of Adelaide.
In 1867 she made the London-toAdelaide passage of 12,700 miles in 65 days—a record. Compare that against the long 19,000-mile trip back to London around South America that once took her 140 days in contrary winds.
Constructed by William Pile, Hay, and Co. in Sunderland, England, City of Adelaide was built as a composite vessel—a wooden planked hull on iron frames. Launched ve years before the famous Cutty Sark, the only other surviving clipper ship, City of Adelaide is 176 feet long overall, 33 feet on the beam, and draws 19 feet. Her composite structure is the key to City of Adelaide’s longevity. Says Peter Christopher,
director of Clipper Ship City of Adelaide Ltd., which owns the vessel, “ !e ship is in remarkably sound condition, with most of its iron frames intact and its hull timbers still solid. !e few hull planks that had sprung have been pulled back into place.”
Initially, the vessel was rigged with a single topsail with three reefs and a self-ree ng mechanism, which proved manageable and would be the beginning of modern labor-saving technologies developed for the sailing ship. She could carry up to 300 passengers. A rst-class passenger could enjoy one of the 14 cabins and heads installed on the poop deck. Below, the hold could be con gured to carry steerage-class emigrants or cargo, typically copper, wheat, and wool from Australia.
O cially, the ship sailed under the Devitt & Moore 0ag, although D&M were the managing agents and only owned a quarter share of the vessel, a typical arrangement in Victorian times. !omas Devitt and Joseph Moore were
two ambitious shipping clerks who combined their skills to become successful shipowners, eventually owning 29 square-rigged sailing ships and two steamships during 55 years in the shipping business. Almost all their ships traded on the London-Australia run. By the mid-1880s, the sailing ship was giving way to the steamship. City of Adelaide was laid up in 1887 and her decline began shortly thereafter. Over the next century, she morphed into several con gurations depending on use: a coal and timber carrier, an isolation hospital ship, a training ship for the Royal Navy (renamed HMS Carrick), an accommodation ship for the Royal Navy in World War II, and eventually, in 1948, a 0oating club for the Naval Volunteer Reserve moored at Custom House Quay in Glasgow, Scotland.
Here, City of Adelaide was to remain until 1989 when she was damaged by 0ooding and two years later sank at the mooring. !e Scottish Maritime
City of Adelaide making the slow roll to her permanent site.
Museum began to restore the ship, but funding dried up and a plan was made to break her up. At this point, conservation enthusiasts in Sunderland and South Australia vied for control. In 2010, the Scottish government ruled in favor of the Australian group.
Of course, there was the issue of getting the hulk to Australia. In time, funds for the transit were raised, augmented by a generous grant from the Australian government. City of Adelaide would make it safely to Australia as deck cargo on a heavy lift ship, arriving in Port Adelaide in February 2014.
!ere the historic vessel has slumbered for the past decade, residing on a barge in the port’s inner harbor. Seventy volunteers came forward to work on refurbishing the hull, bit by bit. Over the last ten years, important preservation work has been undertaken, led by Peter Christopher, a volunteer maritime archaeologist, photographer, and author. Tours began and, until COVID hit in 2020, approximately 20,000 people were visiting the ship each year. But the ship was never in-
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tended to remain permanently on top of a barge. !e government of South Australia provided the property for a permanent home nearby at Dock 2. Twenty years after her arrival from Scotland and after two years of detailed engineering and logistical planning, the ship was lifted from the barge onto self-propelled modular transporters and carried 500 meters to a massive pit in which the cradle and ship were lowered onto concrete foundations.
Going forward, there are major projects in the pipeline, including stepping two towering masts and mounting a new gurehead at the bow. A push is underway to raise funds for an elevator to be installed outside the ship to accommodate disabled visitors. !e ultimate goal is to build a seaport village at the site, with City of Adelaide as its main attraction.
“City of Adelaide is a priceless part of South Australia’s history and a unique link to the growth of the Australian nation,” says Christopher. “Saving her is saving an important example of naval architecture in the 19th century and also
a milestone in maritime history.” (Learn more at www.cityofadelaide.org.au.)
R12i3 K 3i(h, London, England
3685, Title 39, US Code: Sea History is published quarterly at 1000 N. Division Street Suite 4, Peekskill NY 10566; minimum subscription price is $27.50. Publisher and editor-in-chief: None; Editor is Deirdre E. O’Regan; owner is National Maritime Historical Society, a non-profit corporation; all are located at 1000 N. Division Street, Suite 4, Peekskill NY 10566. During the 12 months preceding October 2024 the average number of (A) copies printed each issue was 11,380; (B) paid and/or requested circulation was: (1) outside county mail subscriptions 5,630; (2) in-county subscriptions 0; (3) sales through dealers, carriers, counter sales, other non-USPS paid distribution 4,466; (4) other classes mailed through USPS 311; (C) total paid and/or requested circulation was 10,407; (D) free or nominal rate distribution was: (1) outside county 374; (2) in-county 0; (3) mailed at other classes through the USPS 200; (4) outside the mail 144; (E) total free distribution was 718; (F) total distribution 11,125; (G) copies not distributed 255; (I) total [of F and G] 11,380; (I) Percentage paid and/or requested circulation 93%. The actual numbers for the single issue preceding October 2024 are: (A) total number printed 11,241; (B) paid and/or requested circulation was: (1) outside-county mail subscriptions 5,691; (2) in-county subscriptions 0; (3) sales through dealers, carriers, counter sales, other non-USPS paid distribution 4,511; (4) other classes mailed through USPS 223; (C) total paid and/or requested circulation was 10,425; (D) free or nominal rate distribution was: (1) outside county 100; (2) in-county 0; (3) mailed at other classes through the USPS 200; (4) outside the mail 225; (E) total free distribution was 525; (F) total distribution 10,950; (G) copies not distributed 291; (I) total [of F and G] 11,241; (I) Percentage paid and/or requested circulation 95%. I certify that the above statements are correct and complete. (signed) Catherine Green, President, National Maritime Historical Society.
Honoring Maritime Leaders and Legends: A Night of Celebration
On 24 October, the National Maritime Historical Society held its annual awards dinner at the New York Yacht Club, where maritime professionals and enthusiasts gathered to celebrate those who have made signi cant and lasting contributions to historical preservation, marine science, education, and research.
Renowned oceanographer Dr. Sylvia Earle was recognized for her groundbreaking achievements and unwavering dedication in advocating for the world’s oceans. Earle’s exhilarating stories of exploration and discovery captivated everyone in the room, as she highlighted the importance of perseverance and passion for the marine environment. In describing recent advances in marine science, she also impressed upon the audience that the ocean is in trouble: “ at’s the big thing we should be aware of, not just how much we’ve learned, but how much we have lost at the same time.”
Dr. Earle’s sobering message was also inspiring; she stressed that it’s not too late, but that there is no time to wait. We need to act.
Equally moving was learning more about the life’s work of Dr. John Hattendorf, an internationally renowned naval historian, who has shaped generations of military leaders and civilian o cials at the Naval War College. As a historian and educator, he has advanced our understanding of sea power, both in the study of the past and how it in uences the Navy’s strategies today. In addition to his long career at the Naval War College, Dr. Hattendorf has been a mentor to many historians and military professionals through his leadership and involvement with the North American Society for Oceanic History and other academic organizations.
We were pleased to honor Ford Reiche, a passionate preservationist, for his tireless e orts to restore the 1871 Halfway Rock Lighthouse in Maine, as well as other light stations threatened by neglect and the elements. Reiche’s work exempli es the intersection of history and conservation, showcasing the vital role that such landmarks play in understanding coastal heritage. roughout his journey, Reiche has been a role model for others who care about historic maritime structures in the face of ever-increasing challenges brought on by coastal erosion and other e ects of climate change.
As NMHS members, trustees, sta , and guests gathered over dinner, the conversations owed with enthusiasm and camaraderie. e evening featured auctions that gave attendees the opportunity to contribute towards the Society’s new initiatives and share in the goal of supporting the maritime heritage community at large.
(L–R) NMHS Trustee Dr. Timothy J. Runyan, Dr. John Ha endorf, and US Air Force Academy Professor Chuck Steele, who later in the evening presented Dr. Ha endorf with his award.
Dr. Sylvia Earle with maritime archaeologist and author, Dr. James Delgado, who presented her with the NMHS Distinguished Service Award.
Green,
and
e evening concluded with a performance by the US Coast Guard Academy Cadet Chorale, leaving everyone motivated to rea rm our commitment to safeguarding the maritime world that we treasure in whatever way each of us can contribute. e awards dinner serves as a powerful reminder that the dedication of individuals like Earle, Hattendorf, and Reiche both honors our maritime heritage and fosters a shared vision for a sustainable and vibrant relationship with our oceans.
“Everyone everywhere is inextricably connected to the existence of the sea,” Earle noted while at the podium, a theme that all the awardees expressed in their acceptance remarks, and a point concurred upon by everyone in the room.
Ford Reiche accepts his award from NMHS
(L–R) Dinner chair Thomas A. Whidden, Betsy Whidden, and champion sailor Gary Jobson. NMHS is grateful to the Whiddens for their e orts and contributions as sponsors of the event. Whidden and Jobson are both past NMHS Distinguished Service Award winners and members of the America’s Cup Hall of Fame and the National Sailing Hall of Fame.
Cathy
NMHS President
Executive Director, welcomes guests and shares some of the Society’s new initiatives before leading the auction to benefit NMHS and the honorees’ selected maritime-based organizations.
(L–R)
Trustee, Captain Je McAllister.
Bradley A. Rodgers (1955–2024)
Dr. Bradley Rodgers passed away unexpectedly and peacefully at age 69 in his home in Greenville, North Carolina, on 24 October. Brad earned a BA (anthropology/archaeology) from the University of Minnesota in 1979, an MA in maritime studies from East Carolina University in 1985, and a PhD in maritime studies from the Union Institute in 1993. Along the way, Brad became an experienced scuba diver and licensed captain and embarked on a life on and under the sea.
Born in Des Moines, Iowa, and raised in Green Bay, Wisconsin, after college he headed to East Carolina. As one of the earliest graduates of the Program in Maritime Studies, he would go on to hold almost every position in the program, including sta archaeologist (1986–1993) and all ranks professor (1991–2018), while concurrently serving as program director (2012–2018), and becoming professor emeritus in the history department upon his retirement.
winner of the Cleveland State Great Lakes History Prize Award) and e Archaeologist’s Manual for Conservation: A Guide to Non-Toxic, Minimal Intervention Artifact Stabilization (2004), and the co-authored e Steamboat Montana and the Opening of the West: History, Excavation, and Architecture (2008). His research brought him and his students to many far- ung places around the world, from the Caribbean to the Great Lakes to Midway Island in the Paci c. He was especially known for his expertise in the maritime history and archaeology of the Great Lakes.
Always a team player, Brad was a valuable member and leader in maritime archaeological eld work and a mentor to hundreds of graduate students just starting their careers. e graduate program at East Carolina and the maritime heritage eld at large have lost an important member of their community. Rest in peace Brad.
Brad published three major monographs: Guardian of the Great Lakes: e US Paddle Frigate Michigan (1996;
—Dr. Nathan Richards and the crew at the ECU Maritime Studies Program.
NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY 2025 Wall Calendar — Celebrating Historic Ships
The National Maritime Historical Society’s 2025 calendar celebrates the American historic ship fleet today. These vessels represent our maritime heritage from the Age of Sail to steam and modern propulsion systems.
12-month calendar is wall hanging, saddle-stitched, and printed on quality heavyweight paper. 18”H by 12”W (open)
$14, plus $5.50 s/h (media mail) within the USA. NYS residents add sales tax. Please call for multiple or international shipping charges.
TO ORDER, call 914 737-7878 ext. 0, or online at www.seahistory.org/calendar2025.
Captain Cesare Sorio (1935–2024)
Captain Cesare Sorio was a beloved and in uential leader of the National Maritime Historical Society, which he joined as a member in 1993. He was elected to the Board of Trustees in 2007, then to the Overseer group in 2023. His knowledge and talents were invaluable during his tenure as a member of the NMHS Executive Committee, as chair of the Program Committee, and as chair of the Nominating Committee, and in his various roles throughout the years.
Cesare was the trustee we always referred to as “the Real Deal.” He and his lovely wife, Margherita, were actively involved in our outreach programs and traveled extensively on behalf of the Society. When a group of NMHS members took a Star Clipper cruise to Tahiti some years ago, we were all impressed by how many of the crew he knew. He was never one to boast of his time as a big-ship captain, but if you got him talking, he had some great sea stories to share.
Cesare and Margherita settled in Connecticut, but their connection to Italy remained strong. A few years ago, maritime artist Len Tantillo was interested in creating a painting that would depict his grandfather’s shing boat, a “leudo,” in Italy. Having no personal knowledge of that kind of boat and the scene in Italy in which it operated, he asked Captain Sorio for guidance. “Cesare was my only connection with my grandfather. He helped me so much in understanding Antonio and his sailing career in the sea of Naples.”
Graduating rst in his class from the Italian Merchant Marine Academy in 1955, Cesare Sorio embarked on a long career at sea, mostly in oceangoing oil tankers with a stint in the passenger trade, progressing from deck cadet to chief o cer, sta captain, and master. By age 24, he already had
Cesare was as involved with family as he was with the sea and history, and there, his wife Margherita was the captain, a more gracious, interesting, and lovely person you would not find, a devoted mother to their four children, and a welcome partner to Cesare in all our activities.
his merchant mariner credential, which he maintained even after he retired: Master, Unlimited Tonnage, All Oceans.
In 1967 he accepted a job ashore, and in the years that followed he became involved in all aspects of shipbuilding and ship conversion and repair, vessel purchasing and sales, economics of transportation, and marine operations. After working for various international oil companies, he cofounded an independent maritime consulting group, S. J. Marine, from which he retired in 2011, after 68 years in the shipping industry.
Cesare continued to be involved with the industry, maintaining his a liation with the Italian Masters and Chief Engineers Association and the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME). He was an active member of the American Bureau of Shipping’s Council and Classi cation Committee and a commissioner of Harbor Management for the Town of Guilford, Connecticut. He described himself as an old sailor who got great joy from joining other sailors and shermen regularly for breakfast at a small diner in Guilford.
e annual NMHS David A. O’Neil Sheet Anchor Award, given in recognition of extraordinary leadership in building the strength and outreach of the Society, was presented to Captain Cesare Sorio in 2016. NMHS is a stronger and more in uential organization thanks, in part, to his dedication, leadership, and outreach. More than that, his friendship and support impacted all of us who knew him. He is greatly missed. Fair winds, Real Deal.
—Burchenal Green, President Emerita
Feeling the Roll
Memories of RMS Queen Mary Powering Through an Atlantic Storm
Mariners justi ! ably fear a storm in which waves tower over their ship, tossing it about like a cork bobbing in the ocean. Even modern cruise ships have met their demise—or at least been grievously damaged—by oceanic storms over the annals of history. One of these historic tempests brought the 1,019-foot RMS Queen Mary within a few degrees of capsizing during her wartime service in 1942. If she had been lost on this passage in the Atlantic, more than 10,000 troops would have died before they reached Europe. e story of this
by Suzanne Pool-Camp
“perfect storm” was recorded by only a few of the passengers, perhaps because many of the others had been so seasick and traumatized that they preferred to forget the experience altogether.
For the men and women who boarded the ocean liner Queen Mary at Pier 90 in New York Harbor that cold day on 8 December 1942, it was the beginning of their adventure into the jaws of war, from which many would never return. Most of them, arriving by bus or train from military camps across the eastern seaboard, knew little about the ship in which they would be traveling.
From her maiden voyage in May 1936 from Southampton to New York City until her last trip as a luxury liner before World War II, she served as a oating resort for the wealthy and famous. Passengers dined in elegance, listened to celebrity entertainers, and exercised on the tennis courts and in sparkling swimming pools. On 1 September 1939, Queen Mary departed Southampton, England, with 2,332 passengers, including Bob Hope and his wife, Dolores. By the time they made their arrival in New York just four days later, World War II had been declared.
After an extensive conversion to serve in her new role, including the removal of ! ne carpets, china, crystal, and other luxury features, the ship received a coat of dull gray paint to camou age her from German vessels and U-boats. e liner’s best defense against enemy torpedoes was her speed—about 25 to 30 knots—and steering a zigzag course across the Atlantic. Soon known as the “Gray Ghost,” she proved her value as one of the few large Allied troop carriers. e British Admiralty ordered additional anti-aircraft guns for her defense and enough canvas racks to accommodate the thousands of troops she would transport over the next !ve years.
Her ! rst wartime voyage in May 1940 was a 6,000-mile passage from Australia to South Africa, and another 6,000 miles to Scotland. For the early years of the war, Queen Mary and her sister ship Queen Elizabeth shuttled more than 80,000 troops from Down
Crowds gather at the pier to bid adieu to family and friends aboard RMS Queen Mary, August 1949.
RMS Queen Mary in her two paint schemes: (above) Steaming into New York Harbor in 1936, her first year of operations. (below) Camouflaged in gray paint to reduce her silhoue e on the open sea. In World War II, Queen Mary carried thousands of troops to war zones and home again a er the war was over.
Queen Elizabeth (le ) and Queen Mary (right) in Southampton, England, on 27 September 1946. This was taken just before Queen Elizabeth’s sea trials, having been repainted in Cunard livery. Queen Mary was just concluding her war duties and had yet to be repainted.
The Queen Mary, HMS Curacoa Incident by Harley Crossley (1936–2013), oil on canvas
Under to South Africa and the Middle East. After the United States entered the war in December 1941 and the Allies began to focus on preparing for an invasion of Europe, the two Queen s began transporting American troops to theaters of war across the Paci!c and in the Atlantic to Great Britain. On 11 May 1942, Queen Mary sailed from New York to Scotland and set a record as the ! rst ship to carry more than 10,000 people. Another record-breaking crossing for the Gray Ghost came in August 1942, when she carried the US First Armored Division of 15,125 men from New York to Ireland and then on to England.
In early October 1942, Queen Mary had a disastrous accident with one of her escort vessels forty miles o the coast of Northern Ireland. As was standard procedure, small destroyers and larger escort Royal Navy vessels met the liner as she entered the dangerous North Atlantic waters, which were haunted by German U-boats and Luftwa e planes, to protect her for the ! nal 160 miles to Scotland. During this passage, her escort, the 450-foot light cruiser HMS Curacoa, appeared to be on a parallel zigzagging course with the huge ocean liner, but when the Queen Mary turned to starboard to initiate the next zag, the escort vessel did not answer the change in course. Queen Mary slammed into her escort amidships, slicing its armored hull in half. To avoid being targeted by U-boats, it was policy for the liner not to stop, so the Queen Mary pressed on. Her captain radioed the other smaller vessels in the vicinity to rescue the sailors in the water, but 338 would perish in the icy waters.
After a temporary patch job on Queen Mary’s bow, she sailed for Boston for extensive repairs in dry dock, which took several weeks. She then headed to Manhattan and returned to her berth along the south side of Cunard’s Pier
90 on the Hudson River. RMS Queen Elizabeth was docked on the north side of the pier. Queen Mary’s scheduled voyage to Scotland on 8 December 1942 would be her ! rst trip since the Curacoa accident.
All through the evening of 7 December, thousands of passengers gathered at the pier before boarding. Army nurse Lt. Mildred A. Radawiec, ird Auxiliary Surgical Group, arrived about 10 pm, having traveled from Camp Kilmer in nearby New Jersey and then across the Hudson by ferry from Weehawken. After struggling up the gangplank with her suitcase, gas mask, purse, and canteen, she followed directions to her cabin. Out of the seven decks on the ship, nurses were assigned to the main deck. Her cabin had twelve narrow bunks in tiers of four, the top one nearly touching the ceiling. After stowing her baggage, she climbed into the top bunk and tried to sleep, despite the sounds of pounding boots and clanking gear of troops making their way to lower decks.
Early the next morning after a breakfast of eggs and bacon, Radawiec and other nurses went topside to watch the surrounding vessels guide the massive liner past the Statue of Liberty out to sea. She noticed the smaller ships changing positions according to semaphoric signals, as well as planes ying over the convoy to watch for enemy U-boats patrolling the waters around New York Harbor. Along the entire Eastern Seaboard in early 1942, German U-boats had sunk more than a hundred merchant ships and oil tankers. Once Queen Mary sailed beyond coastal waters, she was on her own until she reached the Irish coast, where British escort vessels would meet her.
As the liner was a prize target of the Nazis, the British crewmen conducted emergency drills at random and warned passengers about not smoking or using ashlights on deck to maintain
the ship’s blackout. ey also pointed out that the ship’s 24 lifeboats would not be enough for all of the passengers, so everyone must carry their life preservers, and they added: “Should any of you fall overboard, this ship will not turn back for any reason.” e visibility of numerous 40mm and 20mm anti-aircraft guns stationed at several places along the ship’s deck were a constant reminder of the threat of enemy attack.
Racing through the waves at 32 knots, the Gray Ghost continued on a zigzag course, creaking as she lurched from the shifting action. On the fourth day at sea, a squall and accompanying rough seas developed. Soon the ship pitched even more. Radawiec recalled how huge waves crested and then the Queen would drop into a trough, “where she trembled in every joint as the waves receded.” e roaring wind drove waves crashing into each other until the lone vessel was surrounded by a violent storm.
Dr. Norval Carter of the 110th Station Hospital unit was also aboard. A graduate of the Medical College of Virginia, he had volunteered to serve, leaving behind his wife and two young sons. He o ered to assist the doctors in the ship’s small hospital, but was ordered instead to assist the British crew with an anti-aircraft battery on one of the upper decks. During the storm he anchored himself behind the gun-shield to keep from being swept overboard. He later wrote of his amazement to see the massive ship tossed around like a toy: “One moment the top deck was at its usual height and then swoon, down, over, and forward she would pitch. It was magni !cent! I thought for sure I’d get seasick, but didn’t.” Dr. Carter was one of the few who found it so “magni !cent”!
Most of the troops below decks su ered from continuous seasickness during the three-day storm. Some were
so ill they became dehydrated and had to receive medical treatment. Nurse Radawiec saw how “time dragged endlessly for those lying on their bunks retching each time” the ship peaked and plunged. ey had to wait for attention from the medical o cers and nurses because many others were injured by the violent pitching of the ship. Some fell out of their bunks or got slammed against bulkheads or metal railings. Radawiec recalled the transport commander sitting down to enjoy breakfast only to be thrown from his chair and rolled across the room, “followed by his two poached eggs.”
Several portlights were smashed by the impact of the water, ooding some cabin oors. e ankle-high water frightened one o cer into believing that the hull had been torpedoed and that his men should prepare to abandon ship. Meanwhile in the hospital area, Captain Ralph Co ey faced the challenge of doing an emergency appendectomy. He made a swift incision with his scalpel while the oor rocked under his feet and the instruments on the tray rolled back and forth. Fortunately, the patient survived the surgery.
According to Radawiec, the storm lasted for three days: “At times the ship lifted so high on a wave her huge propeller blades were exposed. Several British seamen manning the crow’s nest high over the deck were swept away.”
e few passengers who were still una ected by the tumbling motion went topside to avoid the bad smells in the bowels of the ship. On the third day of the storm, even Radawiec began to feel nauseated and was unable to sleep due to the “ship’s creaking and rolling.”
e next morning, she splashed water on her face and ran up the ights of stairs to the upper deck to get some fresh air and feel the ocean spray against her skin. She joined the saltiest sailors—or at least those with experienced sea-legs and iron stomachs.
(below) Army nurse Lt. Mildred A. Radawiec.
(opposite) Queen Mary’s Captain James G. P. Bisset was commodore of the Cunard Line from 1944 until his retirement in 1947, having previously served as captain of both Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. Bisset got his start in the merchant marine as an apprentice seaman aboard the three-masted barque County of Pembroke. He was on watch as second o icer aboard RMS Carpathia when the distress calls about the Titanic came in over the wireless, and he assisted in the rescue of the survivors.
SMITH ARCHIVE / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
One of these was Chief Warrant O cer James A. Pool, 29th Naval Construction Battalion. He braced himself against gale force winds and near 100foot waves washing over the deck. As a former merchant mariner and experienced seaman, he preferred facing the storm on deck as opposed to staying below with the unfortunates who were “feeling the roll.” Wearing his long wool naval coat with the collar raised around his face, he tied himself to a sturdy post so he wouldn’t slide across the deck.
On the bridge was Captain James G. P. Bisset. He had been the master of the ship during most of 1942, except for the passages between August and November when the ship was commanded by Captain Cyril G. Illingworth. Bisset had faced many Atlantic storms during the 35 years he had been with the Cunard Line, but this, he confessed, was the worst. In his memoirs he recorded: “ is was a passage in severe winter weather with north-westerly gales which made the ship roll heavily for four days.” During this time, he recalled that he had “no rest.”
According to some witnesses, at one point Queen Mary rolled on her side 43 degrees and would have capsized if she had continued much further. Major Cli ord Graves reported that “the captain’s log noted that the Queen had heeled to 30 degrees.” His description of the storm was very similar to that of Lt. Radawiec’s, but he doesn’t mention any loss of life, nor did Captain Bisset.
“On the 14th, the storm began to subside. Seagulls circled the ship, indicating we were nearing land,” Radawiec later recalled. e convoy of destroyers and escort vessels ! nally found Queen Mary at sea, despite her arriving two days late. ey guided her through the submarine net into the Firth of Clyde, the deepwater harbor in northern Scotland. She was greeted by a cacophony of horns and cheering crowds waving small Union Jacks. To nurse Radawiec
and those on deck, Scotland was “a beautiful sight.” Major Graves remembered the colorful villages nestled along the shore: “How soothing to the eye that has beheld nothing but angry waters.” Due to the approaching early evening darkness, everyone was ordered to stay on board until the next day, when they were taken to the dock in Gourock, where they were transported to their various stations.
By the end of the war, Queen Mary had carried more than 800,000 troops and served a vital role in the Allied victory. Chief Warrant O cer James Pool and Captain Norval Carter both participated in the D-Day invasion. Pool returned home in October 1945, but Carter was killed by a sniper in the !elds of Normandy in 1944. Major Cli ord Graves wrote about Carter’s service in Frontline Surgeons: A History of the ird Auxiliary Surgical Group. Lt. Radawiec returned home in October 1945, married her long-time !ancé, Dr. Robert MacGregor, and in 2006 wrote a book titled World War II Frontline Nurse. Captain James Bisset retired as master of Queen Mary in January 1947 and wrote his memoir, Commodore: War, Peace and Big Ships, published in 1961.
After the war’s end, Queen Mary resumed civilian transAtlantic service, sailing until Cunard retired her in 1967. She is permanently berthed in Long Beach, California, where she has served as a tourist attraction and hospitality venue.
Suzanne Pool-Camp is a freelance author and military historian in Fredericksburg, Virginia. She holds a juris doctor degree from Salmon P. Chase College of Law and has co-authored several books with her husband, Col. Richard Camp, US Marine Corps (Ret.). She is the daughter of James and Geneva “Ginny” Pool.
warrant
Pool wrote home to his wife a er the ship’s safe arrival in Scotland, telling her that they’d had a “rough trip,” but that they were aboard the “best ship in the world.”
JAMES A.
Chief
o icer James A.
Queen Mary
TWilliam E. Mighell and the California Shipping Company
he California Shipping Company (CSC) was, for a time, the largest owner/operator of sailing ships in the world. Between 1899 and 1907, CSC owned more sailing vessels than any other shipping concern, including the better-known Alaska Packers Association (APA).
e great sailing ship eet of the Alaska Packers Association of San Francisco is generally recognized as the largest and last sailing ship eet on the West Coast, but this was only true
by James Shu leworth
after 1907. In the years 1900 and 1901, the Alaska Packers Association had only 13 and 15 vessels in its eet, respectively, compared to 32 in the California Shipping Company’s eet. From its founding in 1893, APA grew its eet, albeit very slowly. In its early years, it stuck with wooden vessels because they were cheaper to build and purchase. As time went on, APA made the switch to iron and steel ships, recognizing that they were more economical in the long run. In addition to their greater strength
and easier maintenance, iron and steel ships were larger and had a greater carrying capacity.
e California Shipping Company and Alaska Packers Association were the two most prominent commercial sailing ship owners at this time. APA vessels carried the company’s labor force and canning supplies to Alaska, and returned at the end of the shing season with its workers and canned salmon to distribute in the US. CSC vessels carried cargo with the intent to make a pro t on each voyage. eir routes crossed the world’s oceans, often to or from Australia, British Columbia, and other foreign ports.
What most historians refer to as the California Shipping Company eet was actually two di $erent eets. William E. Mighell was the managing owner of thirteen sailing ships independent of the CSC, with partner Captain Charles Boudrow and others, but because Mighell managed all the vessels owned by the CSC as well as his own with Boudrow, the histories of individual ships and company eets are challenging to separate.
William E. Mighell was born in Mobile, Alabama, in 1845 and moved with his family to San Francisco in 1851 at the height of the Gold Rush. His father, William W., an émigré from England, had a number of occupations, including operating river steamers in San Francisco Bay and on the Sacramento River. He served as master of the river steamer Mount Eden in 1865 and built a grocery warehouse in Napa. Later, he was a partner in a ship chandlery where the younger Mighell worked as a clerk.
William E. Mighell (1845–1917)
Mary L. Cushing of the Flint & Company Fleet
A notice in the Morning Tribune (San Luis Obispo, California) of 19 November 1899 noted that William W. Mighell was at one time the largest shipowner on the coast, including one of the rst steam schooners, Salinas. No documentation about his eet or ownership has been found. Salinas, built in 1861, O%cial Number 232,171, has only been identi ed in early editions of the List of Merchant Vessels of the US A 25-ton schooner bearing the name William Mighell, Official Number 26,788, was built in 1858 at Eden’s Landing in Hayward on San Francisco Bay. It was most likely named for the elder Mighell, since William E. would have only been thirteen at the time. After making round-trip runs to Tomales Bay for many years, in January 1873 William Mighell was run down by the steamer Prince Alfred and sank.
e younger Mighell had various occupations before becoming a shipowner. In the 1870s he owned a dairy farm in San Luis Obispo. In the 1880s, he was working in the vessel-salvage business. He was involved in the salvage of the well-known wreck of the clipper ship King Phillip, which had gone ashore beneath the Cli $ House at Ocean Beach, and of the famous Paci c Mail steamer China, among others. Captain Boudrow was his partner in the shipbreaking business; they were part of the company formed to salvage the steamer Escambia in 1882, which had capsized outbound on the San Francisco bar with a cargo of grain. is probably led to their shipowning partnership. Mighell bought the barque Bundaleer, likely purchased at an auction in August 1886. Because it was a British-built vessel, he had to register
it in another country. Contemporary newspapers are full of notices of the arrivals and departures of the Nicaraguan- agged barque Bundaleer with coal from Departure Bay, Nanaimo, British Columbia. Mighell bought his rst US-registered vessel in 1887 and purchased three more ships shortly thereafter.
William E. Mighell emerged as a prominent and respected shipowner/ manager in late 19th-century San Francisco. His name appears all over shipping registers, maritime documents, contemporary newspapers, and maritime and California history books. In addition to his role as a shipowner, he was a director of both the Shipowners Association and the Shipowners and Merchants Tug Boat Company (Red Stack Tugs) of San Francisco. For a time, he served as vice president of
Barque St. James flying the Flint & Company house flag from the mainmast.
both.1 He was also very active as an o%cer of the Chamber of Commerce. Mighell was probably not an actual ship captain, although he was often referred to as “Captain” in newspaper articles. e only evidence that he may have had some sea experience is that a “Mighell” was the subject of an attempted murder aboard ship in which he sailed as supercargo, but it is not con rmed that this was the same man.
At the close of the 19th century, Flint & Company of New York was looking to divest itself of its sailing ships to invest in steamers (more speci cally in a new venture that would become the American-Hawaiian Steamship Company). e California Shipping Company bought the entire Flint eet, some ten sailing vessels, for $550,000. At the time, all of Flint’s vessels were either in New York or away on long voyages, so it was a while before they arrived in San Francisco.
e CSC was organized to manage the large eet and was capitalized at $1,000,000, incorporating in November 1899. Many well-known shipping men and companies bought into it, subscribing a total of $600,000. ese included William E. Mighell; Capt. Charles Boudrow; William Babcock; W. J. Gray; Roth, Blum & Co.; John Dolbeer; Bennett and Goodall; E. Kenteld; Pope & Talbot; Henry F. Allen; Captain H. L. E. Meyer; Schwabacher Bros.; C. D. York; Hind, Rolph & Co.; and M. Blum. e proposed sale was announced in newspapers in late October 1899, but the actual transaction probably took place in mid-to late November.2
The confusion surrounding Mighell-owned (with partners) ships and CSC vessel management existed to some extent in real-time as well. In the San Francisco Call, 14 November 1899, Mighell stated that he would not merge his separately owned/managed
(above) Unloading lumber, San Francisco, 1905.
(below) The ship Saint David, purchased from Flint and Company in 1899. She was sold in 1911 and converted to a barge.
vessels with those of the California Shipping Company. It is likely because those ships were owned by various individuals who may not have been afliated with the CSC. Ships owned by multiple investors were common in the 18th and 19th centuries. Not only would the cost of building or purchasing a ship and the expenses to out t a voyage be shared among several parties, but it was also a way of spreading the risk if the vessel was lost or damaged. In most of these scenarios, one of the owners would manage the eet.
e acquisition of the Flint & Company ships and the reorganization of the CSC occurred during a period of transition from sail to steam, but the principals of CSC were convinced they could still make a pro t using windpowered ships, which could carry bulk cargoes at minimal expense. Wooden vessels were selling at a cheap price compared to steamers, and both the Alaska Packers Association and the CSC were buying them up.3 In its early years, CSC paid a dividend of 10.5%, but by 1907 that was down to 4.5%. In some years no dividend was
paid at all, re ecting CSC’s nancial di %culties and vessel losses.4
Aside from frequent slowdowns in shipping, the Panic of 1907 and the CSC’s policy of not purchasing insurance for its vessels would have a very negative impact on the company’s bottom line. e practice of operating ships with either no insurance or only partial insurance was likely carried over to the CSC ships by Mighell, as none of the vessels in his eet with Boudrow were adequately insured. While it may have saved the company money at the outset, operating deep-water sailing ships over long distances was dangerous and risky. Most of the Mighell-managed vessels— both his and those owned by the CSC—had regular routes sailing to Australia or other distant ports carrying lumber and returning with coal. Four of these ships were lost in the rst four years of the rm’s existence, and if the vessels were carrying cargoes owned by CSC or Mighell/Boudrow, it is likely that the cargo itself was also not insured.
e full-rigged ship Henry B. Hyde is a good example of the fallacy of this
policy. Purchased by the CSC in 1900, she wrecked in 1904 at Dam Neck, Virginia; she carried no insurance per the o%cial US Government Wreck Report, incurring a $50,000-plus loss to the company.
e following charts (opposite page) show both California Shipping Co. vessels as well as those in the Mighell & Boudrow eet.
After 1907, the size of the CSC eet and the company’s pro ts were in decline. By 1909, sixteen of its ships were put up for sale, many having been laid up and deemed too unpro table to operate. At the same time, the vessels extant in the Mighell/Boudrow eet were being managed by Captain Boudrow without his partner. It is unclear why, but records hint that Mighell may have been in declining health. By 1910 his shares were put into a trust and he began taking long vacations, including at least one round-the-world tour that took 18 months.
Established in late 1899, by 1912 the California Shipping Company ceased to exist. William E. Mighell died in San Francisco in 1917.
Downeaster Henry B. Hyde Running Before the Wind by Christopher Blossom
Notes
1 Humboldt Times, 16 July 1896.
2 Morning Tribune (San Luis Obispo), 19 Nov 1899.
3 The Fleet Book of the Alaska Packers Association 1893–1945, 2014.
4 San Francisco Call, 22 March 1907.
James Shuttleworth is a retired Army o cer and engineering geologist. He is the author of Collecting and Studying Ship Portraits (2023, the Friesen Press). e author wishes to thank the following people for their assistance in researching and preparing this article: Gina Bardi and Kirsten Kvam of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park; Michael J. Mjelde, author of Glory of the Seas, Clipper Ship Captain, and From Whaler to Clipper Ship; and Ted Miles, retired assistant curator, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park.
California Shipping Co. Fleet
Vessel Name
1. R. D. Rice (Flint & Co.) 1899 Oct/Nov 1900 lost/fire 2263 Ship
2. John McDonald (Flint & Co.) 1899 Oct/Nov 1901 Jan fire 2281 Ship
9. A. J. Fuller (Flint & Co.) 1899 Oct/Nov 1909 1848 Ship
10. S. D. Carleton (Flint & Co.) 1899 Oct/Nov 1911 Feb (barge) 1882 Ship
11. James Drummond 1899 Dec 1908 sold (barge) 1556 Ship
12. William H. Smith 1899 26 Dec 1911 1978 Ship
13. Joseph B. Thomas 1900 25 Jan 1909 sold (barge) 1938 Ship
14. Henry Failing 1900 25 Jan 1909 1976 Ship
15. Reuce 1900 21 March 1911 1924 Ship
16. Governor Robie 1900 May 1910 1712 Ship
17. John Currier 1900 May 1907 wrecked 1848 Ship
18. Mary L. Cushing 1900 1906 wrecked 1658 Ship
19. Abner Coburn
Mighell & Boudrow (Mighell managed) Fleet
1. Joseph B. Brown 1887 1902 1550 Ship
2. Rufus E. Wood 1887 1906 1477
6.
9.
10.
11.
Rig and tonnage figures (GRT) are from the List of Merchant of the United States , 1900. Dates are mostly from contemporary newspaper articles. “>” means a er. *as of November 1899
e End of SS United States
by Bill Bleyer
The famed ocean liner SS United States is heading to the Gulf Coast to become the world’s largest arti cial reef after its non-pro t owner, SS United States Conservancy, signed a sales contract with Florida’s Okaloosa County and resolved a legal dispute with the owner of the Philadelphia pier where the ship has been moored for 28 years. e 990-foot vessel was expected to
depart for a shipyard in Mobile, Alabama, in mid-November, but storm systems in the Caribbean threatened the safety of the long tow south. As of press time, her departure date was still on hold. Once the ship arrives in Alabama, she will be cleaned and prepped to be scuttled o the Florida panhandle and transition from a $oating piece of maritime history to a dive site. e
exact location of the site has not been set, but it is expected to be about 20 miles south of the panhandle region in the Destin-Fort Walton Beach area.
On 1 October 2024, the Okaloosa County Board of County Commissioners signed a contract with the SS United States Conservancy to purchase the ship for $1 million. e Conservancy announced in mid-October that it had settled its longstanding dispute over berthing costs with Penn Warehousing and Distribution, the owner of the pier. During the COVID epidemic, the company doubled the rent and sued the Conservancy to evict the vessel, so the property can be redeveloped.
e Conservancy was under considerable pressure to make a deal to sell the ship after a federal judge refused in August to grant the non-pro t organization an extension of the September eviction deadline from the Philadelphia pier. While denying the motion by the Conservancy, US District Court Senior Judge, Anita Brody, said she would give the non-pro t more time to move the vessel if it had a signed contract for a new home before the 12 September deadline for eviction. Once the contract with the county was signed, she instructed the parties to engage in mediation over the timing of the ship’s removal and the pier owner’s e ort to collect payment for alleged damage to its facility during the ship’s long tenure. e mediated agreement calls for the county to assume rent payments of $3,400 per day starting 12 September and make a $50,000 initial upfront
SS United States under construction, just before her launch in 1951.
payment. e county would also pay a portion of the expected repairs to the pier and pay a $100,000 penalty if the ship is not removed by 12 December 2024. Okaloosa County has allocated up to $10.1 million for the project, including partial funding to create a museum about the ship.
According to a statement from the Conservancy: “As we begin this process, we do so with a sincere appreciation for our global community of supporters. We’ve received a vast number of leads that we pursued about temporary pier locations, numerous introductions to local, state, and federal leaders. We have a sincere understanding about how painful our decisions were as we assessed all the possibilities for our cherished ship. Together we will see the extraordinary story of America’s Flagship, and her inspiring spirit, continue to endure.”
Just moving the ship away from the pier requires more than just pulling it into the Delaware River, as mud and silt have built up behind her stern over the years. Once the towing company successfully clears her from her berth pierside, it has to wait for low tide to allow the 151-foot-tall superstructure to pass beneath four bridge spans: the Walt Whitman, the Commodore Barry, and the twin spans of the Delaware Memorial Bridge.
e tow to Alabama is expected to take two weeks. Prepping and sinking the liner is expected to take at least a year. Part of the prep work will remove the ship’s two distinctive raked funnels. At least one will be stored for possible display at the planned museum. Her mast will also be removed to prevent the hulk from becoming an obstacle to navigation once it settles on the sea $oor. e anchors and chains have already been removed in Philadelphia to facilitate the tow south.
Okaloosa County has an established arti cial reef program, with 564 reef sites deployed since 1976. e
in 2024.
program aims to create shing, diving, and snorkeling sites that are accessible to local residents and visitors. e arti cial reefs provide critical habitat for commercial and recreational sheries. According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, every dollar spent on arti cial reefs in the Florida panhandle generates a $138 economic return.
While the Conservancy hoped to keep United States a $oat as the centerpiece of a future mixed-use development, the plan yielded no interest from potential partners up and down the East Coast. e ship would either have to be scrapped or turned into an articial reef. “She will become a unique historical attraction above and below the waterline,” Conservancy President Susan Gibbs said. “A land-based museum and immersive experience utilizing the latest technology will showcase her unique story and proud history.”
e aircraft carrier USS Oriskany —an 888-foot vessel sunk o Pensacola, Florida, in 2006 and currently
the world’s largest arti cial reef—attracts more than 10,000 divers annually, generating approximately $3.6 million per year in direct spending, according to gures from 2015.
Launched in 1952, SS United States still holds the record for the fastest transAtlantic crossing by an ocean liner. On her maiden voyage, she averaged over 35 knots across the Atlantic. A marvel of engineering at the time of her launch, she was retired from service in 1969, spurring multiple attempts to restore the ship in one form or another. None proved successful.
Learn more about the ship’s remarkable history at the SS United States Conservancy website, www.ssusc.org, and by searching for articles in past issues of Sea History, accessible online via the Sea History Index at www.seahistory. org/index/a/. To learn more about the Okaloosa County’s arti cial reef program, visit www.destinfwb.com/explore/eco-tourism/arti cial-reefs.
SS United States at the pier in Philadelphia
Irene Aloha Wright: e Remarkable Woman Who Unlocked the Spanish Side of American and Caribbean History
by John S. Sledge
In 1926, the Hispanic American Historical Review reappeared after a four-year hiatus. Founded in 1916 to focus on Latin American scholarship, it lost its !nancial backing in 1922 and lay dormant until picked up by Duke University Press years later. Newly con !dent and secure in their jobs, the journal’s editors o ered a poem to leaven their comeback issue’s staid articles, book reviews, and bibliographic notices. “It has not been the policy of the Review to publish metrical matter,” they explained in a brief note. Nonetheless, they believed the poem, titled “ e Archives of the Indies at Seville,” by Irene A. Wright, an American researcher living in Spain, was “so true to the spirit” of that remarkable institution that it deserved attention. e selection occupied pride of place at the journal’s front and consisted of !ve vigorous stanzas that bowled along like a caravel driven by the trades. “ ese are the Archives of the Indies!” Wright began.
Here—in these tall cases, built from the marble $oor Toward domed, arched ceiling—
Here are stored, in blue-wrapped bundles, pack on pack, e papers passed between old Spain and her far colonies.
In excited cadences, Wright revealed the world of action and adventure those papers contained.
Here—the voice of guns!
Hawkins’ and Drake’s and doughty Baskerville’s!
Pater’s and Heyn’s! ...
How they sail yet on this troubled sea
Of ! nite History!
How brave they sail!
How brave they sail through these old papers here preserved!
ese are the Archives of the Indies! ese!
Who reads these records through hears arrows whistle, feels the whir
Of good Toledo steel; sees Indians skulk, Creeping at dawn to storm the palisades
Of unremembered posts on river routes and shores:
“My Governor, send help! We are surrounded.”
…
And she acknowledged the “bold friar, acting courier” by whom the records were carried and saved, within them a
Irene Aloha Wright (1879–1972)
message that “rings down the centuries.” On Wright continued, listing exotic wonders like Aztec shrines, Inca palaces, stately galleons, and plundering pirates before ! nally ending with a $ourish:
ese are the Archives of the Indies! ese—
Ashes of empire!
Worthless! Bale on bale
So much old paper—tied with dirty string!
Wright was no stranger to the Review’s editors and readers. Indeed, she had published more than half a dozen articles with them previously, mostly about early Cuban and Jamaican history. She also engaged in research for prominent historians like J. Franklin Jameson, editor of the American Historical Review and a founder of the Hispanic American Historical Review. Jameson a ectionately described her in a letter to a colleague as
a demon for work, full of enterprise and energy, and yet amiable and kind, nowise overwhelming or obstreperous. She is a character, breezy and informal, not like anybody else, but thoroughly likeable and full of kindness toward everyone.
Ursula Lamb, a young German-American historian, held her in awe. “Irene Wright was a tall statuesque presence,” she recalled decades later, “built to be seen from a distance and aware of it.”
When Wright’s poem appeared in the Review, she had a formidable reputation as a researcher and translator specializing in Spain’s New World history of conquest and colonization. She was thoroughly familiar with the Seville archives, commonly known as the AGI (Archivos General de Indias), which was home to virtually all the o cial documents relating to that history, and she could decipher centuries-old penmanship, whether $owery or scribbled. “We of the United States,” she later remarked, “seldom realize how much of our own early history lies in those early reports of Spanish soldiers, traders, and priests. eir records are as much our history as Spain’s.” To demonstrate her point graphically, she joked that in the AGI, “I found Peter Stuyvesant’s lost leg. Well, perhaps not precisely the actual limb of that famous peg-legged Governor of New Amsterdam, but I was able to establish for the ! rst time that he lost it in his siege of the Leeward Island of San Martin.” Jameson declared, “She knows the archives of the Indies, so far as the materials for American history are concerned, better than anyone else does or ever has.”
When Wright returned to the United States in 1936, on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, her accomplishments included editing and translating thousands of documents for institutions like the Florida State Historical Society, the Library of Congress, the Hakluyt Society, and the governments of Great Britain, Spain, and the Netherlands. Her literary corpus included over a dozen articles and ten books, and she was recognized with numerous awards and honors. James Alexander Williamson, a British maritime historian and vice president of the Hakluyt Society, credited her with cracking open the Spanish side of the Elizabethan Age’s Caribbean con $ icts. “Our debt to Miss Wright’s research and editing is not easy to express,” he concluded.
Irene Aloha Wright’s path to such prominence was by no means direct. Born in Ouray, Colorado, 19 December 1879, she grew up among Irish immigrants. e origin of her unusual middle name is unknown, but perhaps it was her father Edward’s idea. He owned part interest in a gold mine, and in 1888 he built an opera house downtown, so he must have had a bit of the theatrical about him. After he died during Irene’s 15th year, her mother, Letitia, sent her to a girl’s school in Roanoke, Virginia, where it did not take long for the youngster’s independent spirit to manifest itself. Bored by the routine, she skipped her second year and hopped on a train to Mexico with $300 worth of gold sewn into her dress. “It seemed to me, de ! nitely, that
Mexico City would be a great deal more fun than Virginia,” she later laughed.
And so it was. Wright mastered Spanish and went to work teaching English, translating museum guidebooks, and serving as a governess for the country’s vice president. e latter experience proved especially useful, acquainting young Wright with the traditions of upper-class Latin Catholic life. at provided, certainly, one form of education, but after three years Wright decided she needed more formal schooling and returned to ! nish at Roanoke, doubtless to Letitia’s great relief. She subsequently attended Stanford University and graduated in 1904 with a bachelor’s degree in history.
Women faced very limited professional opportunities during the early 1900s. Rather than marrying and settling into a domestic routine, Wright chose adventure and again traveled south, along with her mother, her “constant, patient, tireless companion,” for a newspaper job at the Havana Post. In her eloquent 1910 memoir, Cuba, Wright described steaming into Havana Harbor before dawn. She and her mother were on deck when they sighted Morro lighthouse’s bright beacon. “ en, gradually, details of a picture detached themselves from a gray background,” she wrote. “We made out the outlines of Morro. We saw minor lights, those of the barracks on the sloping shore to the left of it, and those, more numerous, of the city itself, across the channel, at the right.” e sky brightened further, the sun rose, and before them lay such a city “as I had not supposed ever existed o the black curtain of a stage set for a light opera.” e bay shore curved before them in “gracious welcome,” and over it all “lay the most delicate, shifting, blue-gray mist, which made what our eyes beheld seem the more unreal. I felt that we had arrived in an enchanted land.”
The General Archive of the Indies (AGI) in Seville is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Irene Wright became a fixture here for 22 years in the early 20th century.
Wright never lost that sense of enchantment, though the discomforts and frustrations of living in a newly independent tropical nation occasionally challenged it. In the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, Cuba shed its Spanish yoke, but thanks to the Platt Amendment (1901), the United States reserved the right to unilaterally intervene in its a airs and to lease land for a military base at Guantánamo. For herself, Wright dubbed the island “the land of topsy-turvy.” She continued: “Here logic and rational sequence are not the rule.” Life seemed more like a play, and “contradiction exists in all the details.” Inconsistently enforced rules, endemic corruption, confusing business practices, and rampant bureaucracy all prevailed. Racial complexity wove through every social class, resulting in more nuanced interpersonal relations than in the United States. “Here, black is not necessarily black,” Wright explained, “but may carry a legal document to prove its color white; white is not surely white but may only ‘pass’ for such.”
Wright admitted that she came to Cuba “with every prejudice we Americans are accustomed to entertain against blacks, and especially against mixed breeds; to me, then, a single drop of black blood was worse than a whole bucket-
ful.” To her credit, Cuba compelled her to relax these views and take the country and its people as she found them, with only the occasional grumble.
More di cult was the climate. e heat and humidity were insu erable, and simply crossing the Plaza de Armas seemed like an endurance contest thanks to “the glare from its paths, which penetrates the eyes like a white-hot knife.” During the long summers, hurricanes posed a serious threat. Wright recalled that she had “the rare luck to be outdoors in the storm of 1906. I shall not forget to my dying day, how the wind howled up and down the narrow streets, how the rain twisted and whirled, driven by winds that blew from every quarter at one and the same time.”
Not surprisingly, given her large-mindedness and goahead nature, Wright $ourished professionally. After two years at the Post, she worked as city editor for the Havana Telegraph. In 1908 she bought and edited e Cuba Magazine, an English-language weekly. She also did a stint at the island’s most distinguished newspaper, Havana’s Diario de la Marina. Wright reveled in the Diario’s elegant o ces, “tiled, painted, decorated with chandeliers, statuettes, arti!cial $owers, and portraits,” where everyone dressed to the
Malecón and El Morro, Havana, Cuba, ca. 1904. Wright found early 20th-century Havana to be dressy, formal, and decidedly opinionated about a woman’s place in the world. Nonetheless, she flourished there.
O !ices of the Diario de la Marina newspaper, 1907. Wright loved the elegant building but shocked her conservative male colleagues with her relaxed, informal behavior. “From which they deduced,” she laughed, “that the masterful and mastering Yankees were about to crush in an iron grasp the very flower and essence of Spanish sentiments as intertwined about the heartstrings of Cuba!”
nines and management forbade scattering papers on “the sanctum $oor.” Predictably, Wright ignored this diktat until the editor issued her a stern rebuke. e presence of this con !dent, unmarried American woman proved entirely novel to the paper’s male employees. ere were a few early complaints, namely that Wright “walked like a man, looked neither to right nor to left, and favored them with no ‘silvery cachinnations’ during o ce hours!” Soon, however, her colleagues grew to appreciate her work, “for they gave me a man’s title and a man’s pay, and permitted me upon occasions to assume full responsibility.” is came about even though she “moved among them as no decent woman of their own would, and they saw [her] come and go with a freedom that de !ed every article in their accepted code of an honest woman’s conduct.” roughout her time in Cuba, Wright studied the island’s history and occasionally indulged in little imaginative $ ights to conjure it. When crossing the heat-blasted Plaza de Armas, for example, she made herself “oblivious to the discomfort by reconstructing scenes and events which have transpired [t]here.” She wished away the Governor’s palace, “that smug yellow square which faces the Plaza from its west side,” and replaced it with “the old parish church which preceded it.” Similarly, when relaxing on the $at roof of her harborside lodgings, she fantasized about standing on the deck of a “fat caravel” surveying “a very di erent scene from that the physical eye beholds.” Gone were the tall buildings,
packed houses, and the Morro on its headland, replaced by scattered ceiba trees, an adobe church, and cedar-built dwellings with thatched palm roofs and little gardens surrounded by rickety palings. Her reverie was rudely interrupted by a trolley car “thundering up Chacon Street,” and modern Havana $ooded her senses again.
Wright’s desire to better understand Cuba’s colonial origins and social conundrums meshed perfectly with the aims of the American businessman and ! nancier Ronald R. Conklin (best known as the inventor of the motor home). Conklin had business interests on the island and was fascinated by its past. In 1914 he ! nanced a trip to Seville for Wright to research and write a book about the island. e so-called “Pearl of Andalusia,” Seville, Spain, is located 54 miles from the sea on the banks of the Guadalquivir River, the country’s only navigable river. Historically, the city had, of course, served as the administrative seat of Spain’s overseas empire, home to the Casa de Contratación (House of Trade), which closely regulated a airs and jealously guarded the Padrón Real (master chart). During the Age of Exploration, cartographers periodically updated this map with new information provided by far-ranging ship captains. e Crown strictly forbade its publication, lest its dissemination empower European rivals.
Seville’s glory days were long past by the time the Wrights arrived, but its wharves still bustled, and it sheltered a respectable 130,000 souls. Doubtless, mother and daughter visited the tenth-century Real Alcázar palace with its $orid Moorish-in $uenced architecture and the famous sixteenthcentury Gothic cathedral, featuring a 343-foot bell tower with the tomb of Christopher Columbus just inside its entrance. Immediately next to the cathedral stands the Archivos de Indias, a square, two-story, sixteenth-century stone building commissioned by Philip II as the Casa de Contratación headquarters and converted into an archive by Charles III in 1785. is was Irene’s destination.
Her work focused on the Papeles Procedentes de Cuba (Papers from Cuba), a massive trove of over a million pages gathered into 2,375 legados (bundles) and shipped from Havana to Seville during the 1880s. ese papers not only concerned Cuba’s administrative history, but those of Spanish Louisiana and East and West Florida. Each legado covered a speci !c category—a governor’s correspondence, treasury reports, mission records, naval plans, or construction documents. Some contained only a few pages—others, hundreds. e year before Wright arrived, one observer opined that the collection presented “a virgin !eld for investigation.”
Wright’s ! rst glimpse of these materials nearly overwhelmed her. Many of the bundles were neatly labeled and
A small portion of the “Papers from Cuba,” at the Archive of the Indies, c. 1911–13. “They lie practically untouched,” Wright declared shortly a er her arrival in Seville. She worked methodically through one bundle at a time.
stored in the archives’ beautiful $oor-to-ceiling wooden shelving, but others were stacked on pallets, unexamined for centuries and untouched except by the occasional mover. If she hesitated, it was but brie$y. Soon she had a system in place, methodically sorting through each legado. She also hired younger scholars to assist with the translation and transcription.
Working conditions were often less than ideal. e archive had limited hours and its poorly lit work rooms were either chilly or hot, depending on the season. Sta required each research request in writing and released only one legado at a time. Despite these challenges, within two years Wright published e Early History of Cuba, 1492–1586, Written from Original Sources. In the introduction, she explained that she had abjured secondary sources because the Papeles represented a “greater wealth of material.” Nor was she shy about her achievement, declaring, “the history of the island has not been written until this present book.” An anonymous reviewer for the Southwestern Historical Quarterly was not so kind. “It seems strange that more than a year of research in the best colonial archive in Spain could
not be productive of a more enlightening and sympathetic treatment of Spain’s early colonial institutions,” he mused. Nonetheless, the reviewer conceded the usefulness of an English language “connected history” of Cuba and recommended it to students.
e presence of an energetic American researcher in the AGI attracted attention, and other commissions soon followed. Among the most consequential was that of John B. Stetson Jr., son of the famed hat maker, on behalf of the Florida State Historical Society. Having recently been founded by a clutch of heritage-minded individuals, including Stetson, the Society fretted that its state’s colonial records were inaccessible to American researchers unable to a ord an expensive foreign trip. erefore, Stetson hired Wright to copy everything she could locate relating to Florida’s colonial period (broadly 1518–1821) and provided her with a photostat machine to speed the task. is was a ! rst for the archives sta , and they marveled as this bold American woman, assisted occasionally by a frocked Spanish priest, manipulated the large camera and rolls of photographic paper. Wright worked steadily between 1924 and 1927 until Spain’s Ministry of Culture, fundamentally uncomfortable with the newfangled process, ultimately ended it. Nonetheless, Wright managed to copy more than 130,000 documents, tracing the histories of Ponce de Leon’s voyage, St. Augustine’s founding, Hernando de Soto’s murderous entrada, the Siege of Pensacola, and much more. Wright’s photostats, since micro! lmed (761 rolls), form the heart of the John Batterson Stetson Collection, now at the University of Florida.
Continuing to work at fever pitch, Wright produced two books for the Hakluyt Society, Documents Concerning English Voyages to the Caribbean, 1527–1568 (1929) and Documents concerning English Voyages to the Spanish Main, 1569–1580 (1932). Each book included a detailed introduction followed by edited translations of speci !c documents, all copiously footnoted. A writer for the American Historical Review praised the 1527–1568 volume as “excellent” and “meticulous.” Here, for the ! rst time for many English speakers, was the Spanish side to the epic clashes with the likes of Drake and Hawkins. “In these documents,” Wright wrote of Drake’s 1572 raid on Nombre de Dios, Panama, “we hear the English drums and trumpets sound through the Spanish town at dead of night, we see the startled residents wake to the glare of ! re pikes... But here, too, we see the Spaniards rally—a dozen, two dozen—to face the enemy in the streets and break into the marketplace to make a !nal desperate stand there.” With his plans “gone all awry,” Drake retreated “wounded and defeated.” A two-volume set for the Dutch government followed in 1934, Nederlandsche
zeevaarders op de eilanden in de Cariaïbische zee en aan de kust van Columbia en Venezuela gedurende de jaren 1621–1648 [Dutch navigators on the islands of the Caribbean Sea and on the Coast of Venezuela during the years 1621–1648.] Wright’s 22 years at the AGI ended with the onset of the Spanish Civil War, and she returned to the United States with her mother and an adopted daughter, Flor. Relocated to Washington, DC, Wright worked as an associate archivist for the National Archives until 1938 and thereafter as a foreign a airs specialist for the Department of State, focusing on Latin American issues. Of the latter assignment, she wrote, “No small part of the purpose of the department is to keep the lamp of reason and knowledge burning amidst the blackout of untruth, prejudice and their concomitant, war.” She produced one more book in 1951, Further English Voyages to Spanish America, 1583–1594,
published by the Hakluyt Society. Of honors there were many more, and in 1953 she served as president of the Society of Woman Geographers. She died on 6 April 1972 in New York.
Lamb wrote that Wright left “indelible traces on the path of scholarship.” Indeed, her work opened countless research avenues for future historians, and references to her publications pepper the footnotes and bibliographies of numerous modern books and articles on Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico history. Her vast achievements are all the more remarkable considering the highly conservative maledominated cultures in which she had to operate. Late in life, Wright quipped that at Seville she became, “the boon companion of every pirate who sailed the Spanish Main,” and she is still regarded as such by anyone moved to study that fantastical realm today.
The research room at the General Archive of the Indies Seville, Spain, is a place Irene Wright grew to know well.
John S. Sledge recently retired from the Mobile Historic Development Commission a er thirty-eight years of service. He is currently the maritime historian-in-residence 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 The Mobile River, The Gulf of Mexico: A Maritime History, and Mobile and Havana: Sisters Across the Gulf, an excerpt of which was published in Sea History 185.
ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
The First Snowflake
The Coast Guard’s 1984 Seizure
of
Cocaine Worth
$100 Million Heralded a Coming Blizzard
by CAPT Daniel A. Laliberte, USCG (Ret.)
Ensign Peter J. Bergeron, US Coast Guard, sat in the cockpit of the 33-foot sailboat Chinook, chatting amiably with the vessel’s twoperson crew. e sun had risen that morning, 31 March 1984, on a ne day for a boarding in the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti. Bergeron had a good feeling that when the sun set that evening, its glow would shine on the addition of yet another marijuanaleaf seizure sticker a xed to the superstructure of the Coast Guard Cutter Gallatin.
When Gallatin had rst hailed the north-bound, bedraggled-looking S/V Chinook by radio, the vessel’s master, Hewitt McGill, claimed the boat was Canadian- agged. While this was consistent with the actual ag being own by the vessel, Hewitt further claimed a homeport of Key West, Florida, and that he and his crewman, aptly named John Crews, were US citizens. With the vessel’s name displayed only on a removable plaque at the stern, and no homeport indicated there, Chinook was starting to t the pro le of a drug smuggler.
When the Coast Guard subsequently requested permission to send a boarding party over to verify the vessel’s documentation—called a “consensual boarding,” since the foreign- agged vessel was not subject to Coast Guard jurisdiction on the high seas, and the master was “consenting” to a limited intrusion—Hewitt readily assented. Such requests were almost always granted; to refuse would raise a red ag and merely delay the inevitable. A crafty smuggler would gamble that his cooperative attitude would lessen suspicion
US Coast Guard assets are designed to combat drug smuggling. USCGC Gallatin WHEC-721, commissioned in December 1968, is a high-endurance cu er and served until 2014 in a variety of roles and missions, including smuggling interdiction, search-and-rescue, and intercepting refugees a empting to reach the United States by boat.
Windward Passage
and reduce the scrutiny that would undoubtedly be applied to his vessel.
As the four-person boarding party motored aboard a small boat from the cutter to the Chinook, Bergeron noticed someone tossing a baggie of white powder over the side. Although Hewitt would claim it contained only sugar, this only served to heighten suspicion.
After hopping aboard, Bergeron and one member of the boarding party sat with the Chinook ’s crew, reviewing the vessel’s papers and asking questions about the trip, while the remaining two members of the boarding party did a “safety and security” sweep down below. Chinook ’s crew told the boarding o cer that they had been hired to deliver the vessel to e Bahamas for the owner, but that their IDs had been lost overboard in bad weather. e poorly maintained state of the vessel and the lack of seamanship skills of its crew cast serious doubt on that claim. Additionally, the sweep team reported that not only did the anchor lack a chain, but the chain locker itself was completely inaccessible. Chinook was clearly hiding something.
After consulting by radio with his commanding o cer back aboard the Gallatin, Ensign Bergeron informed Hewitt that the Coast Guard would be seeking permission from the Government of Canada to search his vessel for contraband. Hewitt agreed to let the boarding party remain aboard while waiting for a decision from the Canadians but cautioned that if no answer had been received by morning, he would ask them to leave—as was his right under a consensual boarding. A long, tense night followed, after which, with no answer yet received, Hewitt withdrew his consent and directed the boarding party to depart.
Once the Coast Guardsmen disembarked, Hewitt set a course northward, presumably hoping to reach the sanctuary of the Bahamian Territorial Sea, where they would be beyond the Gallatin’s reach. e only way this tactic could succeed would be if the Canadians took longer than a day to respond.
e Chinook stood no chance of outrunning the cutter, which dwarfed the diminutive sailboat both in size and
speed capacity. USCGC Gallatin was a high-endurance cutter out tted with twin diesel engines and supplemented by gas turbines; the 378-foot ship could make more than 30 knots. Gallatin had no problem shadowing the boat on its slow northerly course, while awaiting word from the Canadians.
Just two weeks earlier, and only a few miles SE of their current position, Gallatin had overhauled and busted the 22-foot vessel Push Push after nding 1,000 lbs. of marijuana onboard. Not bad results for a cutter whose primary assignment on this patrol was Haitian Migrant Interdiction Operations (HMIO) a term abandoned in 1989, when maritime operations involving all nationalities of migrants were gathered under the umbrella term of Alien Migrant Interdiction Operations, or AMIO.
While on HMIO patrol in the Windward Passage, the Gallatin was tasked with enforcing the US policy of intercepting any vessel carrying undocumented Haitians and returning them and their vessel, if seaworthy, to Haiti. is policy implemented an
The Windward Passage cuts between Cuba and Haiti and has been a regular route for cocaine smugglers moving drugs from South America to the United States.
agreement between the governments of Haiti and the United States that had been reached in response to the large numbers of Haitians who continued to risk their lives taking sea voyages aboard sailboats, often overloaded and unsafe, from Haiti to South Florida in the wake of the 1981 Cuban Boatlift. Like all Coast Guard cutters, the Gallatin was designed to be versatile and capable of switching missions in an instant.
Many HMIO interdictions turned into search-and-rescue (SAR) missions, with the Coast Guard often rushing to get everyone o an unsafe boat before rough weather might cause it to founder and potentially drown all onboard. Nevertheless, when not actively involved in a rescue or migrant vessel interdiction, upon sighting a suspicious vessel a cutter could immediately shift to counterdrug (CD) operations.
e Coast Guard had been waging a campaign against the maritime smuggling of marijuana since 1973, shortly after a combination of increased US Customs scrutiny of the US-Mexico border and American-sponsored aerial eradication e orts in Mexico success-
fully denied growers the abililty to meet skyrocketing demand for the drug north of the border. Growers in Colombia and Jamaica quickly stepped in, and a ood of boats put to sea to sneak bales of marijuana into South Florida. Over the next decade, the USCG seized thousands of vessels and millions of pounds of marijuana in this corridor.
In the late 1970s, Americans’ appetite for marijuana began to be supplanted by a growing demand for cocaine, and smugglers were only too happy to oblige. At rst, they ew cargoes of cocaine from Colombia into private airstrips in the Bahamas. Once there, the contraband was transferred to other aircraft or fast boats to be run into South Florida. As enforcement efforts became more e cient at detecting and interdicting inbound aerial shipments—even when aircraft dropped loads to waiting targets rather than landing at clandestine airstrips—smugglers again shifted their focus more to waterborne transport.
S/V Chinook was one of the rst to attempt to sneak a hidden cargo past the Coast Guard. e boat was owned
by General Manuel Noriega, the de facto dictator of Panama, who was, at the time, a staunch ally of the US in resisting communist inroads into Central America. While on the surface playing nice with US o cials, Noriega had a lucrative side gig. For turning a blind eye to smuggling through Panamanian airspace and territorial waters by Colombian cartels, he collected “protection money.” By 1984, the Colombians allowed him to purchase some product wholesale in Colombia and use his own boats to get it to the United States, giving him a higher payout.
Hewitt McGill found himself in a unique position to be part of this enterprise. After years of successfully running cannabis into Key West and the Bahamas, he had the rotten luck of getting boarded by the Colombian Navy o the Guajira Peninsula…with a few tens of thousands of pounds of “square grouper” in the hold of the shing boat he was operating. Expecting to rot in a dank jail cell in South America, instead he was soon released to a representative of Noriega’s smuggling enterprise, who made him an o er he couldn’t refuse: Hewitt would sail the Chinook to the Bahamas for them, and in return they would forgive the costs incurred in “securing” his release from prison. On the plus side, the Chinook would not be stu ed with bales of marijuana sitting in plain sight for the rst Coast Guard boarding team aboard to spot immediately; instead, bricks of cocaine would be cleverly hidden in an inaccessible compartment and in what was essentially a false hull that had been added around much of the vessel. Until this time, the Coast Guard had no experience with nding drugs in small spaces speci cally constructed to conceal contraband. McGill’s background as a boat captain and smuggler should have ensured smooth sailing. at should have been the case, but McGill had absolutely no experience
USCGC Gallatin was patrolling the area as part of Haitian Migrant Interdiction Operations, when her crew spied the Chinook in the Windward Passage.
with wind-powered boats. All of his previous ventures had been aboard diesel-powered boats—and those past activities had not escaped notice. In addition to having already identi ed McGill as a drug smuggler, the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) maintained a network of agents and informants in Colombia to report boats getting ready to head north with contraband onboard. e DEA even operated a small eet of spotter planes to y the coast of Colombia to detect the departure of these boats. is intelligence would then be shared with other US law enforcement agencies as needed to intercept the load.
When McGill set sail aboard the Chinook, he had no illusions about his prospects for success. He appreciated the prowess of the Coast Guard and the DEA and was pretty sure he stood a good chance of ending up in a US prison, which at least would be an improvement over a Colombian jail cell.
With a crew of three hands, Hewitt set out under power on a course for the Bahamas via the Windward Passage. e voyage did not begin well. Only an hour after leaving port, the Chinook ’s engine broke down, forcing McGill to rely solely on the wind and sails. A few days later, a storm damaged the sails. After limping along for three weeks, the boat nally made landfall at Negril, on the west coast of Jamaica, having averaged barely one knot over the 560 or so nautical miles covered. e Chinook’ s company arrived tired, hungry, out of supplies, and thoroughly demoralized.
As McGill had anticipated already reaching the Bahamas by this time, no allowance had been made to reprovision. He was reduced to selling some of his stash to nance the next leg of the journey. Two of his three crewmembers had had enough and abandoned
the venture in port. With John Crews as his only shipmate, McGill set out once again for the Bahamas.
A few days later, on the southern approach to the Windward Passage, the Chinook showed up on the cutter Gallatin’s radar. While an initial consensual boarding revealed no contraband, it did raise suspicion that McGill was smuggling drugs. e Coast Guard, via the State Department, “requested the permission of the Canadian government to board and search the vessel, and if contraband was found, to arrest the crew and seek prosecution under United States law.” At 7:30 pm the next
day, the Canadian government responded. Canada could not verify the registry of the Chinook at this time but allowed that if it was Canadian “the ship, cargo, and crew be dealt with in accordance with US law.” is sealed the Chinook’ s fate—if it were Canadian, the Coast Guard was authorized to take law enforcement action. If it were not Canadian, a false claim of ag put the vessel in the stateless category—which allowed any nation’s Law Enforcement units to take action.
Within half an hour, Ensign Bergeron and his boarding party were back aboard the Chinook. Tearing away
S/V Chinook moored at GTMO.
some carpeting, cushions, and paneling in the forward compartment of the boat quickly revealed hidden bricks of white powder that tested positive for cocaine. Bergeron arrested McGill and Crews and seized the Chinook for violation of US law.
Since clues such as o -placed sailstay brackets and unaccounted-for space along much of the hull suggested the likely concealment of additional cocaine throughout the vessel, Chinook was towed into nearby Naval Base Guantánamo (GTMO), Cuba, for further examination. While McGill and Crews were own from GTMO to Miami for arraignment, DEA agents were own in to assist the Coast Guard with a “destructive search.” As the term suggests, no space aboard was left unchecked. Eventually, nearly 2,000 lbs. of cocaine would be discovered.
Cocaine seizures by the Coast Guard would steadily increase over the next ve to seven years; marijuana seizures dropped correspondingly. By 1990—a year in which the Coast Guard intercepted nearly 17,000 pounds of cocaine—shipments of the drug had almost totally supplanted marijuana. In scal year 2022, the Coast Guard would seize the staggering amount of more than 335,000 pounds of cocaine. e growing demand for cocaine led to a sea change in the nature of maritime drug smuggling. e smaller bulk and greater value of cocaine meant that contraband could be more easily concealed aboard a smuggling vessel, decreasing the odds of discovery by a boarding party. It also meant that the reduced-sized cargoes could be carried aboard smaller, faster boats, reducing the chance of being detected by the
Coast Guard in the rst place.
Although some smugglers would continue to use sailboats, shing vessels, and coastal freighters, many smugglers would shift to using long-range fast boats propelled by high-powered outboard engines. Speeding northwards from Colombia via both Caribbean and Eastern Paci c routes, they could reach both US coasts and would prove both hard to detect and hard to run down. Coast Guard equipment and tactics would keep pace, however, their growing success seizing vessels would prompt smugglers to develop Low Pro le Vessels, or LPVs. e term LPV denotes any vessel intentionally built to reduce its radar signature and visual pro le. Fast boats were purpose-built or modi ed to reduce their height above the waterline, including semisubmersibles and submersibles. A semisubmersible
USCGC Gallatin crew with the Chinook’s seized cargo at GTMO. Boarding o icer Ensign Bergeron is third from right.
is built such that its deck is awash or nearly awash when loaded, leaving only a small “conning tower”-like structure above the deck, out of which a person can see to steer the vessel. Despite the small size of LPVs, they are still capable of transporting multi-ton loads over hundreds of miles. While Colombian authorities have seized several fully submersible vessels in port, none have actually been captured in the act of smuggling. e vessels reported in the press as submersibles seized at sea have actually been semi-submersibles that resemble submarines.
e technological cat-and-mouse competition between the Coast Guard and cocaine smugglers, which began with the seizure of the Chinook, will likely continue as long as Americans’ appetite for cocaine ensures its pro tability. While both sides strive to gain an advantage, the Coast Guard will continue to enforce US law at sea.
CAPT Daniel A. Laliberte, USCG (Ret.), served for more than thirty years in the US Coast Guard, during which time he participated in or provided intelligence support to the interdiction and repatriation of hundreds of undocumented Haitian migrants, and the seizure of numerous drug smuggling vessels and the arrest of their crews. He writes on historical topics involving the Revenue Marine Service and Coast Guard.
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Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum A ermath
by Tania June Sammons
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 Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum in Savannah, Georgia. Enjoy!
In the aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which took lives and homes, toppled trees, wiped out crops, and left millions of people without power in Florida, Georgia, and other Southeastern states, this photograph of “tugs trying to pull schooner o marsh, Brunswick, Ga” caught my eye.
At rst glance, the image suggests a timeless, peaceful coastal scene with a tugboat and a three-masted sailing ship anchored close to shore. A closer inspection, however, reveals not one but two tugboats with towlines secured to the schooner, not anchored but aground with a slight list to port. Figures can be seen on the ship, on one of the tugs, and onshore. A handwritten note above the photograph reads “Result of Hurricane & Tidal Wave 2d Oct 1898.”
On that autumn morning, Cumberland Island, a barrier island along the coast of Georgia, was hit by a hurricane with 130–135 mph winds (Category 4 on the Sa r-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale). A few days earlier on 28 September, the US Weather Bureau (West Indies station) reported “a cyclonic storm in the neighborhood of Puerto Rico.” It tracked along the north coast of Hispaniola and over the Bahamas, strengthening as it turned northward on 1 October. Weather advisories issued warnings to coastal communities between Key West and Norfolk. During the night, the storm made a westward turn and made landfall mid-morning on 2 October.1
“ e Great Storm,” as it came to be known, remains the strongest to hit the state of Georgia. e tempest caused extensive damage from St. Augustine to Charleston, with Fernandina, Florida, and Brunswick, Georgia, taking the brunt of the impact. “Fernandina was nearly destroyed,” and in Brunswick “nearly every business house and warehouse in the city was ooded … [and] the principal residence and business thoroughfares were 4 to 8 feet underwater.” Storm surge ooded Hutchinson Island on the Savannah River, inundating cotton warehouses, naval stores, wharves, sheds, and rice and cotton elds. Sailing vessels were damaged, sunk, and “blown into the marshes”—like this unidenti ed schooner. Communication and transportation lines also su ered. All telegraph lines between St. Augustine and Savannah were lost, as well as “many miles of railroad track washed away.”2 An estimated 179 people perished.
Taking in this image of a group of people trying to re oat a ship in the fallout of the 1898 hurricane conjures up palpable feelings of recovery that many of us along the coast and throughout the Southeast can relate to—even as I write this. Everyday life halts in the aftermath of major storms as we clean up and rebuild and endeavor to create a new normal. May this image serve as a reminder that we can—and will— carry on.
1 E. B. Garrio , “The West Indian Hurricane of September 29-October 2,” Monthly Weather Review, Vol. XXVI, No. 10, October 1898, 439-440.
2 Cumberland Island National Seashore, “The Great Storm,” Facebook, October 2, 2016; Ibid.
A ermath
“Taking in this image of a group of people trying to refloat a ship in the fallout of the 1898 hurricane conjures up palpable feelings of recovery that many of us along the coast and throughout the Southeast can relate to—even as I write this.”
The Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum is located in the historic William Scarbrough House in Savannah, Georgia. The museum features ship models, maritime paintings, and antiques, and is surrounded by the largest private garden in the city’s National Historic Landmark District.
41 Martin Luther King Jr., Blvd., Savannah, Georgia • www.shipso hesea.org
Tania June Sammons is the curator of the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum in Savannah, Georgia, and the author of Tania Talks Museums, a Substack newsle er.
GARFIELD’S PHOTOGRAPHIC STUDIO, BRUNSWICK, GA., UNTITLED, 1898, PHOTOGRAPH MOUNTED ON BOARD, IMAGE: 8 1/8 X 6 ¼ INCHES, BOARD: 10 X 12 INCHES.
A Maritime History of the United States INLAND WATERS & SHIPYARDS
by Charles Raskob Robinson1 illustrated by the American Society of Marine Artists
Since the colonial period, Americans have relied on maritime trade routes to connect with Europe and other parts of the world. American seaports developed into economic hubs and emerged as the nation’s largest and most important cities. With the development and growth of river-based maritime networks in the interior, inland ports grew in size, number, and importance. ese networks supported both commerce and communication across the country, fostering economic ties between regions.
While maritime historians and marine artists often focus on oceangoing shipping, inland waterways have played a vital role in shaping American history. In the 19th century, as watercraft propulsion changed from sail and
oar to steam-power, these waterways became the backbone of westward expansion, enabling Americans to explore new territories and driving the growth of industries in areas previously isolated from major markets.
All maritime history, of course, depends on the development of watercraft, and American shipbuilders rose to the task, producing a wide range of vessels—from riverboats to cargo ships, from gunboats to full-rigged warships—that propelled the nation’s commercial and military ambitions. ese waterways and the vessels built to navigate them stimulated commerce and growth, helping to shape cultural and economic patterns that would de ne the United States as a maritime power.
1 This article is based on the book, A Maritime History of the United States: The Creation and Defense of a Nation, wri en by Charles Raskob Robinson and designed by Len F. Tantillo.
Water
Street Shipyard, oil, 15 x 25 inches, by Len F. Tantillo
Given the importance of shipping in virtually every aspect of early colonial life, it is no wonder that shipbuilding was found throughout the northeast and especially in New England, where wood was plentiful and the topography of sloping shorelines lent itself to easily constructed shipways.
Despite its inland location, Albany, New York, was the site of numerous small shipyards along the Hudson River. To create this scene, Len Tantillo studied a 1797 Simeon DeWi map, which showed the location of a launchway and shipyard near the foot of Clinton Avenue. Tantillo is also a trained architect and historian and the author of several books looking at nearly 400 years of shipbuilding. In this painting, he has recreated a shipyard with a 65-foot hull nearly ready for launching, c. 1806.
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Stirrings, oil, 32 x 40 inches, by Lisa Egeli
Over the 3.8 billion years that life has evolved on this planet, the maritime environment has played an important role in creating the millions of species that inhabit land, freshwater, and ocean ecosystems. Human beings, one of those millions of species and a relatively new arrival (only 300,000 years ago), are only now beginning to appreciate how all species are intricately linked by their interactions with each other and the environments they live in. The vast marshes, estuaries, and wetlands are prime examples.
As the United States developed, so did its system of inland waterways, allowing further se lement of the interior. Inland communities situated on navigable rivers grew into cities and became important economically and politically. Albany, 135 miles north of New York City, is the oldest city in New York State and became its capital in 1797. Located on the tidal Hudson River and connected to the state’s extensive canal system, Albany is accessible by large vessels coming from Manha an and beyond. The New York State Canal System was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016.
The New York State Legislature authorized construction of the Erie Canal in 1817. It opened to vessel tra ic in 1825 and was an instant success, with toll revenues covering the state’s construction debt within its first year. Its peak year came in 1855, when 33,000 commercial shipments transited its waters. The canal’s construction was a landmark achievement in civil engineering. When completed, the 363mile man-made waterway was the second longest in the world (second to the Grand Canal in China).
The Albany, 1900, oil, 20 x 30 inches, by William G. Muller
The Old Erie Canal, 1895, oil, 24 x 36 inches, by Len F. Tantillo
Cincinnati, Queen City of the West, 1876, oil, 28 x 45 inches, by John Stobart (1930–2023)
Following the purchase of the Louisiana Territory in 1803, President Je erson authorized an expedition to explore the vast new territory and seek out new trade routes and partners. Led by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Second Lieutenant William Clark and guided by Sacagawea, that remarkable expedition (1804–1806) alerted Americans to opportunities in the west, made possible by inland rivers, such as the Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri, Columbia, and others. Some of these river towns, like Cincinnati on the Ohio River, grew into important centers of trade and commerce.
Ice Bound, oil, 32 x 52 inches, by Michael Blaser
Steam transformed commerce on inland waterways, beginning with shallow-dra watercra and paddlewheel propulsion, as seen here with sternwheelers in the “big freeze” of 1819 in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was not until the next century that locks and dams were introduced along the full length of the Ohio River. With a minimum depth in the river guaranteed, vessel owners began the switch from paddlewheel propulsion to the more powerful propeller. The last of the sternwheelers tried to survive by towing barges and became known as “towboats.” The name survived long a erward, even though the new propeller-driven boats “pushed” and did not “tow” their barges. These technological advancements vastly increased the amount of river tra ic, both day and night.
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Sacramento: Celebrated River Steamer Chrysopolis Leaving for San Francisco in 1870, oil, 20 x 32 inches, by John Stobart (1930–2023)
In 1839 John Su er established an agricultural community with a fort near the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers in California, about 90 miles northeast of San Francisco. When gold was discovered at a sawmill in the nearby foothills in 1848, the word spread east, prompting thousands of people to pack their bags and head west. Su er’s Fort rapidly grew into the town of Sacramento, which became a center of trade and commerce, known as the “River City.” In 1854 it became the capital of California. The city prospered and was selected as the terminus for the Pony Express (1860) and for the Transcontinental Railroad, when it was completed in 1869.
Set a Thief to Catch a Thief, a trompe l’oeil of oil and ink, 30 x 36 inches, by Alan Ryall.
The Slave Act of 1794 was the first legislation passed by Congress to outlaw American participation in the slave trade. It was followed by a slave-import ban in 1808. Enacting a law in Washington was one thing, enforcing the ban was another story altogether. At first, the US Navy’s e orts to interdict slave ships in international waters were minimal at best. It stepped up its patrols when President Monroe diverted slave-trade appropriations to the American Colonization Society (ACS). Formed in 1816 by white Americans, the group sought to send free and emancipated Black people to West Africa as an alternative to emancipation. Supported by an odd alliance of abolitionists and slavers, ACS started shipping them across the Atlantic in the early 1820s to form a colony that would eventually become the independent nation of Liberia. During the early years of the Liberian se lement, the Navy actively provided assistance, without which the colony likely could not have survived.
Compared to the e orts by Great Britain, the US Navy’s e ectiveness was negligible, and remained so, even a er the African Squadron was established in 1842. In 1858, the federal government decided to fortify both the African and Home Squadrons for slave-trade suppression. This produced significant results for the first time and gave the Navy a couple of years of active experience before entering into the Civil War in 1861.
During this era, slave ships were designed to carry a human cargo but not sacrifice speed, as they needed to be able to outrun patrols on the lookout for them. In this painting by author/ artist Alan Ryall, he depicts the plans, framed model, and images of the Fair Rosamond, which served in the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron to catch slavers on the high seas. Fair Rosamond was indeed a fast vessel, having started her career as the slave ship Dos Amigos, which had been caught o the coast of Africa by HMS Black Joke and taken into the service. Her lines were taken o during a drydock period in 1832.
The Lynx at Dry Dock, Gloucester Marine Railways, oil, 21 x 14 inches, by Charles Warren “CW” Mundy CW Mundy has always loved the working man’s harbor. His plein-air painting career began in the early 1990s as he traveled to harbors all over Europe, but it was closer to home that he came upon this scene in Gloucester, Massachuse s, in 2017. Hauled out at the Gloucester Marine Railway was the Lynx, a replica of a privateer of the same name that sailed in the War of 1812. The railway in Gloucester is one of the oldest continuously operated shipyards in the United States, dating back before the Civil War, and, up and until recently, used steam to pull vessels out of the water for repairs and maintenance. So excited to take his “plein air shot” at it, Mundy didn’t let a li le weather get in the way, spending much of his time painting in the rain. Despite the conditions, he produced a marvelous painting with which he was satisfied.
Charles Raskob 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. He is the curator of the current exhibition at the Pentagon, also titled A Maritime History of the United States: e Creation and Defense of a Nation, which will run through 2024.
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.
Generously donated by William G. Muller from his Personal Collection. Your Purchase of this Print Will Directly Support the N!tion!l M !ritime Historic!l Society!
New York Harbor During the Great Steamship Era, 1935
e legendary new French Liner Normandie steams out of port past the Manhattan skyline and Statue of Liberty, while the venerable Cunard Liner Aquitania arrives from Europe amid the bustling harbor tra c on a September late a ernoon in 1935.
Marine artist Bill Muller grew up on the Hudson River. As a young man, he served as quartermaster aboard SS Alexander Hamilton in the 1950s and went on to become a master painter, specializing in the steamboat era in the Hudson River and beyond. A founding director and Fellow of the American Society of Marine Artists, Muller serves as an advisor to the National Maritime Historical Society. Image size 1$ ⅛” x 28 ⅛” • Sheet size 24 ½” x 34” $200, includes free shipping (within the US, NYS add applicable sales tax)
To order this and other prints by William G. Muller visit www.seahistory.org.
We’ve met a lot of maritime professionals in Sea History, from historians to shipbuilders, artists to o shore racers, oceanographers to maritime a orneys, and more. The career most people think of when talking about maritime professionals is the ship captain. Even within that category, there are all kinds of captains. Some specialize in sailing vessels, others are tugboat captains, yacht skippers, etc. In this issue, we meet cruise ship captain Todd Burgman, whose path to the bridge started in childhood sailing in small boats on lakes and rivers near Omaha, Nebraska, hundreds of miles from the closest ocean.
Even though he’s been boating for most of his life, Todd admits that “never in [his] wildest dreams” did he think he would pursue a career on the water. Instead, he went to college and studied engineering and !nance. As a way to help pay for tuition, he enlisted in the US Coast Guard Reserve. As a reservist, he received training in seamanship and took classes in navigation and nautical studies. After graduation, he chose to ! nish his enlistment obligation in the Reserve versus the option of pursuing a career as a commissioned officer in the Coast Guard. Instead of a job on the water, he embarked on a career in !nance.
How did someone working in the ! nancial industry end up as a sea captain? Todd was working in a suit and tie by day and having fun sailing dinghies and keelboats during his time o . en he started volunteering on large sail training ships. He put in enough time onboard that he was able to sit for the
Capt. Burgman works for the Mein Schi cruise ship line, based in Germany. Its ships sail to destinations around the world. As the only American captain in the Mein Schi fleet, it helps that he is fluent in German.
licensing exams that would qualify him to run vessels up to 100 gross tons.1
During this time, he was living in New York City and working as a ! nance professor during the week and sailing as a schooner captain on the weekends. One year his employer allowed him time o for a sabbatical—perhaps a big mistake for them, but a great opportunity for Todd. He promptly headed to California and got a job as the !rst mate on a tall ship sailing along the West Coast. After six months, he was offered the captain’s job. He accepted and never looked back.
ere are two paths to becoming a big-ship captain: going to a fouryear maritime academy to get your start or taking the “hawsepiper” route.2 e maritime academy student graduates with a bachelor’s degree and a junior o cer’s license, plus the advantage of the school’s career placement o ce to help them get their !rst jobs. You can get there on
your own without going to an academy by getting a job as an unlicensed deckhand or other entry-level position and accumulating “sea time.” Mariners need documented time at sea before they can sit for the exams to get their !rst license or later upgrade their “ticket” so they can run larger vessels and in speci !c waters. ere are licenses that restrict you to inland waters, near coastal waters, and then “all oceans.” Todd logged many years of experience and also completed several training courses. He now holds an Unlimited Masters License, the highest-level license you can get. It allows the licensee to command any ship without limitations based on tonnage, power, length, trade, or type.
Captain Burgman: I consider myself extremely lucky to have found a career that I truly enjoy. I am in command of a large and modern cruise ship equipped with leading-edge technology. I lead an incredible team
of more than 1,000 shipmates from over forty di erent nations and get to visit beautiful and exciting destinations around the world.
Any cruise ship captain will tell you that the most enjoyable part of the job is actually driving the ship— maneuvering in and out of harbors and getting on and o the dock. e ship has one or two days at sea on a typical cruise, but a lot of the schedule has us coming into port early in the morning to give the passengers time onshore in di erent locations. My typical day begins with a wakeup call at 5 a&. By 5:30 I am on the bridge where I receive a status report, followed by a brie!ng with the team about navigating the ship into the harbor and alongside the berth. At 6 a&, the pilot comes aboard, and we are usually tied up by 7 a&.
While Todd is the captain of the ship and thus is ultimately responsible for everything and everyone onboard, he tells us that maneuvering a large
1 Gross tonnage measures a vessel’s internal volume. It does not refer to a vessel’s weight.
2 A hawsepipe is the iron or steel pipe that passes through the hull through which the anchor chain is led. A hawsepiper is a slang term used to describe a ship’s o icer who came up through the ranks vs. having gone to a maritime academy.
Todd is a versatile captain, as comfortable on the bridge of a square-rigged ship as he is on a modern cruise ship. Above is the 360-foot barque Sea Cloud; Todd served as her captain for several years before his move to Mein Schi
vessel is most de!nitely a team e ort. e bridge is manned by senior and junior o cers, and a pilot is there as well while they are making their approach to the dock or departing. Teams of deckhands are stationed at the bow and stern to handle mooring lines, and security personnel constantly watch for anything that might pose a problem, such as obstructions in the water or on the pier.
Captain Burgman: Navigating and maneuvering the ship is a critical part of the job. e captain is legally and morally responsible for the safe navigation of the vessel, and for the safety and well-being of everyone on board. But the administrative aspect of the job is also extremely important. A large cruise ship is like a oating city. We have our own power generation plant and water treatment plant, numerous restaurants and bars, a !tness center, swimming pools, a spa, a hair salon, a laundry and dry cleaner, a shopping mall, a basketball court, an art gallery, a hospital, a waste-management facility, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, tailors, !nancial controllers, IT experts, etc.
Once in port, the captain might meet with the senior management team, conduct safety drills, review and approve upcoming cruise tracks with the navigation o cer, and perform various inspections throughout the ship. In port and underway, the captain also trains and mentors junior o cers. At sea, Todd welcomes guests in the theater for the ! rst evening show, hosts cocktail parties, and
conducts a Q & A session with passengers. He tells us that he typically o ciates at least one wedding per cruise!
Cruise ship captains rotate on a schedule where they are onboard three months and then o three months. While they are onboard, it is a consuming role. Todd works a 10-hour day and is on duty seven days a week.
Captain Burgman: It’s not all work and no play on board. I’m a !tness fanatic and enjoy running and cycling, which I can do both on and o the ship. On a typical cruise in the Mediterranean, for example, I might get to do some road biking in Mallorca, a run in Marseilles, some mountain biking on Corsica, and another run in Ibiza. I also work out a few times each week in the extremely well-equipped !tness center, and I never have to go out for entertainment. We sail with musicians, dancers, singers, comedians, etc. It’s
like living in a 5-star hotel. I don’t cook, clean, shop, do laundry, etc., and the food on board is amazing.
When Todd is o for three months at a time, his time is his own. He is not one to lie around the house, taking advantage of those long vacations to pursue his hobbies, like long-distance cycling trips across the United States and Europe. He also backpacks, sails in smaller boats, and even volunteers as a captain of a squarerigged tall ship.
It is a pretty great life, but one he has worked hard to achieve. And it isn’t for everyone. Not everyone can be gone from home for three months at a time on a regular basis. If you are interested in travel, love ships and the ocean, and can handle the pressure of being in charge of a oating city of sorts and all the people onboard, then it is entirely doable, whether you start out at a maritime academy for college or take the hawsepiper route.
An avid cyclist, Captain Burgman brings his bike onboard the ship, and he has cycled all over the world.
ANIMALS IN SEA HISTORY by
Richard J. King
.Weak, exhausted, starved, thirsty, and with some of his men su !ering from scurvy, Captain Thomas Bilton and his nine crewmembers shipped their oars and dri ed up onto the beach of Anguilla, an island in the eastern Caribbean. It was 1707, and they had sailed across the Atlantic from Portugal, nearing the coast of Virginia when a gale blew their ship back to the open sea, almost to Bermuda. Their ship began to take on water and then sank, leaving the crew with just the ship’s tender to serve as a lifeboat. When they stumbled onto that beach in Anguilla 31 days a er abandoning their ship, the sailors were likely unaware of what sharp-toothed dangers might lurk in the shallows. They certainly could not have
guessed that their story would lead to a small reptilian mystery more than three centuries later.
The local people of Anguilla took them in and nursed them back to health. When the captain
finally made it back to England, he published his logbook as Captain Bilton’s Journal of His Unfortunate Voyage (1715). At the end of the book is a section titled, “Prospect of the Isle of Anguilla,” with a description of the landscape and accounts of several “strange Fourfooted Beasts.”
Of all the animals he described, Bilton wrote, “the crocodile is the most remarkable.” Crocodiles, “hideous to look on,” could grow to be eighteen feet long, he said. Their teeth could cut a person in two and the scales on their back and head were so hard that a musket ball barely made “an impression.” The captain learned to recognize their smell when out of the water, and he observed how the crocs hunted by floating as still as
INTERNET ARCHIVE
Anguilla
(le ) Illustration from The English Empire in America by Robert Burton, 1729 edition. (right) Cover page from Captain Bilton’s published journal of his voyage.
a log. The Unfortunate Voyage concluded: “There are abundance of these monstrous Crocodiles in these Islands that come in great Numbers in the Night to the Places where the Tortoises are killed, to feed on the Entrails le by Fishermen, who carry great wooden Leavers to keep them o!, and o kill them by breaking their Back therewith.”
The mystery is that there are simply no crocodiles in Anguilla today. In fact, there are no resident crocodiles anywhere in the eastern Caribbean. Did Captain Bilton make the whole thing up?
To begin to answer this, know that biologists recognize four species of crocodile living along the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean today. The American crocodile, el cocodrilo, is the most widely distributed of crocodilians in the Western Hemisphere. It also grows the largest—some males are more than twenty-two feet long. This species of crocodile is the most comfortable in brackish and saltwater environments.
American crocodiles are skilled swimmers and can dive for more than an hour underwater on a single gulp of air. A recent study found that American crocodiles in 2012 and 2018 likely crossed more than 430 miles of open water in the Caribbean Sea, in the ocean long enough that at least one arrived with barnacles on its skin.
Today, American crocodiles live on the larger islands of the Caribbean, such as Hispaniola
(Haiti and the Dominican Republic), which is only 300 miles west of Anguilla. American crocodiles will eat almost anything—fish, crabs, birds, and rodents. They also feast on turtles, whose populations in the Caribbean were once far larger than they are today. With the strongest bite in the animal kingdom—even more powerful than a great white shark— crocodiles can crunch right through a smaller sea turtle’s shell.
It’s certainly plausible that American crocodiles once lived on Anguilla and the other islands of the eastern Caribbean. Records from early European pirates, explorers, and naturalists describe crocodilians in other parts of the Caribbean, and they record their own reckless hunting and decimation of crocodile, shark, and turtle populations. It’s also possible that the original cultures of the region, such as the Taino and the Kalinago communities, who likely numbered in the millions across the Caribbean islands when the Spanish arrived, may have eradicated or at least severely reduced crocodile numbers in some locations.
So, Captain Bilton’s account of the presence and behavior of crocodiles on Anguilla was probably pre y reliable then, right?
Well, no.
Captain Bilton’s publisher in England, perhaps finding the journal of their ordeal too brief and not worthy of the six-pence sticker price, shamelessly copied this natural history section verbatim from another book, The English Empire in America (1685), by Robert Burton. This earlier volume had lovely illustrations, including one of a crocodile.
So then, Robert Burton must have visited Anguilla and le this important historical account of the island and its crocs. Right?
Nope.
Robert Burton was the pen name for editor Nathaniel Crouch, who stole the crocodile description from a 1666 book titled, The History of the Caribby-Islands, originally published in French. This
Imagine staring these chompers in the face a er 31 days in a makeshi lifeboat. This beauty is an American crocodile in the Caribbean, photographed in 2019.
account did not place the crocodiles in Anguilla, but more broadly in the Caribbean, and more specifically in the Cayman Islands, a small island group with a wellknown history of turtles and crocodiles. The name Cayman itself is derived from an early European (or maybe even African) word for crocodile.
When asked about historical crocodiles living in Anguilla, expert Frank Mazzo i of the University of Florida told me, “Maybe yes, but no reliable records.”
Alas, the work of the environmental historian is never done. To find out if Captain Bilton and his crew would have had to cower
away from crocodiles when they crawled up the beach in 1707, we need more research into Indigenous art and culture histories, studies of fossils and archaeological sites, and more reading of colonial narratives and sailor stories. Knowing where crocodiles once lived before human hunting and the loss of much of their habitat helps modern conservationists work toward healthier coastlines and can help crocodile populations recover. Once o! icially “endangered” in US waters, the American crocodile is today listed as “threatened” and protected. The species seems to be recovering in many areas of its current range.
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 18 years of this column!
Sea History for Kids is sponsored by the Henry L. & Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation
by Captain Michael Rutstein
Tall Ships America’s new executive director, Stuart Gilfillen, previously spent 13 years as director of education with the US Sailing Association. He spoke to Marlinspike contributor Michael Rutstein this fall a er just two months on the job.
Marlinspike: Stuart, COVID was a game-changer for the entire sail training industry under your predecessor, and the organization had to pivot just as much as its member vessels. What is Tall Ships America these days? What is its mission?
Stuart Gilfillen: COVID forced organizations to take a hard look at who they are to rethink how they operate, but a lot of opportunities came out of that. At US Sailing, we pivoted from in-person training to online training. We really didn’t have any other options! But that allowed us to connect with new audiences and to deliver training and education to people we just hadn’t seen before.
To answer the second question: the mission is still encouraging characterbuilding through sail training. We’re promoting sail training to the North American public and supporting education under sail. Education is at the forefront, though we’re also looking at how to engage with new audiences.
Take the Tall Ships Challenge: it’s an opportunity to engage with over 100,000 people every year. How do we make sure that not only do those people have a great experience during the event, but that they also become part of our community going forward? How do we make them members? How do we force-multiply? We’re going to collect information and potentially provide free memberships to people attending the Challenge events. We’re going to communicate with them to make sure that they stay engaged, that they can ! nd a tall ship in their local area, or they can ! nd a related experience in a di erent place.
At the Tall Ships Challenge in St. Petersburg, for example, my predecessor collaborated with one of the local newspapers, providing supplementary materials that teachers could use. It had information about the ships, tall ships in general, and information about the ports. All of that stu ties in with school systems.
Marlinspike: It feels like we are experiencing a downturn in demand for longer-format sail-training programs— semester programs, gap years, and the like. Is education under sail evolving toward shorter programs?
Gilfillen: Yes, individuals are signing up for shorter activities along the lines
of what you described. ey’re looking to do a day sail, a week, something shorter, just because of what else is occurring in their lives. However, the longer-term experiential opportunities have huge value. From a Tall Ships America standpoint, how do we get people to the type of program that they’re looking for? I’m less concerned with what that program is, as long as we’re able to help people ! nd it.
Marlinspike: Before COVID, Tall Ships America had established a regular rotation of Tall Ships Challenge events, alternating between the Great Lakes, the West, East, and Gulf Coasts. Will that continue to be the case?
Stuart Gilfillen
Gilfillen: Yes, but if there’s an opportunity for us to do something that will engage new audiences that’s outside of what we’ve done, we’re going to look at that.
Marlinspike: I’ve always enjoyed Tall Ship America’s annual conferences, connecting with other sailors and other programs and renewing old friendships. Are you still committed to that big national conference, now that your regional meetings have become a regular thing?
Gilfillen: Yes! And just to be clear, I am not saying that we’re changing the Challenges. It may sound like a weird analogy, but if you look at what the NFL has done, they haven’t changed their core product. ey’ve looked at ways to expand upon it. How do we re! ne and improve our o erings, rather than make massive changes to them? And as far as the conference goes, I could see us moving the dates, perhaps. We’re relatively close to a number of other conferences that occur at that time of year. And again, how do we engage with new audiences? I could see us trying to ! nd partners that have similar goals in a way that would allow us to make the conference a little bit bigger or change the dynamic of it.
Marlinspike: What was it about your experience that you think led to your hiring for this position? What is the Tall Ships America board looking for you to accomplish during your tenure?
Gilfillen: I think coming from a sailing background—although not through tall ships—and having some connections in a di erent sector of the industry were important. I spent a little bit of time as a kid on the schooner Adventure out of Gloucester and fell in love with it. I’ve done some donor management and fundraising as well, which
is another thing that the review committee was looking for. But at the end of the day, I pride myself on the ability to identify new opportunities and to connect the dots. ere’s a lot of history and success that’s happened with
Tall Ships. How do we leverage those successes to provide new opportunities? My focus is to make sure that we support the ships as best we can, so that they literally and !guratively can stay a oat.
Tall Ships America’s mission is to encourage character building and seamanship through sail training, promote sail training to the North American public, and support education under sail. Learn more at www.tallshipsamerica.org.
In July a replica vessel based on a type used about 4,000 years ago was successfully sailed o the coast of Abu Dhabi. Shipwrights specializing in historical replicas worked closely with researchers to build the boat using locally sourced raw materials and traditional hand tools, using techniques that date back to 2100 BCE. !e materials used in its construction were described on an ancient clay tablet. !e outer hull is made of 15 tons of reeds that were soaked, stripped of leaves, crushed, and tied into bundles using rope spun from date palm ber. !e bundles were then lashed to a wooden frame and coated in bitumen, a waterproo ng technique used by ancient shipbuilders in the region. Its sail is made of goat hair. !e Magan boat project is a collaboration between Zayed National Museum (Abu Dhabi, UAE), Zayed University, and New York University Abu Dhabi, to expand understanding of the UAE’s maritime heritage and Bronze Age trade. ! is type of vessel was called a “Magan boat” in ancient texts, using the ancient name for the UAE and part of Oman. !e team of more than 20 specialists, including engineers and
Mystic Knotwork
archaeologists, designed the vessel based on ancient illustrations and descriptions, and guided by a naval engineer using hydrostatic analysis to calculate the dimensions for seaworthiness given an estimated cargo, boat, and crew. More than 20 sailors were required to handle the sail and rigging without block and tackle, which was not a Bronze-Age tool. !e sea trials were carried out over two days, accompanied by the UAE coast guard. !e boat sailed approximately 50 nautical miles and reached speeds of up to 5.6 knots. Marwan Abdullah Al-Marzouqi, one of the two captains for the sea trials, described his impressions of the experience: “When we rst towed the boat out from the jetty, we were very careful. I was very aware it was made from only reeds, ropes, and wood. !ere are no nails, no screws—no metal at all—and I was afraid of damaging her, but as we got underway, I soon realized that this is a strong boat. I was surprised by how this big boat, weighed down with a heavy ballast, moved so smoothly on the sea.” !e boat will be displayed at Zayed National Museum, when it is opened to the public, expected in 2025. (www.zu.ac.ae, www.zayednationalmuseum.ae/en/, www.nyuad.nyu.edu/en)
… On 11 October, the Biden-Harris administration announced the designation of the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, the nation’s 17th NMS. Comprising 4,543 square miles of coastal and o shore waters along 116 miles of California’s central coast, it is the third largest in the NMS system. Among the area’s nationally signi cant natural, historical, archaeological, and cultural resources are kelp forests, rocky reefs, sandy beaches, underwater mountains, and more than 200 NOAA-documented shipwrecks. “NOAA recognizes and celebrates this unique area’s modern-day and historic cultural connections to Indigenous peoples. Tribal and Indigenous communities will be co-stewards, as informed by their values, knowledge, and traditions,” said NOAA Administrator Richard Spinrad. “ !e sanctuary designation will support and conserve the area’s rich biodiversity, create new opportunities for research and economic development, including recreation and tourism, and co-exist with renewable energy, sheries, and other sustainable ocean uses.” !e Northern Chumash Tribal Council (NCTC) led a decades-long campaign to protect the Central California coastline, submerged
PHOTO BY EMILY HARRIS, ZAYED
Magan boat
cultural sites, ocean habitat, and abundant wildlife held sacred to the Chumash Peoples for millennia. “ ! is recognition is a crucial moment for our community,” said Violet Sage Walker, chair of the NCTC. “It will not only raise awareness of the Chumash People around the world, but will also honor the legacy of my late father and a $ rm our commitment to the stewardship of our land.” !e e ort was initiated in 2015 under the leadership of Walker’s father, the late Chief Fred Collins. !e NCTC hosted a gathering on Indigenous Peoples’ Day at Dinosaur Caves Park in Pismo Beach to celebrate the creation of the rst tribal-nominated NMS. !e designation will take e ect following 45 days of continuous session of the US Congress, anticipated in December 2024. (www.northernchumash.org; www.sanctuaries.noaa.gov)
… At the 85th annual meeting of the Sons & Daughters of Pioneer Rivermen, held in Marietta, Ohio, the group announced its intention to establish, in partnership with Mountwest College of Huntington, West Virginia, the Inland Waterways
and
This marine protected area contains kelp forests, surfgrass beds, and rocky reefs surrounded by sandy seafloor. It also hosts an abundance of diverse marine life.
Maritime Academy !e campus of the Academy and a “hub of learning, job development, and innovation,” set to open in 2026 in Sardis, Ohio, will feature two pilothouse simulators (one for instruction and one for the visiting public), classroom spaces, and 2,200
square feet of exhibit space to display the Sons & Daughters’ collection of river artifacts. SDPR board member Taylor Abbot, who spearheaded the project, remarked: “ ! is initiative will give individuals in this region, in Appalachia in particular, the opportunity to build a career in the maritime industry, which will provide them with the skills to become employee-ready for towboat and river eeting companies.” !e SDPR was founded in 1939 to carry on the legacy of pioneer rivermen and that of the Mississippi River system. (SDPR www.riverhistory.org ) …
PHOTO BY ROBERT SCHWEMMER, NOAA
Aerial view of Government Point, located within Point Conception State Marine Reserve
Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary.
Graphic rendering of the Inland Waterways Maritime Academy, set for completion in 2026.
e Maryland Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) has selected the next three sites for large-scale oyster restoration in Maryland waters. !e MDNR will conduct oyster restoration and monitoring in designated sanctuaries in the Nanticoke River, in Hoopers Strait, and in Herring Bay. A four-point plan was presented to the Oyster Advisory Commission in October. As required by the 2014 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement, the MDNR has completed initial restoration in four oyster sanctuaries and will complete the fth, in Manokin River, in 2025. “ !ese three large-scale
restoration sanctuaries represent a new chapter for oyster restoration in Maryland,” Department of Natural Resources Secretary Josh Kurtz said. !e plan is designed to help guide future oyster sanctuary restoration and management in the state and includes monitoring the rst ve sanctuaries, evaluating underperforming sites, continuing and expanding oyster restoration projects, and developing strategies to connect oyster restoration to watershed restoration. !e population of Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) is still a fraction of what it once was due to historic overharvesting, disease-related mortality,
habitat degradation, and reduced water quality. !e sanctuary areas, closed to harvesting except on aquaculture lease sites, allow oysters to strengthen the breeding population and build reefs, providing crucial habitat for other Chesapeake Bay species. !e Maryland restoration e orts have been bearing fruit; as of last year, the rst ve oyster restoration sanctuaries have been exhibiting promising oyster density. Harris Cree, the rst Maryland sanctuary to be addressed, is considered fully and successfully restored. In the Manokin River, it was found that supplemental hatchery-reared juvenile oysters would not be needed, freeing up $1.8 million to be redirected to other aspects of the program. (Maryland Department of Natural Resources, 580 Taylor Ave., Annapolis, MD; www.dnr.maryland. gov) … e Texas Transportation Commission has approved $400 million in Ship Channel Improvement Revolving Fund (SCIRF) loans for improvements to ensure that Texas ship channels are prepared to accommodate larger vessel sizes. A loan of up to $357 million was approved in August to begin deepening the Sabine Neches Waterway from its current depth of 40 feet up to 48 feet. !e total price tag for the project is estimated at $1.8 billion, with $600 million coming from the Sabine-Neches Navigation District (SNND). ! is waterway supports two US strategic military ports. !e second loan of up to $33 million will assist the Brownsville Navigation District (BND) in deepening the Brazos Island Harbor Channel from 42 feet to its authorized depth of 52 feet, a project with an estimated cost of $139 million, of which BND will be responsible for $71.5 million. ! e improvement will increase export capability and increase access to clean energy. Combined, it is predicted that the two projects will create 336,800 additional jobs. (www.txdot.gov) …
Chesapeake
The Sabine-Neches Waterway is the lifeline that drives the economy in Southeast Texas, generating more than $10 billion in economic impact and more than 100,000 jobs.
e Bu alo and Erie County Naval & Military Park has received a $10 million grant from the State of New York to fund long-term repairs and preservation work on the museum ships USS e Sullivans (DD-537) and USS Croaker (SSK-246) to ensure both vessels remain xtures on Bu alo’s waterfront. Governor Kathy Hochul made the announcement in August: “USS e Sullivans is a tribute to our heroes—to a family that lost all ve of its sons in the Paci c, and to the 400,000 Americans who died ghting in World War II. As an iconic and recognizable symbol on Bu alo’s waterfront, my administration is committed to helping rebuild and restore this national treasure and symbol of perseverance.” In addition to the state grant, the organization will receive $1 million from County of Erie, $1 million from State Senator Sean Ryan, and $500,000 from the o$ce of NYS Assembly Leader Crystal D. Peoples-Stokes. The money committed from NYS Senator Chuck Schumer’s o$ce ($7.5 million)
will also be available. !e museum will provide expert consultation to the City of Bu alo as plans are made to move the two vessels into dry dock in September 2025. !e restoration work will include: reinforcing the steel hull at the water line of both e Sullivans and Croaker, either with steel plating replacement or epoxy coatings; full replacement of individual framings or
longitudinals if they are found to be too compromised; anode\cathodic protection; the inspection and repacking of packing glands and propeller shaft stabilization, and repainting the outsides of each vessel. USS e Sullivans, a Fletcher-class destroyer, was named for the ve brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, who died aboard USS Juneau (CL-52) when that ship was sunk in
USS The Sullivans (DD-537)
battle in 1942. Commissioned in 1943, she shot down eight Japanese planes, bombarded Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and rescued American pilots and crews from burning or sinking vessels in the Paci c theater of World War II. !e destroyer also saw action during the Korean War and Cuban Missile Crisis and was decommissioned in 1965 with eleven battle stars for meritorious performance. In April 2022, e Sullivans made national news when she partially sank at the dock from a severe breach in the hull. !e ship was repaired and reopened to the public in August 2022. !e Gato -class submarine Croaker was commissioned in 1944 and conducted six war patrols in the Paci c theater. She was later converted to a “hunterkiller” con guration with added sonar, radar, and quieting capabilities to serve in the Cold War. Decommissioned in 1971, Croaker was acquired by the museum in 1988. She is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. !e third ship in the museum’s eet on the Bu alo waterfront is the Clevelandclass guided missile cruiser Little Rock (CLG-4). (1 Naval Park Cove, Bu alo, NY; www.bu alonavalpark.org )
e San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park has been awarded a $102,282,000 grant from the Great American Outdoors Act Legacy Restoration Fund to rehabilitate the Hyde Street Pier and the Eureka ferryboat. At more than 60 years old, the pier is no longer structurally sound enough to safely accommodate the thousands of visitors who come each year to view the museum’s eet of historic vessels: Alma, Balclutha, Eureka, Hercules, and C. A. ayer. Irreparable parts of the timber framing will be replaced with a new concrete structure,
and outdated water, re, and electrical systems will be replaced. !e eet as a whole will receive various levels of repair work. Some vessels will only need some basic maintenance or a coat of paint; others will need more substantial work, in particular the steam ferry Eureka. In addition to work on the hull, Eureka’s deck will be repaired and her electrical and safety systems will be updated. !e pier was closed to visitors on 4 November, and at press time the museum was in the process of planning and executing the relocation of its eet to nearby Mare Island in Vallejo, where the shipyard work will take place. Once the vessels have been moved, the public will have opportunities to see them at the new location, but the timing and level of access will depend on the condition of the ships and sta $ ng availability. Hyde Street Pier was built in 1922 to support Golden Gate Ferry Company automobile ferries between San Francisco and Sausalito. !e ferry route was considered part of US 101 until the opening of the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937. !e museum’s historic eet has made its home at the pier since 1963. (www.nps.gov/safr) … e wreck of USS Stewart (DD-224), a US Navy destroyer that saw service under both the American and Japanese $ags, was located in August. !e expedition, a collaboration between
Hyde Street Pier
Ocean In nity, the Air/Sea Heritage Foundation, SEARCH Inc., NOAA’s O$ce of National Marine Sanctuaries, and the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC), found the remains of the “Ghost Ship of the Paci c” within the boundaries of the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary (NMS), o the coast of northern California. !e ship had been deliberately sunk on 24 May 1946 in a naval exercise. !e destroyer was launched on 4 March 1920 and within two years joined the Asiatic Fleet; she would go on to serve in the Paci c after the outbreak of World War II. She was damaged during combat in February 1942 and sent to dry dock on Java for repairs, where she became trapped when enemy forces seized the island. !e Japanese repaired the ship and assigned her the name Patrol Boat No. 102, putting her into service for the Imperial Japanese Navy. Farranging Allied pilots were puzzled when they spied the American destroyer operating in Japanese-controlled waters. After the war, the Stewart was recommissioned into the US Navy and towed to San Francisco, where she was sunk for use as a target ship. !e wreck of the Stewart was identi ed as an ideal subject for an expedition to test and develop Ocean In nity technology and equipment. !e collaborative team was formed by—and permission obtained from—the Cordell Bank NMS and the US Navy. On 1 August 2024, they deployed three HUGIN 6000 autonomous underwater vehicles equipped with highresolution synthetic aperture sonar (HiSAS) and multibeam echosounder systems. !e data collected from their survey of the sea oor revealed the location of the destroyer. !e team returned to the site to conduct a high-resolution sonar survey and perform a detailed visual inspection via a camera-equipped remote-operated vehicle (ROV). USS Stewart is reported to be “largely intact” and “nearly upright on the sea oor.”
HiSAS image of the USS Stewart wreck site
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.
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.
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.
FOR SALE—SIX ORIGINAL STATION BILLS FROM SS UNITED STATES, Signed by Captains L. J. Alexanderson & J. Anderson. Station Bills for every department and crewmem-ber: 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.
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: 917 287-8339 or email chrysedawn@gmail.com.
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CUSTOM SHIP MODELS, HALF HULLS Free Catalog. Spencer White, 4223 Chestnut Dr., Center Valley, PA 18034.
OWN A PIECE OF AUTHENTIC AMERICAN NAVAL HISTORY & SUPPORT THE AMERICA’S MILITARY AND 1ST RESPONDERS MUSEUM. Brand new, manufactured in 1941, 1942, & 1943: WWII-era US Navy ships’ solid brass 10-inch Bearing Circle in its original wooden case. !e Bearing Circle was placed on top of a magnetic compass or gyro repeater and used to measure bearings of terrestrial objects. $150 each— includes shipping in the USA, To order call 614 205-0357 or email davehindsusmc@yahoo.com.
NATIONAL PARKS PLAYING CARDS. Many of America’s National Parks are represented on these cards with interesting facts and images. www.ArcturusLLC.net
PRESIDENTS PLAYING CARDS All 46 US presidents are represented on these playing cards with interesting facts and quotes. www.presidentsplayingcards.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.
FINE ART PRINTS OF SEA ROVERS & BUCCANEERS by award-winning ASMA Signature artist Don Maitz. Visit: www.paravia.com/DonMaitz.
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 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 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.
COLLECTING and STUDYING SHIP PORTRAITS by James Shuttleworth. Ship portraits, paintings, signal codes, sea flags, interpretation, research, sources. Hardcover $69, $6 S&H. Email Jimpinxit@gmail.com, or send check to James Shuttleworth, 2625 Pepperdale, Rowland Heights, CA 91748.
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!e data and images collected from the site will be shared with both NOAA’s Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary and the Naval History and Heritage Command to support their management and stewardship of the site. Dr. James Delgado, expedition member and Senior Vice President of SEARCH, remarked: “USS Stewart represents a unique opportunity to study a wellpreserved example of early 20th-century destroyer design.” (www.oceaninnity.com, www.airseaheritage.org , www.searchinc.com) … Maritime historians with the Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association have located the sites of two 19 thcentury shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. On 12 May, a team including Brendon Baillod, Bob Jaeck, and Kevin Cullen located the remains of the schooner Margaret A. Muir o Algoma, Wisconsin, and on 13 September, Baillod and Jaeck found the remains of the steam tug John Evenson !e threemasted schooner Margaret A. Muir was built in 1872 in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, by the Hanson & Scove shipyard for Captain David Muir. She sailed the Great Lakes carrying grain and other
cargo for 21 years. On 30 September 1893, the schooner was carrying a cargo of bulk salt from Bay City, Michigan, when her crew encountered a storm underway and sank approximately four miles from shore. !e captain’s dog was lost, but the crew managed to escape in the lifeboat. !e 54-foot John Evenson was lost in June 1895 while assisting the steam barge I. Watson Stephenson, towing a chain of schooner barges. Evenson’ s captain was crossing the larger vessel’s bow
when she was struck by the steamer and sank instantly. Four of the tug’s ve crewmen were rescued, but reman Martin Boswell, who had been working below deck, was lost in the accident. Divers have been searching for the wreck for four decades; at one point a local dive club even o ered a cash reward to anyone who discovered the wreck site, but her location remained unknown until Baillod and Jaeck spotted the tug’s boiler early on 13 September. !ey deployed a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), which immediately sent back images of the tug’s propeller, steam engine, and boiler. Wisconsin State Underwater Archaeologist Tamara !omsen was noti ed and arrived on the scene the next day with diver Zach Whitrock to survey and document the site, creating a 3D-photogrammetry model incorporating more than 2,000 high-resolution images. !e site will be nominated to the National Register of Historic Places, and it is expected the site will be made available for sport divers to visit.
Ex-USS Stewart being sunk as a target on 24 May 1946. The destroyer had already been bombed by aircra$ and is now under fire by the 40mm singlegun mount in the foreground.
Wreck site of the steam tug John Evenson in Lake Michigan.
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Billy Waters is Dancing: Or, How a Black Sailor Found Fame in Regency Britain by Mary Shannon (Yale University Press, 2024, 373pp, illus notes, biblio, index, ISBN 978-0-30026768-6; $38hc)
Only some fty pages of this exhaustively researched and compassionate biography directly concern the sea, the period from 1811–12 when Billy Waters, born in New York into slavery sometime around 1776–78, served in the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars—at the time, one way for a man in his position to gain his freedom. at said, this period is central to the story of Waters’s short but spirited life; he was only about 45 when he died, seemingly of exhaustion and poverty. Mary Shannon, a university lecturer in the UK and expert on 19thcentury British culture, appreciates this whilst also recovering a forgotten social gure of some note, who became London’s most famous street performer in the dozen years before his death.
For the likes of Waters, the American Revolution changed little. Slavery continued to be a reality in New York State well into the 1840s. Life for Black Americans, both enslaved and free, was precarious, yet seafaring did o er a path forward. Most likely, Waters rst went to sea in an American merchant ship in British waters before volunteering, or being impressed, to serve into the Royal Navy. Whatever happened, once he was there, he made the most of the opportunity.
Soon noticed for his seafaring skills when he joined the 20-gun frigate HMS Ganymede at the end of 1811, he quickly became an able seaman and a “quarter gunner”—a prestigious role as one of a four-man gun crew and part of an elite in a Royal Naval ghting vessel in this era. Waters was one of a quartet of men from the United States aboard Ganymede, and possibly not the only African American. is was far from
unusual; Black sailors often served in the Royal Navy in the 18th and 19th centuries for a variety of reasons. His time in the service was brief. ree months after joining, he fell 100 feet from the main yard, broke both his legs and, in his captain’s words, “severely wounded himself.”
e accident transformed Waters’s life. His right leg was amputated (without anesthetic) onboard the ship. He survived and a month later was transferred to the Royal Navy’s state-of-theart Haslar Hospital in Portsmouth, where he fought o infection. Leaving Haslar in June 1812, he was granted a pension for life of £20 per year, provided he did not beg for a living.
To earn money, the indomitable Waters reinvented himself as a street performer. Wearing colorful clothes, using bawdy humor, playing a ddle, and dancing and “twirling” on his peg leg, he soon became one of the sights of Georgian London. In the end, this fame led to his downfall when the authorities decided to prosecute him for begging. Faced with prison, he chose to enter a workhouse and died shortly afterwards in 1823.
Shannon’s book, if somewhat replete with thesis-like jargon, reads well and is part of an academic-led initiative in the UK today to retrieve Black history. In Billy Waters’s case, this e ort climaxed in 2023 on the 200th anniversary of his death, when his contribution to black history in Great Britain was recognized in an “Early Day Motion” in the House of Commons.
R$b&n K n&()t London, England
Bucked in the Yarn: e Unique Heritage of Coker Canvas by Terry Stevens (Gra eg Ltd., Wales, UK, 2024, 128pp, illus, gloss, biblio, ISBN 9781-80258-697-8; $33hc)
Retting and heckling, warp and weft, ds and bench hooks. A book in which these terms are used throughout is my kind of book. But I like reading about maritime artisans and support industries, speci cally sailmaking, sailcloth manufacturing, and the tools of the trade. Disclaimer: I am a former
More than a cruising guide, Michael Dodd shares historical perspectives on 23 Chesapeake ports.
Available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble
sailmaker, and I wrote a master’s thesis on 19th-century sailmaking, so my geeking out about this book might not be everyone’s response. For the record, “bucked in the yarn,” was something I had not heard of before. It refers to the process of steeping yarn in lye and potash before it was woven into cloth to strengthen it, thus making the nished product more durable. Would anyone else nd value in reading this book? Absolutely. Anyone interested in sociology, geography (both human and physical), history, travel and tourism, villages in the UK, and maritime history in the Age of Sail will nd it of interest.
Bucked in the Yarn takes a look at the history of East, West, and North Coker, three small villages in southwestern England that for 300 years produced some of the most soughtafter sailcloth by admirals, yachtsmen, shermen, and merchant shipowners. is is a region where the soil is ideal for growing ax and for processing it for use in sailcloth. e process is called “retting” and requires a landscape and climate suited for laying stalks of ax across elds or in streams and letting dampness and time ret (or rot) the stalks, breaking down the pectins that bind the bers together. ere is a lot more to the process of turning plants into sailcloth, but you can read about that in the book.
During the Age of Sail, acquiring quality sailcloth in staggering amounts of yardage was a priority for any maritime nation. HMS Victory, for example, required four acres of canvas to rig her, and for long voyages she typically left port with either a full spare set of sails or enough cloth to make them underway. at was just for one ship. e Royal Navy eet in the Age of Sail was immense, and with naval warfare almost a constant during this era, demand for sailcloth was high most of the time. How Coker canvas became the standard against which other cloth was
measured is the story of home industry, local traditions, and a community that embraced the process and the livelihood it brought. Flax and hemp had been grown in the region since the 14th century. By the 1700s, Coker-made sailcloth was known well beyond the local area. It was even in demand long after the transition from sail to steam (and later diesel) for use in early aircraft wings, army tents, and tank covers, and more.
Bucked in the Yarn is not a treatise on sailcloth manufacturing, however. e book was written by East Coker native Professor Terry Stevens, a tourism consultant whose curiosity about place names and local traditions inspired him to research this history. While it is a very local story, it includes major names in history, such as William Dampier, Lord Nelson, T. S. Elliot, and others. For tourists curious about the region, it covers historic sites and restored historic buildings—places you can still visit.
In addition to the informative and well-written text, the book is beautifully laid out with about a hundred photographs, both historical and current. For those who may not be familiar with agricultural or sailmaking terms, there is a concise glossary at the end.
D,&-.-, O’R ,(an Editor, Sea History
e Bounty and Beyond: A Textual and Bibliographical Investigation of William Bligh’s Journals of the First Breadfruit Expedition by John A. Fish (Australian Scholarly Publishing in Association with Ancora Press, North Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2023, 320pp, illus, notes, ISBN 978-1922952-78-3; $150hc)
Written by Australian John A. Fish, a well-known collector of books and manuscripts connected with the life and career of Captain William Bligh, e Bounty and Beyond is a lavish and expensive volume that centers on the manuscripts of two journals written by Bligh to record his rst breadfruit expedition to Tahiti (1787–1790). e rst and more important of the two manuscripts, according to Fish, is a private journal kept by Bligh for himself, “unencumbered by the need to consider that it would be read by outsiders.” e second is a more polished document prepared by Bligh and written in the hand of the Bounty ’s clerk and submitted to the Admiralty as an o0cial report. In the introduction to the book, the author states: “[My] primary objective was to identify and document the di erences between the two versions of the Bounty journal to provide material for those who might want to undertake more analytical investigations. I have not attempted to analyze or interpret the di erences … I regard my work as pure research and as an essential link between the Private Journal and the O cial Journal.”
As a retired accountant and management consultant, Fish brings a lifetime of professional experience “checking the books,” and roughly half of the volume is devoted to an impressive side-by-side comparison of the two manuscripts that is useful for a wide audience of historians, literary scholars, and Bounty enthusiasts. Fish does a masterful job of directing readers “where to look” when comparing the
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The Untold Story of the Boston Merchant Who Launched Donald McKay to Fame by Vincent
J. Miles
Donald McKay
“An impressive feat of historical research that illuminates the life of an unjustly neglected historical fgure.” Kirkus
Reviews and more information at vjmiles.com. Available at Amazon.com, etc.
Sit in the wardroom of a mighty battleship, touch a powerful torpedo on a submarine, or walk the deck of an aircraft carrier and stand where naval aviators have flown off into history. It’s all waiting for you when you visit one of the 175 ships of the Historic Naval Ships Association fleet.
For information on all our ships and museums, see the HNSA website or visit us on Facebook.
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.
THE ABALONE UKULELE: A TALE OF FAR EASTERN INTRIGUE is triple-expansion epic is set in 1913 Shanghai, where four cultures are about to collide: China, Korea, Japan, and the US. e point of collision is three tons of Japanese gold ingots meant to undermine an already collapsing China.
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texts. e balance of the book is a thought-provoking but less satisfying mixture of interesting observations, insights, and considerable educated speculation concerning the Bligh journal manuscripts and uses by early Bounty historians. Of profound interest to a small circle of dedicated Bounty scholars, enthusiasts, and collectors , e Bounty and Beyond’ s exclusively empirical approach and insider discourse will prove frustrating to a wide range of scholars from multiple disciplines interested in the Bounty story. Despite these limits and a challenging organization, the volume is a signi cant scholarly achievement, a rare example of beautiful bookmaking, and a worthy acquisition for research libraries and serious Bounty collectors.
J$)n O.&n J,n1,n Pensacola, Florida
Sailors, Ships, and Sea Fights edited by Nicholas James Kaizer (Helion & Company, Warwick, England, 2024, 351pp, illus, maps, tables, notes, index, ISBN 978-1-804513-44-6; $49.95pb)
Sailors, Ships, and Sea Fights is a by-product of the proceedings of the 2022 “Reason to Revolution 1721–1815: Naval Warfare in the Age of Sail” conference. e book comprises fourteen
expository essays divided into four parts: “Naval Operations in European Waters,” “Naval Operations in North America,” “Naval Administration,” and “Naval Social and Cultural History”— a wide topical swath to be sure. Connecting this broad thematic are the equally daunting dualities associated with addressing the British Royal Navy’s path to hegemony within both the history and historiography of the period, 1721–1815.
Editor Nicholas Kaizer selected essays that help illustrate, and in a way simplify, the path to the British command of the seas at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Each essay o ers a revisionist view of how the Royal Navy emerged as the sovereign of the seas. e guiding principle behind this anthology was to shed light on the historiographical shadow cast by the British victory at the Battle of Trafalgar.
Part one, “Operations—Europe,” focuses on the Venetian, Ottoman, Spanish, and French navies, respectively, with naval parity in the 18th century stressed throughout. e move from naval warfare using galleys to ships powered by wind and sail illustrated the growing need to develop navies
capable of protecting more globalized trade and commerce. is coming-ofage theme also follows the growth of total-war strategies, particularly the threat of naval annihilation. e process of navy centralization, as seen through a prism of state centralization, continues in parts two and three. Here, the authors concentrate on the state of the French and British navies in the lead-up and early years of the American Revolution.
Parts two and three: “Naval Operations in North America,” and “Naval Administration,” feature essays that look at how the French and British navies exercised sea power in the North American station. e preparedness or—perhaps more relevant—the unpreparedness of the French and British navies shows how maritime geopolitics were uid on both sides. It turns out that Pax Britannica was achieved more by French e orts simply defeating themselves rather than the great power status of the Royal Navy narrative. e continuous threat of French invasion forced the British to develop blue-water strategies that ultimately required the perception of the mythical “great power” status rather than the reality, as expressed in these essays.
Britain’s naval policy focused on protecting commerce and revenue collection in its North American colonies.
e essays here have the common denominator of downplaying the signicance of the Royal Navy as a geopolitical power leading up to and during the American Revolution. e massive expenses associated with regulating North American trade, commerce, and revenue collection are generally followed, as are the command issues surrounding the many failures of the British Admiralty’s pursuit of untenable policies that ultimately led to the indefensibility of the North American station both during the American Revolution and into the War of 1812.
Sailors, Ships, and Sea Fights o ers a more re ective look at the extremely broad historical themes covered. Conversation is at a minimum, and the book is more a series of vignettes than it is historiographically engaging, but it does o er starting points for more robust discussion. Callum Easton notes in his essay, “Safe Moored,” that his look at the Greenwich Hospital o ers “a rst step in better understanding” the lives and experiences of peripheral actors and action. is note can be applied to the work as a whole.
R &2)a-. B3&n(t$n Winter Park, Florida
Cargo of Hope: Voyages of the Humanitarian Ship Vega by Shane Granger (Lyons Press, Essex, Connecticut, 2024, 257pp, 978-1-49308086-1; $24.95pb)
Far- ung, mostly abandoned by their government since the late-1970s, lacking even basic facilities of modern life such as school textbooks and doit-yourself medical manuals, hundreds of small tropical islands can be found at the eastern extremity of the state of Indonesia. ese islands provide the backdrop for an enthralling, againstthe-odds account of two decades’ adventure and compassion, involving a 130-year-old wooden sailing vessel and two intrepid good Samaritans.
e genesis of this previously untold saga is the 2004 tsunami, which killed hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed countless povertystricken coastal communities dotted around the Indian Ocean. At the time, Shane Granger and Meggi Macoun happened to be recuperating in an upmarket yacht club in Langkawi, Malaysia, having cruised there in stages from the Canary Islands. Quickly realizing the scope of the disaster, they rounded up donated materials, sailed 500 miles to northwest Indonesia and, despite riptides, standing waves, and
Michael J. Dodd
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erce currents, succeeded in delivering 22 tons of food and medicine safely down the west coast of Sumatra.
An idea formed. A plan followed. e couple decided to assist the forgotten people on these small islands, each year using Vega to take donated goods based on expressed educational and medical needs to some of the most farung communities on earth. Often, they learned, the smallest things can make a big di erence. To date, they have been on this quest for nearly two decades. At a pinprick in the ocean called Nila, they were the rst outsiders seen in 30 years.
Without Vega , of course, there would be no story. Along with the donors, volunteers, and the authors themselves, the boat is one of the heroes of this colorful and poignant tale. A 60foot sturdy cargo vessel designed to carry cement, brick, and stone, she was launched in Norway in 1892 and re-
mained in the stone trade into the late1960s. A checkered period for the vessel ensued, until in 2001 Granger discovered her, abandoned and in poor condition, in Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands.
Today, powered by a Perkins 250 hp engine and 14 sails, Vega’ s annual humanitarian timetable includes a 6,000-mile round-trip voyage, four months’ restoration at base in Malaysia, three months “on display” collecting supplies and generating income, and ve months spent delivering supplies. It is a tough schedule that demands endurance from the sturdy boat, commitment, and stamina from Granger (now in his mid-70s) and Macoun, and ardent enthusiasm from the many volunteers who provide practical assistance of every kind.
e couple has also been lucky, surviving some hair-raising cyclones and storms at sea. “A big storm at sea
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must surely rank right up there with root canals and tax audits” and occasional hostility, reckons the author. Perhaps the best proof of their impact is their o0cial designation as “goodwill ambassadors” for the distant but fabled Banda (Spice) Islands. “You are our voice to the outside world,” they were informed.
Granger, as he admits, is not a natural author, and the paperback is woefully devoid of photographs. Yet the 63 short chapters in the volume are full of vivid phrases, perhaps originating from his background in advertising: “Long nights, darker than the halls of doom,” “how easily sailors forget,” and an engine that “swills fuel like a thirsty drunk in a brewery.” “Always,” he writes of his life, he “comes back to the sea.” Enjoyable throughout, this is a book for anyone who loves adventure at sea. “We needed a purpose that included Vega constantly moving—one that added meaning to our lives,” writes Granger. Since 2004, the old boat has logged about 100,000 miles delivering supplies to those in need. And Shane Granger and Meggi Macoun have established a wonderfully praiseworthy pattern to their lives.
R$b&n K n&()t London, England
A Civil War Gunboat in Paci c Waters: Life on Board USS Saginaw by Hans Konrad Van Tilburg, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 2023 (reprint), 380pp; illus, index, notes, ISBN 978-0-81308-017-8; $28pb)
Dr. Hans Van Tilburg led the NOAA maritime archaeology team that in 2003 discovered the remains of the 1859 USS Saginaw within the shallows of Kure Atoll in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. In A Civil War Gunboat, he put together into one tome two exciting stories and a treat in a coda, covering the ship’s construction and loss, the discovery of the wreck site,
and nally the subsequent archaeological survey and documentation.
e rst story covers the building, crewing, and operations of the sloop of war on the West Coast and across the Paci c to Hawaii, Japan, and China.
e wooden sidewheeler was built in California at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, the rst US Navy base in the Paci c, with untested timbers (from the Navy’s perspective) and by tradesmen unknown in the department or at the Washington Navy Yard.
Saginaw served as a backstop to the nation’s expanding trading interests with Japan and established business in China. Fitted with sails for auxiliary power during longer voyages, the ship and her crew were also tasked with watching over the vast American whaling eet in the Paci c.
Commissioned in 1860, the sleek and narrow sloop-of-war USS Saginaw was never intended to be the be-all and end-all of the tiny East India or Paci c Squadron. To be honest, it was the Royal Navy that ruled these waves during that period. e Taiping Civil War was then raging in China, and the US government didn’t exactly throw itself into the bloody con ict. By the time Saginaw arrived at mainland Chinese ports, the war had claimed millions of lives, with no clear end in sight.
“ ese were confusing times,” Van Tilburg wrote. But up the Yangtze Saginaw went, showing the ag and little else to the Taipings. In China, piracy “was a far larger challenge” than American involvement in the war. e cost of that mission to the sloop’s crew didn’t come from naval warfare or from chasing pirates, but from “seasoning”— exposure to new climates, environments, and diseases. Almost half of the original crew of 58 died while serving in the Western Paci c. is continuing situation, as revealed in the ship’s logbooks, sailed with the ship from the Paci c Islands to China to the Arctic
and along the South American coast.
When the demands of the American Civil War pulled ship after ship from China, Japan, and Hawaii back to US waters to protect the homeland, Saginaw took on new duties after its arrival at Mare Island. Its last days in China are, on their own, worth a dedicated episode on the Emerging Civil War podcast.
e Navy was tasked with safeguarding the shipment of gold from California, and later Nevada silver, by sea to Panama for the trans-isthmus passage to the Atlantic. Saginaw’ s crew kept a sharp lookout for Confederate commerce raiders. If that were not enough, there were the orders to “keep an eye on Mexico.” e French had toppled the Mexican government and in 1864 installed Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, as emperor. If the Monroe Doctrine of “hands o the Americas, Europe” wasn’t dead in the early to mid-1860s, it was most assuredly on hold.
Life for the crew, both o0cers and seamen, proved challenging and their individual behaviors ran the gamut from dutiful and heroic to insolent and per dious. “For the military serving overseas, the farther into the tropics they went, the shorter their average life expectancies grew. ‘Marsh fever,’ the name for malaria” and yellow fever ravaged the crews. “Typhoid fever, dengue fever, and hepatitis were also present on the Mexican coast.”
After Alaska became a US territory in 1867, Saginaw was sent to survey and chart Arctic waters. Its nal assignment sent the ship back across the Paci c to oversee dredging operations around Midway Atoll, which was designated as a refueling station for coal- red ships crossing the Paci c. e book’s second story covers the harrowing tale of shipwreck that followed Saginaw’ s mission to Midway. What followed was marooned survival,
a desperate but disastrous attempt to get help across 1,200 miles of open ocean in the ship’s gig, and the aftermath—the drumbeat of a court of inquiry over who or what was responsible for the calamity o Ocean Island (now Kure Atoll). “Saginaw had gone in search of castaways on Ocean Island, and indeed castaways had been found— they were the ship’s own crew” when it wrecked on 29 October 1870. e coda— nding and then exploring the remnants of Saginaw on the sea oor—is a true detective story. “Before we could assess the wreck site, we had to nd it.” Van Tilburg provides the detail and value of teamwork required to carry out maritime archaeological work, both legally and scienti cally. Originally published in 2010, this paperback re-issue is a treasure.
J$)n G-a.3 Fairfax, Virginia
true depictions
the merchant ships he sailed aboard during the 1970s and ’80s engaged in worldwide trade with tales of raging storms, bizarre captains and crews, piracy, and the magic of the sea.
Veteran master mariner Christopher McMahon shares
of life aboard
NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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Sail Aboard the Liberty Ship
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.
Last day to order tickets is 14 days before the cruise; conditions and penalties apply to cancellations.
