Sea History 006 - Winter 1976-1977

Page 1

$1.50

No.6

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY MARINE ART LIVES! Review of a unique N.Y. art show • Gloucester Schooners • Great Republic Revived • Captain Klebingat Weathers a Hurricane in 1906.

WINTER 1977


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SEA HISTORY No.6

WINTER 1977

1 PRESIDENT'S REPORT

SEA HISTORY is the journal of the National Maritime Historical Society, an educational, tax-exempt membership organization devoted to furthering the understanding of our maritime heritage.

2 LETTERS 4 THIRTY SURVIVING GLOUCESTERMEN, by Ted Miles 7 THE GREAT REPUBLIC WILL NOT DIE! by Joe Garland

OFFICES are at 2 Fulton St., Brooklyn, NY 11201 ; at the San Francisco Maritime Museum, Foot of Polk Street, San Francisco, CA 94109; and Suite 643, 1511 K Street, Washington, D.C. 20005 .

9 MARINE ART LIVES! Special feature on a unique art show. 9

MEMBERSHIP is invited & should be sent to the Brooklyn office: Patron, $100; Regular, $10; Student or Retired, $5 . OFFICERS & TRUSTEES are Chairman: Rear Admiral Walter F . Schlech, Jr., USN (ret.); President: Peter Stanford; Vice Presidents: Karl Kortum , John Thurman; Secretary: John Lyman; Treasurer-elect: Howard Slotnick; Trustees: Frank 0 . Braynard, Norman J . Brouwer, Robert Carl, Alan G. Choate, Harold D. Huycke, Karl Kortum , John Lyman, Walter F. Schlech, Jr., Howard Slotnick, Peter Stanford, John N. Thurman, Shannon Wall, Charles Wittholz.

ADVISORY COUNCIL George Campbell, American Museum of Natural History; Frank G.G. Carr, Cutty Sark Society; Melvin H. Jackson, Smithsonian Institution; R.C. Jefferson; John Kemble, Pomona College; John Noble, artist; Kenneth D. Reynard, San Diego Maritime Museum; Alan Villiers, Seaman-author; Barclay Warburton, Ill, American Sail Training Association; Alen York, Antique Boat & Yacht Club.

AT THE END OF THE ARTIST'S RAINBOW, by Charles Lundgren.

10

George Campbell, Fred Freeman

12

Charles Lundgren, Michael Beddows

13

Kipp Soldwedel, Frank Braynard

14

Carl Evers

15

John Stobart

16

Melvin Miller, Robert Sticker

17

Gordon Ellis, Mark Greene

21

John Mecray, Ned Herrmann

22

Oswald Brett, William Muller

25

Sandford Downing, Dean Waite

27 SHIP NOTES 28 SAIL TRAINING: Conference Report 29

Two Annual Meetings; Square Rig Advocated

30 SEAPORT & MUSEUM NEWS 31 BOOKS 35 SUMMER-NORTH ATLANTIC, by Capt. Fred Klebingat An account of a hurricane aboard a square rigger, 1906.

STAFF Brooklyn Headquarters Director: Peggy Murray; Curator-at-Large: Peter Throckmorton; Assistant Curator: Ted Miles; Ships & Piers Manager: James Diaz; Exhibitions: Jo Meisner; Membership: Marie Lore.

COVER: South Street, 1879, by Carl G. Evers. © 1976, Greenwich Workshop. The ten-yeat old Glory of the Seas, last of Donald McKay's proud series of full-rigged ships, hangs off New York's South Street piers, with the fishing smacks of the Fulton Fish Market and spire of Trinity Church on Wall Street in the background. The teaming life of this tidal reach of the East River gave birth to New York and made it great. A noted artist of today catches a moving moment in this life, as a great ship comes in from sea, hove to and shortening sai l while a busy coal-burning tug nuzzles up to bring her into the docks of a busy city which, in a few short decades, will know her kind no more.

SEA HISTORY STAFF Copyright © 1977 by the National Maritime Historical Society. Reproduction of any painting illustrated in this issue is forbidden without express permission of the artist.

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY NEW YORK

WASHINGTON, D.C.

SAN FRANCISCO


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PRESIDENT'S REPORT

American Heritage published in their December issue a small symposium on the question: "Is History Dead?" Three distinguished historians said, in effect: "No, but she's not healthy." They blamed teaching methods, shallowrooted patterns of thinking among those who tend to set patterns for American society, and the general unease of the American culture today, approximately in that order, for Clio's parlous state. This is a question of some seriousness for those who believe that man flourishes only as he masters his experience across more than one generation, and acts in a manner to contribute to future generations. We would be grateful if readers of SH would give us their thoughts on this. We seem to be afflicted today by stupid, dangerously stupid, concepts like "the need for relevance ." Relevance to what? The need is for people, rather, to relate to their history, past, present and future-as the chart of their voyaging through time. On that chart you can plot a course and try to sail it, and maybe learn and find some joy in the experience. To ask the chart, or the ocean of time it represents, to tell you what you want to hear is crazy. This leads to a second thought I'll toss in as grist to the mills of the gods: that the image of a course of action is not really a nourishing substitute for the act itself. Starting as placebo, such things become (in a healthy society) emetics: alternatively they become poisons that destroy the society. Witness the Romans. They built very straight roads. Only, toward the end, they failed to send very straight messages down them. A Celebration of Straightness The art exhibition, "Marine Art Lives!" is reported in extenso in this issue as a first call to summon another of the Muses to the aid of History's Muse Clio. We hope there will be further oc-

casions, many, to do this. It is by people's natural sense of art that they find their ways to lives that have meaning to themselves and to others-and thereby to history. There are many mansions to the house of art, obviously. In trying to find out what marine artists are doing today, we think we found one strong common strand: they are students of the sea experience, after the thing itself, not the image of the thing, or the way to make it or themselves look good. Robert Murphy, Advisor to the National Society, put the show together, an exhibition that opens at the National Boat Show in New York January 15 . He and his wife Maryanne do this kind of thing because they like to volunteer for hazardous assignments. They are prepared for the shot and shell this show-the first ever attempted that brings so many leading marine artists together-is sure to attract. For their comfort in a difficult and extremely demanding service, I will quote here a thing from Pierre Schnieder, writing on August 20, 1973, in the New York Times. Art, he said, is "more complex and more modest" than most of the talk we hear about it suggests. It is a thing of elder breed, and has little to do with the "shrill, proud, eclectic language" of cult and counter-cult. Its function? "It insinuates the dream of eternity," he wrote, "into the very fabric of history, and seeks the sacred at the grassroots level." That, I believe, is where we live. Of course we will have made errors in this show. We must rely on our readers to tear into it, like Henry VIII into a piece of chicken, and see how they come out. We would very much like hearing about it. Sea Roads We very much like hearing from readers of SH in general. We pursue our

work doing the best we can, and risking it in the marketplace of your opinion and judgment and interest. We suffer an illusion we are not easily to be dissuaded of, that the work is of interest. But we truly need that interest more focussed. Our Chairman Wally Schlech is very good at focussing such interests and our Trustees share my concern that we know more of what people think and want and know in this work than what we may think they are thinking, or want, or know. The Art Show of course is not the only thing in this issue. Ted Miles's Gloucesterman article may open some fruitful lines. I had the honor of sailing the Howard into South Street and spent time-well spent!-hunting down Lady of Good Voyage in Gloucester and tracing her original waterline graving marks, and measuring the angle of her bobstay iron as its scar was left upon the stem, to get the length of the bowsprit she once carried. So whatever perspective I bring to this job of editor vanished when I saw that article. Another question: What do you think of our policy of running advertising in these pages? I like the idea of SH being a marketplace as well as a forum. I would hate our becoming dependent upon any one interest, other than the governing interest of history which is universal but all too weak (see supra), but shouldn't American industry and commerce be in our act, and we perhaps in theirs? Advertising of course brings us revenue, and makes more things possible for us. "The reality," said Joseph Conrad, "is better than the dream." I favor that view. More people can share in a thing that really happens. And I think the thing will grow up straighter and truer if it grows in hard-case conditions, up against the same kind of challenge that bred our excellent ships and the disciplines of their people. Respectfully submitted: Peter Stanford


LETTERS Oh! Calcutta!

Adrenalin on the Tongue

X Songs in Hungary

To the Editor: SH No. 4 is a handsome, well-produced dog; you should all be proud as I would be if I had anything to do with it. It reads easily and well for its purpose. Anyone joined with you in common struggle will find this issue a mine of information and enthusiastic purpose . You were kind enough to send me for comment the photo of Calcutta in the 1850s by Bourne and Sheppard (p.48), used to illustrate the Cooper story. It should be treasured. I would suspect the barrels off-loaded on the river bank contain barreled cement, possibly transhipped from Antwerp . The steamer to the left is likely a Peninsular and Oriental propeller, brig-rigged, awa1tmg homeward-bound English colonials and civil servants. The bark, I think a Dane or Norwegian by the metal bands on her fore lowermast, has been rigged down to her topmasts for a long stay while waiting for a home-ward bound charter . Homeward-bound freights from Calcutta then were not plentiful and waiting in the monsoon season was dreaded by seamen; fever and illness raged with little relief. The next little bark offshore in the moored tier has a beautifully carved stern and quarter galleries as well, a relic of the 1840s easily, sporting the single topsails of the next period, her big sails furling to the bunt in the old manner. Next in the tier, a port-painted ship, I believe with her topmasts struck and housed in the old-fashioned style. Across the stream, a handsome ship, discharged and standing light suggest one of London River's better-known flyers. The cone-shaped moorings in the river are of particular interest. ROBERT A. WEINSTEIN Los Angeles, California

To the Editor: So much of natural lore is expounded today by persons who, though furrowed of brow, lofty of dome, and gimlet-eyed from worming through tomes, have never, never wetted their socks in salt water! These worthies gravitate toward each other, form learned "societies" and periodically laud one another with laurel wreaths as experts and "Men of the Year." I could hardly aspire to such lofty company. I have, though, seen a big square-rigger lean her four lofty pyramids of canvas to a wind humming, even roaring through the tracery of her gear. I have seen a pampero lay a ship over on her side, bailing water over the lee rail, and I tasted the adrenalin on my tongue! Having seen it, having experienced it, I could talk of "this, that and the other" as the pilot replied when asked what his ship carried. Good wishes to the National Maritime Historical Society! ARCHIE HORKA Fair Lawn, New Jersey Captain Horka began his seafaring in the little bark Callao out of New York. SH Nos. I and 2 carried excerpts from his journal of a later voyage in the Cape Horner Skaregrom. Agreeing to come speak to a gathering of friends of the Society at the New York Yacht Club, he enclosed photographs of where he was just fifty years before, in November 1926, with the foremast hands of the barkentine Forest Dream, in New South Wales, Australia.-ED.

To the Editor: We are very glad to have the record album and songbook that you published with the X Seamens Institute. Once we had listened to the record, we decided that we shall shape a little band like the X Seamen, and we shall play and sing the songs they sing in South Street, in our country. LESLIE VIT AI Veszprem, Hungary In the Wake of Slocum's Spray To the Editor: When Captain Joshua Slocum was on the beach after a distinguished career in command of American sailing ships, no one expected him to do more than sail around in Buzzards Bay and Cape Cod waters in the old sloop Spray which a friend gave him. But he rebuilt the sloop from timbers he cut himself, and sailed her around the world . Today there are a number of replicas of the Spray which people have built for varying reasons, drawn by Slocum's career as lone voyager and by the philosophy expressed in his book, Sailing Alone Around the World. There is a feeling shared by these people that Slocum stood for something important in the changing world of his time, and that he has important things to tell us today. I am working with Walter Teller, Slocum's biographer, on a film which will chronicle Slocum's sailing and his outlook on life. We have support from many people who sail in Slocum's wake today, including several owners of Spray replicas. We seek funding for the documentary film we are working on, and welcome inquiries about the project. JIMMcMAHAN Chapel Hill, North Carolina Word from a New Museum

"Beyond the Spectacle" To the Editor: A resounding note of admiration on SEA HISTORY No. 4! The article by Charles Gallagher ("Beyond the Spectacle," p. 18) is ironic, apropos, and on the whole very fair. I suspect, however, that in the next few years, we'll be developing close contact with the Coast Guard and will come to reasonable, intelligent and safe conclusions. CORWITH CRAMER, JR. Executive Director Sea Education Association Woods Hole, Massachusetts 2

To the Editor: We have been watching news items about the Effie M. Morrissey for some time and wish the best for the efforts of the National Society. The place of her building (James and Tarr or Willard Burnham) here in Essex is one of many local controversies. However, I am told by Dana Story and other local historians and shipbuilders that the fact is clear: the Morrissey was built by James and 1 arr. The retirement ot W1ilard A. Burnham in 1893 is well documented and would seem to bear this out. I am familiar with the Lettie G. How-


ard in South Street, the only Gloucesterman of older vintage than the Morrissey that we know of. I spent some time aboard her last fall, and a former owner, Paul Dunn, is a great friend and help in our effort with the Essex Shipbuilding Museum. Two small historic vessels that are now avail~ble might be of interest to you. The first is one of the last Grand Banks dories to long-line out of Boston, on the schooner Gertrude Decosta. She has been given to the Essex Shipbuilding Museum, but we have no room for her. We would like to find a place that will take her on Joan, restore her, and keep her out of the weather. Mystic Seaport is taking a look at her, and have first refusal. The second is the Swallow, built in the 1890s as committee boat for the Boston Yacht Club. She is a lovely 65-foot clipper-bow fan tail steamer, and carried auxiliary sail. She had a Diesel put in her and so is missing her boilers and engines. Her owner is restoring a larger steamer and might dispose of the Swallow, which needs work, but still boasts cabin and wheelhouse of raised mahogany paneling! JAMES WITHAM, President Essex Historical Society Essex, Massachusetts Yes, please, Astrid! To the Editor: Norsk Sjofartsmuseum has had the pleasure of studying a number of the Society's journal SEA HISTORY, which we find most interesting and useful for the Museum. We would like to ask if the Society would be interested in an,exchange agreement. Norsk Sjofartsmuseum can offer its yearbook published each year in June. The articles are in Norwegian with summaries in English, and are profusely illustrated. ASTRID JOHNSON Librarian Norsk Sjofartsmuseum Oslo, Norway New Building, Rebuilding and a Loss To the Editor: We went to Gloucester in mid-October for a week. The rebuilding of Howard Blackburn's Great Republic is coming along fine. I am getting a set of deadeyes for her. Joe Garland, in charge of that project, recently bought Howard Blackburn's last boat, the 25foot sloop Cruising Club, which was given to him by members of the Boston

Station of the Club to keep the old man sailing. When Blackburn took delivery of her in the spring of 1929 I helped him rig her, whip rope ends, etc. She was built at Cooney's Wharf, Gloucester. Joe took her on a two weeks' cruise to Maine in September. The new schooner John F. Leavitt must be framed now and plank going on. When I saw her at the end of September, all square frames were raised and centerboard trunk being built, ready for frames abreast of trunk. For the last two or three years a Boston man has been talking about a replica of Gloucester's last salt Banker, Columbia. He's been down to see Dana Story about consulting on the construction. Dana's father Arthur D. built the first Columbia in 1923 and upon the father's death in the 1930s, Dana ran the yard until vessel building ended in Essex. He's also been to see Roy Wallace at Thomaston, Maine, about building the new Columbia. It can't be done at Essex since Essex Creek has not been dredged good in 35 years or so and there is not water enough to get her down it. The biggest the Story yard is building now is about 50 feet. This new schooner will be a project! A man from Philadelphia has been talking with the Bath Marine Museum about a five-year lease on the south ways of the Percy and Small yard, to build a whaler, Kate Cory, and other vessels. This was held up while the Museum tried to complete the rebuilding of the north ways for their own use. They had to change contractors for the piling work. They plan to haul the towboat Seguin and raise the schooner Laura Goulart for hauling before winter closes in. Goulart may have to await spring now, as ice will soon be coming down the river. Another big Gloucester dragger was lost Thursday, the 90 foot Sylvester F. Whalen, built in Thomaston in 1947. She started leaking bad about 16 miles south of Nantucket. Water put her electric plant out so she could not call for help. They headed her in and beached her on our south shore, with 18,000 pounds of fish aboard. The six-man crew was taken off by helicopter. The Coast Guard was called from a house on the shore. It was hoped she could be saved, but we had a fresh southerly Friday afternoon and night, and a heavy northwest gale Saturday. By Saturday morning her wheelhouse and deck were gone and her back broken. CHARLESF. SAYLE, Sr. Nantucket, Massachusetts

The Mighty Moshulu To the Editor: In "Ship Notes" (SH No. 4) you mention the Moshulu, a ship for which I have a major soft spot. About a year ago I had the good fortune to come across her in Philadelphia, unattended and to all appearances abandoned. Not being one to pass up such a golden opportunity I climbed up a line hanging from her starboard scuppers. Along with my brother I spent hours of sheer ecstasy exploring her from stem to stern. She is beautiful and seems (to my inexperienced eye) relatively sound. I have been aboard her twice since then and I am extremely curious as to her future fate. I have heard rumors of her conversion to a restaurant, of purchase by South Street, and a few others. Could you shed some light on the future of this magnificent ship? DA YID J. WOOD Harvey Cedars, New Jersey J. Ferrell Colton singled out the German/our-masted barks Moshulu (1904) and Peking (1911) as twin pinnacles in the development of the ultimate sailing ship. The Peking is on exhibition at the South Street Seaport Museum in New York, and the Moshulu was moved into Penn's Landing in Philadelphia to become a restaurant ship this fall. David Tallichet of Specialty Restaurants held an inaugural dinner aboard her December 1. Previously she had been at South Street, but plans to develop her there fell through, and her place was taken by the Peking. The mighty Moshulu, as she was known in her sailing days, won the last Grain Race in 1939, with a 91-day passage from Port Victoria in Australia to Queenstown, Ireland. Eric Newby's brilliant account of that voyage, The Last Grain Race, is available in paperback (Ballantine Books, New York, $1.25). He ended his book "I never saw her again"-but now he can!-ED. From Moshulu 's Owner To the Editor: We worked hard with some of your members to get the Moshu/u placed in New York. I was disappointed that conditions changed, which necessitated our having to move. But we are very pleased with the ship's new home, and grateful to your member and patron Bronson Binger for his help in recommending our project in Philadelphia. DAVID C. TALLICHET, Jr. President Specialty Restaurants Corporation Long Beach, California 3


Lady of Good Voyage at Fulton Market, January 1976. Photo by Ted Miles.

A Fast and Able Type Lives on:

Thirty Surviving Gloucesterillen By Ted Miles Assistant Curator National Maritime Historical Society

What we call the Gloucester schooner came into being toward the end of the last century. Built for the hotly competitive fishing trade, without benefit of power, the Gloucesterman, like the clipper before her, was a thoroughbred racehorse of the sea and was sailed in a manner to make her a legend in her time. In the first decade of this century, engines became small enough to fill our streets with autos and the fisheries with powered craft. At first engines were put in what was essentially a Gloucester hull, usually a little heavier in the haunches, like the L.A. Dunton at Mystic, built in the 1920s. By the 1930s, sailing rigs were reduced or eliminated, and a boxier (usually square-sterned) "dragger" hull replaced the sailing Gloucesterman. Lady of Good Voyage, Pilgrim and Puritan, still extant, built in the 1940s, are perhaps the last Gloucestermen built in the U.S. for commercial fishing. The type name "Gloucesterman" was extended to vessels built in Canada's Maritime Provinces. Its essential hull shape and rig was used in John Alden's famous schooner yachts of the 1920s and 30s-lovingly preserved and actively sailed by their owners todayand is celebrated in the replica of the Canadian Bluenose. Here Ted Miles 4

lists and describes survivors of the type, beginning with the Lettie G. Howard, now at South Street Seaport Museum. The next oldest-and the oldest survivor of the larger "offshore" class-is the Effie M. Morrissey . A widespread effort is under way to save her, with the support of the National Society.-ED. Few workaday, utilitarian ships have so captured the imagination of painters and photographers as have the distinctive and world-famous Gloucester fishing schooners. Winslow Homer painted her again and again; she (and the way of life she represented) inspired authors like Rudyard Kipling and Edmund Gilligan, and films like "Captains Courageous"-a classic familiar to generations of sea-struck children and grownups. The graceful hulls, boiling along under a mountain of piled-on canvas, in a race to beat the fleet to market in Gloucester, Massachusetts, with the twin light towers of Rockport and windswept sky for background, still inspire artists to reach for camera or brush. Even the clipper ships, in their brief day of glory, are hard-pressed to vie for grim determination and daring with the Gloucestermen, for whom speed on the homeward voyage spelt success and fortune. Captain Tommy Bohlin of the Nannie Bohlin is reputed to have pulled five sets of spars out of his vessels, piling sail on lofty sail when wind and sea were up.

In the days when the Grand Banks were fished under sail, the Gloucesterman was used from New York, all along the New England coast, and on Down East to the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Many ended up in the Caribbean fishing and coasting trades as well. Interest in the type has been revived lately with the construction of a replica of the Canadian schooner Bluenose. The new Bluenose II acted as the welcoming craft at the Montreal World's Fair in 1967, and since has made tours to the United States. Currently she daysails out of Halifax Harbor in Nova Scotia with groups of summer visitors . The original Bluenose was built to compete in the International Fisherman's Races held off Gloucester and Halifax in the 1920s and 30s. She dominated these events, which were hotly contested but in the end inconclusive as to which port sent out the superior schooner. Bluenose put up a gallant fight against the power-driven schooner, ending her days in Caribbean trading. One of her old crewmen in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia, told me that she was so fast she could do three trips to the Banks in the time most other schooners took to do two. By the 1930s most American owners had abandoned sailing vessels and switched to power-driven draggers for bottom fishing. For a decade or so con-


verted schooner hulls co-existed with the dragger type. Today many of the early draggers are still in operation along the coast. Interestingly, if you go aboard, you'll find the forecastle layout just like that of a late-19th century Gloucesterman, complete with bunks along the sides and a tapered table with folding wings down the middle. In Canada the ship evolved on different lines than it did in New England. The Canadians developed a large knockabout (no bowsprit) schooner with a powerful Diesel engine and a sailing rig consisting of jib, forestaysail, foresail and trysail rigged on the mainmast. These schooners went to the Grand Banks for fishing, or as coastal or Caribbean traders-sometimes serving as both fisherman and trader. The local coasting trade carried general cargo such as gasoline, staple foods, spare parts and machinery, salt, building materials, etc., to the small isolated fishing viliages which dot the coasts of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. They returned with the dry salted fish that was the main product of these hamlets. This trade has only recently been taken over by trucks and by more modern craft. The maritime trade in general has slacked off as smaller hamlets have been consolidated into larger towns, due to the need for schools, better health facilities and more viable economic conditions for the inhabitants. A list of the existing schooners follows. Each worked under sail for some part of her life. Some are museum ships, some still go to sea-usually not in the trade for which they were built. The first name shown is the one that vessel was built under, the name in parentheses is the one currently on the stern. Gross tonnage is listed, with length, breadth, and depth of hull as available (these are Custom House measurement and do not reflect extreme dimensions). Gross tonnage reflects inside volume of the vessel in units of 100 cubic feet. Lettie G. Howard: Built in Essex, Mass., 1893 for the inshore fishery. She was sold in 1903 to Pensacola, Fla., for use in the red snapper fishery . She fished under power and short rig until 1966, when she was sailed back up to Gloucester to become a museum. Two years later she was bought by the South Street Seaport in New York, where she is still used as a museum ship. 60 tons 74.6L 21.6B 8.40 Effie M. Morrissey (Ernestina: Built in Essex, Mass., 1894 for the Grand Banks fishery. She has worked for both Americans and Canadians, has been an

Artie exploration vessel, and since 1948 a Cape Verde Islands Packet, in the last immigrant service to the U.S. under sail. Plans are now in the works to bring her back to Massachusetts as a sailing museum ship. She operated under sail longer than any other schooner in existence. 120 tons 93.6L 23.8B 10.20 Mary E.: Built in Bath, Maine, 1906, is another inshore schooner that is still with us. After many years as a dragger, she was rebuilt in the early 1960s for the "Windjammer Trade" along the coast of Maine. She is currently owned by the Seven Seas Sailing Club of City Island, N. Y., and is still in the charter business. 16 tons 46.4L 14.0B 5.80 Virginia (Buccaneer): Built in Essex, Mass., 1909. Like many schooners built in the early years of the 20th century, she went down to Pensacola, Fla., to take part in the new and expanding red snapper fishery. She was rebuilt in 1925 and changed her name at that time. She is now a museum ship owned by the Historic Pensacola Preservation Board. 106 tons 102.2L 23.0B 10.20

Marion Elizabeth. Photo, N. Brouwer.

Marion Elizabeth: Built in Lunenburg, N.S., 1918. She was a fisherman, a rumrunner during Prohibition and a freight boat. Beached in 1958 in Margaree Harbor, N.S., she is now used as a restaurant and gift shop during the summer months. 146 tons 117'2"L 26'3"B 10'3"0 Grace D. Boehner: Built in West La Harve, Newfoundland, 1919. Owned for many years by Boehner Ltd., a large company who had built and operated many fine fishing schooners, she is now a museum in Twillingate N.F.L. 148 tons 112'7"L 26'1"B12'0"0 L.A. Dunton: Built in Essex, Mass., 1921. She fished from Boston until 1935. Then she moved to Nova Scotia and continued to fish until the early 1950s, when she was converted to carry

cargo. She was in that trade when she was brought to the attention of the Mystic Seaport. She has been on display there since 1963. 134 tons 104.3L 25.0B 11.60 American: Built in Essex, Mass., 1921, she is a knockabout schooner. She fished and later hauled freight until the mid-1950s. She is now a restauraltt in Cape May, N.J. 137 tons 107.6L 25.0B II.SD Nina W. Corkum (Joan B.): Built in Lunenburg, N.S., 1922. She had a bowsprit when built and later was converted to a knockabout. She did a lot besides catch fish . She took part in the Canadian trials to see who would defend the Fisherman's Trophy, (Bluenose was chosen). In 1952 she was used in the Gregory Peck movie, "The World in His Arms," which includes a memorable sequence of two schooners in a race. She is owned by William Bucke and has been laid up for many years in City Island, N.Y. At this writing she is sunk in her slip. 138 tons 133'2"L 26'4"B 15'8"0 Ladona (Nathanial Bowditch): Built in East Boothbay, Me., 1926. Originally a yacht, she later went fishing and then still later became a powered dragger. After extensive rebuilding she now carries passengers along the Maine Coast. 61tons70.7L 20.4B 10.40 Adventure: Built in Essex, Mass., 1926, this schooner was the last American vessel to go dory fishing. She had to quit in 1954, only because her crew, all past 70 years, was too old to go out any longer. There was nothing wrong with the boat. Since that time she has been in the passenger trade out of Camden, Me. She is owned by Jim Sharp, a man with a fine eye for old boats. 130 tons 107L 24.5B 11.lD Robert J. Knickle: Built in Lunenberg, N.S., 1926. Another knockabout schooner, she has fished and carried cargo until the present time. Recently sold to owners in the Caribbean, she will be used to carry passengers or freight. 147 tons 155'5"L 26'0"B Evelina Goulart: Built in Essex, Mass., 1927. This fine looking vessel is now a powered dragger often seen around Cape May, N.J. If anyone is looking for a good boat for preservation this is a good prospect! 82 tons 83.2L 21.2B 10.20 Swile: Built in Port Union, N.F.L., 1928, she is still in use by the Fishermans Trading Co. to carry cargo. She is about the last of the old timers still in the coastal freight business. 123 tons 91'0"L22'10"B 14'0"0 5


THIRTY SURVIVING GLOUCESTERMEN

Charlie B.: Built in Essex, Mass ., 1920. Built as an auxiliary knockabout, she is now a powered dragger. She fished out of Newport, R.I., in the 1950s, but her home port since has been Cape May, N.J . 106 tons 86.9L 21.SB 21.5B Shannon: Built in Damariscotta, Me. , 1931, she fished under sail and later as a dragger. About 1965 she became a floating houseboat. Last heard from in Bridgeport, Conn. 43 tons 66.3L 17.0B 7.9D Marjorie & Dorothy (Sundowner): Built in Lunenberg, N.S. 1934, she followed the usual fishing/cargo-carrying career until recently, when she was sold down to St. Petersburg, Fla. There she is used to carry passengers. She is now a three-masted schooner, so she is easier to handle as a sailing vessel. 164 tons 138L 27 . IB 15D E.F. Zwicker (Capt. James Cook): Built in Lunenberg, N.S., 1934, she was used around her home waters until 1964. She then became a school ship for the Harry Lundeberg School in Piney Point, Md ., and is now for sale. 167 tons 145'0"L 27'0"B 15'7"D Arthur J. Lynn (Richard Henry Dana): Built in Lunenberg, N.S., 1936, she also belongs to the Harry Lundeberg School in Piney Point, Md . The school has added a bowsprit and two topmasts . She is a good looking schooner, for sale, that needs a good home. 168 tons 117' 4"L 26'B lO'O"D Harry W. Adams: Built in Lunenberg, N.S., 1937, this big knockabout schooner fished and carried cargo until about 1960. She was in the Caribbean

for a while and then was laid up in Newport News, Va. She has just been bought by a group who intend to use her as part of a maritime museum in Wilmington, N.C. 177 tons 129.3L 27 .OB Skilligolee: Built in Essex, Mass., 1938, as a yacht, later converted to a dragger. She now runs out of Cape May, N.J. Another good bet for anyone looking for a fine, solid old schooner. 62 tons 76L 18.5B 9.5D Theresa E. Connor: Built in Lunenberg, N.S., 1938, she was the last Canadian schooner to go dory fishing. She worked until 1963 when her crew got too old to continue any longer, and no more young men could be found who wanted to face the rough life of the dories on the Grand Banks. Since 1967 she has been part of the fleet of the Lunenberg Fisheries Museum . She looks to be in fine shape and the retired fishermen on board do a good job telling her story and that of her sisters. 185 tons 142L 27B 15D Caroline Rose: Built in Lunenburg, N.S ., 1940, she followed a career of fishing and freighting mostly out of Halifax. Recently she was bought by an American who plans to use her in the Caribbean. 173 tons 127'5"L 26'8"B 13D Lady of Good Voyage: Built in Ipswich, Mass., 1941, she fished out of Gloucester for many years and is now a dragger owned by the Ocean Fish Co. of Fulton Market, New York City. She has been fishing in Honduras for the past few years. The last American fishing schooner built that carried a mainsail. 80 tons 83 .2L 21B9.2D

The clipper bowed Ester Anita at the Fulton Market in the first quarter of this century. Just behind her is a spoon bowed Gloucesterman drying her sails.

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Sherman Zwicker: Built in Lunenburg, N.S., 1942. The Zwicker family owned many schooners and a fish wholesaling business. In any photograph of a group of Canadian fishermen there is usually a Zwicker present. She is now on display in Boothbay Harbor, Me. 183 tons 144'L 25' 11 "B 15'0"D Columbia: Built in Essex, Mass., 1942. She is a motor sailer that was fitted with otter trawling gear. She was an attempt to combine the best qualities of the schooner and the dragger. It worked too, because she was "highliner" of the Gloucester fleet for many years (a term used to denote the vessel that brought in the most fish in any given year) . 144 tons 93.3L 23.3B 1l.5D Pilgrim: Built in Thomaston, Me., 1944. Same as above for the same owners. Now being converted into a sailing yacht by Jerry Hillmen in Boston , Mass. She could set two sets of gear at once. You catch a lot of fish that way. 135 tons 92. 7L 22.0B 1l.9D Puritan: Built in Thomaston, Me ., 1944. Same as Columbia. Owned in Gloucester until recently. Last American schooner built to carry sail, even if a short rig. 122 tons 88.3L 22B l l .2D Francis Gelaldine: Built Lunenburg, N.S., 1944. She was fishing and then carrying freight until recently. Now owned in Corpus Christi, Texas, her future is undecided. 192 tons 131'4"L 27'0"B Norma & Gladys: Built in Trinity Bay, N.F.L., 1945. A knockabout schooner, built and owned by Harry Stone of that town . Last Canadian fisherman built to carry full sailing rig. She fished for a few years and then carried cargo. Bought by the Province of Newfoundland in 1973, she was rebuilt and re-rigged by the Clarenville Shipyard over the next year and a half. Starting in September 1974, she left on a two-year voyage around the world to promote ecology and a 200-mile limit for fishing . 113 tons 93 '2"L 23'4"B 12'0"D Philip E. Lake: Built in Clarenville, N.F.L., 1948 . She fished on the Grand Bank for one season and then switched to carrying cargo. She has recently been overhauled, is now for sale. 142 tons l 10'2"L 26'1"B15'0"D

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g Anyone knowing of any additional Jl schooners or ex-schooners built in New York or Down East to catch fi sh under sail is invited to be in touch. The list is shrinking as time takes its toll . If you ~ want to see what is left of the "fast and ~ able" Gloucester schooners look now , 8 before the last of them are gone. .t :J

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Great Republic, summer 1976, under restoration in Laurence Dahlmer's shop at East Gloucester, Mass.

THE OREA T REPUBLIC WILL NOT DIE! By Joseph E. Garland Gloucester Historical Commission NOTE: In 1901, the great Gloucester

doryman Howard Blackburn sailed across the Atlantic to Lisbon in his 25foot sloop Great Republic. Years later the Cruising Club of American contributed to keep him sailing. Lately Joe Garland, author of notable books on the Gloucester fisheries, decided with a few friends to recover the wreck of the vessel from her last home in Long Island, and in 1970 they brought her home and gave her to the Gloucester Historical Commission. There the project /anguished, until it came to life as described by Garland in his report. Taxdeductible contributions to support the restoration can be made out to the Gloucester Historical Commission, in care of Garland at Eastern Point, Gloucester, MA 01930.-ED. In the summer of 1975 the City was deeded the State Armory on Prospect Street, and suddenly our long soughtfor "museum" materialized . On October 16 the City Council approved the Commission's proposal that Great Republic after restoration be given a berth at the far end of the drill floor , where there is ample roof clearance for the mast, permanently or until such time as a museum on the harbor becomes a reality, if ever. In the meantime, the Massachusetts Historical Commission voted GR an historic vessel eligible for the National Register. The projected cost of restoration has been scaled down to manageable proportions, thanks to Laurence Dahlmer of the well-known Gloucester family, a boatwright who has agreed at considerable personal financial sacrifice to do

the job. Larry is a recent Northeastern graduate, a Blackburn buff, small boat sailor and antique boat enthusiast, but above all an exceptionally skillful builder and restorer. He designed a permanent cradle of steel supplied at cost by Linsky Brothers. This was welded in place at Montgomery's (Herb has been storing the Great Republic for a token charge), and boat and cradle were trailered by Jim and Nancy Thompson of the Wheeler's Point Boat Yard (who also donated their services in the two previous moves) to Dahlmer's shop at 235 East Main Street, overlooking Smith Cove where Archibald Fenton built and launched Great Republic in the spring of 1900. Restoration will be quite extensive. Keel, deadwood, garboards and most of the floor timbers are rotten. The original deck and spars are long gone. But planking and frames are almost intact, so much so that the hull has held its lines amazingly, and without hogging. Bad wood will be replaced with good as

Howard Blackburn al the helm of Great Republic under sail in Gloucester Harbor in 1901.

needed for strength, rigidity and integrity of restoration. Deck, cockpit, companionway, wheelbox, spars and rigging will be reconstructed from contemporary photographs and descriptions. In the Armory, Great Republic will be sparred and rigged, with sails furled, just as she looked lying at Captain Blackburn's mooring off Five Pound Island. Probably the sloop will be displayed behind a security railing and a walk-up ramp for viewing her deck. Dahlmer plans to take off her hull lines and probably to loft them full scale as a dramatic backdrop. There will be photo blowups of Blackburn and his boats, a pictorial record of the restoration and expository text. Al Viator, a young photographer, plans to document the restoration as a film or slide show. We figure that to do the job up right, exhibit and all, will take $10,000, of which we've raised over half. This very low budget is possible only because Dahlmer accepts a rate of pay which is far below prevailing levels and because so many are providing goods and services for nothing or at cost. The Gloucester Historical Commission receives no public funds, and considering the pressure on the Gloucester taxpayer, will not request any. So the Commission decided to cut bait and fish, and put me (a member) in charge of the project. We have a good niche for Great Republic on the one hand, and the right man for the restoration on the other, and we have revived interest and enthusiasm. The Bicentennial is also the 75th anniversary of Howard Blackburn's great crossing. He more than any other man, and his little vessel more than any other in existence, I think, symbolize Gloucester to itself and to the world. w 7


Sportsman's Edge, Ltd A Gallery of Contemporary Sporting and Wildlife Art is privileged to offer works by

Montague Dawson

The Fight Between Grand Turk and Hinchinbrooke oil on canvas framed size 47 x 57 Other originals a nd p ri nts by M ontag ue D awson avail able Our 1977 ca talogue of Sculp ture, Con tempo ra ry Sportin g a nd Wild life Art is available for $10 which incl udes postage.

Sportsman's Edge, Ltd

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D ept MD, 136 Eas t 74 th Stree t, N ew Yo rk, N.Y. 10021 Telephon e (212) 249-5010 / M ond ay-Sa turd ay 10-6

:C '.C TD


If you think the great age of marine art is past, look again:

Marine Art Lives! The National Maritime Historical Society is sponsor of a showing of the works of leading contemporary marine artists at the National Boat Show in New York City. The show opens January 15 and runs through the 23rd at the Coliseum at 59th Street. The show is made possible by the generous support of the National Association of Engine and Boat Manufacturers (NAEBM), sponsors of the National Boat Show. The concept of the art show is Robert and Maryanne Murphy's. They organized it and did the overwhelming work of designing and putting it together. Never before has the work of all these artists been shown in one place. Selec-

tion was a difficult process, and as the Murphys say, they certainly do not expect agreement with every choice they've made. Along with the recognized leaders. there is the work of younger and less-known artists. The quest has been for work that lives today-and will tomorrow. The philosophies of the artists have been expressed in these pages as best we could manage: if we could suggest one strong strand that runs through the work, it is that marine art is a form that flourishes today through a very simple virtue, namely devotion to the subject: a dedication to getting at the truth of the ships and their people at work in them.

At the End of the Artist's Rainbow By CHARLES J. LUNDGREN l am a fortunate man! A few aches and pains from advancing years, but many, many rewarding memories. Mundane things such as school, household chores, grass cutting and the like took a back seat when spring and summer arrived and l headed for my eighteenfoot catboat. I had the privilege of sailing among such yachts as Morgan's Corsair, Vincent Astor's Normahal, Lambert's magnificent schooner Atlantic-all in my backyard, Hempstead Harbor. The finest yachts in the world moored off the Glen Cove Station of the New York Yacht Club. (The station is now preserved-and in use!-at Mystic Seaport, thanks to my brother Bill and Harry Morgan.) Those were the days of six coats of hand-rubbed varnish on the brightwork and a piano finish on the wood hull, faithfully rubbed down by chamois each morning. On a clear northwest day one could see fore-and-aft work schooners making easting loaded with lumber, Sound steamers and ferries keeping their busy schedules, and tugs with a mile of barges. (l blush to recall sailing with a

reckless skipper across a tow rope, giving the New York Thirty with her sixfoot draft a rap full to heel her over and skid across: cause for self-congratulation aboard the yacht and curses aboard the tug who would have had to stop to clean up the wreckage if we hadn't succeeded. But then, a friend of later years,

Jim Kirk, tells me he used to dive into the millrace wake of sternwheelers on the Mississippi, to their equal vexation.) And there were other rewards that never left me but grew and flowered through the rest of my sailing years: drifting in quiet coves and creeks with the mainboom brushing cattails, the

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MARINE ART LIVES slow-moving hull coming upon astonished cows and flights of water fowl, beating back home against the afternoon southwesterly, in time to get back for a silent movie at the Town Hall in Sea Cliff, or digging clams to cook up a mess with a pal on a sandbank ... simple, non-plastic pleasures that seemed very important at the time and do today! In the early 1930s, at the beginning of my art career, I left these things to do a little studying and a lot of living in Europe. These were the days of Hitler's rantings and a general slide of old institutions in Europe's storied capitals but we hardly noticed that-one could live so well on $50 a month, or like a king on $100! It was during this period that I was exposed to the great museums of France, Italy and Germany and the glories of magnificent sculpture and architecture: the whole of Europe seemed a living museum with an attitude of preservation unlike our own of "tear down and build a bigger and better one." After Europe my old yen for the sea got the better of me and I stepped up a peg to ocean racing-Bermuda, Halifax, Gibson Island, the Vineyardall races designed to give one a healthy respect for the sea! And the distinct feeling at times, during a howling gale 600 miles offshore, that a nice, comfortable living room has its advantages. The fair weather and the foul, closehauled, reefed down battering awesome seas or "running free" with a fair wind-all serve me well as I stand by my easel doing my best to capture some of those moments . The right place at the right time, I believe, has happened to me in ways to shape my destiny. While peddling my wares in downtown New York I bumped into the owner of a large steamship company. He asked me to pay him a visit concerning some art work. This turned out to be an assignment to research and paint his forebear's sailing ships. I worked from a list of twentythree ships of Danish origin, making necessary (I was nothing loathe) a trip to that country to do my research. Back to Europe! This time to put to use some of the museums that had given me such pleasure in my early career. If you have ever done research you really have to master for your own use, you will appreciate the hours of searching through file cards, the deciphering -of flimsy letters and tattered logbooksthe picture you are after comes out bit by bit, but there is joy in the discoveries, and in fitting them together to your own understanding. The museums were won10

derfully cooperative and I managed to get background of the periods and creditable likenesses of all the ships. The one ingredient missing was the ships themselves, and the visual demonstration of life in those days-in other words, seeing and doing exhibits. There is an excitement in that, and a learning, not obtained from only pictures on a wall. After my return to the United States via an overloaded aircraft with more than my weight in drawings, books, photographs, logbooks, artifacts, etc . I spent the following two or three years composing and painting ship portraits. Mystic Seaport asked me to exhibit the paintings. And it was at this exhibit that I had the good fortune to meet Peter Stanford. At this time Peter had formed the concept of the South Street Seaport and we were to have a long and friendly relationship working on that. We felt the project should be basically formed by volunteers, the people. With their participation and enthusiasm and hard work, we would save a waterfront portion of the City of New York and make the public aware of the fact that New York would not exist were it not for trade created by the magnificent sailing ships of the past. The project would include all the shops and activities of the maritime trades-coffee, tea, ship chandlers, sea food restaurants . These things are now happening as part of this heroic effort, and the result is a true bonanza for the lover of the sea. My most recent project (I seem to go from project to project) has been to research and paint the story of American whaling, portraying the Charles W. Morgan and her many successful voyages. The painting of this series is a prime example of the relationship of the marine painter to the maritime museum. One can walk the decks of the Morgan at Mystic, study her gear, dream of her in combat with the magnificent mammals of the deep she hunted, and then walk over cobbled streets to see it all depicted. The test of the artist is-how well! In that, none of us can do any more than the best that is in us. For those readers who have had the courage to stay with me this long in this essay, let me make the observation that it is well I make my livelihood from the brush and not the pen. The rainbow I have followed has brought me rewards that it is a great privilege to share, even by talking about it as I have attempted to do here.

GEORGE F. CAMPBELL, Member of the Royal Institute of Naval Architects, comes at ships as a portraitist, with a fine rage to get at the truth of their hull forms and rig. Born in 1915 on the banks of the River Mersey, he spent his boyhood holidays and weekends working as a hand aboard a cutter-rigged fishing smack in Liverpool Bay. The

FRED FREEMAN comes near living everything he paints or draws, and does so to the hilt, intensely. Born in Boston, raised in Maine, he met his wife Katie in New Jersey where she started out modeling for artists as he was starting out to be an artist, studying under Henry Rankin Poore, a noted painter of wildlife. They were married in 1927 and later moved to Essex, Connecticut, where the Freemans live today. Today Fred's paintings hang in The Mariners Museum, Virginia, the Smithsonian Institution and elsewhere. But his heart remains in the seaport village of Essex, and his work is wrapped up in the ex-


vast parade of ships coming into the great English port that serves the densely populated industrial MidlandsFrench onion schooners, transatlantic liners, and occasional square riggersdrew him in their wake into a career first as naval architect with Royal Mail Lines, then with the London County Council, designing ferryboats, river craft, pontoons and buoys. He worked with Alan Villiers and Frank Carr as architect of the Cutty Sark restoration in Greenwich, and is author and illustrator of histories of the Royal Mail Lines and China tea clippers, and Jackstay, a manual for model-builders. George serves as Advisor to South Street Seaport Museum and the National Society, and works as exhibit designer at the American Museum of- Natural History; having come to the United States in 1963, he lives today in Brooklyn Heights with his wife Peggy, looking up from his drawing board to see the shipping of the great city that grew up on trade with his native Liverpool. perience of America at sea, which he has helped to unfold in original research, as well as in his art. In the '20s and '30s he did magazine illustrations and ads. Three years' service in the Navy in World War II opened new opportunities. The U.S. Naval Institute histories of submarine and destroyer operations were illustrated by Fred, who contributed to the revision of history through the careful study that went into some of his battle diagrams . He has also illustrated Scribner's Pictorial History

Campbell, The Challenge, extreme clipper built in 1851 in New York by William Webb.

of the U.S. Navy, and has illustrated Time-Life and Reader's Digest books including a memorable Two Years Before the Mast. Before Sputnik was launched, he got into drawing advanced rockets and men in space: seven of his paintings are in the permanent NASA collection. A founder of the Essex Art Association, he has encouraged many young people to follow his interest in American seafaring. "Captain William Coit trod these cobbles!" read a formidable poster he put up for a recent show

at Coco Lovelace's Foot of Main Street Gallery in Essex. But as these paintings show, he is ready to explore the world of the ancient Greeks, or of the modern scuba diver: after 50 years in the field, he feels he is at last at the frontiers of what he has to paint.

Freeman, The Battle of Salamis, 480 B. C., in which the Greeks took to their "wooden walls" to gain victory over the invading Persians.

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MARINE ART LIVES

CHARLES J. LUNDGREN counts himself a lucky man. He grew up sailing small boats in western Long Island Sound, enjoying fair weather and foul and learning all its creeks and byways. Having a noticeable bent for art, he studied at the Parsons School in New York, then topped this off with study in France, Germany, and Italy as well. As a young man he was able to pursue his fascination with the sea by sailing in many famous ocean racing yachts, and earned his living painting what he saw. His paintings hang in the New York Yacht Club, and he is a kind of unofficial artist for the Cruising Club of America, many of whose members' homes have a Lundgren over the fireplace. Sailing in these boats, from catboats to blue-chip racers, he mastered their ways and learned to paint them from inside out. After World War II Charles embraced a major challenge: to go to Europe and seek out the seagoing roots of the Isbrandtsen family, who have sailed ships in trade for several centuries. The fruit of that effort is a lively and utterly authentic museum of models, artifacts, and paintings, a recreation of the whole life purpose of a hard-driving shipping family extending across generations. To this work he brought his own authentic experience in thousands of miles of deep-sea and coastal sailing. A decade ago, when South Street Seaport Museum was in the making in New York, he brought vision and challenge and sustaining help to that enterprise and may be ranked as

Lundgren, Christian Radich, full-rigged Norwegian school ship.

one of the founders . His work by that time was already hung in Mystic Seaport, and his full range of historic background in the field, ranging from North Sea traders of two centuries back to modern container ships, proved invaluable to the undertaking . The Lundgrens, Charles and Sanchia, live today on a farm in New Milford, Connecticut, where the surrounding hills remind one of the ocean rollers. He was, naturally,

the official artist of Operation Sail, and moving on from that recently completed a series of twelve paintings of the whaling ship Charles W. Morgan, which has been shown at Mystic and will next be shown at the Mariners Museum in Newport News, Virginia. If Charles is a lucky man, his great gift has been to spread that luck around, with generosity and wisdom and a deep caring that shines through all his work .

Beddows, Sir Winston Churchill.

MICHAEL BEDDOWS, born in Staffordshire, England in 1931, started out studying art and working in an architect's office. For ten years he worked in automobile sales, pursuing sailing and art as his hobbies. Art won out when in 1972 he decided to paint professionally. Since then he has begun to make a name with paintings of grace and promise, like this of England's entry in Operation Sail, the Sir Winston Churchill, flanked by a modern racing yacht and an oldtime cutter, all in a lively sea and brilliant sun, close-reaching together. 12


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KIPP SOLDWEDEL began winning art prizes while he was at St. George's School in Newport, Rhode Island. After graduating from Yale in 1936, he received a Prix de Rome scholarship and studied with John Frazer of the Rhode Island School of Design. For the next 22 years he devoted himself to portrait painting: the Duke of Windsor, Governor Allen Shivers of Texas, and Audie Murphy were among his more prominent portraits. But the sea kept creeping in, and Soldwedel paintings began to appear in yacht clubs from San Diego to Long Island Sound. On all occasions possible he got out on salt water; one memorable occasion was the 1936 race of the full rigged ship Joseph Conrad

Soldwedel, Tiajuana.

against the square-rigged yacht Seven Seas, Newport to Bermuda. The fascination of boats sailing hard is a hallmark of much of his work: the look of sunlight through taut, spray-wet canvas, the sense of a vessel moving with grace at the top of her form in tense competition. The square-rigged sailing ships that still cruise the oceans are another leading interest, and Kipp, who had painted so many America's Cup racers

sailing out of Newport, was naturally selected as artist of record for the Tall Ships race to Newport last summer, which immediately preceded Operation Sail in New York and other harbors. His infectious enthusiasm is harnessed to a studious approach, and he plans to complete a series, which already includes Eagle, Danmark, and others, to cover every square-rigged sail training ship afloat.

Braynard, The Tall Ships are Coming.

FRANK 0. BRA YNARD, who has just wound up his job as General Manager of Operation Sail-1976, is now Director of History for South Street Seaport Museum, an institution he helped to found. He is also a Trustee and founding member of the National Society, and of the Steamship Historical Society. Along the way, in what may justly be called an action-packed career, he has worked for

Moran Towing, the Maritime Administration, and in other ship-related jobs, finding time also to write eleven books, of which Lives of the Liners and Tugman 's Sketchbook remain in perenniel demand. He is currently working on the third volume of his epic history of the liner Leviathan. His art springs from what he calls his "lifelong passion for ships." 13


MARINE ART LIVES

CARL G. EVERS was born in Germany as a British citizen. He earned honors at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London, and came to the United States only in 1947, having left his early work in Germany as marine and civil engineer in 1931 to spend the intervening 16 years doing commercial art in Sweden. "My idea when I came here was to do painting that would be art rather than continue in commercial art," he has said.

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"I wanted people to hang the prints of my works on the wall." Thousands of Americans have done just that, for example through the distinguished marine print program of the U.S. Naval Institute, which has reproduced more of his work than any other single artist. At first, Carl settled in San Francisco. But Moran Towing, Farrell Lines, and Ian Ballantine the publisher-early enthusiasts for his fine watercolors-were in New York, so he moved east and today lives in Southbury, Connecticut, with his wife Jean, whom he married in 1964. His ability to enter into the experience of ships at sea seems almost uncanny, but is founded on exhaustive, utterly methodical research and study of the subject from many angles. He is skeptical of loose enthusiasms, and dedicated to getting at the truth of a ship, a scene, a situation. The fervor of his life is embodied in his art, which is lumi-

nous, challenging, utterly unique, as though hours, years of study had produced a kind of freedom to do in paint what can hardly be painted: the coldness of the sea, the integrity of design of a ship, the play through everything of a sea wind which you can smell in his paintings. Carl claims that he is selftaught, and his hard-earned career might bear that out. But his mother was an artist, and there is beneath his flawless technique, a mind and spirit at work that understands the anger of the sea, and the drama of man's navigation of it. The Marine Art of Carl Evers, published in 1975 by Bantam in paperback, Scribner's in hard cover, shows in nearly 50 paintings of Carl's, the superb achievements of his lifework in art. Evers, South Street, 1879. McKay's Glory of the Seas picks up her tug to come into New York's sailing ship waterfront.


Stobart, Whaleship Acors Barnes beset, in Arctic ice, 1875. Her officers & men abandoned her & escaped to another vessel in open water.

JOHN STOBART is a celebrator of life, and in his work he brings us much to celebrate. He is, as the world of marine art well knows, the young artist who came to America ten years ago with a stunning, almost explosively lively bundle of clipper ship paintings under his arm. The art world moved over immediately to make room for him, and in a succession of shows at Mrs. Wunderlich 's Kennedy Galleries in New York, he rapidly developed his main interests

-which, it might be noted, are still developing and will probably continue to do so while he lifts a brush. The incredibly alive, vibrantly colorful quality of his early work was expressed mainly in dramatic scenes of classic sailing ships at sea; increasingly, he has turned to the celebration of the ordinary, to the sense of sunlight on worn, salt-stained wood, to harbor scenes that show the day's work of the waterfront world. The wind, always watch for the wind in his paintings. It flickers through masts and rigging, and is constantly shaking and escaping from canvas sails, or whipping coal smoke out of a steamer's stack; sometimes, in deserted docks late at night, it is just a whisper, somehow laden, as it would be to an old sailor's ear, with hopes and fears and memories of Cape Horn combers, flying fish and sounding whales. John did not have an easy early life in postwar England. But by his early thirties he had exhibited work at the Royal Academy in London,

and he made the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich a kind of second home, disciplining himself rigorously to the realities of the world of wooden ships driven by iron-hard men-the realities beyond the romance. In America, Mystic, Mariners, the South Street and San Francisco museums have come to know him well, a quick, eager figure, boyish, diffident, but never happier than in hours-long conversations over details of rigging, making sketches to illustrate a point, seeking out the authentic details of the experience at sea. He will do the same with old seamen in waterfront bars. His ardent quest for the very feel of the old world of wood and hemp and canvas, of piers that were doorsteps to a wider world than the world we know today, of brick buildings that echoed to drayman's curse and sailor's shout-this quest of his has brought us treasure that glows with increasing depth and understanding, cause for celebration indeed. 15


MARINE ART LIVES

MEL VIN MILLER, born in Baltimore in 1937, seems to see the world of ships and water for the first time in each of his paintings: they are suffused with a sense of wonder and of opportunity. "An artist working in a representational mode," he says, "seeks to create within the two-dimensional confines of the canvas surface an illusion not only of the physical subject, but also those ethe-

Sticker, Constitution and Guerriere, records a moment of horror and disbelief for the British as the upstart Yankee frigate they had been hunting pounds their ship to pieces.

--

Miller, Rough Water. A tug pursues her mission-into the heart of the storm.

real qualities of nature which excite the senses." This philosophy is backed up by an intensely studied technique ineluding research into the methods and materials of 15-18th century Italian and Flemish masters. He graduated from the Maryland Institute of Art in 1959,

where he studied under Jacques Maroger and Anne Schuler, and is represented today by Grand Central Galleries in New York. He reports with some wonder that his paintings sell "right off the easel" these days-a fact others might not find so surprising.

ROBERT STICKER spent long hours searching the sea during World War II, as pilot of a huge Navy flying boat. Returning to his job at Caltex in New York, he went to Art Students League courses at night. When he lost his job in a corporate reshuffle, severance pay provided full-time attendance at the League, where he studied under FranÂĽ Reilly. Much art teaching is taken up

with technique. "But the real secret," says Bob Sticker, "is observing things and understanding what you're observing." With Reilly's encouragement, he drew on his own knowledge of the sea, fleshed out with rigorous research into the ways of whalers and fishermen.

16


Ellis, Shipping on the East River, N. Y., 1820.

GORDON ELLIS was born and bred in Merseyside, the waterfront of England's great Midland port of Liverpool, where he lives today. Like many another child of the River Mersey, he spent his young years wandering around the wharfs and docks of the harbor, every moment he could. The steam whistles, the impudent chuff of innumerable tugs, the dignity of salt-stained merchantmen coming in from deep water evidently got in his blood, for he went on to train in naval architecture at John Brown's in Clydebank, and then studied with Walter Thomas, marine designer and painter. Long service in the Royal Navy in World War II made him familiar with men, ships and the seas in all their moods, an experience he enriched with work on fishing boats, crewing in ocean racing yachts, and sailing steam launches through the Irish Sea in more peaceful times. Much of his work today is of contemporary shipping. Those brought up in the ways of the sea, which

MARK GREENE, born in Philadelphia, studied at the Graphic Sketch Club and the Philadelphia Museum School of Art. Until 1967, he worked as advertising illustrator. Then he took seriously to painting ships, a lifelong interest. As a small boat racer, he likes to catch a vessel at a particular moment in her passage between sea and sky. "I find the fascination of the histories and experiences of the ships, masters and crews, the men who designed and built them, as interesting as painting the ships," he says. "I will preferably select

are not always easy, seek out his work, and he travels where the work calls him to paint the scenes he is called to at first hand. Here, in an historical excursion, he paints the working waterfront of South Street in New York in the days of sail. Liverpool and New York grew up together in the oceanic trade between

an episode in a ship's history to paint, feeling that the painting, when possible, should be more than just a portrait." He makes his home in New Rochelle, on Long Island Sound.

them, and root understanding of the hard work that drives ships across wide oceans is evident in this, as in all Gordon Eilis's work. He is represented in New York by Kennedy Galleries, but he was off painting ships in Greece when this was written, and no photograph of him was available for this review.

Greene, Flying Cloud, catches the most famous of clippers running in ideal conditions, "all her washing hung out," as sailors used to say, a thing of monumental but very lively grace and unforgettable beauty.

17



The automobiles of Mercedes-Benz. The legend continues. Mercedes-Benz invented the automobile in 1886-and in 1895 produced the first car ever built on a production line. Over the generations, Mercedes-Benz has perfected one engineering advance after another. Add to that an auto racing record of over 4,400 individual victories and you have an automotive heritage unmatched by any other car in the world.

N

ow Mercedes-Benz offers seven separate and distinct models for sale in the United States. Each one is unique. Each one continues, in its own way, the Mercedes-Benz legend. At left, you see almost 50 years in the life of a legend. Look closely. See how nobly time touches these Mercedes-Benz automobiles. Their appeal is enduring. A characteristic that marks the truly legendary, and distinguishes it from the merely passing fancy.

A blend of future and past Here is disciplined grace, the product of thoughtful evolution in de-

I: 450SEL ( 1977); 2: 300SL Gullwing ( 1955); 3: SOOK Special Roadster ( 1935); 4: Super-charged SSK (1929); 5: 540K Cabriolet B (1936); 6: 600 (1969).

Mercedes-Benz Technical Specifications MODEL

ENGINE

DISPLACE· MENT (CU.IN.)

WHEEL· BASE (IN.)

OVERALL LENGTH (IN.)

CURB WEIGHT (LBS.)

2400

4 cyl. ohc (fuel injected)

146.7

110.0

190.9

3210

3000

5 cyl. ohc (fuel injected)

183.4

110.0

190.9

3515

280E

6 cyl. dohc (fuel injected)

167.6

110.0

190.9

3530

280SE

6 cyl. dohc (fuel injected)

167.6

112.8

205.5

3905

450SEL

V-8 ohc (fuel injected)

275.8

116.7

209.4

4080

450SL

V-8 ohc (fuel injected)

275.8

96.9

182.3

3815

450SLC

V-8 ohc (fuel injected)

275.8

111.0

196.4

3860

sign. When Mercedes-Benz engineers create a new car, their vision is wide. They look backwards to retain and improve on their worthiest earlier ideas. And forwards as well, to blend in their latest innovative technology. Thoughtful evolution in design: a mark of Mercedes-Benz. To the eye, the changes that have been wrought may be subtle. Invariably, though, they are quietly beautiful-which shows how unerringly their "form follows function." More importantly, the cars of Mercedes-Benz are designed to appeal strongly to your intelligence. They are honest cars. The promises they make relate directly to their primary function: well-engineered, safe transportation. One of the seven MercedesBenz models currently available in the United States is in the front rank, left: the 450SEL Sedan. Our full offering is described in the table, above. Each model represents a blending of patient craftsmanship with sophisticated technology.

Enduring value ... and enduring pleasure Many models of the elegant SOOK shown here (No. 3, Circa.1935) are appraised at over $50,000. The rare 540K Cabriolet B (No. 5, Circa 1936) is considered a genuine value at $75,000. And based on average official used car prices over the past five years alone, the contemporary Mercedes-Benz automobiles have held their value better than any other make of luxury car sold in the United States. The high retained value of Mercedes-Benz cars is a rational attraction. But they have an emotional raison d'etre, too. To experience it, arrange, through your Mercedes-Benz Dealer, to drive one. You'll experience an unrivaled automotive pleasure behind the wheel of this charismatic car from Mercedes-Benz. Truly, the legend continues.

(f\

"CJ Mercedes-Benz

Engineered like no other car in the world. ©Mercedes-Benz, 1976

An unbroken line of excellence. Since 1886, Mercedes-Benz has produced one classic automobile after another. Each one a car engineered like no other car in the world.


HISTORIC SCRIMSHAW Authenticated by Peabody Museum of Salem where original 125-yr.old tooth is displayed, this un· usual 61h" yellowed and colorti nted reproduction depicts Liberty one side and 1814 sea battle other side, $22.50 ppd.

Send 25¢ for catalog on other ~~~ scrimshaw anP nautical replicas. ARTEK, DEPT. 553, ANTRIM, N.H. 03440

A literate magazine for the serious boatman Watercolor

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OPENS 1977 SEASON FEBRUARY 26

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MARINE ART LIVES Mecray, Yacht America catches a flier whose sailing astonished the world. The trophy she won in J85/, now the America's Cup, will be sailed for again this summer off Newport.

JOHN MARCY MECRA Y was raised one block from the ocean in Cape May, New Jersey, where his family history predates the founding of this historic community-both parents are Mayflower descendents. He studied illustration and painting at the Philadelphia

College of Art, graduating in 1961. As a freelance illustrator, he won awards in advertising, editorial and book illustration, and he taught drawing at the Philadelphia College of Art from 1964 to 1966. Then a crewing job on a Caribbean-bound yacht reawakened his love

of things marine; he quit his career as illustrator and moved to Newport, Rhode Island, to concentrate on painting ships and the sea. Kennedy Galleries represents Mccray, and keep him busy except for the weeks he takes to go sailing each year.

NED HERRMANN has focused on marine subjects, in painting and in sculpture, from the outset of his art career. Starting in the early '60s in oils and acrylics, he now paints primarily in water color and gouache. Producing over 300 works in the past ten years, he is represented in collections from coast to coast, has won sixty awards including

blue ribbons and best in show, and held eight one-man shows. Realism and attention to detail characterize his work, which is represented by galleries in Vermont and California. For the past two years he has been president of the Stamford Art Association. Herrmann, Mystic Seaport.

21


MARINE ART LIVES Brett, Phoenix & Rose Bombarding New York, July 12, 1776. The city of 26,000 was surrounded by water and at the mercy of the British Navy.

OSWALD LONGFIELD BRETT grew up haunted by the sea in Australia, where he was born in 1921. He saw the beauty of the last sailing ships in Sydney Harbor as a boy, and wanted desperately to ship away with Alan Villiers, a fellow-Australian, when the latter brought his little full-rigger Joseph Conrad into port 40-odd years ago, on her famous round-the-world voyage. His

parents, however, insisted that he finish his formal schooling, and so he pursued his sea dreams in the studio of the late John Allcot, a distinguished marine painter. Only after further study in fine arts at the East Sydney Technical College was he granted his wish to go to sea, first as a deck boy in the coastal and Pacific Island trade, later in deepwatermen ranging from square riggers to such

WILLIAM G. MULLER was born in New York City in 1936 and grew up in northern Manhattan near the Hudson River. "During the 1940s," he says, "I became addicted to steamboat-watching from the Hudson's banks, and attempted my first steamboat drawings." After working summers during his high

school years on Day Line steamers as assistant purser, at age 18 he became quartermaster aboard the Alexander Hamilton, and is trustee of the society working to save that classic side-wheeler today (see "White Swan of the Hudson," SH No. 5). When this job died, he turned to commercial art, studying at

ocean liners as the Aquitania and Queen Elizabeth. Settled ashore in New York, Os became one of the founding volunteers of the South Street Seaport Museum, whose books he has illustrated and where his paintings hang today. Os and his wife Gertrude live quietly in Long Island, but in any odd corner of New York City where there is argument among knowledgeable people about ships, there you are likely to find them, a long, lanky, soft-spoken Australian and his bright-eyed lady, pursuing a deeply held interest they share.

Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts. Represented by Kennedy Galleries in New York, he states the goal of his lively, painstakingly researched art as "to keep alive the majesty and romance of the great American steamboat through the medium of oil on canvas."

Muller, tthe Hudson River Dayliner, C. Vibbard steaxms upriver.

22


Ship Lore Presents

The Fabled

TALL SHIPS OF THE WORLD

21" x 28"

Meticulously accurate in nautical detail, these high-fidelity lithographs in magnificent full color by the renowned marine artist KIPP SOLD WEDEL will delight all who admire fine art. 20" x 26"

} OPERATION SAIL An historic gathering of the " TALL SHIPS" for Operation Sail celebrating the bicentennial year of 1976 in the U.S.A.

U.S.A.2 "EAGLE" Host vessel for the 1976U.S. Operation Sail gathering, owned and operated by the U.S.C.G.

21" x28"

21" x 28"

POLAND 3 "DAR

POMORZA"- Poland's contribution to the tall ships that spread good will and world wide peace.

GERMANY

4

The winner of the 1976 STN ASTA Race from Bermuda to Newport, R. I. "GORCH FOCK"

21 " x 28"

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5 ADENMARK rare view of the Danish training ship "DANMARK" shortened down for a full gale off Cape Home.

ITALY

Representing the pride of Italy and the Italian people everywhere, VIVA "AMERIGO VESPUCCI''.

I

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unframed

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framed

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$50.00

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From Boating . . . A collection of

•

oar epr1nts Suitable for framing, the ideal gift. BOATING's 7-part series "Notes from History's Log" was illustrated with original paintings by the not ed marine artist Oswald Brett. The paintings show British warships shelling lower Manhattan, the first Colonial seizure of a British vessel at Machias, Maine, the Colonial naval assault on Nassau, and other historic naval actions. 0 swald Brett, an Australian by birth, went to sea as a deck boy in the Australian coast and Pacific Island trade. Later he served in deep water ships from Square-riggers to Queen Elizabeth. Since World War 11 he has lived in New York City, painting, illustrating, and conducting research for shipping lines, banks, museums and publications. Jn 1964 he was commissioned by the President of the Phillippines to paint the American Barque Kaiulani for presentation to President Johnson.

Phomix and Rose pound Manhattan as the British

advaice up Hud so n.

After meeting with Admiral de Grasse aboard Ville de Paris, Washmgton and party ri:turncd to their cutte r while flagship rircd <;a!utc.

.

Brig Pilgrim, imm o rtalized by Dana in Two Years Before the Mast streams in through Golden Ga te.

Defendin g Georgians send fire boats drifting down Savannah River as Briti sh Sloop St. John attemp ts to seize Cont in enta l sh ips loaded wi th supplies of rice.

'

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Con tinental ships, carrying a Marine landing force under the command of Capt Samuel Nicholas, approach Nassau.

BOATING, Consumer Service Division, 595 Broadway, New York, N. Y. 10012 Please send sets of Boating's " Notes from History's Log" set of 7 reproductions at $12 per set, postpaid (outside U.S.A. $15). Enclosed is $ * Residents of CA, CO, FL, IL, MI, MO , NY, DC, and TX, add applicable sales tax.

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Eacheproduction is printed on durable high-uality paper stock, measures 12" x 17", is delrered unfolded in a tube and is suitable for frming. The price is only $12 per set, postpid. To receive your 7 reproductions, just ue the coupon below - a convenient way b shop for a matchless gift.

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<On board sloop Unity, patriots pursued and cap tured armed schooner Margaretta after violent battle.


MARINE ART LIVES

SANDFORD B. DOWNING, born in Georgia, attended The Franklyn School of Professional Art in New York, Wesleyan Conservatory in Macon, Art Students League in New York and L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Fountainbleau, France. She also studied in New York with Don Pierce, and in Positano, Italy. She has won many prizes for her paintings in Westchester, where she has lived since 1949. Today she is realizing a lifelong ambition of operating an art gallery, Collector's Item in Rye, New York, which she has owned since 1969. Her love of sailing is one she shares with her husband and a large family.

Downing, Spinnakers at Northeast Harbor.

Waite, Cup Contender.

DEAN P. W AITE's art career began at age five after a visit to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and he has pursued his love of things marine ever since. An honor graduate of The Vesper George School of Art in Boston, he went on to start the Dean Waite Art Service of Boston, and has been president of the Business Men's Art Club in that city. His work has appeared on the covers of many publications, and is often exhibited. He has been active in art directing, advertising, publishing, selling and teaching, and is now with the Associated Press in New York. "There is a strong need," he says, "for honest effort in traditional painting." w 25


The Chase

The roma nce a nd adventure of our wha ling heritage a re captured in th ese sp lendi d paintings by Cha rles Lundgren, one of Ame rica's fo remost ma rine a rtists. T he Chase a nd T he Lancing, t wo of a series of 19th Cent ury Wh aling scenes exhi bited at Mystic Seapo rt a nd sched ul ed for other mu seum s th roughout the coun t ry, are now ava ilab le in a limi ted edi t ion (9 50 each) of co ll ector's q uality prints (22" x 28") s igned, numbered and t itled ind ividua lly by t he artist. T he gravu re process used to c reate these pr ints captures t he s ubtle

tones and bright pigments of the origin al painting a nd assures the fin est poss ible reproduction the wo rld of pr int ing offers. $80.00 each p lus 3 5 .0 0 s hipp ing. N.J. res idents ad d 5 % sales tax. Ma il and phone order s accepted. Mastercha rge, BankAmeri card a nd America n Express. \V r ite fo r additi onal literature on other quality prints in the E dit ions L imited coll ection.

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The Lancing


SHIP NOTES Move to Save New York's Last Liberty By Francis James Duffy Member Maritime Trades Educational Advisory Commission Schools hip S/ S John W. Brown NOTE: The last of them are going now, the last of these 7, 170-ton workhorses built by a nation at war to maintain its lifelines across the sea. Fewer than ten of the 3, 000 that were built are said to exist, in American hands. Their long and useful life is ending. Ralph L. Show, Director of the Bath Marine Museum, has urged that at least one of the Liberty ships be preserved on each coast. Jn tackling this major challenge he urges that several considerations be carefully explored: "First: She be kept at a location easily accessible to drydocking facilities for periodic inspection and overhaul of her underbody. Two : She be kept as a 'live' ship with a crew, an experienced bosun, etc., to insure ongoing maintenance. Three: that every effort be bent to find a multiple use for the vessel as her size and upkeep indicates that a museum use (i.e. static display) is not a generator of sufficient income alone to sustain her. " Harry Dring, Director of the State Marine Park ships in San Francisco, has let it be known that he thinks he can use a Liberty as baseship for the operations attendant on keeping up his fleet-the largest tonnage of wooden ships afloat in the world. And now a major effort is underway to preserve the schoolship John W. Brown, a well known, well kept, well loved Liberty in New York.-ED. While the National Society travels to the far corners of the world seeking out ships to preserve, there is berthed here in New York City a ship that is destined for extinction and yet represents a great chapter in our maritime and national history. The schoolship John W. Brown, berthed at the Morton Street Pier in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, is one of the last Liberty ships still surviving. At present the Brown is part of the New York City school system, an annex to the Food and Maritime High School, training boys and girls in maritime skills . Although a stationary ship, she is very much alive a live ship, with an operating engine room that is still used for power and light and cargo booms, and winches that function. Unlike many stationary schoolships she has not been

drastically altered from her original role as a wartime cargo and troop carrier. One factor that makes the Brown such an excellent candidate for preservation to represent the Liberty's wartime role is that she still carries gun tubs and special protective armament, unlike others of the class that were converted to peacetime service. There is a good possibility too that various Liberty ship parts and equipment are still available to fill any gaps or make repairs . Ralph Snow , in National Fisherman, and Ed Moran in SEA HISTORY have written of the need to save a Liberty ship lately; many others over the years have talked of this . There is also a great living body of alumni who served in Liberty ships, many now reaching an age when they begin to appreciate what the old "ugly ducklings" represented. The school has operated on the ship since 1947 and has hundreds of graduates that would help support the project. I have heard from members of the maritime unions, World Ship Society, South Street Seaport Museum , Steamship Historical Society and the staff and alumni of the maritime colleges, all expressing interest. The National Society could not be true to its ideals if it failed to respond to that interest.

A Battle of the North Atlantic Museum has now been formed for the purpose of taking on this admittedly large but vital project. The fiscal problems of the city have delayed retiring the John W. Brown from service, but a replacement is now tied up to her starboard side. The National Society must start now to gather the interested parties, gain the monetary support, both governmental and private, and perhaps most important, plan for a suitable site to open the ship to the general public. How many ships have sailed into oblivion because the historic value was discovered too late! See also page 30. -ED. A Brig is Conceived In Sonoma Creek, in the San Francisco Bay region, a group of sailors who have worked on square-rigged movie ships and museum ships have decided to build their own, a replica of the 127foot brig Lady Katherine. They plan to use volunteers and make the building of the vessel itself an educational act. They're organized as the Heritage Navigation Association, at Box 2337, 51 Harbor Street, San Rafael, CA 94901.

SEASCAPES '77 Exhibition and Sale January 11through28, 1977 Preview January 10, 5: 30 to 7: 30

m G

If you love the sea, you won't want to miss this event. From the master of sea painting-Frederick J. Waugh-to 20 of America's most gifted working artists, this show brings you the best of the marine painters from a gallery with a tradition Gordon Grant (shown of great art. Waugh, in illus.), Montague Dawson, Robert Sticker and Bennett Bradbury will be part of this to the galleries January memorable sale. Come 11 to 28 and experience the majesty of the sea. 43rd and Madison Ave . (Biltmore Hotel) New York 867-3344

27


SAIL TRAINING CONFERENCE DISCUSSIONS ON RACES, SHIPS, THE ENVIRONMENT In our last we reported on the Sail Training Conference held at Mystic Seaport on October 21-22, and on one of the panels, "Sail Training and the Maritime Museum ." Herewith further panel reports are presented by the various chairmen. Sail Training Races Representatives of AST A, the Argentine Navy, the Norfolk Sea Explorers, the City of Norfolk, Op Sail New York, and ST A were among participants in this panel. They agreed that sail training races are a valuable experience for the participants and a worthwhile method of getting and keeping the aims, goals and practitioners of Sail Training in the public eye. Due to distances and limits placed on certain vessels by Coast Guard licensing, it was decided to hold two separate races in 1977, under the auspices of the ASTA. One race, at a time to be decided upon later, is to be in the Chesapeake, and is tentatively scheduled for Baltimore to Norfolk . The other race is scheduled for Block Island to lower Long-Island Sound, and is scheduled to start at the end of Block Island Week in June. An invitation to run a sail training race to Norfolk, to commemorate the Bicentenary of the Battle of the Capes in 1981, was tentatively accepted by AST A, pending Board approval. The race will be run from South America so that as many South American Class A vessels as possible can participate. Invitations will also be sent to European Class A vessels, in the hopes that some may come to Norfolk. The Chairman stated that it would help promote European visits to this country if more effort were made by American vessels to participate in European Sail Training races. A suggestion that a recreation of the Battle of the Capes be held met with lively discussion. It was agreed that ASTA is the logical organization to run sail training races in the Western Hemisphere, and that tentatively, major races including Class A vessels, should be held in odd-numbered years so as not to interfere with European sail training races. It was emphasized that AST A performs its major functions as a central agency best without owning a sail training vessel of its own. Ownership of such a vessel, it was felt, would too greatly

28

fragment AST A's efforts and roles . Cities with on-going Sail Training organizations should be represented on ASTA's Board, and Naval Attaches of other nations in the Americas operating Sail Training vessels should also have a voice. A proficiency certification system, similar to the Royal Yachting Association in Britain, to be maintained and prepared by AST A was discussed . It was felt that such certification could be of great value to yacht owners signing on crews as well as being a great source of pride to the certificate holders. The importance of action now, while the events of Tall Ships and of Op Sail are fresh in the public mind was stressed. Once the public has forgotten these events, fund raising and lobbying will be much more difficult. PERRY LEWIS, Chairman Ship Acquisition and Operations About forty ship owners and operators, legal counsel, and representatives of the insurance industry, Operation Sail, and maritime museums considered the problems of legislative changes, representation before regulatory bodies, and coordination with the insurance industry. It was the sense of the meeting that: l. ASTA should, as national coordinating body for sail training, perform these functions: a. Establish a committee to research and determine changes in national statutes governing construction, manning and operation of sail training ships where necessary, b. Represent sail training organizations on the national level to effect such changes, c. Investigate and determine steps to be taken to bring about broader insurance coverage and more realistic rates, d. Assist and promote local and regional associations with sail training programs through an information service including design and operational costs, manning requirements, and referral of applicants, e. Provide, as soon as possible, the membership with cost estimates of carrying out the above, and recommended methods of financing. 2. The AST A Board of Directors should be so constituted as to represent the interests of the members on a regional basis and a ship owner and operator basis.

3. It was the strong sense of the meeting that it was not in the best interests of the membership for the national office of AST A to consider the acquisition of a sail training ship on a national basis. An informal meeting of the Executive Committee of AST A was held following this discussion, and recommended to the Board that the above program be activated forthwith. BARCLAY H. WARBURTON, III Chairman Sail Training & the Marine Environment It was proposed that:

l. AST A, as parent organization, take a strong leadership role in a marine awareness program as stated on page nine of the Program of the ASTA pamphlet. It was felt that AST A should not merely exist for the sole purpose of sail training, but that a marine awareness program should be an integral part of any sail training student's life aboard a sail training vessel. 2. ASTA create a small, manageable Marine Awareness Committee whose job it would be to act as a central reporting and operational committee for the dissemination of information to various sail training vessels. 3. ASTA commit no less than $500 to assist in the creation of this committee to help in printing materials for distribution to various vessels with a membership in AST A and other interested persons and organizations. Matching funds should be sought through individual AST A membership groups. 4. Such materials, already, for the most part, available, be adapted and tried aboard AST A vessels and then resubmitted for final reworking and ultimate publication. In discussion, it was agreed that: If AST A is to be a viable force in marine education and marine awareness, more of its thrust must be applied to this urgent role of marine awareness. The embryonic beginnings must now be matured into a workable format so that young people who go to sea will know about the problems and parameters of the ocean's past, present and future . The uniqueness of the AST A's role in sail training presupposes a burden of responsibility to create such an awareness program and to lend its fullest support to the implementtation of this role in the ASTA program. PRENTICE K. STOUT, Chairman


Westward, the Sea Education Association's 240-ton topsail schooner, slices into a sunlit sea, far from the Arctic waters she also sails. "We think our graduates gain an understanding of the sea which they could not get in any other way," says the vessel's master, Jonathan Lucas. By the end of a term at sea, the students are running the ship, "not by resisting and overcoming the sea, but by respecting it and using its forces to advantage." Photograph: T.E. Heidenreich.

"The More Yards the Better!"

Two Annual Meetings Important news was reported at the international meeting of the Sail Training Association held in England in November. The 1978 Tall Ship Races, it was announced, will go to Goteborg in Sweden, to Fair Isle, and Oslo, Norway. The 1980 races will go to Friedrichshaven, Germany, and Karlskrona, Denmark. It is hoped that Soviet authorities will invite the Tall Ships on to Tallin, Estonia. The very good news was given out that the Norwegian government is providing financial aid to permit the Sorlandet and Stratsraad Lehmkuhl to sail again in the 1977 season. Laid up in 1976 for lack of funds, these vessels could not take part in Operation Sail, though the Norwegian Christian Radich did. The American Sail Training Association was formally enrolled as a constituent member of the international organization, and will take a seat on its governing council, whose chairman is Commander the Hon. Greville Howard, RN (ret.). The Annual Meeting of the AST A, held December 3 in Newport, Rhode Island, saw the following officers elected: Chairman, Rear Admiral Joseph Wylie, USN (ret.); Vice Chairman, Dr. Robin Wallace; Secretary, Captain Eugene C. Kenyon, USN (ret.). John G. Winslow,

president of the Seamen's Church Institute in New York, was named Finance Chairman, Patrick G. Kirby of Newport was named Membership Chairman, and Francis E . Bowker of Mystic Seaport, Connecticut, was named Chairman of Sail Training & Education. New regional directors were elected: Henry Dormitzer, president of the Historical Museum of Massachusetts, and Captain Edward Cassidy, USCG (ret.), of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, for Massachusetts; Robert Hubner and H. Alexander Salm, both directors of Operation Sail-1976, for New York; Richard K. Page, director of the Philadelphia Maritime Museum, for Philadelphia; Robert E. Michel, businessman and yachtsman and prime mover in Op Sail Baltimore, for Baltimore; John R. Sears, Jr., realtor active in sail training, for Norfolk. Dues were increased to $20 in view of expanding responsibilities, and by laws were amended to permit the Association to accept affiliated organizations as members, and to provide standards of accreditation leading to the establishment of squadrons on a regional basis. Affairs concluded with a testimonial dinner to Elwood E. Leonard, Chairman of the National Advisory Council, whose devoted service to the educational purposes of sail training elicited well earned plaudits from all hands.

The debate over the merits of square rig and fore-and-aft for deepwater work carries over from the late nineteenth century, when the first big multimast schooners were built, into our day. (See Klebingat letter, SH No. 5.) And it is visible in the diverse rigs of sail training ships built for the purpose. Spain's Juan Sebastian de Elcano and Chile's Esmeralda must be among the biggest topsail schooners ever built-fore-and-aft rigged four-masters, with square yards on foretopmast only. But when the Libertad was laid down to the same basic design in the Arsenal Naval in Buenos Aires, Captain Juan P. Jose DeValle, then Commandant, argued successfully for her conversion to the full-rigged ship she is today. The big-ship design most widely followed in new construction in the decade prior to World War II and since is that of the German bark Eagle-squarerigged on fore and main, fore-and-aft mizzen. This design was most lately embodied in Columbia's Gloria, built in 1968. Two years earlier the Sail Training Associated built their famous Sir Winston Churchill as a three-masted topsail schooner, a little over half Eagle's length. But the highly successful Loyalist class in Canada use square rig on a much smaller hull, less than half the Churchill's length. These 60-foot steel vessels are brigantines or half brigs: square rigged on the foremast, fore-and-aft on the main. The Soviets are the nation most thoroughly committed to sail training in big ships. The new ships they are building are reputed to be generally similar to the Tovaritsch (ex-Gorch Fack) of the Eagle class; but during Operation Sail one Soviet captain was heard to opine that the new vessels should be full-rigged ships, not barks. "The more yards the better, for this kind of work!'' he said. 29


SEAPORT & MUSEUM NEWS

Deckhand warps sloop Clearwater into the National Society's Brooklyn pier.

"He Was the Man Who Made It Go!" With these words Admiral John M. Will, USN (ret.) saluted Frank 0. Braynard, General Manager of Operation Sail, on his achievement in bringing the Tall Ships of Operation Sail to New York. The occasion was the eighth annual James Monroe Award Luncheon, held on December 6 aboard the schoolship John W. Brown in New York City-one of the last of the 2,710 Liberty Ships built in the United States in World War II. Frank Braynard, recipient of the award, was laid up with a cold. His wife Doris spoke for him, urging the preservation of the last Hudson River sidewheeler Alexander Hamilton as well as the Brown. Ralph L. Snow, Director of the Bath Marine Museum and a leading advocate of preserving a Liberty, pointed out that while the British prototypes of the Liberty were built at Bath, giving him a special interest in preserving one of the type, the ships were actually a deeply important part of our American sea heritage. "They did what they were built to do," he said. The James Monroe Award is sponsored annually by the National Society for outstanding contribution to the cause of maritime history in New York. Past award winners have included Robert C. Albion, Frank G.G. Carr and Alan Villiers. Braynard opined from his sickbed (he's since recovered) that he was particularly glad to make his address on steam, his first love-not sail! In the forehold of the John W. Brown, guests hear Captain John Yaeger, USCG, hold forth on the role of the Liberty ship. From the left, Admiral John M. Will, USN (ret.), Chairman of the James Monroe A ward Luncheon, Doris Braynard, Peter Stanford, President of the National Society, and at far right, Ralph Snow, Director of the Bath Marine Museum.

30

Getting It Together in Philadelphia

Old Yachts Go On Forever

"I'm really experiencing the Penn's Landing 'getting it together' problem," writes our correspondent Elizabeth Miller Martel. She notes that a Boat Show held in late September helped focus attention on the waterfront. And one by one, the historic ships intended for the area are moving in-the latest, the mighty Moshu/u, which came in October 29, as the National Trust was meeting in the city. Moshu/u, winner of the last Grain Race of square-rigged sailing ships from Australia to England in 1939, is to be opened as a restaurant ship. Just north of Penn's Landing, another floating restaurant exists in the old car ferry Florida .. . and another is planned in the Presidential Yacht Williamsburg. The Grand Banks barkentine Gaze/a Primeiro, belonging to the Philadelphia Maritime Museum, the Barnegat Lightship and the schooner Nellie and Mary, belonging to the Heritage Ship Guild, and the Spanish American War flagship Olympia, belonging to the Cruiser Olympia Association, along with the World War II submarine Becuna, make up in sum with the commercial vessels, a major museum fleet. The dragger Quest, raised as a wreck and now displayed ashore to considerable public interest, and the decayed Baltic galleass Sonja are two further vessels of interest. If the ships are cared for, and if the master plan works out well for them as they come into safe harbor at Penn's Landing, then Mrs. Martel will be satisfied, and history rewarded.

Alen Sands York, Commodore of the Antique Boat & Yacht Club, and skipper of the 100-year-old junk Mon Lei, has proposed reactivating the Club under the auspices of the National Society. The Society's Board of Trustees has voted in favor of this in principle, and it is expected that early in 1977 the Club will be in operation once more, headquartered in the National Society offices on the Brooklyn waterfront. Readers owning old yachts, or yachts of historic design, are invited to write Antique Boat & Yacht Club, care of the National Society, expressing their interest. Dues were at $25 annually when the Club became inactive a few years back. Probably they will now be at a higher level, if the Club is to pursue its full range of programs. The feeling of the Trustees of the National Society is that the AB&YC did a marvelous job in drawing people and boats together in active program; we think the public and our members can share in the educational value of the Club's programs if the Club functions as a special chapter of the National Society. There'll be a fuller report in the spring SH on the way the Club functions and the plans it is now considering. Many historic boats sail as yachtsthe oldest bugeye in the world is a yacht. Many yachts are carefully built to highly traditional design. The Antique Boat & Yacht Club has functioned by setting standards, putting boats and owners together, and holding assemblies of these vessels which we would like to see again.

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BOOKS The Riddle of the Sands, by Erskine Childers, (Dover, paper , 284 pp., $3 .50) . This underground classic is a book for lovers. That explains I think why it has been reprinted from time to time since 1903, and why it's brought out now in a handsome, cheap, readable edition. The yarn opens with the shy love of two young men for each other, young men adrift in their first years after college, seeking meanings in life and roles in what seems to us the incredibly stable, ordered world of Edwardian England . They find themselves, and perhaps their metiers, in a somewhat overheated plot of spying and skullduggery, sailing in a small converted lifeboat in the low-lying islands and tidal sands of the German Frisian coast. Sailing people pride themselves on knowing what a No. 3 Rippingille stove is, from this novel, and a small band of literary aficianados accounts some of its prose the finest ever written in English on the experience of sailing. It is then a kind of love affair with the sea, centered on the yawl Du/cibel/a, a demure, somewhat dowdy, but s9ciable and stout-hearted boat whose character shines through her ventures in one of the world's more unusual crusing grounds. Love is expressed in working men and boats too: old Bartels in his coastal galliot Johannes irradiates some cabin and rainy October canal scenes with a memorable affectionate presence that seems to extend and have continuance beyond the printed page. Clara has more difficulty getting off the page, a girl so English she belies her German name and family situation, giving away a key point in the plot rather early-but who cares? She does get off the page. You'd have to be a brutish lout not to fall for her yourself, with her "brown, firm hand-no, not so very small, my sentimental reader" . And there is love of country: Carruthers and Davies for theirs, Commander Bruning of the torpedo boat Blitz for his-a sentiment which even if the reader has not felt it much himself, he should perhaps not lightly knock. The Edwardian evening ended. Its epitaph is written in the names of young men killed before their time at places like Passchendael and Ypres, painted on the stone entryways of Eton College. Childers himself was shot by a firing squad (with each of whose members he had first shaken hands) outside Beggar's Bush Barracks in Ireland in 1922-even his friends said he pursued the cause of total Irish independence too far into

violence. He died, he said "full of intense love for Ireland." My word, what a lover! And how that love springs to life today in The Riddle (which is at least five kinds of genre novel and transcends them all), a story much addressed to things timeless and forever young and full of completely natural grace . PMS Whaling and the Art of Scrimshaw, by Charles R. Meyer (New York, McKay, 1976. 269 pp., illus., index, $17.95). The world seems full of overpriced, lavishly produced books aimed at the gift market-but, reader, this is not one of them! Here indeed is a beautiful and not inexpensive book, but it's worth the price of admission. Meyer's text is admirably up to its subject, making both a good introduction to scrimshaw, and companion for the aficianado. He delves rewardingly into the conditions of hard, stinking, dirty work, boredom and extreme discomfort amid which the art of scrimshaw came into being. Three to five years at sea in all climates, plagued by insects in the tropics and frozen in pursuit of a wet, risky calling in the polar regions, sick with scurvy, crowded into a dank, smelly forecastle, living always with danger of death beneath the cachalot's flukes, such was the whaling man's world, which he entered into, often, involuntarily as a shanghai victim. The materials of his art, ivory teeth, bone and lampblack, were plentiful and usually free. The tools, penknife and sailmaker's needle, were at hand. His favorite subject was the thermopylae of his own existence: an eggshell boat and hapless crew crushed by the angry whale as the mother ship and sister boats watch in the offing. Folk humor and legend born of long hours of tale-spinning forward were recorded: Old Stormalong, the sailing Paul Bunyan, measuring four fathom from the deck to the bridge of his nose, Piccolo Ike, the whistling whale, and his encounter with Bowleg Bill were common subjects. Other products of the scrimshander's art included swifts for winding yarn, pen stands, pipes, spoons, jagging wheels, candle stands, boxes and wooden objects of all kinds inlaid with bits of ivory. It's thought there were some 150-200,000 sailors who tried their hands at scrimshaw between 1825 and 1865. Most of the products were inferior and wound up over the side; the surviving pieces are the best, probably, and Meyer postulates that much of the surviving work was not done aboard ship at all, but by retired salts ashore. He also finds simi-

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larities in the sweeping curves and concentric circles used by Eskimo, Maori and other early carvers, and suggests that the whalers learned their techniques from these peoples, wedding them to scenes from their own lives. The book is rich with quotes from Melville and contemporary newspaper accounts, which beautifully illustrate the bravery as well as the gruesome cruelty of the whaling experience. Meyer, searching out the beauty of a stern and difficult way of life, makes a fervent plea for the survival of the whale today, hunted by means that virtually assure the death of any cetacean that inadvertently exites a blip on the little screen. DAVID 0. DURRELL The Scrimshander, by William Gilkerson (San Francisco, Troubador Press, 1975. 119 pp., illus., $6.95 paper). "The old scrimshaw was an escape from the sea-from too much sea-back towards the land. The new scrimshaw moves in the opposite direction." So says Karl Kortum in the introduction to this lovingly illustrated review of contemporary scrimshaw finding its way back to sea, in perspective of the old, which dealt much with landbound topics. PS Death Raft, by Alexander McKee (New York, Scribner's, 1976. 288 pp. Illus. $8.95). On June 17, 1861, the French naval frigate Medusa, her gundeck cleared of armament to facilitate her use as a transport, set sail with 367 souls aboard for St. Louis, Senegal. An incompetent master ran the Medusa onto a reef 100 miles off the African coast, however. Seventeen men, convinced that the Medusa was safer than the open sea, remained aboard (one survived). Two hundred took to the boats, and the remaining 150 were consigned to a large, ill-constructed and partially submerged raft. The boats that were supposed to tow the raft abandoned it. Of the 150 aboard, only 17 were left alive when rescue arrived after twelve days in which men fought for life in water up to their waists, without food, water, or shade from the brutal sun; more than half died by violence, and men were driven to cannibalism in frantic struggle for survival. A major political scandal arose as the brutal facts came out. McKee traces two other survival stories (a 1941 shipwreck closely paralleling the Medusa's, and the crash of an airborne football team in the Andes in 1972) to show that mankind still has much to learn from the Medusa. DOD

The Tall Ships: A Sailing Celebration, by Hyla M. Clark, Frank 0. Braynard and Tony Gibbs (New York, Two Continents, 1976. 128 pp., illus. $12.95 & $7.95 paperback). Frank 0. Braynard, General Manager of Operation Sail, introduces this book of over 100 photographs, in color and black-and-white, as a record of "Operation Sail's growth from the Bicentennial's 'best kept secret,' which is what it was for four and a half years, to the number one event of the Bicentennial." Tony Gibbs, Associate Editor of Yachting, gives his impressions of The Day and Hyla M. Clark writes a short history of sailing ships, in a handsome, well designed volume that includes some movingly beautiful photographs of ships and people. PS An Evolution of Singlehanders, by D.H. Clarke (New York, David McKay, 1976. 206 pp. Illus. $9.95). A survey of lone voyages from early times, with rambling asides into maritime history (how Cape Horn got its name, how yachts preceded working boats as foreand-afters), this informative volume is packed with records, dates, outstanding feats of seamanship ... probably a must for those who think, or dream, of doing such voyaging themselves. DOD Motor Sailers, by Dag Pike (New York, McKay, 1976. 224 pp., illus., $12.50) . • From the introduction of the internal combustion engine to yachting around 1900, people have sought to get the best of both worlds by designing motor boats that can sail, and sailing craft that perform well under power. Here Pike provides a guide to the almost infinite variety of the type that flourishes today, with plans, photos, and discussion. DOD The Delaware and Raritan Canal: a Pictorial History, by William J . McKelvey, Jr. (York, Pa., Canal Press, 1975 . 128 pp ., illus., $14.00). Formally opened in 1834, closed in 1933, the Delaware and Raritan Canal connected New York and Philadelphia waters for a vital century. McKelvey, who became fascinated with the bankside and floating life of the canal, its tugs and cargo boats, canoes and passing yachts, bathing kids and fishermen, brings it all to life for us in this admirably annotated collection of first-class photographs. TED MILES

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NOTE: Captain Klebingat retired from the sea at age eighty a few years back. "I do not know, " he said once talking with Karl Kortum, director of the San Francisco Maritime Museum, "when I first made up my mind to go into the Southsea trade. It may have been in the Anna on a voyage from Antofagasta to Newcastle, when we passed through the Austral Group and met Southsea schooners.... "He went on to serve in the barkentine S.N. Castle out of San Francisco to the Marquesas, Tahiti and Samoa. In 1916-17 he served as mate in the Falls of Clyde, now preserved in Honolulu, Hawaii, by the Bernice P. Bishop Museum, who have published a remarkable memoir of his entitled Christmas at Sea. Here he tells what it was like in his first voyage in the Anna, from Dunkirk, France, to Brooklyn, New York, in the summer of 1906.-ED. "All hands lay aft," said Gau, the chief mate of the four-masted bark Anna, formerly the Otterburn. "The port captain wants to speak to you." The Anna had recently returned from Australia with a full cargo of wheat and was lying now in the port of Dunkirk, in France. The wheat had been discharged, a broken fore upper topsail yard had been repaired and a half cargo of chalk taken aboard. It came from a quarry in the form of chalk rock. Two thirds was stowed in the lower hold in a mass that reached from the floor of the hold to under the 'tween deck beams. The other third was in the 'tween deck, also a mass, in the middle of the ship, that reached to the beams of the deck above. On either side of this partial cargo of chalk there was an empty hold and an empty 'tween deck. In the after hatch, the French longshoremen had dumped about a hundred tons of quarried granite; some of the Jumps may have weighed 100 or · 150 pounds. We distributed this in the bilges abaft the mizzenmast and the bilge pump suctions. The cargo was well stowed, and that was to play its part in this voyage. Some of the sails were bent, stores were on board, and we would have been

Looking forward ff"om the Anna's poop deck. The cro'jik (fcrossjack) yard, from which the author fell to the deck, is in use as acargoboom_ ....


It should have been a peaceful passage, after all it was

Summer-North Atlantic By Captain Fred K. Klebingat

ready for sea except that we were short of crew. A boardinghouse master in Antwerp had supplied the men and we were full-handed a few days ago. But some of tht.:se had deserted a day or so later. We were short six men . We assembled aft, the older AB's in front and the ordinary seamen, of which I was one, somewhere behind and half out of sight. Capt. Kuhlmann, the port captain, a man about six feet tall, bewhiskered and stout, was there to receive us. Beside him was Capt. Koester, the ship's commander, of the same build and whiskery face. In back of them was Mr. Gau, the steuermann, as we called him, a man about five-footsix with a straggling moustache but of husky build . It was a motley crew that stood before them. There were a few Germans but most of them were men of all nations. Some of them had come on board with just what they stood up in; overalls, a shirt, a coat; one wore carpet slippers. " Are these all your men?" said Kuhlmann to our captain, pointing a finger from man to man as if to count them . Capt. Koester answered in the affirmative. "Men," said the port captain, collecting himself, "you know why I have asked you to lay aft." His gaze went from man to man as if mentally to assess each man's worth and capabilities. San Franci sco Maritim e Muse um

(Could this little group handle this big ship?) "Men," he said finally, "your Capt. Koester just has told me that you are the finest crew he ever shipped on board here. I agree with him . No one has to tell me that each of you knows his stuff." The crew straightened a little and looked proud. "Men," said Capt. Kuhlmann, resuming, "you know why I wanted to speak to you. It is on account of those men that we are short." He hesitated, and then said, ''Capt. Koester here has tried his best to replace those men, but without result." There was a pause. Some of the men now nudged George, a German, who was in front of the crowd and was the most talkative man in the fo'c's'le. They whispered and urged him to make a reply. "I hope you get those men," said George to Capt. Kuhlmann finally. "This is a heavy ship.* Those men that deserted thought so, too .... " "There is no time to get more men," *The Otterburn (now the Anna) was like the Springburn, Celticburn and other four-masted barks built for the Scotch shipowner Shankland in the '90s in that she did not cross royals. She only had double topgallant yards. But there was enough canvas in those upper 'gans'ls to make any number of royals. The t' gallant yards were tremendously long and she was lofty at the same time- you knew that when you were up there in port looking around at the other ships.

said Capt. Kuhlmann, "but Capt. Koester says he would not mind to go to sea short-handed with men like you . He is sure that you can handle the vessel. I may point out too that it is summer on the North Atlantic.'' "We appreciate your worth," Kuhlmann brought his harangue to ¡a climax. "When the Anna comes to New York, Captain Koester will divide the wages of those men we're short among you." That did the trick. "Three cheers for Capt. Kuhlmann," said George . "Hip-hip-hooray" .. . " "And by the way," said Kuhlmann to Capt. Koester, "please tell your steward to give these men a couple of bottles of rum to celebrate this occasion." The bottles duly came forth and the crew trooped forward . We finished bending sails that day, took in the last of the stores , and topped off the fresh water tanks. Next morning the French tug Atlas took a line from our fo'c's'lehead, and a smaller tug made fast on the quarter. We let go our lines and, as they were dry, stowed these haw5ers below. Slowly we passed through the different basins heading for sea. The docks were full of sailing ships. It would be a long time before we again would see the beauties of the A. D. Bordes Company assembled again-the four-masted ship Tarapaca, the four-masted bark Atlantic, the Loire and the Wuljram Puget of the same rig. The Anna passed out between the two jetties that marked the harbor entrance. We set the sails, and in another half hour the tug let go. The wind in the Straits of Dover came from the west and southwest, moderate, but it soon turned into fog. How long we beat in the narrows between Calais and the English shore I do not know. We were in the fog for at least ten days. It was only a matter of luck that we escaped collision in these narrows, the main highway of the sea, where ships of all nations funnelled through into the North Sea. Whistles and the sound of foghorns were constantly heard on all sides. With apprehension, the captain or the mate listened to the bass tone of some ocean liner as it approached, and showed his relief when the sound receded in the distance. Another horn would be heard somewhere ahead of us. From the poop, "Keep that fog horn going there on the fo'c's'lehead!" 35


SUMMER-NORTH ATLANTIC It was pitiful to hear that instrument, the "Norwegian piano" as we called it. We knew that it could not be heard at any very great distance. At times we might hear the three blasts of another sailing ship using a similar foghorn that told us that nearby was a windjammer returning to her port. Then it ran through our thoughts that it could be years before we in this ship, the Anna, would be homeward bound.

As we groped our way through that gray and sightless realm, our chief preoccupation, apart from tacking shipwe went about every couple of hours or so-was heaving the lead. That put us in touch with something. It was a reassuring contact with the bottom of the sea. Heaving the lead is no easy task on a windjammer. The tub with the leadline, 120 fathoms, is carried on deck along with the lead, thirty-five pounds. Next we turn to the ship herself. "Let go the cro'jick tack and sheet ... cro'jick clew garnets." The men haul the clews of the sail up. "Weather cro'jick braces!" The mate lets go the lee cro'jick brace, the mizzen lower topsail, upper topsail, and 'gallant braces as well. The men to windward hauling the br~ces. It is a hard pull at first, but as the sail starts to pass through the wind, the work becomes more easy. The¡ sails are now aback on the mizzen. "Belay cro'jick braces!" "Keep her close ... " the captain gives the order to the man at the wheel. A seaman carried the lead to the fo'c's'le head; others pass the leadline along the weather side of the ship, outboard of everything, and hitch it to the lead. A man is stationed at each mast in the weather rigging-he has a few bights of the line in his hand. The ship loses way. She is now just drifting ahead. "Drop the lead!" The man on the fo'c's'le head lets go. As the lead sinks towards the bottom, the men stationed at each mast let go in turn, warning the next mast to be ready with the cry, "Watch her, watch!" The plunging line comes past the mizzen rigging. "Watch her, watch!" The man lets go his coil. In a moment it will be perpendicular under the chief mate, stationed at the last mast, known as the jigger. The mate pays out the line rapidly until it touches bottom. He reads the mark on the line. ''Take in the line ... '' The crew drops the line into a small 36

lead block made for this purpose, and then race along the deck, heaving it in . The lead breaks water. "Easy now!" The mate studies the arming of the lead as it rises to the rail-the arming is tallow, pressed into a hole in the bottom. It shows whether the lead has touched sea bottom, and what kind of a bottom-sand, mud, gravel or shell. "Lee, cro'jick braces!" The yards are swung; the sails fill. "Set the cro'jick .. .let go the lee cro'jick garnet...cro 'jick sheet! " The watch hauls in the sheet. "Let go the weather cro'jick garnet ... cro'jick tack, now ... " The sail fills, and the ship continues to gather way. The mate enters the fact that the lead was dropped and at what time, in the logbook . Also the depth of water and what kind of bottom. This is compared with the dead reckoning position on the chart, and if the depths and bottom match with the depths on the chart, then it is reasonably certain that the dead reckoning position is correct. It is far more difficult for a ship coming up the English Channel, racing before a gale. Say the wind is southwest and the visibility poor. They are uncertain of the fix, but they are sure that they are on soundings. The ship is under a press of sail. .. she has too much canvas on her. They know that they should drop the lead. But in order to do so, they will have to first shorten sail and then heave to ... the ship's speed has to be reduced before taking a sounding. That means shortening down to lower topsails, in all likelihood. And it may be dangerous to heave to; the Old Man has been avoiding it. She will take heavy seas on board, sweeping the decks, as she comes up to the wind before losing speed. It is an uneasy position for the ship's commander. Let's say he carries on and counts on The/our-masted bark Anna, ex-Otterburn.

luck. The weather stays thick. Suddenly, "Breakers ahead!" By now it may be too late to save the ship. It was almost two weeks before we had worked our way out into the Atlantic. We never saw land. By this time the after guard and we ordinary seamen as well (novices or greenhorns at sea though we were) had found out that those who had signed on the Anna as able seamen were not so able. Some could have been called seagoing imposters . There was George, the noisiest one of the gang in the port fo'c's'le. Judging by his looks when he first came aboard, there could be no better sailor than George. He was of medium height, wellbuilt, and dressed in a rigger's overalls held mid-ships with a belt and sheath knife. He had homemade canvas shoes on his feet and on his head was a tam o'shanter. No one could look more like a sailor than George. But what a fraud and coward he turned out to be! A few years in Kaiser Bill's Navy, so we heard, was the only experience at sea that George ever had. He tried to lord it over us ordinary seamen but did not get very far with that. There was a stray cat on the ship, a cat of quite good size that had shanghaied itself aboard at Dunkirk somehow. The cat stayed wild. No doubt it had plenty to eat as there was quite a multitude of rats on every grain shipgrain was the Anna's previous cargo. At night the cat would scoot along the fo'c's'lehead, very likely on the lookout for water. This ghostly creature darting about in the night nearly scared George to death. He talked about the ship being haunted. An unusual noise would scare him, such as a piece of gear that was not properly secured and which thunked about in the forepeak as the ship rolled.


"Dear God, if this is a hurricane I hope you never let me see another one. " Three weeks after we left Dunkirk the wind finally turned fair. It increased in force and with a clear sky the ship was making course for New York. Our watch left the deck at midnight with all sails set. Anna was going at least 12 knots. At 2:00 AM there was the call, "All hands on deck!" It didn't take us long to jump into our clothes and get out of the fo'c's'le. We found a moonlight night, a full moon, with scattered clouds driving past its face. The wind had increased to a gale. "Take in the upper 'gans'ls!" was the order. We had trouble getting in these sails. Something was up-a wind this strong ~ o suddenly upon us. "Clew up the cro'jik and the mainsail!" was the next order. There were few hands to do this as some men were still aloft uying to furl the 'gans'ls. "Take in the flying jib and the outer jib!" came next. Then, "Take in the lower 'gans'ls." The wind continued to increase and the sky became overcast. The moon disappeared. The sea grew in size. The wind was from the starboard quarter, and the ship was travelling at great speed. Frequent flashes of lightning lit up the eerie scene. The wind was now abeam and while I worked, a fivemasted schooner appeared like an apparition in a lightning flash and then was gone. She was right on top of us. I noticed the men on deck working in a hurry to take in sail. It was a miracle that we escaped collision. Although we had a few men still aloft trying to furl the 'gans'ls, this didn't account for the feeling that some of our hands were missing. There was a scarcity of men to do the work ... could that blowhard George and some of his sulky followers be hiding? Scared to death? We were all frightened; the ship was plainly in the grip of a malevolence whose power was increasing minute by minute. What would happen next? It settled one's nerves a bit to have work to do. I clung to the mizzen upper topsail yard, working. Near me on the spar, trying to save the topsail, was the mate, Gau, and Capt. Koester. Daylight appeared slowly and lit up this turmoil-an angry sea, the wind

shrieking through the rigging, the squalls and clouds scudding overhead. The Anna had only a half cargo in her, so she took little water aboard, but she rolled and pitched violently. We had managed to furl the sails, but it was exhausting work. I came down the main rigging and jumped from the rail to the deck. The mate came up to me and said, cupping his hands close to my ear, "Go down in the cabin, Fred, and secure whatever has gone adrift." "I hurried aft into the cabin by the after companionway and found some barrels out of the storeroom rolling across the deck. I secured these. On a bracket secured to the after bulkhead of the saloon was the mercurial barometer, a long, upright shaft of rosewood. It was swinging wildly in its gimbals. Capt. Koester, in streaming oilskins and southwester, appeared suddenly in the cabin. He crossed to the barometer, studied for a moment, and left for deck again with a worried look on his face. On the cabin table, propped up, I saw a volume-Findlay's North Atlantic Directory-and I glanced at it. The book was open to the chapter: "Hurricane." Now I knew what we were in for. About 8:00 AM, the sky all at once cleared and the sun shone and the wind ceased. The ship was laboring violently. A wall of water came from right ahead and half buried the jibboom. The men working on the boom, furling the sails, jumped on a stay to save themselves. "Wear ship!" But there was little wind and the vessel was nearly unmanageable. We labored away at the braces and had got the yards square-all of a sudden the wind came from the opposite direction. It hit the sails with a force no canvas could stand. The chain sheet of the lower topsail broke and dropped amongst us. "Stand out from under!" My watch partner and I got onto the poop and lashed ourselves to the pinrail. A human being could not stand against the wind. The spume that filled the air and drove over the ship was more salt water than rain . Now our best canvas, the foresail and the three lower topsails, blew away. The sound they made as they went was like the big guns in a sea battle. The tearing away of the rags and the remnants that followed had the sound of a mass of machine guns firing. (Even when I left the Anna twenty months later, hemp fiber pounded together like papier mache could be found in the eyes of the rigging.)

The sails that we had made fast followed after these sails that had been set. The wind would worry a corner loose and then get a further grip and finally the gasket loosened and off went the sail. In a few minutes the yard was bare. The main yard took charge. The topping lifts carried away and one end of the ninety-foot spar rose high in the air, the other end struck the rail a might blow. As the ship rolled, the opposite yardarm would swing down to the rail, and the other end would rise to the topsail yard. A wild disorder had taken charge of our orderly ship that was fearful to see. We could secure nothing as the force of the wind prevented us from moving. I prayed as I stood there lashed fast to the pin rail on the poop. I said, "Dear God, if this is a hurricane I hope you never let me see another one.'' About noon, the wind tapered off and died out entirely. A tremendous sea, like a boiling cauldron, was now on every side. The ship rolled and pitched. In the calm we secured the main yard. The ship rolled as I have never seen a ship roll before or since. We thanked the Lord that the cargo below was stowed so well that it did not take charge and put us on our beam ends.

"I was the last one out on the yard and we were hurrying down because there were pancakes for breakfast. I jumped for the rigging and missed.... They picked me up for dead and put me on a hatch cover.... " We had labored, we had done our utmost, and we lay down for an hour or so now, exhausted. Our masts stood. We rose and set to work to reeve off new gear .... But there is an end to everything-even a West Indian hurricane. There is an end if your ship survives .... Only two sails were left of those that were bent. The courses and topsails and topgallants that we had painstakingly furled had been clawed off the steel yards by the hurricane. The two that remained were staysails that had been lowered throughout the gale. We broke out spare sails now and sent them aloft. Less than twenty-four hours later, everything was set and the Anna laid course for New York. About a week later, I fell from the 37


SUMMER-NORTH ATLANTIC cro'jik yard and miraculously was not much hurt. I fell all the way to deck from close to the slings on the starboard side. I was the last one out on the yard and we were hurrying down because there were pancakes for breakfast. I jumped for the rigging and missed. I landed on my feet; I struck my hip on the fiferail. They picked me up for dead and put me on a hatch cover; I was unconscious. They carried me in to the sail locker, a spare cabin under the poop. At the back of the room were a couple of bunks. These were filled with onions. These were hastily emptied out of one of the bunks. When I came to, a couple of hours later, it was onions that I smelled-my first sensation of life. Captain Koester looked after me and there were no bones broken. I was back at work in a week. Ten days later I was sitting in the fo'c's'le door eating a plate of beans, breakfast, and here comes the second mate plummeting down. Off the foreyard. He fell from a crane line that leads from the after part of the top to the t'gallant backstay. As I remember, some men were swifting in the riggingtaking the slack out of the lower shrouds. (This gear can be seen abaft the mizzen top in the deck photograph of Anna.) The crane line was rotten and it gave way. I saw the second mate drop; luckily he landed on one of the boatswent right through the wooden cover. It broke his fall, but he broke his jaw. The second mate was paid off when we reached port. Another hurricane approached and we reduced sail down to goosewing lower topsail. But the storm changed track and was only a false alarm. The cook on the Anna was named Pagel; he had sailed in the Rickmers Capt. Klebingat greeted his old ship, the Falls of Clyde, at Honolulu when she arrived there in 1963 to be rerigged as a museum ship.

"And there were others missing, steuer-

"The captain drew some money next day .... It was divided evenly among all the men, and amounted to $3.17.,, ships and used to brag about how they carried sail. These were Bremen vessels, too, and they had a reputation for fine upkeep, good gear, and skippers who cracked on. One of them, the Peter Rickmers, was, in the opinion of many, the most beautiful steel sailing ship ever set afloat. She was launched at Port Glasgow by the firm of Russell & Co., whose Falls of Clyde still survives as a museum ship in Honolulu. The Peter Rickmers was of 2,989 gross tons, the Clyde is smaller, 1,807 tons.* With her. green hull, white superstructure, and four soaring masts, each crossing seven yards (she had double topgallants, royals and skysails), the Peter Rickmers was always spoken of admiringly by seafaring men . But to return to Pagel, our grub spoiler: We had reduced sail to lower topsails; the Anna had encountered one more gale toward voyage end . The watch trooped past the galley door; all of a sudden the upper part (it was in two halves) opens a little and Pagel peers out: "Hello, what is this? Packing in the upper topsails? My God, you will never reach New York that way. Why, in the Peter Rickmers we would be carrying upper t'gallants in all four tops ... " Bang! The iron door slams shut. The champion of the Rickmers line left us in New South Wales. He had fed us badly, and nobody shed a tear.** "And where was George? I heard the captain ask one afternoon. The Old Man was pacing up and down the deck. "I don't recall that I ever saw him on the night of the hurricane. '' The captain was addressing the mate. •1 joined the Falls of Clyde as chief mate ten years after the voyage described. ••The Rickmers ships loaded coal in Wales, or case oil at New York, or Point Breeze, Philadelphia, for the Orient or Australia. After discharge of their cargo, they would sail <O Bangkok or Rangoon to load a cargo of rice for the mills that the firm owned in Germany. In looks, upkeep, and in their reputation for fast passages, the Rickmers vessels were the equals of the Laeisz ships of Hamburg, the famous Flying P Line engaged in the nitrate trade around the Horn. I have met many men who sailed for Rickmers and they were proud of the fact, but none were quite as boastful as our cook.

mann." There had been a sullenness in the fo'c's'le. Not on the part of those who had grappled with the hurricane on the yards of the Anna, but on the part of those who hadn't. It was the young men, the boys, the quiet men who had been up there. George and his followers, the talkers, the bluffers, had not. They had malingered and put the heavy burden of a heavy ship on the rest of us. The younger element had a new confidence. The hurricane had "separated the men from the boys," in the modern expression-and it was the men who were found wanting. Or at least some of them. I was interested to hear this discussed at the other end of the ship. "The man at the wheel was there at least six hours," said Capt. Koester to the mate. "He should have been relieved in that time." "I tried to locate them, but there wasn't time to really search the ship," said Gau. "Hoboes," said Capt. Koester. "Cowards and hoboes ! " On the 45th day, we sighted the pilot boat outside New York. A tug came out and got hold of us. There was a short squabble about the price. We towed to Brooklyn and made fast at 5th Avenue Pier. We unbent the sails that day and the stevedores came on board and rigged up the cargo gear to discharge the cargo of chalk. The captain drew some money next day and all hands laid aft to get the extra share that Capt. Kuhlmann promised. It was divided evenly among all .the men, and amounted to $3 .17. This would go a long way in this man's country, if one was a little careful. A schooner of beer cost only 5¢ with all the free lunch you could eat. "And you are the watchman, Paul," said the captain to one of the AB's. "Well, if anybody in the crew wants to beat it, don't stop him. If anything, give them a hand." "Turn to," the mate said next morning, but there were only six or seven left. "Most of the men have deserted," said the mate to the captain. "That's fine," Captain Koester replied, "I'm glad I have seen the last of George and the others like him. They aren't the best shipmates for summer on

the North Atlantic." The irony in his words wasn't all for the shirkers; he saved some of it for that blithe phrase of the port captain's long ago in Dunkirk. <!>

38 Lithography by Lirho·Craft of New Englamd, Jnc., Snmford, Conn.


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