Sea History 008 - Summer 1977

No. 8

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY

SUMMER 1977

$1.75

J

Historic Tugs, U.S.A. California Ships Last Sailing Packet Paddle Tug in a Storm Champigny Dismasted Marine Art & Books

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 au· tomotive heritage unmatched by any other car in the world. ow Mercedes-Benz offers eight 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-

N

l: 450SEL (1977); l: 300SL Gullwing ( 1955);

3: 500K Special Roadster (1935); 4: Super-charged SSK (1929); 5: 540K Cabriolet B (1936); 6: 600 (1969).

Mercedes-Benz Technical Specifications ENGINE

DISPLACEMENT (CU. IN.)

WHEELBASE (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

6.9

V-8 ohc (fuel injected)

417.1

116.5

210.0

4390

MODEL

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 eight 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 appraisedatover$50,000. Therare 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 made 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

M:;;~des·Benz (5) Engineered like no other car in the world.

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.

©Mercedes-Benz, 1977

The Last of the Ten Thousand . ..

Norwegian whalers circle the ship anxiously, May 1927. Her captain said she was "not in distress as long as he had one mast left to sail with. " Photos: Sea Breezes.

Champigny Will Not Make Her Voyage Fifty years ago the great French bark Champigny put into the Falkland Islands to leeward of Cape Horn, dismasted.

The sea had dealt harshly with her.

Norwegian whalers sighted her first, and circled round her, worried at the fate of an elder sister. She was then under Finnish flag, and named Fennia.

The whalers passed word to the Falkland Islands Company ashore of her trouble.

A steamer went to meet her, but had to seek shelter in one of the island coves from stress of weather.

"On Monday, May 9th at 10:30 AM, " runs the official report, recovered for us

by John Smith, historian in the Falklands, "Fennia reported she was 80 miles south doing 5 knots. " The next morning, a rescue vessel reached her.

Captain Christensen reached an exposed anchorage off .Cape Pembroke , outside the main harbor at Port Stanley, without her help. Two days later , in a lull in the weather, he moved to a slightly less exposed position.

He consistantly refused to accept salvage, and stated that he was "not in distress as long as he had one mast left to sail with. " The ship had been dismasted bracing the main yard. ""Mr. Henricksson , the second mate, 路路 runs the story given us by Captain Sten Lille of Finland, ""was standing with the main brace and both topsail braces in one hand. A turn, of course, on a pin. It was a little careless .. . " A boarding sea swept him away from his post, and the main yard slammed forward, hitting the main stay, which was slackened by the blow.

"The incident was not reported," says Captain Lille , who had the story from Mr. Palen, third mate in the ship at the time. 路路01d Captain Christensen would have killed that man!" And that night, the mainmast came down.

Champigny (then Fennia) finally towed into Stanley on her own terms.

There she was condemned , and used as a hulk. Slated for destruction forty years later, she was found by Karl Kortum of the San Francisco Maritime Museum , who persuaded the Pacific Bridge Company to buy her. She was then towed to Montevideo, and taken for restoration to a port up the River Plate - where she languished. And as this issue of SEA HISTORY goes to press, a final effort to pull her out to complete her voyage to San Francisco has failed , and she is being scrapped.

She was the last of ten thousand sailing ships to round Cape Horn and bring cargo into San Francisco . She was , after the earlier loss of the Ville de M ulhouse, the last of the famous French '' bounty" ships, which trained international crews while they carried cargo. A German cadet who sailed in her wrote of her recently that she was one of the " most beautiful on earth." Did people care?

Those who knew her did.

Could she have been saved ? Of course.

The German bark Moshulu flourishes in Philadelphia today-and plans were well advanced for Champigny's installation in San Francisco , where her masts, seventeen stories tall, would have made her mistress of the waterfront.

Karl Kortum has on this ship, as on others, a bunch of notebooks, photos, records, filling out a foot or two of bookshelf . . . materials going back to the life stuff of the ship, the men who sailed in her, her owners the Societe des Longs-Courriers Franca is. Well, this long course she did not make. Her voyage of 1927 will not be completed.

We have lost her.

What was lacking? Perhaps $25,000 on loan to secure her, pay her debts pending the working-out of her placement in San Francisco. A little staff time, to help put all things together. That is all.

'There was no place to call to get he! p for her, " says Karl Kortum. There still isn't. But she would have rewarded the city that saved her. She would have brought us cargo now lost forever in the seas of time.

PETER STANFORD, President National Maritime Historic Society

No. 8

_JA HISV

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.

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.

MEMBERSHIP is invited and 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: Alan G. Choate; Treasur er: Howard Slotnick; Trustees: Fran k 0 . Bray nard, 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, Barclay H. Warburton, III, Charles Wittholz; President Emeritus: Alan D. Hutchinson.

ADVISORY COUNCIL: Chairmen: Frank 0 . Braynard, New York Harb or Festival & Rick Miller, National Maritime Union; George Campbell, American Museum of Natural History; Frank G. G. Carr, Cutty Sark Society; Richard Goold-Adams, Great Britain R estoration; Robert G. Herbert ; Melvin H. Jackson, Smithsonian Institution; R.C. Jefferson ; John Kemble, Pom ona College; John Lyman ; Robert Murphy ; John Noble, artist; Kenneth D. Reynard, San Diego Mariitime Museum; Albert Swanson , Commonwealth of Massachusetts; Peter Throckmorton; Alan Villiers, seam an auth or; Alen York, Antique Boat & Ya cht Club.

STAFF : Curator-at-Large, Peter Throckmorton; Assistant Curator, Ted Miles ; Publications Director, David 0. Durrell; Ships & Piers Manager, James Diaz; Coordinator, Jo Meisner ; M embership, Marie Lore.

Copyright© 1977 by the National Maritime Historical Society.

SUMMER 1977

1 LETTERS 3 IN CLIO'S CAUSE 7 THE EPPLETON HALL REVIVED, by William E . Burgess, Jr. 10 CALIFORNIA SHIPS DREAMING: 11

FOLLOW THE STAR! by Karl Kortum

12

THE SAN FRANCISCO RENAISSANCE, by Peter Stanford

14 HISTORIC STEAM TUGS AND TOWBOATS SURVIVING IN THE U.S. AND CANADA: A PARTIAL LIST,

by Ted Miles and Norman Brouwer 17 REPLICAS : WHERE ARE THEY HEADED?

by Norman Brouwer 19 THE CAPE VERDE PACKET TRADE: PART I,

by Michael Platzer 22 REPORT ON THE MARITIME PRESERVATION CONFERENCE IN BALTIMORE, JUNE 24,

by Francis James Duffy 24 MARINE ARCHEOLOGY: ENCOURAGING AND DAUNTING, by Peter Throckmorton 26 SHIP NOTES 28 SEAPORT & MUSEUM NEWS 30 MARINE ART: ART FOR LIFE'S SAKE, by John Noble 35 BOOKS 41 THE EPPLETON HALL ENCOUNTERS A GALE,

by Scott Newhall SEA HISTORY ADVISORY COMMITTEE Timothy G. Foote, Tim e, Inc., Oliver Jensen, American H eritage, Karl Kortum, San Francisco Maritime Museum; Clifford Lord, N ew Jersey Historical Society; John Lyman ; J. Roy McKechnie, Ogilvy & Math er; Robert Weinstein.

SEA HISTORY STAFF Editor, Peter Stanford; Managing Editor, Norma Stanford; Associate Editors, Norman J. Brouwer, Ted Miles, Maryanne Murphy, Albert Swanson; Advertising Sales, David 0. Durrell; Circulation, Jo Meisner.

COVER: The historic Tyneside paddlewheel tug Eppleton Hall thrashes out into San Francisco Bay, where the San Francisco Maritime Museum runs her today as a working exhibit. Photo by Bob Parkinson, April 4, 1977.

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY NEW YORK

WASHINGTON , D. C.

SAN FRANCISCO

Our Public Relations Department.

At Savannah Machine and Shipyard we don't have a fancy "Public Relations" crowd drumming up business for us.

Business comes to us because of the kind of guys in the picture. Workers.

The kind of workers who'll stick with a job until it's completely and totally finished.

Then take pride knowing their work will satisfy the ship's owner and the regulatory people.

Look, you know and we know that all shipyards have 50-ton cranes, drydocks, joiner and electrical shops, and stuff.

But it's the people behind the equipment who ultimately make you happy or teed-off with a yard.

Savannah Machine and Shipyard.

We do scheduled drydocking, voyage

repairs, and major conversions. And we do them for less than the big-overhead yards.

(We can meet and often beat their time as well.) And our good weather means we can work on your job any time of the year.

Add it all up.You'll understand why we're getting a solid reputation as the nicest yard in the South. And that's all the "Public Relations" we need.

Savannah ttachine and Shipyard Co. P.O. Box 787, Savannah, Go. 31402 Tele. (912) 233-6621 74 Trinity Place, Suite 1800 New York, N . Y. 10006,Tele. (212)432-0350

LETTERS A New Suit for a Lovely Lady To the Editor: All of us in the United States will never forget the memorable visit and the magnificent parade of the "Tall Ships" in connection with our nation's Bicentennial observance last July 4.

One of the impressive sailing vessels was Norway's full-rigged Christian Radich. On her return to Norway she encountered a most severe hurricane on the night of September 22 (see SH 5, pp. 16-17). Cc,lpt. Kjell Thorsen's radio message read: "To all ships and coastal stations. This is the Christian Radich. We are a Norwegian sail training ship. There are 103 people on board. We are hove to at approx.imate location 47 degrees west. We have severe damage to sails and rigging, drifting at 3-4 knots, wind force 11 (65 knots) . If hurricane lasts another 12 hours, we will need assistance. " Those of us who had fallen in love with the tall white ship , its officers and cadets, felt pangs of anxiety and fear as we listened and looked for word of her safety. Finally the soul-relieving word , .. Christian Radich and crew safe at anchor off Falmouth, England."

As a gesture of thanks to the Christian Radich from the American people for its having come to our birthday party last summer, a committee "American Friends of the Christian Radich, " has been organized.

Inasmuch as the damage to the sails and rigging was uninsurable , our goal is to present to the Radich a new suit of sails. Oscar Heath , sailmaker at Eden Prairie , Minnesota, has volunteered to make the sails. The cost of the dacron is set at 565,000 which is our fundraising goal.

Our Honorary Chairman is Vice President Walter F. Mondale. Each person contributing to the gift will be listed on a scroll to be presented to Crown Prince Harold of Norway. Tax deductible contributions may be sent to "American Frie nds of the Christian Radich ," Box 7000, Duluth , MN 55807.

MAXWELL E. OIE , President American Friends of the Christian Radich

An Evening Encounter ... with Ernestina To the Editor: A small article in the New York Times, a nd a visit to the National headquarters, Society's Brooklyn brought back an unforgettable encounter that happe ned o ne night on Narragansett Bay, a pproximately

SEA HISTORY , SUMMER 1977

twenty-four years ago.

I was stationed on the USS Arcadia A.O. 23, a destroyer tender based on Newport, R.I. As was our usual practice we were moored to a buoy on Narraganset Bay, between Conanicut Point and the now unused Midway Landing, with three destroyers nested along the port side for repairs .

As I recall it was a clear evening, clear enough to notice what appeared to be a red light swinging back and forth in a small arc out on the bay, in the general direction of Conanicut Point. This sighting was immediately repo rted to the Officer of the Deck , who, concluding we were seeing a distress signal, called away the Fire and Rescue party. Immediately, our fiftyfoot motor launch was brought alongside. We loaded the laun ch and shoved off in the direction of the swinging red latern.

In a matter of minutes we were able to distinguish the outline of a beautiful two-masted sailing ship. Our first impression was, because of her lines, that she must be a yacht.

As we pulled alongside we were greeted by a number of people, one of which was holding a regular kerosene lamp, wrapped with a piece of someone's old red flannels , o ur distress signalman in person!

Upon climbing aboard the Ernes1ina - for it was she - we were amazed beyond words ; we found ourselves surrounded by beds, bureaus, boxes , mattresses, dressers, chairs, tables, chickens and barking dogs, with people milling about and conversing in a foreign language all at the same time. It was impossible to think that this ship or floating moving van , was actually headed out to sea!

Inspection revealed that, although the Ernestina was hard aground, she did not appear to be taking water, nor had she sustained any great damage.

Our officer in charge told the master that we would notify the Coast Guard of his plight and, there being nothing further we could do, our party departed , leaving behind the barking dogs, clucking chickens and red flannels in the event they might be needed in the future.

No one could actually believe that dozens of people had embarked upon this voyage, with all their worldly possessions, in a ship past her prime having no radio, setting out to cross the Atlantic Ocean! But the next day Ernestina was gone. How, I do not know , perhaps only the tide was needed

to float her free. But she was gone.

To those of us who felt radar, sonar, loran , gyro repeaters, etc. are essential for ocean travel, the crew of the Ernestina personified the old adage, "Wooden Ships and Iron Men ."

FRANK WAY, Jr. Rutherford, New Jersey

Cutlasses at Call To the Editor: Your winter issue belatedly arrived this desk . I can only assume our modern mail system shipped same as bag cargo aboard a grain ship by way of Australia.

I first went to sea as a 12-year-old truant aboard the 110-foot World War I subchasers berthed at the yard which stood where Kennedy airport now lands planes. The boatyard's actual money man was one Art Flegenheimer (Dutch Schultz). I then spent about 34 years in wooden ship and yacht yards as a motor mac, along with service in World War II aboard yacht patrols, wood minesweepers and other wooden craft. Though I have been a stinkpotter all my life at least I heard the creaking and groaning of the 136foot sweeper that took me out to Australia and later New Guinea. Thank God! I've never served aboard metal ships, only wet-rot specials.

This 60-year-old's hobby since early youth has been to collect and exhibit old cutlasses of all the world 's nations and navies; these weapons, which have sailed the world 's seas, and done much fighting and boarding, are at your service.

I am, Sirs, respectfully, SAMUEL KAPLAN Marine Surveyor Freeport, New York

Better Than Best-Sellers?

To the Editor: Though not a sailor I do enjoy and become very absorbed in your journal.

The "Letters" column in the spring issue was more interesting reading than most of the best-selling books. I particularly enjoyed Karl Kortum's "At the Bottom of a Downswing, Hope from Man's Organic Inheritance" (SH 7, pp. 7-8). And I think you are doing a great job in giving information of sailing events, as you did in "Working Sail" in that issue .

V. LOUISE STEWART Museum Shop Manager Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum St. Michaels, Maryland

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2

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SEA HISTORY , SUMMER 1977

John Stobart paints a coasting sloop loading bales of hay at Ring 's End Landing, Darien, Connecticut. She is named Clio¡,for the Muse of History, whose concerns were celebrated with reverence, in time past, 1vith the concerns of all th e other arts. Is it irrational to think the artist felt that, in the natural grace he ca ught in this scene? It's a scene of some force, in its quietude: the sunlight of this quiet day not long past lends benediction to an experie nce of man that began, so far as we know, with Mesopotamian sloops on the River Euphrates.

LETTERS

IN CLIO'S CAUSE: Ortega y Gasset, in his resonant little book, discovered (t hat is a good word for it: he discovered this as surely as Columbus discovered America) that the salient characteristic of modern man is his ahistorical self-confidence. It is more nearly fatuity than self-confidence, if self-confidence connotes self-reli ance.

Ortega's intuition was profoundly conservationi st. He felt that modern man ("mass-man" does not accurately convey the man Ortega was talkin g about) uses up hi s patrimony without a ny th o ught to refresh the wells from whi ch he drinks so voluptuously. But how can one refresh wells discovered for us by the divine dowsers of the past? How, conceretely, does o ne repay oile"s obliga tion to Aristotle, or to Shakespeare, or to Fleming? The answer is as simple as it is satisfying: by reverence. Piety is the co in of appreciation. It is what history asks of us, a nd what we owe to it.

Ortega¡s Revolt of the Masses was as explosive a book in the thirties as the Treason of the Clerks: and , in the e nd , it justified its own thesis by being practically ignored. It is said about G handi that he became the idol of India in proportion as he was ignored

by Indians. When he was lonely and unobserved, except by a few disciples, there were those few who so ught to li ve by a Ghandian philosophy. The nerve Ortega struck was that of a community that saw the terrible truth of indictment: modern man , th e swaggerer, unconscious of his dependence on what went before, insouciant toward the blessings others contrived for him , ignorant of any sense of obligation to reach o ut and extend the great c ircu it to anothe r ge neration. The vindication of Ortega's thesis was in the heedlessness

SEA HISTORY , SUMMER 1977

We Have Met Clio & She Is Us

"Modern man, the swaggerer, unconscious of his dependence on what went before . .. "

of those he addressed. By and large, they - we? perhaps: we are all guilty in some measure - ignore history, c hewing away at its capital without regard for the form, affection for the matrix , or devotion to the divine seed. It is a small commun ity, those who concern themselves with the museums - artistic, archaelogical, and philosophical - of this world, and they need to spend much of their time, as Ortega would have pred icted , begging the despoilers for help. But even in doing so, they kindle an interest in Clio, and it is what maintains such civilization as we have got.

Wm. F. BUCKLEY , JR .

New York. New York

A Footnote on "Relevance" Historians and journalists are constantly reaching for what is considered ""relevant. .. Thus, origin al thinkers of the past are often relegated to the dust bin of history . Professor Commager avo ids this foolishness by look ing below the periwigs causing us to think in fresh ways about those figures who breathed humanism into gove rnment.

He makes them not merely rel evant but essential to an understanding of the Atlantic nations.

-HERB E RT MITGANG , in a review of Henry Stee le Com manger's The Empire of R eason(< J 977 The New York Times).

We've turned our backs on history on the premise that it no longer has anything to tell us . .. not now, now that we have jets and TV and modern medicine. Life is different now. What have we to learn from our forebears , those quaint but backward folk , that can possibly be of any use?

It sounds so rational: What's the use of history?

But disorienting as recent changes have been , technology has only superficially changed our condition. The basic nature and needs of man as individual and social animal continue through those changing conditions. We still need social groups, and to find a role in them: we need love, dreams, purpose. We sti ll wonder why we are here and worry abo ut death. We are still very weak creatures, and we are still searching.

And it is an arrogant assumption that we cannot learn about living from those less developed, whether they live today or lived 1000 years ago. How an individual handles the problems of living, or how a c ulture handles those problems, is of universal interest in the a ffairs of man.

We have been surprised by the discovery of the Tasaday, these utterly primitive food gathe rers in the Philippines who seem so ge ntle, so loving, and devoid of violence. The African Bushmen of the Kalahari live in conditions that require a constant, strenuous effort for survival. Yet these people, so harshly driven by their environment, have a society that is well-ordered, caring, and full of purposive selfdiscipline. They seem to stand in dignified contrast to the unending wanting and whining we fall victim to.

3

LETTERS These people might easily have been lifted by a time machine out of our own past. They surprise us; they are not like our stereotype of primitive people.

Through them we are learning something about mankind ... about ourselves and about our society.

Clio has endless lessons for us and can help us take our next steps with more wisdom and dignity than we've shown in this century. She can show us cities that worked, while ours are failing; people who had less of everything, but had more joy and stability. She can show us all the splendor and stupidity of humanity.

But not if we already know it all. Not if we've got all the answers and keep chanting them in the face of all her evidence to the contrary.

NFS

Waiting for Kaiulani To the Editor: I've been aro und for quite a while , waiting for the Kaiulani to be restored.

In fact I have Lifetime Free Pass No.455 to board her in Washington , DC . Unfortunatel y ifs not dated , but I've had it for years ... and hope to use it some time!

C LAIRE A. RICHARDSON Baltimore , Maryland M e mbe rship Secretary Marie L ore, acknowledging Ms. Richardson 's renewal, had noted '" Your name is a familiar one lo me from my years of volunteering for the NMHS ty ping lette rs, labels, e nvelopes and lately m embership cards." As to Kaiulani , which the National Society was founded to save, her remains are to be moved to San Fran cisco by a firm that towed her often through the Golden Gate. - ED

Who Cares About Cultural Resources on the Ocean Floor?

To the Editor: Cultural resources do not seem to rank very high on the conservation agenda, and most people have not even the slightest concept of what is happening o n the sea floor. As an oceanographer and a diver and an amateur a rchae ologist I am well awa re o f the damage that is takin g place in the ocean to our historical past. With Arthur Skodnek and others, I am involved in an archaeologica l di g o n HMS Culloden, a British 74 wrecked o ff Montauk in 1781.

4

Although peo ple like myself a re odditi es, there is a whole new breed of pe rso n very familiar with ce rtain a re as o f the seafloor. It is being raped by the treasure hunter and the antique dealer.

Pe rhaps it is time more than ever in the past to bring o ut the need for a counter balance, the preservation o f o ur underwate r cultural heritage.

Last ni ght two students called to tell me they had discovered an intact ship with brass cannon. The ni ght before an a ntique de aler asked me if I was interested in purchasing some very old doubloons. 1 hope a magazine like yours would rather see these items of our cultural past become a part of our museums and our historical heritage than an item o n a page o f an auctioneer's sale sheets.

HENRY W. MOELLER , Ph .D .

New Yo rk Ocean Sc ience Laboratory of Affiliated Colleges & Universities, In c .

Montauk, New Yo rk We salute your work on the C ulloden and wish help in any way we ca n to save her re mains from the despoilers, willing or unwilling. For further IVOrd on this concern, see Pe ter Throckmorton 's "'Encouraging and Daunting," this issue. -ED.

Of Aymars & South Street To the Editor: B. Aymar & Co. was founded about 18 15, when New York 's population was 20,000. It was nam ed for Be njamin Aymar, by great grandfather. The

company eventually owned seven clipper ships: the Try, B. Aymar, John W. Cater, Orbit, Emily, (named for Emily Aymar), Juniper, and Spirit of the Times.

I have a letter from Captain Victor Slocum, the son of Joshua Slocum, written in 1946, which says: "The B. Aymar was built in Searsport, Maine, in 1840 and was later sold to Joshua on the West Coast for the Australia-China trade. My father sold her in Manila (circa 1874) to China parties and soon after she was wrec ked on the south side o f Japan , near Nagasaki."

A painting of her was made by a Dutch artist on the reverse side of glass. The legend reads : " B. Aymar, New York , Captain B. Carver, Entering th e Texel (Holland) October 16, 1840."

This was her maiden voyage. The gunports on her side were merely painted on, to try to deceive the Chinese pirates who were very active at that time. Captain Joshua's second son (V ictor's brother) was named Benjamin Aymar. He was born on the ship in Sydney, Australia December 21 , 1873.

Many years ago I we nt to South Street to see the old ship chandlery. DeGraw & Aymar was still there.

GORDON C. AYMAR South Kent, Connecticut

Mr. Aymar is a noted artist & designer.

His rendition of the Dutch portrait of the B. Aymar is shown above.

-ED. continued on page 6

SEA HISTORY , SUMMER 1977

218 GREAT VOYAGES JN SMALL BO AT S by

211 AMERIC A'S SAILING BOOK

JOSH UA SLOCUM, VITO DUMAS and JOHN GUZZWELL

(Pub price $14.95 )

!Pub price $15 )

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LETTERS

13 N.uu:-POBT

TllE NEW YORK )fl BELONOJ"O

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Square Rig in New York To the Editor: In 1906 when I visited New York in the Anna (see voyage narrative , SH 6, pages 34-38) steam had already captured the export trade, and square riggers were a rare sight. Our learned friend Andrew Nesdall says I am mistaken . But in shifting ship, and later at anchor in Stapleton and while loading at Bayonne, I never sighted a square rigger.

While we lay at 23rd Street in Brooklyn, where we discharged our cargo of chalk into lighters or barges, ahead of us there was docked the little Danish wooden bark Emilie, from Fano.

She was so yacht-like, and we often longed to be in a vessel of that kind , where the ropes were so light. the blocks so small, comparing her to the Anna she was a toy. And there was the American barkentine Bruce Hawkins of Boston; She was there only about fourteen days.

The Mate tried to entice some of us to desert and ship with him , but I thought I was too young and had to learn more about my trade as a seaman.

On a wharf a short distance away, they were dismantling a Down Easter- I never knew her name, it was too far away to read . They made a coal barge

6

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of her.

You may be interested in how I spent the ~3.17 the skipper gave us for bringing the Anna across shorthanded. I went to New York on a Sunday and gaped at the skyscrapers.

But of course on a Sunday downtown Manhattan was dead. I bought some California grapes and that was a treat, and came back on board with 52 still le ft.

CAPTAIN FRED K. KLEBINGAT Eastside, Oregon To the Editor: When our good friend Captain Klebingat arrived in New York in the Anna, September 12, 1906, there were 120 steamers, 258 schooners and, of square-riggers, 9 ships, 28 barks (including the Anna) and 2 brigs (really half-brigs) . This is shown in the excerpt from the September 19 issue of the weekly Ne\\' York MaritimeRef{ister l 've sent along.

You will note some confusion in the list: the four-masted bark Drumeltan is listed with the ships, while the fourmasted barks Anna, Laivhill and Port Stanley are among the barks. In those days it was American practice to call a four-masted bark a "shipentine," or "ship" for short , but they weren't con-

sistent about it, and apparently could never decide whether they belonged with the ships or the barks. There was no separate list for barkentines and they are with the barks. Your will note the Bruce Hawkins there, confirming Captain Klebingat's excellent memory.

The Down Easter he mentioned as being barged must have been the M.P. Grace. Or it might have been the John A. Briggs at Morse's Drydock - 1 don't know where that was. The Anna was at Arnott's Doc ks at 23rd Street and 3rd A venue until sometime during the week prior to September 26, when she shifted to th e Tidewater Docks at Bayonne. She sailed for Yokohama on October 28th. I am sure that the last square-rigger to load case oil there was the Spanish bark Guadlhorce about 1935. I read in the paper that she was there at the time , and went over to see her but was denied entrance to the pier.

She went missing that trip.

Abbreviations used in the list: EB-Erie Basin (Brooklyn); UC - Long Island City; So Bk -South Brooklyn (where Anna lay) ; JC - Jersey City; N Ck-Newton Creek; Hbn -Hobo ken.

The list includes vessels well outside New York Harbor, at Port Jefferson , Long Island , and Stamford, Connecticut, for instance.

You will note in the list of ships that the Occidental had just arrived and was anchored off Quarantine, completing her final voyage under sail.

Among the Hester photos I got from Karl Kortum in San Francisco was one of a captain and wife in the after cabin of what was, judging from the paneling, a Down Easter, not identified.

The master's license was framed on the bulkhead , and with a glass I made out his nam e, William Kessel. Knowin g the approximate years that Hester took the pic tures ,a nd with what little information there was about Kessel in Mathew's American Merchant Ships, I followed him around in the New York Maritime Register. He had the Alden B esse, Emily Reed (lost her in 1908) , and Henry Villard, but since while he had th e m they didn 't visit Puge t Sound where Hester worked, the picture couldn't have been taken in any of those ships; it must have been taken in the Occidental just before she sailed from Port Blakely on March l, 1906 for New York, where she was barged . I was aboard her about 1935 at Port Johnston, Bayonne , where she lay with several old schooners, abandoned.

ANDREW J. NESDALL Waban, Massac husetts

SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1977

Eppleton Hall Revived:

Eppleton Hall , July 5, 1976. All photographs

by William E. Burgess, Jr.

A Restorative Day aboard a unique Grasshopper-engine, Paddlewheel Tyneside Tug, Steaming, Wheezing and Clunking Round San Francisco Bay

By William E. Burgess, Jr. President Friends of the Eppleton Hall Society San Francisco Maritime Museum Bill Burgess had no experience of the sea, besides dri ving across the Golden Gate Bridge, until, he says, he wandered one day into the San Francisco Maritime Museums exhibition building to get a drink of water. He got ... oceans.

Wandering among ship models, assailed by relics artfully welded up by the same Scott New hall who saved the Eppleton Hall (and is, today, president of the Museum), he fe ll victim to an old, but not altoge ther incurable disease: sea fever. The patient is still alive, certainly his heart beats strongly, but clearly, as th is narrative suggest, he has fou nd no cure for his ailment.

The Eppleton Hall lies alongside the ta ll square-rigger Balclutha, in whose service Burgess had originally volu ntee red. This sto1y, and some notes on the aftermath, sho ws what happens to volunteers.

Today, July 5, 1976, "The Friends of the Epple ton Hall Society" take her on a to ur of San Francisco Bay. Eppie was constructed in the United Kin gdom in 1914. Her grassho pper engines were patented in the 1820s.

Originally used to tow ships up the Wear River to collieries, she ended her working days as a harbor tug o n the Tyne Rive r until she was sold for scrap in 1968.

She is the last of her kind. Bo ught from th e wreckers and re paired . she steamed 11 ,000 miles in a six-month voyage from Newcastle , England , to San Francisco in 1969-1 970. The nine men and three wo men from age 67 to 11 who se rved as crew say this was a dangero us, frightening , gripping, hilarious, and inspiring voyage . The cranky tug left

SEA HISTORY , SUMMER 1977

England as a registered yacht. Fuel o il was stowed in barrels stashed on deck .

To help push her along and add stabi lity, her foremast was square-rigged. A mizzenmast was added to ho ld a spanker. Staysails were rigged for-andaft. Up to that time no o ne had any idea what fuel consumption would be.

Between Dove r, England , and Lisbo n, Portugal, she ran o ut of fuel a nd the British freighter Cervantes came to her rescue. After a deep-water party for the crew of bo th vessels, she steamed o n her way. She was the last sidewheeler to cross the Atlantic.

TheEppie is o ne hundred and five feet long with a thirgy-seven a nd a half foot beam over the paddleboxes. Her power plant, two massive return flue o il-fired boilers, deliver low-pressure steam to a

pair of single cylinder side-lever engines.

A pair of feathering paddlewheels straddle her sides amidships. Raw seawater feeds her boilers.

Three men are on the bridge . Our skipper is Scott Newhall, publisher of the New hall Signal in Newhall , California.

He is on the board of the San Francisco Maritime Museum. In 1969 he purchased and rebuilt the Eppleton Hall and captained her on the voyage from England. Overseeing the operation with pride are two other buffs: Harlan Soeten, retired captain, curator of the Museum , and Karl Kortum, who sailed in the square-rigger Kaiulani during World War II delivering munitions to South Pacific naval bases, the Museum director. Karl built the Museum from a ship model showcase to a wealth of

Imperturbable First Mate Kortum strides bridge as Hall gets under way.

EPPLETON HALL REVIVED

Mate at helm, Skipper N e whall do es the worrying, while . .

Chief Engineer S cott Nicoll entertains the young idea on deck, and .. .

"Wizard " Bill Graham charms the ponderous engine to keep its beat.

So the Hall returns to her berth alongside Balclutha as day ends.

8

mant1me lore, and, eventually a shipkeeping establishment.

Three men are in the engine room. Jim Williams, rough and ready, came here more than four years ago, after working his way " through the hawse-hole" on the museum vessels at the Hyde Street Pier.

Before that he worked West Coast tugs and Gulf fishing boats. Bill Graham, cerebral and meticulous, is secretary of "The Friends of the Eppleton Hall Society." For years he was a civilian machinist in a Navy shipyard and is known as the "Wizard" because he can fix any steam engine. Scott Nicoll, old-time yarner and banjo-plucker, and the original Chief Engineer on the tug's voyage in 1969-1970, is also along for the ride today . These three are covered with oil from head to foot and love every minute of it. For hours they've been firing up the Eppie's boilers.

"It's worth it," says Jim. "You sit up with her all night playing cards in the engine room and some time in the early morning hours the guages begin to show pressure. It's really great to see her come to life ."

The Coast Guard says Eppie can cruise on the bay if she meets safety standards. Consequently, repair is a continuing process. Engine parts for the Eppie are hand-made. "You can't just go to any Sears store and order an Eppie part ," says Jim. "She needs tender care , and even then we hope she behaves."

Finally we cast off from theBalclutha, the Eppie 's two steam-driven pistons hissing petulantly. Two crew, side by side on a platform over the working parts of the engines, literally manhandle the two pistons into synchronization by manipulating large steam levers the size of broom handles. These levers continue to move back and forth once the engines are engaged. Bystanders stand well back. The paddlewheels on each side of the tug must work in harmony if we are to get anywhere . We watch dials and guages as the captain telegraphs clanging orders to the crew . With a lurch we are finally on our way. The engine room is watchful and pleased. She has not responded so well in months. This monster has a personality all her own!

It is a clear, fogless day. The bay is studded with the usual potpourri of vessels. We pass Australian warships berthed along the Embarcadero and sleek yachts out for a pleasure cruise.

The ungainly tug steams doggedly along.

The guests, many older than I am, enjoy the ride . The cruise is not luxurious, but that's the fun of it; it's an event. They explore the cramped cabins below deck

and try a hand at the wheel on the airy bridge above deck. On the afterdeck they sit on folding chairs and eat picnic lunches in the sun. Even the wind cooperates , blowing smoke from the Eppie 's great stack away from the picnickers. However, near the sponson boxes which house the paddlewheels it is wet. The churning wheels splash water through chinks in the boxes and the wind whips it into a fine spray. In the engine room "Wizard " plays a few tunes on his recorder ; the soft sweet notes are distinct from the background clatter of machinery.

Two hours later we berth again next to the Balclutha, securing mooring lines to the ship and blowing down the boilers for lay up. Tourists gape over the rail of Balclutha. "Hey," one of them says, "what kind of a cruise you been on?"

"Super," I say.

Now, after everyone has left, 1 am on clean-up detail. I manage to drop my push broom overboard while sweeping the small steps on the sponson boxes. I get a boat hook and haul it aboard, confident no one has seen me . Then I glance up at the Balclutha and catch the "Wizard" looking at me! We laugh. I shrug my shoulders.

That evening I stake out a lower bunk in the cabin aft and below deck.

Through the open skylight I can look up fifteen stories to the swaying fore topgallant mast of Balclutha. The Balcultha was built in Glasgow, Scotland , in 1886 for the grain trade with California. She could carry 35,000 square feet of sail and she rounded Cape Horn seventeen times. Later, she hauled lumber from Puget Sound to Australia.

Her return cargo was coal for American steamships and locomotives. Her longest service in any trade was as a cannery supply vessel out of San Francisco with the Alaskan Packer's Association , when she transported fishermen and cannery workers to and from Alaskan waters with a return cargo of tinned salmon.

After her final voyage under sail in 1939, whe was used as an exhibition ship. She finally ended up on the mud flats of Sausalito until 1954, when she was restored to become a museum ship. As I lie in my bunk I think about her days of the glory and the adventures that she and thousands like her went through; only a handful of these ships survive as a silent reminder of what it must have been like.

The night is a comfortable sound of creaks and groans as the two vessels ride .ti the tides alongside each other.

SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1977

How? Here's How! .. What a thrill to steam under the Golden Gate Bridge as our great Epple ton Hall rides the swells ;· runs the opening of the latest newsletter of the Friends . .. She really struts! ..

Beyond the strutting, as the newsletter points out. lies .. gut-breaking·' effort. It is no easy task to keep up a museum tug in steaming condition~and to steam her! Scott Nicoll , who bade farewell to being 70 some years ago, engineer of the transatlantic voyage that brought the Hall to San Francisco , gets into the engines with folk younger in years , but not in spirit, to keep the complicated machinery functioning , and functioning better, he reports, than it did in her famous voyage.

The Eppleton Hall has had several outings this year. The press delights in reporting them .

"Hell's fires flickered up from the saltwater boilers· furnaces below , and hot dogs sizzled on the deck hibachi above, " notes a recent report. "It was the regular monthly outing day for the Friends of the Eppleton Hall Society, one of the newest, oddest and cheapest of the distinguished social clubs afloat in the bay. " Through the voyagi ng, membership in the Friends has increased from 90 at

9

5

year end in 1976 to over 200 today. Every member becomes a member of the parent body, the San Francisco Maritime Museum, goes in for hard labor at obdurate machinery, and contributes to all costs of voyaging. And all that works very well.

It was a great act to bring in the ship ; some of the grandeurs and miseries of the long, difficult voyage are apparent in Scott Newhatrs account, in this issue of SEA HISTORY. But to steam on from that! To keep the ship alive ! Those are the goals of the Friends of the Eppleton Hall.

Their most ambitious undertaking, a week's cruise in the Delta , across the

0

NEW

T

H

Jeannie Kortum's bumper-sticker is emblem of the "how-to" tug friends .

Bay from San Francisco, takes place this July .

That effort, reaching through the complicated waterways that nourished the growth of California , should enroll many new members in the work of the Friends, and the basic work of the San Francisco Maritime Museum, whose vision, labors, and ach ievements have meant much to San Francisco and the nation. Those who have an in clination to join them, have on ly to send a check for $10 to "Friends of the Eppleton Hall," care of Ship Balclutha,Pier 43, San Francisco, CA 94133.

R

D

A V

E

YORK.

N

Y .

10022

N

U

E

1819 (Mystic, Connecticut)

LONDON SEAMAL LTD. CEDEMAL RELAY

Tanker, Ship Sales and Bunker Brokers

SEA HISTORY , SUMMER 1977

9

CALIFORNIA

"A ship properly invested as a museum or set up as a display sends out emanations of lore, humanity, history, adventure, geography, art, literature . ... " Karl Kortum No master plan summoned them lo the important work they do today. No famous mayor, no powerfu.l corporation ordained their presence. But quietly, through the efforts of many and the vision of a few, they have come back over time's horizon-these ships o( another age that infuse new purpose and new life into the waterfronts of the great Cai(ornia seaports o( San Francisco and San Diego.

More than ships were saved in this redeeming act. New !tfe has flowed into these city wate1fronts, because people, who bring life, care about the ships. Old skills, priceless learning in the generational experience of man, are saved, and in lively fashion- the skills are urgently needed to keep the ships in being! A sense of the high endeavor, tall dreams and hard work that built our West Coast cities is saved.

And a sense that the voyaging that brought us lo this coast really mattered ... and that ii is not complete, that we are a voyaging people still, with our voyage still lo make. There 's a saving thought!

Dream on, ships of California! Gi-eal things came of your voyaging through untamed seas in a wider world than that of our city streets and suburban lawns; important things come of your silent voyaging through time today, and will tomorrow.

The jilil-rigged sh1/1 Balclutha/aces the morning in San Francisco. Photo: William E. Burgess, Jr.

10

SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1977

SHIPS DREAMING Follow the Star!

by Karl Kortum Director, San Francisco Maritime Museum Last year the first successful ship save on the Pacific Coast celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. And the Star of India, built in 1863, showed all the rest of the historic ships saved in America how to celebrate fifty years of extra life -on the Fourth of July she towed to sea from San Diego and set sail again.

"Raise tacks and sheets and mains'! haul! " She was the first significant merchant square-rigger to be saved as a museum ship. Inspired by the false dawn of plans announced by the Maritime Exchange in New York to save the Down Easter Benjamin F. Packard in the fall of 1925, a group of enthusiasts persuaded the San Diego Zoo to take on the Star of India the following year. (The Packard was later sold off for less than the price of one of the ship models in her owner's collection, served as a dance hall , and was scuttled in 1939. Her after cabins are preserved at Mystic Seaport today.) The Star of India was towed from San Francisco to San Diego in July 1927, by the steam schooner Wapama-a vessel later preserved by the Maritime State Historic Park in San Francisco.

The Star of India was not immediately treasured by San Diego. She fell on hard times that stretched out for more than three decades. There was little interest in the ship: funds were not forthcoming for her upkeep. Gradually she deteriorated. She played the role of HMS Pinafore and netted $4.85. A barge crashed into her in a gale; she broke adrift and fl oated in the bay. She was in a remote spot- for a while one of her night watchmen turned her into a floating whorehouse.

In World War II the avy crudely and peremptorily cut down the bark's rigging with acetylene torches until only the lower masts stood. This was so that Navy planes, which swarmed in the area, would no t hit the topgall ant masts. The old emigrant sh ip began to look bedragg led, rusty and unloved. There was talk of ordering her scrapped as an eyesore. But she had one inamorata who would not give up.

Jerry MacM ullen , marine historian , had been the bark's guardian angel since before she arrived in San Diego .As a young man, he had been one of the gro up of five who conspired to bring her in . Now he moved to awaken the city

SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1977

to the rarity it had on its doorstep. MacMullen saw his chance when, in 1957, San Diego had a visit from Alan Villiers, the noted lecturer and Cape Horner, who had just brought Mayflower II across the Atlantic. At the end of his lecture, Villiers found Jerry MacM ullen at his elbow. Jerry suggested a visit to the Star of India. Villiers agreed-and was a bit surprised when he climbed her rotting gangplank, to be greeted by John Bunker, waterfront reporter for San Diego's Evening Tribune, with a photogra pher. (Jerry himself, as his father before him , had been a newspaperman.)

"So the old bark came back spectacularly from the shadow of extinction and beat us all to sea. " The result was, on page one of the next day's Tribune, a big picture of a scowling Villiers looking down from the break of the fo 'c's'le, and over it the caption: "She's a bloody mess." The interview presented his challenge: "She'd take a lot of work, and a lot of money. But London restored the clipper ship Cutty Sark and San Francisco restored the old sailing ship Balclutha. They're both packing tourists in and paying for themselves ."

A campaign was put together, with Port Director John Bate weighing in, and attorney Jack Donnelley (as a boy he'd made a voyage to Alaska in the Down Easter Oriental) willing to take on the crucial task of fund-raising. Things began to move. I was invited down from San Francisco to make a survey. There was a willingness to proceed, even to go into debt to save the ship . She was hauled, her masts were pulled ; Jack Dickerhoff began renewing aged rigging in the spacious decks of the ferry Eureka, with Harry Dring's cheerful cooperation, in San Francisco.

Not long after I finished my survey, a remarkable man arrived on the scene, in the person of Captain Kenneth Reynard.

The physical restoration of the Star of India soon revolved around his energies and talents. Reynard led a crew of a few professionals and many amateurs and

The Star, painted by Capt. R eynard to rem ind himself to get her to sea under sa il.

showed them how to do the work with his own hands- he is a sailmaker, rigger, shipwright, marine artist, navigation instructor, and ship master.

Through the early 1960's, San Diego closed ranks behind these men and their sh ip. So the old bark came back spectacularly from the shadow of extinction and beat us all to sea.

Many were called to this service and many responded . But without Captai n Reynard's determination to see the ship through in first-class style- no scamping of the work anywhere-and the devoted loyalties he commanded in that task, she would not have sai led . Without Jerry MacMullen , author of classic books on our West Coast ships, and the most quiet of men, there would have been noStarof India for us to steer on.

Jerry Ma cMullen 's Star of India (Berkeley, Howell-No rth, 1961) recounts the ship 's long history and her battle for survi val up to the turning-point of the Kortum survey and her hauling for refit.

The Star has since paid her debts, and gathered support for further ventures: a full-scale museum is coming into being in the handsomely paneled spaces of the gia nt steam ferry Berkeley, the steam yacht Medea now graces the harbor. A maior maritime cultura l center has grown up on the traffic of people drawn to the Star.

As emigrant ship, Alaska salmon ship, and museum sl11iJ, shes seen over a century's voyaging.

11

CALIFORNIA SHIPS

The San Francisco Renaissance

The artist John Stobart spent time in San Francisco learning the sluiJs and ways of the old port Ji-om Karl Kortum of the Maritime Museum and others.

Here, at the Vallejo Street Wha1j in 1863, he shows the tall windships at rest, masts and rigging catching the night air like giant harps in faint echo of the screaming Cape Horn gales they fought through to get here. Gaslight spills from chandleries and taverns, men wrangle in the street, while a few lat e workers wrestle barrels onto drays on the wharf.

Behind the tall Down Easter lies a Bay schooner, part of the varied sea traffics that built the city and nourished the thriving life of the port. In 1951 the San Francisco Maritime Mu seum was founded to recapture that life. "The concept to which the ne w museum people were dedicated, " says Kortum, "was to present the whole of the maritime story of San Francisco . .. "Jn doing so, in the past quarter centwy, they changed the wate1jront th ey came to honor.

Karl Kortum had difficulty settling down on the family farm in Petaluma after World War II. It had been his plan to write of the last voyage of the Yankee square-rigger Kaiulani under sail, in which he and a few other young men had signed on as greenhorns in a shellback crew, in 1941-42.

It was a hell of a challenge to write about. And there were distractions - the fight to stop a freeway being driven through the chicken-farming lands (which succeeded), and the long-held dream of seeing a maritime museum established and historic ships saved in San Francisco. A letter to Scott Newhall, brother of Hall Newhall who had sailed with Kortum in Kaiulani, written in March 1949, expressed Kortum 's views on this, including exasperated reference to public officials who " know nothing about ships and can think only in terms of bronze effigies and flower beds. " But, he suggested , the success of Mystic Seaport in rural Connecticut showed how ships - real ships, with a real story to tell - interested people, and this represented an opportunity for San Francisco, the city which had ¡' i,1spired the building of the Yankee clippers and the Down East Cape Homers, sent whaling ships to the Arctic, sealing vessels to the western Pacific, lumber schooners to the South Seas and had , in the salmon-packing fleet, the last great gathering of sailing ships on the face of the earth .''

Scott Newhall , an editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, took the bait after his own fashion. He said if Kortum picked up the project himself, he would support him in it. Farming flew out the window, and the Kauilani story was laid

aside . Within a year, a nonprofit San Francisco Maritime Museum Associatio n was set up , and soon after it took possession of the abandoned Aquatic Park Casino, on the north shore of the city, between Fisherman 's Wharf and Fort Mason, not far inside the Golden Gate . Scott Newhall used his welding skills to help construct some of the displays, which consisted not merely of models and paintings, but gear and parts of old ships abandoned in the Bay and elsewhere .

But that was only a beg inning . In 1949, before the Museum was formed , Kortum had written of his plan to bring in a major square-rigged sailing ship , and to add , at the nearby Hyde Street Pier, a lumber schooner, a steam schooner, the last walking-beam ferry ; to convert the abandoned lot at the foot of Hyde Street into a gaslit park , to see the cable car that came down the hill turn around in the park , and to see the great Haslett Warehouse building on the other side ¡o f the street turned to museum use, for a full presentation of the maritime cultural inheritance of the city.

Nearly all these things have come to pass in the succeeding quarter century.

The fight to bring in the Balclutha, a British-built full-rigger of 1886, was the first challenge and it was one that nearly dismembered the Museum. A labor leader, Mario Grossetti , turned the battle on the board of trustees (who understandably were divided over acquiring a 1700ton artifact) , and 18 labor unions jo ined with over 90 corporatio ns to make possible her restoration and opening to the public in 1955.

The Museum then immediately turned to a campaign to recover the schooner C.A . Thayer, steam schooner Wapama , and ferry Eure ka for the Hyde Street Pier. Kortum 's able aide Dave Nelson went to work to secure the whole of the $2 million pot offered by the State as San Francisco's share of offshore oil revenues. The city planners , of course , had othe r uses in mind , but stage by stage , the Museum plan won through, the Museum 's president Stanley Dollar, Jr. , not being one to back down in the face of Establishment fiats, and the public constantly siding with the Museum as the issue became public through attacks on the Museum 's plan. The ships were brought in , and restored under the direcTiny against the sky, me n o/ K aiul ani 's crew examine the hulk of Joseph Conrad 's sh1jJ Otago in 1942. A ge neration late r, th ey reached out to bring her ste rn back .fi'om Tasmania to San Fran cisco. Ph oto: Karl Kortum.

SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1977

tion of Harry Dring, the Balclutha's first manager, in a new Maritime State Historic Park on the Hyde Street Pier.

In the course of this effort, Museum trustee William Roth bought G hirardelli Square for development of what has become one of the leading historic shopping complexes in America, and Leonard Mar.tin soon followed suit with his remarkable development, the Cannery, facing Fisherman's Wharf. A campaign to keep the fishing boats in in Fisherman·s Wharf helped prevent its overdevelopment. A Joseph Conrad Square was created to establish a cornerstone to the historic waterfront area, and there through the generosity of Leonard Martin and others, the stern of Joseph Conrad's favorite command, the little bark Otago, is being emplaced today. (He had written of her: "One feels it is good to be in the world in which· she has her being. ") And , as recorded elsewhere in this issue, the paddle tug Eppleton Hall was steamed in from England in 1971.

And civic pride flowered, and business prospered , and people from all over came to share in what the San Francisco Chronicle called this " magnificent act of civic rescue," inspired and led , from the architectural details of Victorian Park to the saving of whole blocks of historic buildings, by the ship-saving museum.

Haslett Warehouse, authorized for museum purposes by the State, was let slip to private developers, absurdly, considering the generative forces and values at stake (see SH 4, pp. 26-29). But now this should be redeemed.

At Congressman Phillip Burton's initiative, the Hyde Street Pier and ships, the Haslett, the Victorian Park, the Maritime Museum building, and Balclutha are being brought together under the National Park Service, in what Burton's aide William Thomas-an origina l Balclutha volun teer- has defined as a "new national maritime museum. " What better investment in the life of the city could be made? William Whalen , Director of the National Park Service , has pledged that in this effort the vision of the founders in the late 1940s will be fulfilled. * * * * * * Harry Dring, shipmate with Kortum and Port Director Tom Sou les in Kaiulani, continues to stand watch over the ships at the Hyde Street Pier today, as they begin their new·destiny under the ational Park Service. Besides the beautiful three-master C.A. Thay er, the last surviving steam schooner Wapama (she that towed the Star of India to San Diego half a century back) , and the

SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1977

300-foot walking-beam ferry Eureka, there are the Bay scow schooner A Ima , the steam tug Hercules, and the elegant new felucca Mathilda D. - named quite properly by the volunteers who built and sail her, for Harry's wife.

The Alma, separately governed by Friends of the Alma since 1969, and rebuilt by them, is actively campaigned; her sails may be seen sweeping up the salt marshes as far inland as Petaluma , where she used to trade. Alma Sooman, two years old in 1891 when her father named the schooner for her, comes down to chat with the crew on such occasions. Friends of the Alma meet regularly to organize the participation and support that make her sailing possible, and much else besides. The new felucca marks the reappearance of an Italian type once common in the Bay , and Harry works as a private project on the restoration of a Chinese junk, another type once active in the fishing fleet.

But the big ships make the center that supports this new life.

And it's universally recognized that without Harry's dedicated work and pugnacious advocacy of the sh ips' needs, they would be long gone. Looking out over the fleet from his wheelhouse office, he hammers home the point that a complete marine establishment, including a drydock and working shipyard, is needed to keep the ships in life. "The skills are drying up," he says. "And as to budget, you can 't go on arguing forever in competition with new parking lots and restrooms in the park system.

"We've been fighting here for a trust, all these years, " he adds. "If that trust isn't met at last, it would be better to sink the ships, with dignity." He smiles , but he means it.

"Of course Harry's right," says Karl Kortum from his eyrie overlooking the same ships. "The problem in the beginning was to do things so people could see what the opportunity was. Now we've got to build-and for the ages."

Clearing up his papers at the end of the day, before a long evening review of the situation, of the threatened Champigny (now lost) and the Vicar of Bray (safe under National Society ownership in trust for the American people, but still to be brought back to San Francisco), he looks down the waterfront into which he and others have put so much of their lives.

"It takes time to see things," he says, and gestures abruptly toward the arched brick structure of Haslett Warehouse, caught in a patch of evening sunlight.

"When I was first here, wondering if we could move in ship models, and pieces of ships, and one day-I hoped- ships, I looked up from our schemes and these deserted halls-and saw just that glow of sunlight on the Haslett's brick. That belonged here-and this is where we belong." .t

~·· ..

FROM THE TOP: Lumber schooner C.A. Thayer (1895), steam schooner Wapama ( 1915), paddle wheel ferry Eureka ( 1890).

This historic ships of San Francisco:

"Long may

their cutwaters cleave the sea. "

The Port of SAN FRANCISCO Ferry Building, North Point

13

Historic Steam Tugs and Towboats Surviving in the U.S. and Canada: A Partial List

By Ted Miles and Norman Brouwer The first successful steamboat was a tug , put in service on a Scottish canal a little before Robert Fulton's North River Steamboat began carrying passengers on the Hudson River. Steam 's first opportunity, early in the last century, was in confined waters where the sailing ships that carried the world's commerce could not operate at full efficiency; and from early on, steam was used to assist sailing ships in and out of rivers and harbors. This auxiliary function grew in importance as sailing ships grew bigger, from about 100 tons for the average ocean trader in 1800, to around 400 tons in 1825, to 1,000 (and sometimes much more) by 1850.

While putting together these lists we were often surprised at the variety of craft we encountered - and by their longevity! Who would have thought a boat from 1874 would still be in service!

Museums have preserved some good examples, most added in the last decade.

But if you look on a nearby water you might see a boat just as old or just as unusual as any in a museum collection.

Readers are invited to let us know of any classic towing craft they come across, which might be of interest. We shall be having more to report on tugs and towboats in a future issue, and on the historic continuities of tugboating in our time.

Steam, Still Active Edna G. Built 1896 at C leveland, Ohio. Home port is Two Harbors, Minnesota. Owner, Duluth Missable Iron Range Railroad Co. Portland Sternwheel towboat, built 1947 at Portland , Oregon. Home port Portland, Oregon. Owner, Port of Portland , Inc. Salutation Built 1904 at Philadelphia. Home port Philadelphia. Owner, Kathryn L. Tucker.

Steam, Preserved in Retirement

A rtl111r Foss Built 1889 at Portland, Orego n.

Part of Northwest Seaport fleet at Kirkland , Washington.

Clyde B. Holmes Built 1924 at Baltimore .

Maryland. Preserved at Camden , Maine.

Dorothy Built 1890 at Newport News, Virgin ia . Preserved at Newport News Shipbui lding in Newport News , Virginia.

Epp leton Hall Sidewheel Tug, built 1914 at South Shields, England. Maintained in operating condition at San Franc isco Maritime Museum in San Fra ncisco, California.

Equator Built 1888 in Benicia, California as schooner. Preserved at Carey Davis Tug & Barge in Seattle, Washington.

George W. Verity Sternwheel towboat, built 1927 at Dubuque, Iowa. Preserved at Keokuk River Commission at Keokuk, Iowa.

Hercules Built 1907 at Camden, N.J. Preserved at San Francisco Maritime State Park in San Francisco, Cali fornia .

Jean Sternwheel towboat, built 1938 at Portland, Oregon. Preserved at Lewis and C lark State College in Lewiston, Idaho.

Mathilda Built 1899 at Sorel, Quebec. Preserved at South Street Seaport Museum in dry storage in New York, N.Y. Ned Hanlon Built in 1932. Preserved ahsore at the Maritime Museum of Upper Canada in Toronto, Ontario.

Nenana Sternwheel towboat, built 1922 at Nenana, A laska. Preserved at Nenana , A laska.

Pegasus Built 1927 at Mariners Harbor, N.Y. Ex-Socony #5. Currently laid up at Nantucket , Mass.

Reiss Built 1913 at Cleveland , Ohio. Preserved at Saugatuck Marine Museum in Douglas, Michigan.

W.P. Snyder Sternwheel towboat, bui lt 1918 at Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania. Preserved at Marietta, Ohio.

70 Years and Still Going Strong (Old Steam Tugs Converted to Diesel): Fannie J. Ex-Rebecca, bu ilt 1874 at Camden, NJ. Home port is Portland, Maine. Owner Cranbro Corporation, Inc. Hay-De Ex-New York Central No. JJ, built 1887 at Camden , N.J. Home port is New York , Pier 1 I (East River). Owner, Fred Kosnac.

James Battle Built 1900 at Wyandotte, Michigan. Home port is Montre al.

John E. McA /lister Ex-Socony No. 16, built 1907 at Baltimore, Maryland. Home port is Philadelphia. Owner, McAllister Towing, Inc. MwJ! D. Hume Built 1881 al Ellenburgh , Oregon. Spent part of her career as a schooner-rigged steam wha ler in the Arctic.

Home port is Seattle , Washington. Owner, American Tug Boat Co. Montclair Built 1903 in Camden , N.J. Former Lackawanna Railroad tug in New York Harbor. Home port is Tampa, Florida . Owner, Tampa Bay Towing Co. Oget Wooden hull, built in 1898, only 40 feet long. Home port is Jacksonville, Florida.

Progress No. 9 Ex-Cheektowaga, built 1902 at Port Richmond , N.Y. Tank clean ing plant in New York Harbor. Burned and sank recently at Mariners Harbor, N. Y. Raised and laid up at Erie Basin, Brooklyn. Owner, Progress Marine Corporation, NJ. Tankmaster No. 1 Ex-Catawissa, built 1896 at Wilmington , Delaware. Former Reading Co. coastwise tug. Tank clean ing plant in New York Harbor. Owner, Tank Masters, Inc. Thomas A. Moran Ex-New York Central No.

Annie B. Built 1926 at Milford, Delaware.

Part of Chandler's Wharf Museum fleet at Wilmington, N.C.

14

Rhododendron Stern wheel towboat , built 1918 at Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania. Preserved at Museum in Clinton , Iowa.

21, built 1899 at Newburgh, N.Y. Home port is Port Arthur, Texas. Owner, Moran Towing & Transportation Co., Inc.

Seguin Built 1884 at Bath , Maine. Unde rgoing restoration at Bath Marine Museum in Bath, Maine.

Virginia Ex-El Toro, built 1891 at Newport News, Virginia. Home port is Baltimore, Maryland. Ow ner, Harbor Tow ing, Inc.

SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1977

\

The tug Equator started life as a 68-ton schooner (lop le ft}, built 1888 in Benicia, California. She ll'as charte red by Robert Louis Stevenson for several of his South Sea voyages: he re, hat in hand, he ll'aves goodbye as they cast off from Oceanic Wharf, Honolulu.

A s a t11gboa1, the Equator (le/I) and the A litack toll'ed the Bal c lutha , the n named Star of Alaska into Chignak Bay, Alaska.

Jn 1962 the San Fran cisco Maritim e Museu m sent the late Al Harmon north lO Everet/, Washingto n to repo rt on the stranded tug. At right, San Francisco Port Director Tom Soules looks her over. She is preserved, bu t f imds for restoration and a permanent home for her have not yet been found. Ph otos: San Francisco Maritime Museum.

Photo: Karl Kortum

SEA HI STORY, SUMMER 1977

HISTORIC TUGS

r

"'=--

A GAGGLEOFWORKINGGIRLS: FannyJ. (above) came by the South Street Museum piers in New York one day recently to announce he rself, still going strong sin ce 1874; Mary D . Hum e (top right), built in 1881 as a wooden tug, se rved as a steam whale r in A retie wate rs, is see n here in Seattle's Lake Union locks, going fi'om. one job to another; Hay-De (lo we r right), doing harbor work f rom he r Lowe r M anhattan base, was eight years old when the f ull-rigged ship Wavertree, no w unde rging restora tion at the South Street Muse um a few piers north, f irst visited the port in 1895: the powerf ul Segu in (below), built in 1884 in Bath, Maine, is now being restored to steaming condition by the Bath Marine Museum.

Photos: Seguin, courtesy Ba th Marine Museum; all othe rs, No rman Brou we r.

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I

Two Famous Landmarks of New York Harbor A co ntin uously expanding Moran fleet has kept pace with the soaring skyline of New York for more than a century. By providing the power, experience, and versatility to e ff iciently and e conomically meet the full range of the port's transp ortation needs, Moran h as hel ped make the Port of New York a leader in worl d comm e rce.

16

SEA HI STORY , SUMMER 1977

REPLICAS: Where Are They Heading Today?

By Norman Brouwer Ship Historian South Street Seaport Museum Pride of Baltimore, heading to sea, re vives a vanished type. Photo : Robert de Gast.

To replicate-or not? It has a kind of funny sound, and some replicas of historic vessels are indeed cheats: so deceptive as to be better not built. But the urge to build to traditional designs runs deep, and is expressed in vessels of highly varied function, loosely or closely copied from prototypes that sailed (or steamed!) in the past. Here historian Norman Brouwer looks at the undertakings of the past three quarters of a century, and finds some encouraging developments.

..

Few ships called " replicas" meet the proper definition. A replica is an exact copy in every detail of the predecessor on which it is modelled. But, due to lack of in format ion, many have had to be conjectural re-creations based on knowledge of ships of the type and period.

Many more have been inaccurate due to inadequate scholarship , or modifications imposed by modern uses.

Other so-called replicas have been built on the hulls of later vessels, hardly enhancing their accuracy. In 1930 the coasting schooner Lavolta, built in 1870, was converted to represent the ship Arbella , which brought the first settlers to Salem in 1630. She was berthed at Salem's Pioneer Village in Forest River Park where Ernest S. Dodge in 1953 noted: "Gradually disintegrating, the venerable old vessel has become the greatest unintentional historical hoax of the region as each summer wide-eyed midwesterners marvel that a sh ip could be so well preserved for three hundred years .. . " In England, a replica of Drake's Golden Hind (not to be confused with the Golden Hinde now in San Francisco) was built o n the hull of a motor fis hing boat. Earlier, the same hull had supp orted a replica of Anson's Centurion of 1749. A more recent case of a replica conversion is the brig Beaver, serving as a Boston Tea Party M useum at the c ity. She is a former Baltic galeass ,

SEA HISTO~Y, SUMMER 1977

converted only in rig. Plans called for modification of the bow, and an 18th-century transom to be built abaft the deep Scandinavian one , but this work was never done.

However, beginning with some of the earliest replicas, there have been honest attempts made to produce historical acc uracy, based on the scholarshlip available. Considerable research went into the copies of Columbus' three ships built in Spain for our Columbian Exposition of 1892-93. The Santa Maria was actually sailed to this country , while the Nina and Pinta were towed over by a warship.

All three ended their days in a lagoon in Chicago's Jackson Park , where the Santa Maria , the last to go, was dismantled following a fire in 1952.

The Hudson-Fulton celebration at New York in 1909 resulted in the construction of two replicas: a Dutch-built re-creation of Hudson 's Half Moon, brought to this country on the deck of a freighter , and a copy of Fulton's North River Steamboat or Clermont built by the Staten Island Shipbuilding Company of Mariners Harbor, New York. The latter rep lica included a working copy of the original vessel 's 1807 steam engin e. After the celebration , the Half Moon was moored by the Day Line landing at Bear Mountain, and later at Cohoes, New York. The Clermont was placed in a lagoon at Kingston Point, New York .

Both were gone by the late 1930s ; the Half Moon destroyed by fire, and the Clermont sinking where she lay.

At least five replicas of Viking long ships have been brought to this country to help commemorate the Viking explorations . The first three were built in Norway and sailed over: Viking in 1893, Leif Erikson in 1926, and Roald Amundsen in 1929.

The Viking was placed ashore in Lincoln Park at Chicago ; the Leif Erikson was placed in a park in Duluth , Minnesota; and the Roald Amundsen was sai led back to Norway .

During the 1976 Bicentennial celebration , the Danish-built Viking ship

Sebbe Als and the Icelandic Le1fur Eiriksson, bu ilt in Norway, were brought over to New York on the decks of freighters, and returned in the same manner.

The number of replicas being built increased substantially around 1957, undoubtedly influenced by the publicity surrounding the voyage of the Britishbuilt Mayflower II. This replica was the product of very carefu l research by William A . Baker, using every scrap of information that could be found, both on the vessel herself and on ships of her type. She was brought across the Atlantic by seaman/ author Alan Villiers, and is currently displayed at Plymouth , Massachusetts. She was fo llowed by the Jamestown, Virginia replicas Susan Constant, Goodspeed and Disco very, built in Virginia in 1957; an oversized Bounty 11, a Bluenose II, and an undersized Flying Cloud II, all built in Nova Scotia , in 1960, 1963, and 1966; an America II built in Maine in 1967 ; the ketch Non such II built in England in 1968; the ketch Adventure built in Maryland for Charleston , South Carolina in 1970; the HMS Rose frigate replica built in Nova Scotia in 1970; and finally the British-built Golden Hinde II of 1973.

The 1976 Bicentennial inspired a number of replica projects, of which three have actuall y materialized ; the sloop Pro vidence 11 built at Newport, Rhode Island last fall (of fiberglass) ; the sloop Welcome under construction at Mackinaw City , Michigan: and the Baltimore clipper schooner Pride of Baltimore launched at Baltimore this spring.

The building of replicas for modern active uses is a somewhat more recent phenomenon than the building of such vessels purely for display. In the fa ll of 1937, inspired by the research of Howard I. Chapelle , Wi lliam A. Robinson established a shipyard at Ipswich , Massachusetts to produce yachts which would be copies of late 18th- and early 19th-century sailing vessels. The first ship launched was the Swift, a copy of a privateer of 1778. She became the yacht of James Cagney, and today sails with 17

REPLICAS passengers out of Santa Barbara, California. Two more schooners were launched before the War interrupted operations. A few pseudo-replica yachts have been built in recent years, but unfortunately none have been characterized by anything approaching the level of workmanship and attention to historic accuracy that went into the construction of the pre-war vessels.

In 1962, the Harvey Gamage Shipyard in South Bristol, Maine launched the schooner Mary Day, a re-creation of the traditional two-masted coaster adapted for use in the growing Ma in e coast passenger cruise trade. She was followed two years later by the topsail schooner Shenandoah, based on plans of the revenue cutter Joe Lane, but also adapted to passenger carrying. Three more schooners have since been built for this type of service; Mystic Whaler, Bill of Rights and Harvey Gamage; all much more loosely based on traditional designs.

In 1969, Harvey Gamage launched the replica Hudson River sloop Clearwater.

Built to publicize the ecological problems of the river, she has come to serve a number of educational functions involving ecology, local history. and the seamanship of sailing a traditional vessel-ranging from the brief exposure of a high school student out for one day, to the largely volunteer crew members on board for longer periods.

The use of other replicas as training vessels has been proposed - this is part of the plan for both Providence and Pride of Baltimore - but as yet suc h training has been limited to the use of modern copies of traditional small craft such as those operated by the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School in Maine.

While, in the past, replicas of sailing vessels have tended to predominate, copies of traditional steam boats have become fully as numerous in recent years. Beginning in the 1950s, a large number of recreational "paddlewheelers" were built. However, these tended to be undersized and lacking in a uthenticity. Few had paddlewheels that ac tually propelled them, a nd , far from being steamers, they were likely to conceal anything from twin outboards to a used tractor engine. Recently however, there has been encouraging trend toward greater historical accuracy.

In 1970 the Julia Belle Swain was built at Dubuque , Iowa, 157 feet in length and powered by two 350 horsepower steam engines. Though patterned after no specific vessel , she is a 18

fairly successful attempt to recapture the flavor of the upper Mississippi packets of a century ago. A year later the the sternwheeler Apollo fl was completed to run in the Wisconsin Dells area, in this case a careful copy of a boat which ran on those waters years before. The most impressive craft of this type is the recently completed Natchez , designed to operate out of New Orleans. She is 285 feet in length, and has the engines and paddlewheel from the steam towboat Clairton. Not patterned after any previous Natchez, she is however a good re-creation of the Ohio River packets of the late 1800s, and was designed by the noted riverboat historian Alan Bates.

The original Disneyland in Anaheim , California , has a replica of the fullrigged ship Columbia, and a Mississippi sternwheeler named the Mark Twain .

Neither is self-propelled, the Mark Twain operating on an underwater track. When Disney World was set up in Florida in 1971 , a different approach was taken. A fleet of sidewheelers, sternwheelers, and double-ended ferries was built: the ferries diesel propelled, but the paddlewheelers all operating steamboats. The sidewheelers include a revival of the walking-beam engine, a uni4ue feature of American steamboats which had been extinct for a number of years.

"Subtleties of the craft. may be missing, along with the attitude toward the work."

As already suggested, the educational value of a replica as a re-creation of the past can vary tremendously. Poorly done replicas, of which there have been many, are not only a waste of the money put into them, they have the negative effect of giving the general public a false view of the past. This failure can result from many factors, all of which apply as well to major restoration work done on surviving ships: lack of commitment to accuracy on the part of the sponsors of the vessel, the need to meet a deadline (often an anniversary connected with the original vessel), the need to stay within a limited budget, and inadequate research.

The scholarship may be sound , and the ship may be re-created down to the smallest detail and still not be a complete success. If modern materials are substituted the finish may be different , in some cases the vessel will not perform in the same way, and the natural

aging and weathering processess will be altered. If modern tools are used the texture and finish will generally be unauthentic, even under multiple layers of paint or varnish. Probably the most difficult thing to recreate is traditional workmanship, even using traditional tools and techniques. Subtleties of the craft, which would have been passed from master shipwright to apprentice may be missing, along with the attitude toward the work. A builder of modern cabin cruisers given the one-time job of re-creating an historic vessel simply for display will have a different attitude toward the work than an apprentice shipwright who is part of a craft revival and is building a replica that will be actually sailed. Neither will ever fully recapture the attitudes of the original workman whose life was spent building vessels of this type, and who knew that what he was building had to go out and earn its living and provide a home for its people in all conditions on the oceans of the world for twenty years or more.

If all the requirements for historical accuracy listed above are met, but the vessel is only used as a stationary display, she will remain a true replica very briefly. Active ships and laid up ships age very differently. A working vessel is weathered not only by the elements, but also by the constant maintenance she receives; the holystoning of decks and scrubbing of paintwork.

The stationary replica soon becomes not a copy of the earlier vessel , but a copy of that vessel as she would have appeared if she were launched , fitted out, and laid up without ever going into service, receiving the limited maintenance of an inactive ship.

Consequently, the most hopeful projects are those which seek to recreate traditional vessels for active use, and utilize ongoing or revived traditional shipbuilding methods. Such a project is the proposed construction of a new schooner Alice S. Wentworth at Mystic Seaport, where the ship's active use is guaranteed, and a shipyard exists which has gained valuable experience in maintaining and rebuilding museum vessels. Another such project is the construction , currently underway, of the coasting schooner John F. Leavitt at Thomaston, Maine. Here, however, a question arises: if as the owners intend, she succeeds in supporting herself like her predecessors as a cargo-carrying vessel, is she a replica? Or is she instead simply a continuation of a technology temporarily suspended? .t

SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1977

THE CAPE VERDE PACKET TRADE: PART I

By Michael Platzer Africa Branch, Office of Technical Cooperation, United Nations

,.

The campaign LO return the schooner Ernestina , built as the G!oucesterman Effie M . Morrissey, to the United States has aroused widespread community interest in the story of the Cape Ve rde packets of \\¡hich she is the last survivor. Michael Platzer, volunteer

project director for the National Society in this effort, has visited extensively in the Cape Verdean (and 01he1) communities to develop the sto1y from old newspaper c!1iJpings, fellers, journals, scrapbooks and living reminiscence.

It was not al ways so peaceful; Ernestina 's decks shown here on one of her final voyages.

"

The last deepwater sailing ships to operate out of United States ports were the packet ships owned and sailed by Cape Verdeans, in a packet trade between Africa and New England.

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Cape Verdean seamen had been picked up by passing merchantmen and whaling ships from New England; many Cape Verdeans, as a result, settled in the New Bedford area. They were appreciated for their willingness to work hard for little pay, and .after devastating successive droughts in the islands, there followed the largest voluntary emigration of Africans to the American continent. It is estimated there are now 300,000 Americans of Cape Verdean descent in the Un ited States. All can trace their roots back to a particular valley or village on one of the islands, and most have a relative who was a whaler or fisherman, or who crewed or came over as passenger in one of the o ld sailing ships in this trade.

Unable to buy new vessels, the Cape Verdeans used windships which had been discarded by others as no longer being seaworthy. As steamships replaced sailing vessels, old schooners and former whaling ships became available almost for the asking. And as labor was required for the expanding textile mills and cranberry industries of New ¡England, Cape Verdeans bought the old windjammers in order to bring their countrymen to America to work the cranberry fie lds of Cape Cod and mills of New Bedford. During the height of the packet trade ten or more ships made the annual trip between southeastern New England and Cape Verde Islands. They usually arrived in the early summer before the cranberry season began and returned after the harvest in the fall.

They carried clothing , household goods,

SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1977

roof tiles, and other American-made products back to the islands. Many homes in cape Verde today bear evidence of this sea connection with America. Since most of these ships left from Brava , the trade was widely known as the Brava Packet trade.

Since many Cape Verdeans couldn't afford the passage on the ship, some packet skippers developed a system of smuggling and indentured servitude.

Other, more generous arrangements were often made among family members and between families , to finance the long journey. And diaries, photo albums and the living mem o ry of many Cape Verdeans attest to the familial quality to lifeaboard the packets. Peopie had the run of the decks, crossings were made among familiar people , eating familiar food. singing familiar songs. They landed at the Cape Verdean colony in New Bedford or Providence where they were greeted by relatives and friends. So close were the ties between the two places, that southeastern New England came to be called "a suburb of the Islands. " But the going cou ld be rough.

They risked the ir lives in the rough Atlantic to come to the United States, and then to return to their native country after small sums of money had been saved. Each voyage was filled with danger, and the men who braved the known risks of sailing leaky, wormed vessels across 3,500 miles of ocean were remarkable men.

Coelho and the Nellie May Antonio Coelho was the first Cape Verdean-American to purchase a vessel to begin the Cape Verde Packet Trade.

He bought the Nellie May,. a 64-ton fishing schooner, from John Waters of Newport, hired an old whaleman as captain, and sailed in 1892 from Providence for the Island of Brava. Fifty people

paid $15 each for the passage. Only a few days out, the captain died of a heart seizure. The mate didn't know anything about navigation but tried to steer a course in the general direction of the Cape Verdes. After a month at sea they encountered a steamer and were told they had overshot the islands by 500 miles. Finally, after 45 days at sea , they reached the harbor of Furna on Brava.

Coelho hired a new captain and sailed back with the Nellie May to Providence in the spring of the next year. There were 117 passengers and crew aboard, and the schooner arrived in 28 days.

The Nellie May made another round trip with Captain Jose Godinho in command. The passage to the Cape Verde Islands took 90 days - one of the most terrible on record for its length and the suffering endured by passengers and crew. Food and water ran out. Two of the crew went mad and jumped overboard. The Captain felt he had not been properly compensated for his troubles; and it is said he deliberately beached the ship so he could buy the Nellie May at auction as a derelict. No one knows what actually happened to the Nellie May. When Godinho returned to the United States he was the owner and captain of another schooner, the George B. M cClellan.

Queen of the Cape Verde Packets Captain Heny Rose was a driver in this trade, who .nade passages still talked about today. Rose made his first trip from Brava to America in 1911 at age thirteen as a mess-boy in the bark Charles G. Rice. He made two more trips in the Rice and one from New Bedford in the Diane. Rose then sailed as mate under Captain Jose Silva in the Emma and Helen. At age 21, he was made master of the Pythian and took her to Cape Verde. In 1922, he was master 19

THE CAPE VERDE PACKET TRADE: PART I o f the schooner Volante. In the middl e o f the Atlantic, while a crewma n o n his first voyage was at the wheel, the boat gy bed and the swinging boom knocked Rose overboard . No one o n board knew what to do; for twenty minutes Rose hung onto the log-lin e and sho uted instructions to the crew. Finally after Rose spent two hours swimming in th e cold Atlantic, they were able to turn the schooner and pick up their ca ptain .

Nonetheless, the Volante reached St. Vincente in 19 days - reco rd time!

Henry Rose , howeve r, had his best days aboard the old schooner Va/kyria, a two-masted fo rmer whaler which he commanded fro m 1923 to 1926. He made fourteen crossings in her, a nd claims he made one voyage in twe lve days . She was solidly built as she proved in th e 1923 crossing when for ten days she successfully battled a hurricane. Rose threw 50 tons of cargo overboard but arrived safely in Brava with his 32 passenge rs - 45 days at sea. On April 9, 1924, the Va/kyria and her rival th e Yukon sailed from Brava together a nd arrived the sa me day, May 13, in Providence . Capt. Benjamin Costa, former master of the Va /kyria, was captain of the Yukon. For the re turn voyage, a wager o f $1,500 was a rran ged to prove who had the fastest vessel. The two vessels and the William A. Graber, under Capt. John Sousa, left Providence o n October 19, 1924. The Va /ky ria carried seven passengers and seventeen crewmen, while the Yuk on had fifteen passenge rs and 26 in crew. The Va/kyria won by arriving o n November 13, and remained the undisputed "Queen of the Cape Verde Pack ets'" until 1926 when she was dismasted.

During the night o f November 5, 1926, the Valkyria stru ck a derelict, in hi gh seas. The collision brought down th e foremast , and eventu ally the mai nmast, and opened th e stem. Capta in Rose tri ed to hack away th e ri gg ing a nd masts whick were po undin g aga inst the sides o f the boat, and also to lighte n the Va/kyria to bring her bow three or fo ur feet out of the water. Two seamen were swept overboard durin g this atte mpt. For two days, she drifted , a helpless wreck; but finally her crew o f fifte en and two young girls were resc ued by a pass ing British tanker.

In 1926, Ca ptain Rose took the Manta, the last active whaler o ut o f New Bedford, from th e port of Brava. He made five trips with her. The worst trip was in January 1928. She ra n into suc h bad calms th at it took 53 days from Providence to Sao Vincente.

20

TWO FAMILIES, ONE SCHOONER: Effie M. Morrissey, above, and al right, her namesake (Morrissey family photos).

1n 1929, 17-year-old John J. Barros took the Manta back to Providence; but he ran he r aground o ff Nantucket.

Two power trawlers pulled the Manta o ff the Nantucket Shoals and towed her to Vineyard Haven. The Coast Guard, suspecting illegal immigrants might be aboard, sent several agents to investigate and discovered eleven unfo rtunate aliens hiding below decks in th e bilges.

The Manta was fined and auctioned off.

Frank Silva, former owner of the Valkyria bought he r fo r 53,800 on August 6, 1929, a nd sold her to Joseph and Albertino J. Senn a o f New Bedford on August 30. She continued in the island pac ket trade for several yea rs under charte r to Frank Silva.

Ca ptain Senna br ught the Manta to Providence in 1934. After a summer spent in refitting and rerigging the o ld ship, the Manta sa iled from Providence for Brava o n November 8, 1934 with a crew of nineteen, and a passenger list of thirteen, inc luding three women a nd six children, a nd o ne cow, a G uernsey heife r. A week before C hristmas, the newspapers noted that the Manta was 39 days o ut of Providence and unreported ··but supposedl y winging her way to Brava:· By mid-January, the relatives a nd fri ends began to worry as no word was received from Ca pe Verde that she arrived. Two packe ts, th e Winnepesauke a nd the Trenton , had also sailed from New Bedford and had failed to reach Brava. Severe sto rms we re re po rted in the Atlantic. The Trenton, a n old New York pilot schooner eventu ally made port, but the Winnepesauke was lost with all ha nds. The las t hope for the Manta and her passengers were aba ndoned on February 24, 1935 when

the vessel had been missing for 107 days.

Mathilde: Lost With All Hands The other great tragedy remembered today in the Cape Verde islands is the loss of th e Mathilde. In 1943 a grou p of young men in Ca pe Verde bought a 55-foot sloop Mathilde in orde r to sa il to New England and th ere voluntee r to fight for the United States during Wo rld War II. Some o f th ese men were born in America but had returned to the land of their parents. The Cape Verde Packet trade was suspended during th e war due to the danger of e nco untering ene my ships. The peri od was o ne o f th e wo rst eras in the long history of drought and Portuguese colonial neglect. The Cape Verde economy was severly depressed .

Job opportunities for yo un g people in Cape Verde were scarce.

After o nly minima l repairs were made to th e one-masted craft , twe nty young men sailed in he r fro m Brava o n August 1, 1943. Humberto Ball a , then age twelve , was aboard th e vessel. He could see that the boat was already leakin g and jumped off befo re it had go tten far o ut of the harbor. It took him thirty minutes to swim ashore.

He looked back and saw the sloo p disappearing over th e ho ri zo n a nd wept, for he knew his compatri ots were sailing to their deaths. Septe mber is the hurri cane seaso n, and it is believed that the ship wit h he r twenty brave volunteers we nt down in rough weather near Bermuda.

Contra Mar e Vento Whe n acts of God occur at sea, under Po rtu guese laws a Protest Against Wind and Sea is e ntered -Contra Mar e Ve 1110. When the so n o f John Sousa o f

SEA HISTORY , SUMMER 1977

Above, E rnestina Mendes Randall (left) and her friend Maria Perreira. At right the E rn es tina being repaired in 1972 (Joe Monte photos).

Brava came to write his fat her's biography, that is the title he gave it.

At age six Jo hn Sousa lost his father.

His mother being poor, he went to li ve with his un cle, Capta in John Zurich of Sao Nicolau. Zurich taught him sailing and navigation , and at age twelve Sousa was running a small boat between the islands with his cousins. At eighteen he was made capta in of o ne o f Zurich's ships to America. For most of the next 40 years, he made annual trips to New England and ca rri ed salt to Ga mbia , wood and rice from Bissau , a nd passe ngers to Dakar. H e was captain of the William Grabner, the Fanny Bell Atwood, and the Corona. In 1916, he became a naturalized U .S. citizen and

during the war served aboard a warship.

In 191 8, he married and in 1919 his son Henrique Teixeira de Sousa (a utho r of Contra Mare Vento) was born. In 1924, he took the whole fami ly to the U .S . in the William Grabner and lived here fourtee n months before he was denoun ced by fellow Cape Verdeans for bringing in immigra nts illegall y. He had to leave quickly on the first ship available.

The family was finally re united in Sao Vicente, but Captain John often gave his family cause to worry. Once, three months at sea between Ameri ca and Sao Nicola u, he was considered lost. While sai ling the Atlanta to the United States he lost two masts and the rudder

in a storm, jury-rigged a sail and steering device and made his way back to Cape Verde. At a nother time , between Cape Verde and Bermuda , a cyclone hit hi s ship and he had to abandon it. He was rescued by a passing boat. He lost still another ship on her maide n voyage between Sao Vicente and Sao Nicolau .

He was described by people who kn ew him as very courageous but calm in adversity. At the age of 56, he retired from the sea and established a small farm o n the island of Fogo but kept up his shipping business. On his death-bed at age 75 in 1958, he was still fi ghting the wind and the sea and calling his co usin to sho rten sail because the wind was picking up. .i,

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SERVICES INC.

NEW YORK PHILADELPHIA NORFOLK

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21

The First Maritime Preservation Conference Is Held Amid a Festival of Ships in Baltimore, June 24

By Francis James Duffy Vice Chairman, World Ship Society Port of New York Seen over the foredeck of a visiting schooner, the rakish Pride of Baltimore presides over the Inner Harbor. She was launched here earlier this y ear, by the same interests that built the skyscraper behind her.

"We are like frogs around a pond ; we all know one another. " These words of Peter Stanford, current president of the National Maritime Historical Society, summed up our first national ship preservation conference, held in Baltimore on June 24 under the auspices of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States. People came from twenty states, including Hawaii , to join the conference with the common goal of saving significant ships of our American maritime heritage. Some came with the modest goal of saving guide boats used on the northern lake waters of New York State, while others were out to save the battleship New Jersey.

They came together, at the call of the National Trust's Maritime Preservation Committee , headed by Waldo C.M. Johnston of Mystic Seaport , as if indeed they had always known each other. Trust president James Biddle noted that his organization, now over 100,000 strong in members, had been traditionally building-oriented. The conference, he added, would surely help to change that!

The City of Baltimore was host to the conference , which was scheduled as part of its maritime Heritage Festival.

Baltimore was the second city, and one of five East Coast ports, to celebrate the East Coast Harbor Festival, which started in Norfolk , Virginia on June 17. Following Baltimore, it went on to Philadelphia on July 27, helped New Yorkers celebrate July Fourth Weekend, and finished up on July 9 at New London, Connecticut. In no way a repeat of Operation Sail-76, the Festival did include much of the same things: Sail Training Association races, vintage sailing ships, shoreside celebrations 22

and fireworks. The Op Sail fever is still very much with us, judging by the crowds at the different festivals, and the feeling at the conference was distinctly that there never has been a better time to get broad-based support for maritime preservation projects.

All who took part in the conference received invitations to visit the sixty ships that had come for the Harbor Festival, led off by the Pride of Baltimore, just returned from her maiden voyage.

The U.S . Naval Academy yawls, the 1883 Grand Banks barkentine Gaze/a Primeiro, the brigantine Black Pearl, and a borde of private yachts attended her.

Harry Allendorfer, Maritime Preservation Director for the National Trust, organized the conference for the Trust's Maritime Preservation Committee.

He ran a tight ship , scheduling some twenty speakers, floor discussion, and honored luncheon guests into the 8:30 AM to 4 PM day. In his opening remarks, he paid tribute to the National Society and others who had pioneered in the work the conference was addressed to.

Ships Great and Small Peter Stanford then led off with a sweeping review of leading case histories in ship preservation, in a talk entitled "How Historic Ships Live. " The local press summed this up well next day by saying the ships live by generating ''living interests"-whether by ,attracting paying passengers , like the paddlewheel steamer Delta Queen on the Mississippi , by enlisting civic interests like the Pride of Baltimore, or generating visitation and membership in the parent organization, like the whaling bark Charles W. Morgan at Mystic Seaport.

Maynard Bray, who had been supervisor of the Morgan's recent restoration, (referred to in Stanford's talk as "The Second Coming of the Morgan ') took a close look at what was involved in that effort and the continuing work

on other ships at Mystic. "The work will never be finished, " said Bray, arguing that this fundamental effort to rebuild and maintain ships in their original style kept knowledge and skills alive which were vital to the purposes of the museum. The slides accompanying his talk vividly and memorably illustrated the point! And then Captain Kenneth Reynard of the San Diego Maritime Museum spelled out how "private enterprise does work, " in recounting the years of work that led up to the sailing of the iron bark Star of India, built in 1863, last July Fourth (see SH 5, pages 18-19). This was, again, no " paint brush restoration," and it was costly and time-consuming, but the honesty of the work earned the support it required, without recourse to government aid. The Captain's words carried utter conviction, and his was the best testimony at the conference to the ability of ordinary people to save a ship and make her pay her own way.

Bolling Haxall, of the Thousand Island Shipyard Museum, Clayton, N.Y. and Lance Lee, Director of the Apprentice shop at Bath Marine Museum in Maine, explored the joys and learning of small craft preservation.

In Clayton the work has brought new attention to the maritime heritage and shipwright skills, in what might be considered au inland community. The Museum 's annual antique boat show tells the story of small craft restoration by the boats that enter it. Lance Lee carried the need for apprentice training in small boat building to the group. Coupled with a program of youth training under the direction of veteran craftsmen, Bath has produced outstanding reproductions of small boats using traditional tools.

Getting It Together Today some 27 maritime museums are joined together under the umbrella of the Council of American Maritime Museums, and their concerns are linked

SEA HISTORY , SUMMER 1977

with museums around the world by the International Congress of Maritime Museums, reported Philip Karl Lundeburg, Curator of Naval History at the Smithsonian Institution and president of the Council. The national and international exchange of ideas and programs will do much to further maritime preservation, Mr. Lundeburg said .

The next meeting of the International Congress will be at Mystic Seaport m 1978.

Waldo Jo hn ston told the story of a failure to save the two-masted coastal schooner Australia, a vessel worthy of preservation, lost through lack of wooden shipyard know-how (see SH 5, p.6).

Mystic Seaport, a world leader in maritime museums, has made mistakes and Wal do Johnston 's sad story went home to all present. He went o n to outline the basic needs to save any sh ip : research, money, skilled personnel and material. Material has become such a problem at Mystic that the Museum has started a tree farm to insure a supply of wood for the future .

Ralph Lin Snow , Director of the Bath Marine Muse um , warned of the danger of diluting efforts in trying to save too many sh ips; some, such as lightships, he felt were of questionable value. Bath has reached out and become an act1v1st museum working with youth in the local commun ity. The days when any museum could look for funding from a few wealthy people are long past, accordi ng to Lin, a nd a growing museum must be involved with the present as well as the past. And William Wilkinson , Director of the Mariners Museum in Newport News, Vi rginia , told of his museum's new d irectio ns in carrying out its founding mandate of 1930 to develop the "culture of the sea." With a broadbased program, in all general areas of maritime interests, Mariners has long been a leader in this most basic work.

William Avery Baker, C urator at the Hart Nautical Museum at the Massachusetts Institute of Techno logy, talked abo ut "a reproduction, rather than a replica." Claiming a replica was impossible (cou ld the Santa Maria operate without a Diesel e ngi ne?) he went on to talk abo ut historic ships he had designed for reporduction , in eluding the famous Mayflower II. No one could ever agai n believe that a ship model would take the place of a saili ng reproduction after listening to Bill Baker.

The Pride of Baltimore, la unched in 1977, was a major attraction in the

SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1977

Inner Harbor, and the panel on reproductio n had a fine example to cite in explori ng this aspect of ship preservation .

Conceived and built by the city to promote its ambitious Inner Harbo r development program, the ship is not a reproduction, according to Albert M. Copp, Senior Vice President of Charles Center Inner Harbor Management, Inc ., "but just another ship of that famous class of Baltimore Clippers."

Most of the wind-driven ships still on the seas of the world today would not be in use if it weren't for the important function of sail training. Barclay H. Warburton, III, President of the American Sail Training Association , o utlined the many problems of taking young people to sea. His famous brigantine Black Pearl is used in AST A work and he knows the problems first hand of training as an educational and character-building experience under sail. Corwith Cramer, Jr. , Executive Director of the Sea Education Association , based on Woods Hole, Massachusetts, attributed the success of their seagoing program to having a marketable product: college credits.

College students sail aboard their big schooner Westward for six-week periods while the ship herself helps to pay her way doing research for various institutions on the oceans of the world. The most important product is the great learning experience of having a n "emotional commitment to the ship. " Betty Blake, President of the Delta Queen Steamship Company in Cincinnati , described the successful campaign to keep the 1926 sternwheeler Delta Queen carrying passengers on the Mississippi- a service that has proved so popular that a new Mississippi Queen has been built and put in service.

Robert Shirkey of the Mayor's Office in Detroit described efforts to preserve the sidewheeler Lansdowne as an attraction in a proposed waterfront development. And Lt. Dennis McCord spoke for the Coast Guard on code problems in sail training, steaming, and stationary vessels.

Friends old a nd new gathered at luncheo n to hear Captain Irving Johnson speak with fire of the value of sailing ships " run with human hands." Rogers C.B. Morton, former Secretary of the Interior, spoke o n America's destiny at sea. And in the afternoo n session, Peter Manigault, publisher of newspapers in C harleston, James H. Storrs, of the Commercial C redit Company (who he lped fund the conference), and Grant D. Easterling of IBM ex-

plained how business interests will support educational prese rvation proj ects through grants of mo ney, services in kind, and loan of skilled personnel. Richard Mehring of the National Park Service and Leo n Schertler of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservatio n outlined the Federal Government's growing role and interest in this area.

Many ideas were generated, much information of value conveyed. It was the feeling as the conference ended that a wide world had been opened in this first effort of its kind, a world of awakening interests to counterbalance the costs and diffeculties faced by people working on maritime preservation projects today. .t

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23

"Encouraging and Daunting": The State of Marine Archaeology in the United States and Canada Today

By Peter Throckmorton Curator-at-Large National Maritime Historical Society Ten years ago Peter Throckmorton told the editor of SEA HISTORY that the most important thing we could do was save the hulks of old sailing ships abandoned or turned to use as hulks in the Falkland Islands. Then in Greece, he said he would come home to be part of any effort to accomplish this. And this he did. His reports on the Falkland Islands expedition run with South Street Seaport Museum in the spring of 1976 appeared in SH 4 and 6. A second expedition is planned next \\linter.

This report on the state of marine archae ology today in North America is exce1pted Ji-om his new book, Diving for Treasure, to be published this fall

by Viking Press.

Marine archaeology is a small enclave in the story of modern man 's scientific exploration of the sea. There are treasures in the sea- unimaginable ones from mineral nodules and galleons full of gold to sunken Russian submarines.

In the twenty years since I became interested in ancient ships in the sea, I have experienced an interesting progression. When I first approached the editors of a national magazine with photographs of ancient ships on the sea floor, the first question put to me was, "Did you find gold?" In their minds, the only interesting aspect of a wreck was its treasure.

Eventually I traced the whereabouts of the Gelidonya wreck, which, up to that time, was the oldest shipwreck ever found. That discovery was spectacular enough to receive the support needed to excavate a Phoenician trading vessel of the thirteenth century B.C. Modern marine archaeology was, at last, launched. Unfortunately, we came full circle and ended again at the point where we had started when, in 1975, we found the Cycladic ship at Dhokos, Greece. Political pressure on the Greek Archaeological Service forced them to excavate the wreck with teams of untrained Greek Navy divers , who retrieved a heap of broken pottery and little else. Like Cinderella's jewels that turned to coal at the stroke of 24

midnight, the oldest shjpwreck in the world was reduced to junk by treasure hunters who were blind to the true treasure: a record of a seagoing vessel of four thousand years ago .

There are literally hundreds of underwater expeditions in progress throughout the world today. Most of them have been so distorted by the newspapers that it is very difficult to get an idea of what is really happening in the world of maritime archaeology. Those of us who are obsessed by what we think is the true treasure form a rather friendly group. Once a year or so we meet to exchange gossip about who is doing what. The last such meeting took place in Ottawa, Canada , in January 1977.

Sponsored by the Indian and Northern Affairs and Parks Department of the Canadian government, it was an open meeting which any diver could attend for a small fee. I left the conference with an impression that what is going on in maritime archaeology today is both encouraging and daunting.

Amazingly, the countries furthest ahead in their work in maritime archaeology- that is, in underwater excavation-are Canada and Australia.

The Western Australian Museum has a budget of perhaps three quarters of a million dollars per year for activities relating to maritime archaeology, a firstrate program in the field directed by Jeremy Green , and a modern conservation department. At present, they are working on five known East India ships that date from 1622 to 1727. In addition, Western Australia has instigated a Maritime Archaeology Act to protect its maritime archaeological heritage.

"On the American side these wrecks are rapidly being destroyed by treasure-hunting skin divers. " Canada's conservation lab in Ottawa is the most advanced in the Western Hemisphere. The 1967-1968 excavation of the Machault, a French frigate of the 1760s, brilliantly carried out by Walter Zacharchuk and Robert Grenier, prompted the Canadian government to support surveys throughout the country .

Walter Zacharchuk and his team have seen some extraordinary wrecks in the Arctic, notably an almost intact schooner of the early 1700s. The icy waters of the far north and the far south seem to preserve ship timber, and

modern diving suits, especially Swedish unisuits, allow diving in these frigid waters. Walter and I agreed to form a totally informal , unsponsored information exchange organization POLAR CH - for those e nthusi asts interested in polar archaeology.

Dr. Daniel Nelson of the Royal Ontario Museum is developing a system whereby the intact American schooners Hamilton and Scourge, lost in Lake Ontario in 1812, will be rescued. He and his associates hope to raise each schooner in one piece and preserve them in refrigerated tanks of water, where they will be on public exhibition.

The freezing waters of Lake Ontario harbor hundreds of intact wrecks that date back as far as the 1600s. On the American side these wrecks are rapidly being destroyed by treasure-hunting skin divers. There is even a commercial company in Chicago that is searching for wrecks with side-scan sonar, and salvaging bits of them to be turned into coffee tables. No one in the states bordering the Great Lakes seems to care. In Canada they do: one of the most inspiring projects described was the discovery of two nineteenth-century schooners near Prince Edward County in Lake Ontario by two dedicated women , Barbara M. Carson and Audrey E. Rush brook of the Kingston (Ontario) Maritime Museum.

Andre Lepin, of the Quebec Ministry of Culture, read a fine paper at the Ottawa conference, describing the recovery of objects from Admiral Walker's lost fleet of 1711. It seems that these wrecks are being saved from treasure hunters of carefully explored, and the finds are being preserved and placed in museums.

* * * * * Compared to that m Canada , underwater archaeology in the United States is suffering. Although the National Trust for Historic Preservation started a maritime section in the fall of 1976, it seems that it will be some years before we have an operative national program whose aim it would be to preserve o ur historic shipwrecks. One problem in our country is that these matters are left largely to individ ual states. Some states, particularly Texas, have passed legislation that is sensible and constructive. The Texas Antiquities Committee has taken title to all historic wrecks in Texas waters, and has chosen a compe tent crew to work on them. The group is being led by Barto Arnold, who has successfully carried out a '.'Jell-

SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1977

organized excavation of one of the wrecks of the Spanish treas ure fl eet that went as hore on Padre Island in 1554.

The Texas State Laboratory for Arc haeological Conservation is second o nly to the Ottawa Lab in its careful and organized work on undersea archaeo logical finds on the continent. One day Texas wi ll have a wonderful museum in which the finds from the 1554 fleet can be exhibited .

In contrast to the interest expressed in Texas, F lorida has enacted a law that seems expressly designed to destroy ancient shipwrecks. The state contracts with private individuals to excavate historic shipwrecks within statecontrolled waters. The finds are sent to the preservation lab in Tallahasee, where they are preserved and then divided between the state and the salvager. l n short, the state has created a situation that practicall y guarantees the excavation of wrecks by commercial salvagers - not by archaeologists.

* * * * * The first real United States excavat ion of a ship , based on the standards of modern arc haeology, began in Maine in the summ er of 1976. A privateer brig of the American Revolution, the Defense, was burned in a she ltered inlet of the Penobscot in 1779, by he r crew in order to escape capture by the British Navy.

"The techniques for work on very old ships developed by Americans in the Mediterranean have finally returned to their mother country. "

She was fo und in 1973 by a task force organ ized by the Maine State Museum , which included George Bass's American Institute of Nautical Archaeology and the Maine Maritime Academy. In June and July of 1976, the gro up , directed by Professor David Switzer of the Un iversity of New Hampshire and David Wyman of the Maine Maritime Academy, excavated the bow area of the sh ip. They found the bosun 's and carpenters' lockers, and began a site plan which will o ne day allow construction of a sailing replica. It is no coin cide nce that David Switzer learned to dive with Geo rge Bass at Yassi Ada, Turkey.

The techniques for work on very o ld

SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1977

ships that were developed by Americans in the Mediterranean have finally returned to their mother country.

And the ships are there, waiting.

Ericsson's Monitor (of Monitor and Merrimac fame) has been found by Harold Edgerton 's side-scanning sonar off Cape Hatteras, where she has lain since 1863. So has a less renowned Civil War vessel, the gunboat Hatteras, which was sunk off Galveston the same year by the Confederate raider Alabama. She was discovered two years ago by a group of Houston divers. The Hatteras, all two hundred feet of her, lies under a protective shroud of mud in sixty feet of water. The Galvesto n Historical Foundation is now seri ously considering salvaging, preserving, and exh ibiting the Hatteras.

We still have a long way to go. My desk is full of rumors, sad stories of destruction and potential destruction.

Captain James Cooke's ship, the Endeavor, may have been found during the winter of 1976 on a beach in Waverly, Rhode Island , where the winter gales have uncovered her. Despite the winter, souvenir hunters were already picking apart the wreck. A Revolutionary War frigate is suffering the same destruction by ski n divers on Long Island. At the same time, a British sloop of war, also of the Revolution , is being eyed by a salvage contractor in Maine. The 1614 wreck of the Dutch Tyjgerseems to have been destroyed when the World Trade Center was built in New York C ity in 1967. The last intact East Coast American sailing cargo schooners of the end of the age of sail are rotting to pieces to Wiscasset, Maine. Yet, there is hope in the Un ited States.

* * * * * In the thirty years since aqualung diving caught on in a big way, a great deal of treasure has been turned to trash.

Very little real treasure has been found: the sea is a very large place. The Sunday newspaper supplements will always have a larger readership than the journals of underwater exploration and the general public will always thrill to the wonderful idea of treasure in the sea. But in spite of all the scandals and stupidities, we are coming into a new period of underwater exploration , where eve n the most comm·ercially minded of treasure hunters are beginning to realize that the value of shipwrecks goes far beyond the cash value of the ir sunken go ld. Davy Jones's locker is wide open, full of magic things to those who a re ab le to "strive, to seek, to find , and not to yield ." .t

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OPERATION SAIL This most memorable event of our nation's Bicentennial will remain in the hearts and minds of the millions who participated and witnessed the majesty of the "Tall Ships" forever.

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25

Ship Notes The "Tall Ships'' of last year's Operation Sail are in full swing this year, with harbor festivals held at Norfolk, Virginia , Baltimore , Philadelphia, and, over the July 4th weekend , New York, then New London and Newport, Rhode Island. Separate activities took place in Bosto n and other harbors on July 4th .

The American Sail Training Association's "Tall Ship" races make a purposive backbone to these celebrations, in a program extending from Norfolk to Newport. Next year, as noted in our last issue, it will be the West Coast's turn for a major ra ce .

Hawaii - Vancouver, thence cruising down the West Coast.

This year the Pride of Baltimore joins such stalwarts as the Philadelphia Maritime Museum's barkentine Gaze/a Primeiro, built in 1883, and the Hudson River Sloop Restoration 's Clear1Vater, fresh from a winter's overhaul at Mystic Seaport. Like Clearwater, the Pride is described not as a replica, but '¡a nother in the series." She is the first of her kind to be seen at sea in this century, and has made 9 1/2 knots under sail-clearly, this lovely rakish craft is able to live up to the performance of her forebears.

It's expected that the sloop Providence, a fiberglass rendition o f John Paul Jones's favorite ship, will be under sail by midsummer, adding another unique and important vessel to the sailing scene. She is owned by Seaport 76 in Newport, Rhode Island , who also own the sailing replica of an 18th-century British frigate , HMS Rose, and who plan a shoreside museum and educational activities in Newport.

In Philadelphia, Captain Paul Berner has joined the bark Moshulu. owned by Specialty Retaurants, as "honorary master. " They could not have picked a better man. Captain Berner served in the Laeisz "Flying P Line" ships Pamir, Passat, and Priwall. The Moslwlu makes a good case that you don't have to be a museum to save a ship. Built for the commercial world of cargo-carrying under sail, she now carries a cargo of history to people , with a fine restaurant aboard. Admission to the ship's growing maritime exhibitio ns is $1.50 for adu lts and 75cr, for ch ildren-exhibitions we ll worth the visit, based on worldwide search of the ship's record, with the help of several maritime museums and societies, including the Nationa l Soc iety.

The Sea Nymph, skippered by Ray Wallace, is going to cruise the lower Cali fornia coast, then cross over to the Hawaiian Islands in a voyage sponsored

by The Marine Navigation School, PO 26

Box 1706. San Pedro, CA 90733.

Designer Michael Willoughby has proposed a modern square-rigged bulk cargo earner. Built along the lines of the Preussen the ship could co mpete in these days of rising fuel cos ts and environmental awareness. His ship is a 5-masted bark, 440' long, 60' beam , and displaces 16,000 tons!

TED MILES

The White Swan's Last Call The Hudson River paddlewheel steamer A lexander Hamilton, now on the National Register, is physically still grounded and swamped o n the Jersey shore behind Sandy Hook.

Interest in her preservation now centers in Newburgh, a river city ideally placed to become the maritime cultural center of the Hudso n Valley.

And a plan has been developed which shows specifically how , if Newburgh saves the Harru.lton , the Hamilton may help save the rundown city waterfrontonce one of the more important seaport waterfronts of America. At First Street, where old steamboat buildings still stand, Society stalwart Don Donova n has mapped out shops and galleries, including a theater museum, housed in industrial buildings grouped around a large, open plaza- which would be dominated by the Hamilton 's graceful and commanding shape. There is provision for visiting ships, and for a steam ferry for pedestrians, running to Beacon,

across the river -so adding "waterborn life to the scene," as the plan notes. At least one developer has expressed active interest in this plan to the National Society.

When will our seaport cities learn to harness the new vitality they can gain by going back to the sources of their greatness? Baltimore is moving brilliantly on its opportunity. Newburgh can catch the tide, the force of human desire that brings people to seek refreshment and learning in what the sea brings us.

But the tide is running out for \he Hamilton. Action to refloat her and bring her back is needed now , before she slips downstream for ever. Interested people are invited to write Steamer Alexander Hamilton Society, 5 World Trade Center, 6th Floor, New York, NY 100148. PS

Three 1roode n Erie Canal boats, aston ishi11gJ.1¡ still afloa t in 1974. Ph oto: Mark Ve/k ey

America's Last Canal Boats Three intact examples of the wooden rou nd- ended canal boat, now sunk in Bridgeport Harbor in Connecticut, are threate ned with destruction. They lie in th e way of a planned marina. Other than one decayed wooden hull and two concrete boats in New York H arbo r (see SH 4, page 22), they are the last of their kind.

Built early in this cent ury , the boats are survivors of the type that plied the Erie Canal in the last century (t hey we re built to fit its narrow locks). They are smaller than the flat-ended scows use d o n mode rn ca nals , and have the beautiful rou nded bows distinctive to the type. The Elm.er S. Dailey, built in 1915 as the Claire B. Follette, is 105' long, 18' wide and 10' deep, powered by a Diesel engine. The Priscilla Dailey and Berkshire # 7 are about the same size, unpowered. All three boats were moored in the Pequonoock River at Bridgeport, just opposite the railway station , and sank at their moorings in recent years. The Priscilla is still visible at low tide.

The City of Bridgeport plans a marina where the boats now rest on the bottom of the harbor. The City has delayed construction, but the boats must be moved, perhaps as early as this summer. If they cannot be raised intact, they may be dynamited and swept up as rubbish for disposal.

The boats have been nominated to the National Register of Historic Pl aces, and museums and historical societ ies that might take on one or more of them are being sought by Clark J. Strickland, Connecticut Historical Commission, 59 South Prospect Street, Hartford , CT, (203) 566-3005.

The Last New York Pilot Schooner The last

ew York-built pilot schooner,

Thomas F. Bayard, is in danger of being scraped for her metal. Built in the C&R

SEA HISTORY , SUMMER 1977

A Head of Steam Poillon yard on the Gowanus Creek in Brooklyn , New York, she was first registered on March 23 , 1880. Her official dimensions are: Length 86', Beam 21.l', Depth 8.6', Tonnage Net 66.58, Gross 70.08. Built of oak , pine, and mahogany with copper and iron fastenin gs, she was intended for many years of hard service.

The Bayard was proba bly designed by William Townsend, the foreman of the yard. Townsend also designed the schooner Sapph o, the first to defend the America's Cup. So there was good reason for Henry Vird e n of Lewes , Delaware , her first owner, to come all the way to New York to have his schooner built.

Between 1880 and 1898 the Bayard sailed for the Pilots of the Bay and River Delaware. On J anyary 11 , 1898 she was sold to The Alaska Transport, Trading and Mining Co. After refitting she sailed for San Francisco, arriving on July 18, 1898, after a passage of 166 days with a stop in Valparaiso , Chile. From there she carried people and supplies to the Alaska gold fields. In 1907 she was sold to Canadian owners and eventually became the first permanent lightship on the west coast of Canada .

Upon being retired from service she was purchased by J. Park Mackenzie who has been working on her restoration for many years and to whom her survival

WHITEHEAD SHIP-CARVING

IN HONOLULU Jack Whitehead has finished carving the figurehead for the Falls of Clyde, and the stern carvings are nearing completion. "Work on the ship is going well and ... with this perfect climate we can work outside at all times of the year," he writes. He'll return to England when his work is finished, in about one year.

is solely due. Now Mr. Mackenzie, due to poor health , is unable to continue the fight to keep this lone survivor afloat.

What is needed is the will, the people and the money to keep the Thomas F. Bayard from becoming another piece of history lost forever. Inquiries and offers of help may be made to the writer c/ o The National Society in Brooklyn.

JOHN A. FRIEMAN

Th e 94Jool brig Unicorn, exLe nsively rebuilt by rhe late William W. Smith of Philadelphia, no w sails for th e Unicorn Maritim e In stitute in Florida, a nonpro.f/r organization de voted to '¡sail training/ or S couting and all A 111e rican y outh. " Information may be hadji¡o111 Charles Lawton, Director of the In stitute, 3105 W. Wate rs A ve nue, Tampa, FA 33614.

By Frank 0. Braynard Partly due to the lasting pleasure left

by Opsail '76 (and riow its minisuccessor, Harbor Festival '77), but mostly due to a conviction that there can never be enough occasions on which ships are the main theme, we have decided to create an ocean liner celebration that will do for steamships what Opsail did for sailing vessels.

To that end, Opliner '79 has just been incorporated on a non-profit, taxexempt basis (as was Opsail '76, one of the few Bicentennial projects to end up in the black, with over $300,000 going to the National Historic Trust marine division to be devoted to sail trainin g and ship preservation).

Notification has now gone out to liner owners worldwide, seeking their participation in this Parade of Steam , which, incidentally , will be led by several of the original tall ships of Opsail , to stress the connection of shipping past and present.

The current date for Opliner is the weekend of July 4, 1979, but, as many liner services have already set their '79 sailing schedules, it may have to be moved up to 1980, which would tie in with the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid , and the Summer Olympics in Moscow.

Although Opliner '79 itself may ultimately be moved up to 1980, there will be small-scale versions scheduled for both '78 and '79, to iron out any problems in coordinating the land packages, m1111-cruises, berthing of many vessels simultaneously, etc. These will undoubtedly be planned for the July 4th weekends, to maintain the Bicentennial-initiated tradition of Independence Day maritime celebrations.

It is hoped that Federal, State and City funding will again cover the biggest expenses, but we have always relied heavily on volunteers to organize these events, not just because they are unsalaried, but because they often bring expertise acquired in their daily jobs, or other volunteer work, that would be prohibitively expensive if we had to hire them. We will accept gratefully any time a volunteer can give, even a few hours a week. The Port Authority has authorized us new offices through 1979 at 5 World Trade Center, New York, New York 10048, and we look forward to hearing from you in writing or by phone (212-466-1998) , for whatever help you can give.

FRANK 0. BRA YNARD, general manager of Operation Sail 1976, is now director of the New York Harbor Festival.

SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1977

27

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The Southhold Histo rical Socie ty has o pened the Horton's Po int Lightho use, built in 1857, as a mari time museum in Long Island .

Chandler's Wharf, in Wilmi ngto n, North Caro lin a, is the newest seaport museum to o pen. It is dedicated to preserving old ships and the wate rfro nt they served in history. T he fl eet is made up of the fishe rma n Harry W. A dams (1937), the shipjack Ge neva May (1908), the oyster dredge E d ward M. (1920), the tug Annie B. (1 926), and the shrimp boat Santa. The A nnie B. is now in a dry-l and berth, fo r rebuilding. Old wood hulls need a lot of attentio n. It's a good plan to in volve the atte ntio n to the public in the wo rk , so tra nsformin g a liability, the need to spend and spend in maintaining the ship in life, into a n asse t- the oppo rtunity to e ngage peo ple in the living ac t of restoratio n.

Anothe r new muse um in the mak ing is the Steamboat Dock in Essex, Connecticut, six miles up the Conn ecti c ut Ri ver fro m Lo ng Island Sound. T he Conn ectic ut Ri ver Foundatio n ra ised over $200,000 to acq uire the histo ric steamboat dock a nd adj ace nt wa terfro nt, which has been ter med "the most histo ri c property located o n the Connecti cut Ri ver. " T he Calvert Ma rine Muse um in Solo mo ns, Maryland has just added three small craft to the ir collection.

Richard Snow re ports tha t he has do nated a crab ski ff powered by a single-cylinde r gas e ngine, a 16' row ing ski ff and 22¡ batea u catboat. T he museum has been fo rgi ng steadil y ahead in rece n tyea~,a ndi so n e to k ee p a n eye

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So uth Street Sea po rt M useum in New York re po rts the fe rry Major General Wm . H. Hart ready to return to service full y refitted and bottom plati ng made good : a close save of a valuable shi p, made possible by fo unda tion gra nts and the generosity of trustees , notably Jack Aron. She will return to service a schoolship for the Pio neer Marine School, but ultim ate plans are tha t the school will relocate in a shi pyard complex planned to the no rth of the muse um area, and the Harl will be o pe ned to the public, whe re in fact he r spacio us decks a nd viewing towers (pilo t ho uses) will provide needed public accommodatio n and overview of the Seapo rt Museum fl eet.

Men Wanted John E wald , Manager of the Falls of Cly de in Ho nolulu, reports they're looking for a manager, responsible for day-

to-day supe rvision of wo rk aboard , and a restoratio n specialist whose du ties would be principally those of a rigger.

T here is, he says, "an ambitio us work program o utlined for the ship a nd no lack of c halle ngi ng and in teresting tasks." A pply to: John Wright, Historian, Bishop Museum , PO Box 6037, Ho nolulu , HI 968 18.

A Yacht Club Weighs In T he T rustees of the New Yo rk Yacht Clu b decided , rece ntly, to provide $ 10,000 to renovate the historic New York Yac ht Clu b Statio n 10 at Mystic Seapo rt. This they undertook to do individually. Waldo C.M. Jo hnston, d irector of Mys tic and a member of the clu b since 1969, had this to say in response to this ac t: " It was in this bui ld ing, in 1850, seated at the rou nd tab le in the ce nter, th a t Co mmodo re Steve ns a nd the Flag O ffi cers of the Yac ht C lub d isc ussed the ve iled c halle nge to race, th at came fro m E ngla nd , and the decision was made to build th e yacht A merica, whose rudder is o n di spl ay in t he clubho use . T hus, Statio n IO was a witness to the very beg innings of th e America's C u p and the a ma te ur sai lo rs of the Yac ht Clu b who we nt o n to prove to E ngla nd a nd the worl d A me ri ca's su premacy as yachtsmen , designe rs, a nd sa ilors. While these events were ta king place. Ame ri ca's great clippe r ships, co lorful ca ptains, a nd stalwa rt sea me n were strea ki ng dow n the seve n seas to a niche in hi story. It was truly the Go lde n Age of sa il , a nd Station JO was very mu ch a part of these remarkable achi eveme nts.

It is fitti ng , the refo re, tha t this little bui lding sta nds stra ight a nd ta ll in reme mbrance o f th e New York Yacht C lu b's ro le in o ur pas t. "

T he li nk here, of course, was very direct. I t should also be added , that the contributio ns of members of this club are by no means lim ited to this act alo ne.

Coastal Heritage Stamp Proposed We've le arned of a movement to issue a 1979 coastal heritage comme morative sta mp- which see ms to us a good idea.

Such a sta mp would call attentio n to the invaluable c ul tural heritage of our seapo rt c ities, from which the modern nation grew. It wo uld help suppo rt the effo rts of those concerned with preserving and enhancing that heritage, whether by putting historic buildings to adaptive use, o r la unching new ships like the Pride ofBaltimore , or bui lding up the resources of o ur seaport muse ums in their vital work. If interested , write Hon. Benja min F. Bailar, Postmaste r Ge neral.

US Posta l Service, W ashingto n DC 20260.

SEA HISTORY , SUMMER 1977

Exhibits T he East Hampton Ma rine M use um in Amaga nsett, New Yo rk , has two new exhibits this summe r, on spo rt fi shing o n Long Island , and a wate r safe ty prese ntation sponsored by the local US Powe r Squad ro n.

The Philadelphia Ma ritime Museum is sponsoring a n a nnual ship model contest a nd exhibition, do ne by the membe rs of the Philadelphia Shi p Model Society. Another good exam ple of using the in te rests-and skills-that a re the re fo r muse ums to draw upon.

T he Marine rs Museum in New po rt News, Virginia o pe ned a Sea Power Gallery this yea r, a nd is a lso do ing a special exhibit o n whaling.

T he New Bed fo rd Whaling Museum has a new show o n whaling in Arctic waters.

T he Sa n Franc isco Maritim e Muse um is replacing its indoor displays in stages with new, highly arti fact ual displays th at refl ect the thinking of the fo under s, Scott Newhall , preside nt, a nd Karl Ko rtum , directo r. "I could say th at we wo uld have do ne it this way the first time," says Ko rtum of the new displays.

"Bu t the fac t is we 're do ing it diffe re ntly tha n we would have twenty years ago .. . maybe the delay taught us so mething. " O ne thing evide nt to the visitor is that the new displays, foc used o n pa rtic ula r themes, wi th models, photographs, pieces of old ships and gea r, are tra nsfor ming the indoo r halls of this o utdoor, ship-saving museum .

T he San Diego M aritim e Museum , mea ntime, is improving and ex te nding their display aboard the fer ry B erkeley.

Fleet Captain Ke n Reyna rd's sure to uc h with wo rkin g gear and machine ry pro mises well for the ul tima te in stallation, in a ship th at has already become a cente r of inte rest and commu nity activities, as repo rted elsewhere in this issue.

Th e Afro-A merican Institute, across the street fro m the UN in New Yo rk , has o pe ned a display on the Ca pe Yerdean Heritage which cente rs o n the immigrant packet trade repo rted in this issue of SEA HISTORY , a nd upo n the sailings of the E rnestine ex-Effie M. Mo rrissey, the last survivor of this trade, which it is a prin c ipal object of the National Socie ty to prese rve. T his display, which will be o pe n thro ugh Septe mber, illustrates again the power of an histo ri c ship to summo n resources and people-and to move o ur message beyo nd museum walls. w

SEA HISTORY, SUMME R 1977

"HIGH SEAS AND SAFE HARBORS " A Summer Exh ibiti on of O ri gin al O il Pain tings by O ld a nd Mo dern Ma sters I mportant Early Engravin gs , Curri er & I ves P rints of Cli pper Shi ps, Merchantmen , Harbor Sce nes, R iver Boats by F.J. vVa ugh , Montague Dawson , Thomas Birch , the Butte rsworths , Robert Sa lmon, Edward Moran, Anton ion J acobsen , Ch arles Patterson , and John Sto bart , Willi am B. M ull er , John Mecray, Gordo n Elli s, amongst oth ers . Li sting ava il abl e .

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Marine Art Lives!

I

John Nob le: Art for Life's Sake

By Maryanne Murphy Marine Art Editor Like most admirers of marine art, I was attracted to the grace and beauty of ships, but as I began to learn the history of ships and the backbreaking labor of the men who sail them I found myself looking for a truer reflection, one which showed the realities of life, and the mortality of man. Such an artist is John Noble, whose work we're proud to show in our pages.

Artists Association Advances Splendid progress is being made toward an American Association of Marine Art. Mark Myers in England has enthusiastically agreed to provide liaison with the Royal Society of Marine Art.We are grateful for his cooperation!

Further thoughts on the Association will be found in "Notes & Queries,"' at the end of this section. We invite interested artists to write us at our Brooklyn address. Please be sure to include your name, address and telephone number so that we may be in touch, especially if you're interested in joining the Association .

The Magnificent Robinson Collection Noted in "Books" last issue was the recent issue of American Naval Prints: From the B everley R . R obinson Collection at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum. I recently looked at several of the over 1,000 prints in this collection, lovingly cared for by Captain A. Ellis, USN (ret. ) at the Museum. All who cherish our naval heritage are urged to obtain a copy of the catalog, available in paperback for $7 from the U.S. Naval Academy Museum , Annapolis MD 21402

Silver Medal to Stobart A silver medal was awarded John Stobart at the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma on June 11, for his painting, "Wayne City Landing, Independence, Missouri -S tart of the Sante Fe Trail."

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Art for art's sake was the credo of the artistic communities John Noble grew up in . Son of the famous painter William Noble, he migrated between Paris and Provincetown. But about age 20 he quit all that, and took up life on the New York harbor waterfront. He sailed in schooners, worked on tugs, and painted and drew the changing life around him.

"A new crew always counts the minutes of pumping, Peter, " he says of schooner sailing. " If they go lo nger each day it's not a nice feeling. " And about tacking schooners, you have to hold things aback with a tailrope until she's on the other tack, then step lively, or you'll have to take the sheet to the winch, and maybe lose a sail.

About the business of being a coal thief, the watchman doesn't mind so much if it's for your own use. "I used to tell him, if your hear a little rustling in the night, it's me. " John's work is hung in the best museums when they can get it (once, he ran a little museum of his ow n, a window on Broadway ; when the sponsoring company changed its mind , a restaurant was delighted to take it in).

The San Francisco and South Street museums glory in things he and his friends have saved from old ships for them , that they be not forgotten. He worries that the message of these things gets garbled. In his own work the message is in the wood , in the mud , it is bred in the bone. It is more than a little PS rustling in the night.

More than 75 stones we re dra\\"n here. Dimly through the leak po rth ole appear wrecks which still sail for me-for like so many ancient hulks on this coast I kne 11â&#x20AC;˘ the m whe n they were young. On the easle a composilion no/ yet mastered a/fer yearsSlufling a Topsail. Ph oto by Bany Scl111"artz.

I am firing this small packet of pictorial and semi-literary meanderings of a maritime nature at hwart Peter Stanford 's bow. It is not so much that I mean him harm, for he came into my lone of fire most innocently. It happened thuswise: the idea for a trio of pictures which would atte mpt to contemplate the downtown section of New York form the water instead of the Land - that would put this Island tip not on ly in the water, but in the tide of passing time - had long been with me.

Now on this tip of land behold there was Peter (the director) mortally seized with South Street Seaport problems and finances. We sometimes spoke and with the speaking came the idea of my making three charcoal drawings of the trio-cheap reproductions of which could be sold for the benefit of the Museum. The drawings were made (though never reproduced) and I had the framework for the stones of the Downtown Trilogy. Thus Peter was a sort of an odd godfather to the Trilogy.

Do 1vntoll'n Trilogy No. I GHOST OF A BYGONE FERRY Th e ll'reck of an ancient f eny approa ches the mode rn city . Th e tll'o sta cks and th e twin lowe rs may echo each othe r in th e composition by in life they are antogo nists 11nro death. Th e 1•ictor is ob1•io11s. A h o111 20 f e ny runs have died since I sa11· rh e CARTERET killed in I928 by a Port Authority bridge- onlv the State n Island 11011• re mains. Here should be me ntione d th e ghosts of individual launchme n - White hall boatme n of an earlier era - and e ve n a Charon that sculled y ou across th e M orris Canal Gap (out of the picture to the le/I) for three cents but a f e 11•y ears ago . Many c;re the rolling fe n y slips on our shores and each a screaming memorial to a step to ll'ard making Ne ll' York a dulle r and m ore inconve nie nt place to _live-Each a 111ightv and dec isive step toll'ard our total e nslave m e nt by the automobile.

We are a city o{ bygone f e rries indeed.

SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1977

Do1l'l7to1rn Trilogy N o. 2 PIED ET PAQUEBOT Th e Statue of libe rty is a unique Ame rican landmark and symb ol- but curiously ii is a most difficult object to vie 11•.

A s see n .fi·om the deck ofa passing f e n y at too great a distance she has a tendency to appear dumpy and 111arronl_1' in part heca11se o/ clouts of cloth across her belly. To 111ake malle rs worse, in the afte rnoon with the sun he r bod\' is lost in behind her the thru st dim drap e ries and sh~ disappears into a squatly silhoue tte. Wh en on her island, th e vie wer is to o close-strong foreshorte ning blinds his eye to Lhe real drama of he r proportions.

Now the 11•ater behind Libert)' Island is too shallo w f or large excursion ;,essels and I be lieve that it is for this reaso n m ore than any othe r that artists through the years have not grasp ed the sheer physical impact of her sides and back. One needs a ro11·boat and an airplane to study he r- both we re used for this drawing. Th e n again th e temptation has always been to throw in /oll'e r Manha/Ian ll'ith her.

Of course she can be see n .fi-om the Je rsey shore- but here again the distance is too great.

One of my earliest recollections is of one o/ the World 's most noted sculptors calling her co rn (in some truth - he r Neo -G recian fa ce. etc., etc.}. Patriots think he r magnifice nt.

A las among all these patriots and esthetes fe 11• really look al her. .

Think not that this copper co lossus has 1101 her virtues and over-11•he /ming f orm s. What must be the longest drape ries in the 11•o rld desce nd in great complexity .fi·om the nape of

o/

her neck to he r.feet - he re the shadoll'pallern changes rapidly in th e afternoon sun. Th e back is really mu ch more po1rer/i.tl than the .fi·ont. Through the y ears and ma.n y drall'ings my ad111iration f or her has increased as has the.feeling thM she is most under-appreciated. f\IIy original drall'ing \\'as 'Fo ot and Feny "- but some ho 11· the .feny did not.fit in ll'e/1 - and because of he r Fren ch background I re -al/iterated it and drell' it as "Pied et Paque bot ". Here is seen the /011•er beginnings of that thrust 1vhich elevates that torch on high - high ab ove Commun1jJa11· Flats.

Behind he r lie acres and miles o/fhe rusting tracks of a dying railroad empire, a dead coal p ort, a 11•reck ed commuter line. And what does she f ace?- Bush te rminal, Gree nll'ood ce 111ete rv and the bones of soldie rs of the A 111erican R e vo/111ion (eve n the smalle r bones of Lola M onte:). ln cide111alll'. behind he ra/.rn lies a beautifitl salt 111arsh 1iw1 is be ing .filled in ll'ith trash to make 11·av for Liber/\' Park -an act of outstanding .geographic ignorance and dulln ess-for one of the greatest sights of Ne 11• York is to see the to 11•ers of Manha/Ian rise abo ve this green grass. .

Well a year or more has ebbed by since the above was written and the stone completed - and the good news is that the above garbage which covered the grass has itself been gracefully covered by a parking lot from a Cleveland supermarket thus saving me the long trip of taking foreign visitors to this oncehallowed spot.

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MARINE ART

DownlolVn Trilogy No . J TOWING OUT -END OF SAIL IN THE EAST RIVER The East River writhes in the eternal gnj1 of a relel/fless tidal thrust. 11·hose el'il eddies but dim~)' reflect gri111 and anciem 1rarehouses and forlorn factories Ji-om many a b.1·gone era. Forbidding indeed, ye/ it has no! escaped a cozy sterotyping by the artist (ll"ilh some magnificent exceptions) almost as S\Veet as that ladled upon the Statue of Libert.".

The year 1s abou1 1939- an ancient leaking four-masted schoo ner, its back bent (hogged}, its crew of aging Finns and Norwegians culled

by Black Charlie (Ne11• York s last sh1j1ping master for sail) but the night before from the sad \Varrens the 80\Ve 1y and South Street then maintained for solita rv men. to1rs pas/ the towers o( Manhattan to11·ards sea and uncertainly Here were ingredients to raise a slight smell of apprehension over this theatrical but anachronistic selling. My \Veakness 1n grasping this smell is but artis1ic 111 adequacy-for riding the great schooners under lolV, as I did, scores of times-and on rare occasions tlVo vessels in one day- no one \VGS ever given a richer opportunity to

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interpret "To11·ing Out. ·· I had the ji·eedom of the McCarren tugs as a school boy. Th ey manouvered mos! eve1y sailing vessel in the harbor.

I admit ··smelt"" here is sel before you in a rather literwy \Vay-bu/ should you \Vish the \\/Ord in a more ~Vagnerian role bear in mind !hat this vessel has just lefl !he English Kills in 11·hose complex reaches 1nanF an exotic pioson and obscene 01·erspill fought for maste1y in the sluggish tide 1ri1h mere ordina1y human offal. Here no foam ever spark led on boll" ll"ave.

In the picture the schooners \Vhite paint is blotched by the gas rising above these \Valers- in misty weather vessels have turned color overnight. The paint may have suffered from the environment-but strangely these corrupt 1raters were a blessing for the sailing vessels hull- for they kept her strakes smooth as glass -free of barnacles, worms, or a blade of grass. Old vessels have made record runs from these lValers and in these ll'aters look place the last schooner commerce in Ne"' York City.

Of all the East River bridges the Brooklyn lVOrried sailing vessels men the most-it being

any\Vhere from 4 to 7 feet lower than the others. It is nolV listed as having a 127 foot clearance, center _spa n, at mean high water (I seem to remember a higher figure 40 years ago!!!). Some vessels could not nego tiate it especially when light without housing their topmasts, which was an opera lion not looked upon favorably 11•ith rotten doublings. Tugs with sc hooners \Vere careful to pass under the dead center of !he span for this bridge has \\'hacked off many a masthead ball_ Ho11· small and de corative they appear above the trucks-but they hit the deck the size of a mans head.

Anyone who has ever approached this bridge on even a moderate sized masted yacht knoll's the eerie sensatio n of imminent collision. Just let them imagine then the feelings aboard lVhe n there were literally by a coup le of inches to spare. It was frightening and it 11•as a ji·ighl lVhich ll'Ould not lessen with repetition.

All mwritime museums, all yachts, and all vachly sail training sh ips nOllVithstanding - you p1001- vessel passing under the bridge 11•ith yowr tattered foreign ere\\" are the end of Ame1rican sail.

SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1977

A further trio is offered, these charcoal studies for my next three stones.

Studio Barge- I built it, which may be of small historical importance, but many a maritime concept was wrestled with aboard here for upwards of 40 years.

Hard Lee-Sitting one day on a Wiscasset bank and studying the wreckage that the war of time had waged on the bows of the old four-master Hesper- it suddenly occurred to me that I had it within my power to bring her to life .

This is the result- the anatomy of tacking a large schooner, a theme like many of my others: ordinary enough but never before handled pictorially. These fascinate me ...

The Coal Pirate-An attempt at a most intimate glimpse of New York Harbor. I have already made a " River Pirate"-and a contemplating Iron , Brass and Hemp pirates. These are most close to me. One must avoid the risk of becoming rich and vulgar.

A risk run by artists who raise too many sails, especially so if one billows headsails with the wind aft.

SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1977

MARINE ART Notes & Queries

t-=-=~;;;;.; I

Steam Packet Tycoon Arriving at the Levee, New Orleans Oil on Canvas

by

32 by 47 inches

JOHN STOBART We have the largest collection of 19th and 20th ce ntury Marine paintings available for sale.

Marine Arts Gallery DEALERS

127 ESSEX STREET,

IN

FINE

MARINE

SALEM,

I am anxious to jo in with my fellow marine painters in forming an association in this country that would help set high standards, comparable to the Royal Society of Marine Art in Grnat Britain. Such a Society should be formed not only for the purpose of ·'furthering the understanding of our maritime heritage," but for the equally important purpose of seeing that the heritage is not po lluted by the terrible cheesecake ·'art" that has surfaced as result of the recent interest in the tall ships.

JOSEPH R. CORISH Somerville , Massachusetts

I was very pleased to ge t your letter announcing the plan to establish in the U.S. a society of marine artists similar to that in Great Britain. I am sure the response will be enthusiastic!

PHILLIPS MEL VILLE Washington , DC

PAINTINGS

MASSACHUSETTS 01970

617/745 - 5000

The Atlantic Gallery 1055 Thomas Jefferson Street. N.W. Washington. D.C. 20007. 12021 337 2299

I commend the idea very highly. Not only do I feel it will benefit marine artists directly , but it will certainly be of interest to museums and I welcome it on that basis alone.

ROBERT E. LEE Coordinating Director Dossin Great Lakes Museum Detroit, Michigan

I think the concept of an association of marine artists is a good one and long overdue. You are to be congratulated.

Some very good artists are working here and, in my opinion, would want to become members.

HENRY JEROME GORIN , Jr. San Francisco, California Georgetown ·t 84S

A Collection of Important Harbor and River Port Views during the heyday of the merchant sailing ship by the renowned marine artist

JOHN STOBART ALEXANDRIA , CINCINNATI, DARIEN, GEORGETOWN, NANTUCKET, NEWORLEANS , NEWYORK , SAN FRANCISCO, SAVANNAH .

Published as limited edition collector's prints. Prices are $200.00 signed and $400.00 remarqued, except for New York and Savannah which are rare prints with prices subject to the dictates of the collector's market. All prices are subject to continued avai labi lity and are liable to increase. Subjects due for publication 1977-78: - St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Charleston, South Carolina.

SPECIAL NOTE Please me ntion SEA HISTORY in making inquiries ; a contribution to th e National Society will be made from sales.

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I think the project sounds great. Congrat ualtions on your drive and zest and imagi nation !

VICTOR MAYS Clinton, Connecticut

The idea of a Marine Artists Association sounds great. Setting up an organization of this kind is a big job with the varying opinions on rules , structure and admissions. Keep the faith!

COCO LOVELACE Foot of Main Art Gallery Essex, Connecticut

SEAi HISTORY , SUMMER 1977

BOOKS The Medley of Mast and Sail: A Camera Record, foreword by Frank G. Carr (Annapolis M .. Naval Institute Press. 1977. 330 pp., illus., 521.95).

This superb new volume (a British import) extensively portrays the vanished age of commercial sail in its final century, from about the time of the introduction of the camera to the midtwentieth century. Covered are all manner of vessels of all sizes and rigs from proas, oyster dredges and junks to mammoth four- and five-masters. Skillful editing has prevented this rich stew degenerating into a meaningless hodgepodge, allowing instead for the evolution of a unified, cohesive presentation that transports the reader into a bygone era.

The parade of ships is breathtaking.

The humble sail lighters and " stacker" barges gain dignity, seen in perspective of their everyday work in the final epoch of sail. Their claim to a niche in history is strengthened when they are shown in their proper, working roles, as important links in the world commerce of the day.

Rare photographs of long-forgotten journeymen of the sea, sail tramps such as the Vimiera or the undistinguished topsail schooner Euphemia are in themselves interesting, especially as they seldom surface into print. They are portrayed here cheek by jowl with the finest sailing vessels of their era in a total of 409 photographs that follow each other in a subtle chapter plan that creates a true feeling for the incredible age that has so recently come to a close.

One could regret the scantiness of coverage of the American contribution to all this. Surely the Down Easters deserved more than a passing mention in a work of this scale, as do such craft as the Gloucester schooners and other uniquely American designs. This may be nitpicking, however, an overly chauvinistic view of a grand portrait of international parade of sail.

DOD

Life Along the Hudson, by Allan Keller (Tarrytown, NY, Sleepy Hollow Restorations, 1976, 272 pp., illus., $10.00).

SEA HISTORY has urged its readers to go inland, to explore the river hinterlands of seaport towns, and learn something of the life we lived when we came ashore from the ships that brought us so far. Sleepy Hollow Restorations, in three projects strung us along the lower 50 miles of the Hudson River, carries the visitor from the 19th-century world of Washington Irving back to the early river manors of the grand merchant families, Philipse and Yan Cortlandt.

SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1977

These families derived their great wealth not from besting the wilderness, but from making the best of the maritime marketplaces of New York City, founded on seaborne trade- the same that supported the society that read Irving's books a century and a half later, in a more settled land.

Here, in two quite different volumes from Sleepy Hollow, we have the sweep of the river in history, with all the variety of cultures and tumult of events that clustered round it, and the Revolutionary War memoirs of one of its citizens, Philip Yan Cortlandt, who embraced the patriot cause early and wholly like his father (as many of his peers did not) and served as a young colonel in Washington's army.

Life Along the Hudson runs clear and coherent within the well defined borders

of its concerns, like its parent river. It avoids the horrible mistake such works are prone to, in trying to say too much or be too many things (the kind of work that leaves one's head ringing, while one wonders what it was all about). Keller twists and turns a bit to get in all he wants, from ecology to folklore to the developing tastes of the natives in art and recreation. But the thread, the life nourished by the Hudson, runs clear and strong. Here are the landmark happenings, the lively personalities, the hunters, fishers, warriors, traders, gamblers and steam boat drivers who coursed the river, and the farmers, miners, idealists, hoteliers and boatbuilders who settled on its banks.

The great secret of a bouillabaisse, to keep the flavors clear, is well observed here. You learn from the people, the

The Book Locker ··Here we are 1•• shouted the conglomerate.

"We"re here too:· announced the computer. ··we know how to make money,"· gleefully roared the conglomerate. ··we can help you do that."" shot back the computer.

And so they came in the sixties to the archaic world of books. as small publishers were absorbed right and left by big publishers who were in turn absorbed by conglomerates whose computers were humming with joy - the joy of digestion.

Out in the cold were the writers (no longer necessary, because conglomerates owned film companies and could provide script writers) and the readers (a distinctly obsolete minority. Who needs readers when the ultimate goal is a four-million dollar movie?) . So bigger and bigger corporate empires published bigger and bigger books that usually mattered less and less and cost more and more.

Then a strange thing began to happen. Smaller and smaller publishers came into being who had no computers to tell them they couldn"t make a profit on books published just for readers, and they began publishing more and better books. In the nautical field alone there are at least five successful maritime publishers issuing very good titles that the publishers of four-million-dollar books consider unsafe. This is because publishing attracts a strange breed of people who resent being told by com-

puters what to read and to publish.

And then, just to confound columnists who rant on like this, Holt, Reinhart and Winston, a merger of three companies now owned by CBS (which also owns computers), last year reissued Walter Lord"s classic tale of the Tirnnic disaster. Superb photographs integrated with the text add immeasurably to the power of a book that is worthy of the most loving efforts of the smallest of publishers.

Some exciting books are due later this year. Carlton M itchell"s Passage Eas1 (Norton) , twenty years out of print, describes through the vehicle of a small-boat transatlantic race the mysteries that separate the world of the sailor from that of the landsman. Norton is also republishing Sterling Hayden 's Wanderer with a new introduction and illustrations. Basil Greenhill and Ann Griffard have written Victorian and Edwardian Ships from Old Photographs which will be imported from Britain and published and distributed here by the Naval Institute Press. Wesleyan Univeris publishing the American Mari1inie Librarl' for Mystic Seaport. Such books as the R epublic :S Priva/e Navy (American privateers in the war of 1812) and Neil' England and !he Sea will be coming your way this fall. And England's Genesis Publications is offering a fine, limited edition of Captain Bligh 's logs from his voyages in HMS Bounty and HMS Pro1·idence, as well as Bank"s and Cook 's journals from the Endeavour.

Prices range from S.150 to S.190. DOD

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Books for Summer.â&#x20AC;˘.

WORLD WARSHIPS IN REVIEW, 1860-1906

By John Leather

This volume captures the technical and popular history of the steam warship 's most experimental era , from the first screw-driven ironclad to the Dreadnought . 134 hitherto unpublished ph.otographs are accompanied by comprehensive statistics for each vessel . The ships presented are from the navies of Britain , America , Germany , France , Italy , Austria , Russia , Japan , Norway , Den mark , and many others .

1977. 264 pages . 134 photos . List price: $12 .50 WARSHIPS OF THE IMPERIAL JAPANESE NAVY, 1869-1945

By Hansgeorg Jentschura , Dieter Jung, Peter Mickel.

A fully-illustrated encyclopedia that covers the development of the Imperial Japanese Navy , and details battleships and battlecruisers , cruisers , carriers , escort carriers , gunboats , torpedo boats , destroyer escorts , fast patrol boats , and many others . A major naval reference work.

1977 . 280 pages. Over 500 illustrations .

List price : $24 .00 UNITED STATES NAVY AIRCRAFT SINCE 1911

By Gordon Swanborough and Peter M . Bowers

This fully-illustrated volume describes 125 of the most significant types of aircraft , and also briefly examines another 130 types of less important craft to Naval history . Contains important chap ters on the designation systems used by the U.S . Navy , the colors and markings used on Naval aircraft, and an index providing an immediate cross reference to every designated Naval aircraft .

1977. 518 pages . 500 photographs.

Index. List price: $18 .50 1HE McCULL Y REPORT ON THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR , 1904-05 Edited by Richard von Doenhoff

Recently discovered in the National Archives , this once highly confidential report is a detailed account of the naval operations of the Russo-Japanese War. The author, LCDR Newton A . McCully, amplified his report of the military aspects of the war with detailed observations on Russian transportation, agriculture and social customs .

1977 . 344 pages . Illustrated.

List price: $14 .95

SERVICE ETIQUETTE, 3rd Edition

By Oretha D. Swartz

The guide to correct social usage on official and unofficial occasions for men and women in the Army , Navy , Marine Corps, Coast Guard , and Air Force .

1977 . 544 pages . Illustrated . Bibliography . Index. List price: $13.95 THE MEDLEY OF MAST AND SAIL: A CAMERA RECORD

Presented in the form of a photograph album with commentaries, this book portrays the extent and multiplicity of the great , but vanished , era of merchant sailing operations. The content is broadly based , depicting all manner of different types and craft , and covering a very wide variety of rigs , trades and ports, ranging through proas , junks , various fishermen and barges , coasters , small traders and big square-riggers .

1977 . 330 pages . 407 photographs .

List price : $21 .95 WEATHER FOR THE MARINER, 2nd Edition

By Rear Adm iral William J . Kotsch , USN (Ret.)

A completely updated ed ition of the book which presents in an un complicated and readab le manner the basic principles of modern meteorology and certain practi cal aspects of oceanography .

1977. 296 pages . Illustrated . Appendices . Index . List price : $13 .95 DICTIONARY OF NAVAL ABBREVIATIONS Compiled and edited by Bill Wedertz

More than 16,000 separate entries , this book contains official , unofficial , and slang abbreviations and acronyms are entered in alphabetical order according to the abbreviation .

1977 . 360 pages . List price : $9.95 All books available from the 1,.J.S . Naval Institute , Annapolis , Mlaryland 21402

BOOKS events, the varied culture that grew up along the river. An essentially memorable tale, and one to return to for refreshment.

Philip Van Cortlandt was a product of that cu lture at a particular point in time.

Hard and decisive in uncertain, troubled times - the Revolution in the Hudson Valley , recognized by both sides as the critical theater, was no parade to inevitable victory - his self-confidence verges on vanity when he recites his role at Saratoga, or gloats over the desperate British at Yorktown (he was there, too).

But the same quality in the man becomes touching, even moving, in other lightsin his wholehearted love of an ideal America , his unswerving loyalty to Washington, his strong attachment to family and the fami ly ho use at Crotonon-Hudson, which lay in No Man 's Land through most of the conflict.

And regardless of how you take him how he !il'es in his writing! There is no substitute for what a man has to say for himself, and when that man is this Van Cortlandt, you feel his presence, see what he sees, cannot help but feel what he feels, and after an immersion in his world , strange to us in many ways, but strangest because it is not all that strange, you would not be surprised I think if, hearing a firm footstep behind you , you looked round from the book to see the man himself.

He was young when the events of the book took place , but old when he wrote it. (The memoir may have been inspired by the visit of Lafayette to New York and Croton , in 1824). Philip's branch of the family lived like landed gentry, earlier generations havin g used their citybred wealth to acquire vast upland holdings. Further volumes in this admirable series will develop that story.

PS

Yacht Designs, by William Garden (Camden, Me, International Marine Publishing, 1977. 216 pp ., illu s., S 17 .50).

"Her design is a compromise, which in this case was influenced by a friend giving me the fin from a Thunderbird. The hull size about matched a pile of o ld growth planking that we had stacked away in the shop, and we needed a roomy responsive day sailor and fast cruising boat. " The above is a small part of Mr. Garden's description of the exqu isite little schooner yacht shown on the dust jacket of this very nicely produced book.

It states a very basic aspect of the yacht designer's craft. Almost every boat design may be called a com promise since

SEA HISTORY , SUMMER 1977

it takes place within a set of parameters including approximate size and cost, intended purpose , owner preferences, practicality and good seakeeping qualities and sometimes an arbitrary measurement rule.

Most good designs will satisfy all these considerations but not too many prompt the boatman to say: "That may not be the kind of boat I want or need but I sure do like it. Dammit that is well designed. " Almost all the designs presented in this book , however, drew such response from this casual boat watcher!

In all 37 designs are in cluded , most done during the last 30 years (if one exempts the Viking fishing boat and 19th-century cutters used to illustrate the origins of particular boats). The 21 sai lboats range from an 18' 6" canoe yawl through small cutters, tabloid cruisers, a sai ling scow a nd double ended cruisers to a 60' topsail schooner. The only measurement rule app lied here is a full measure of good sensible design within the parameters laid down.

The power boat section begins with a pair of delicate 17- and 18-footers inte nded for "ash breeze" propulsion.

The largest vessel is a motor yacht 104' overall and in between it and the pulling boats, trawler type cru isers receive equal consideration with fast commuters and st urdy launches. Of particular interest is a 40' LOA express cruiser featuring a unique arrangement plan and very fine superstructure details.

Several of the designs show variations of rig and arrangement plan based on a given hull. Others show custom designs that evolved into limited production sem i-custom yachts. Much of the material in the book will give the aspiri ng small craft designer some insight into the versatility, ingenuity and good humor of a naval architect of Mr. Garden 's calibre. Also included is a system for making accurate perspective drawings of hulls from the lines plan.

Mr. Garden lives near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (on his own island , I believe) and has been in private practice si nce at least the end of World War TI. If the drawings in this book are any indication, he must e njoy his work very much as they abound in ge ntle embellishment and detailing that make them a delight to read. The comments on each design are in much the same vein . Not too many of Mr. Garden's designs and very little of his writing have appeared in the popular periodicals in recent years. This book makes one hope for a Yacht Designs, Volume II. Don Meisner

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BOOKS Good Boats, by Roger C. Taylor (Camden, Me, Inte rnatio na l Ma ine Publishing, 1977. 214 pp., illus., 51 7.50).

If he had learned no thing else in li fe (and such is like ly no t th e case), Roger T aylo r kn ows boats. He kn ows good boa ts as well as lo usy boats, runs a publishing company he fo unded that successfully spec ializes in books abo ut boats, and writes abo ut good boat designs in his Na tional Fisherm an column . He prese nts in Good Boats some of his best finds .

Pe riod, type, a nd rig a re no t a fac to r

in these desig ns. T he re are sloo ps, sc hoone rs, yaw ls, a he rma phrodite brig, a catboat, and even a dhow-type trisail ketch. What un ifi es this wide ly di ve rsi· fi ed collectio n of craft is their excelle nce. All are spac io us, comfortable, handso me, and imme nsely suited to the ir tasks.

T aylo r has no compun ctio n a bo ut alterin g o thers· designs to suit his fa ncy.

He re moves a n e ngin e to create an ex tra cabin , changes acco mmodatio ns, and in o ne case with the stro ke of his pen grandl y added a ce nte rboard whe re no ne previ o usly existed. Fo rtunately, his

The National Maritime Historical Society Proudly Announces . ..

THE PEKING

BATILES CAPE HORN

By Captain Irving Johnson America's most renowned sailor writes of his first deep-sea voyage in square rig, aboard the great German bark Peking. Now on exhibition at South Street Seaport Museum in New York, Peking battled for her life in Johnson's voyage in her, in seas of such power they bent in her steel sides.

Long out of print, this original narrative written at the time is now reissued with a new foreword on the author's life, and an afterword in which Captain Johnson looks again, from the perspective of a lifetime of seafaring, at the experiences which, he says, "taught me to lean forward into life. " 224 pages with 40 photographs $5.95 paper c o ver $11.95 hardbo und

instinc ts are good and such license seems to wo rk.

Some of the c raft re prese nted he re are unusual a nd sta rtingly beautiful. The Cogge ke tches, with their stern counte r with fo ur windows evoking visio ns of 18th-century me n-of-war is an exa mple.

T he G lad Tidings, a n adaptatio n of the dow neast pinky, a no ther. She re tains her traditio nal appearance, a nd , with her supe rb peapod stern is an able craft that was designed a nd owned by Howard Cha pelle. Taylo r's text prov ides fine backgro und ma te rial o n the pinky as an histo ri c class as well as the histo ry a nd qualities of the parti cular vessel.

Designers re presented range from unkn owns to John Alden and Philip Rh odes; they are of less matter than their c reatio ns, all of which fall into that special category o ne calls good boats.

DOD Eastward: A Maine Cruise In A Friendship Sloop, by Roge r F. Dunca n (Ca mde n d., 1nte rn ati o na l Ma rine Pu bli shing. 1976 . 240 pp .. illus., 59.95).

Roger Dun can's ma ny years spent c ruising the Maine Coast and surrounding wa ters come to fin e flower in this e ngrossing acco unt of a summer cruise fro m East Boothbay, Maine to New Brun swick . With him aboard his 32-foot Friendship sloop East ward were his wife Na ncy, his bro ther and his young niece, a nd a host of ideas, me mo ries and ways of seeing things that make his book no me re narrati ve but the celebratiori of a voyage, o r a way of voyaging.

A gentle trip that begins with a peasoup fog has its share of surprises (what c ruise doesn't?) and includes the annual Friendship Sloop Society's race. Inte resting sidelights abo und. The brief accoun t of Maine's fa mous windjammer fl eet discloses that its creato r, Capt.

Frank Swift was inspired by the "dude" ra nches of the West to fit out his little schooner Clinton with bunks in 1935 for o ne-week cruises. His venture soon expanded to mo re than ten ships, some o whi ch still sail along wi th additions to this day.

DOD

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Songs of South Street-Street of Ships, by Eric Russell & Ma rk Lovewe ll (Wood brid ge NJ, C hant yman Press, 1977. 68 pp ., illu s., paper, 53.00).

G ood new collections of folk music are always welcome ; this is a good o ne. The o ral tradition that allows for e ndless variations of lyrics and even melodies permit the compilers to opt for the most familiar , to dig out the most authentic (if there is such a

SEA HISTORY , S UMME R 1977

thing) or to exhaustively present all variations. The authors have steered a careful course among all three in this thoughtful collection, which is comprised of 23 chanteys with background material (in o ne case, three variations) and is not intended to be comprehensive.

Exhaustive attention has been paid to historic accuracy and there is enough historical data to leave a sense of understanding of what these songs are about, and why they sound as they do.

The line drawings providing most of the illustrations are generally well done and amusing. Chords are provided when instrumental accompaniment is called for, though most chanteys should be sung acapello. (This is not properly explained in the text, though it quickly becomes apparent when the songs are sung.)

Russell and Lovewell's tight little volume captures the informal pleasures of an art lately returned to New York's South Street, where they do most of the singing.

DOD World War II at Sea: A Bibliography of Sources in English, by Myron S. Smith, 3 vols. (Metuchen, NJ, Scarecrow Press, 1976 . $35.00). A comprehensive work, inva lu ab le to present-day and future scholars, which checks out well against source lists published in such works as E.B. Potter's classic Nimitz.

The Incredible Voyage: A Personal Odyssey, by Tristan Jones (S hawnee Missio n, KA , Sheed Andrews & McM eel, 1977. $12.95) . This saga of lone voyaging in a small boat from the Dead Sea, at 1250 feet below sea level , to Lak e Titicaca, at 12,580 feet above, expresses the a uthor's desire to "show some of the cynical, fainthearted sods o n this earth that no thing is impossible , that if you put your bloody mind to something yo u sho uld keep at the the bastard until you win."

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The Four Masted Barque, by Edward Bowness (London , Argus Books, 1977 .

125 pp., illus.).

Beginning with a step-by-step description of how to build a model from scrap this book explores in lively detail the last development in sailing cargo shipsthe four-masted bark . If it centers on the famous Archibald Russell. Mr. Bowness's drawings, along with well chosen photographs, illustrate variatio ns within the type (English as opposed to German or French style), and his writing takes yo u into discussions of the actual ships.

Good news for modelmakers, this book is also a neat source for marine historians interested in the last days of deepwater commercial sail.

TM Square Rigged Sailing Ships, by David R. MacGregor (London, Argus Boo ks, 1977. 145 pp., illus.).

England's foremost naval architectural historian conveys a rich store of information, of interest to novice and expert alike, in this overview of the last century of deepwater sa il. The main story js carried forward through photographs, with an occasional drawing by the author.

Often books of pictures leave the reader hungry for informatio n o n what he is seeing-a trap avoided in this book . where the captions say what should be said and invite the reader to delve into the text for the main course.

TM

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Life Along the Hudson

by Allan Keller An illustrated history of the Hudso n Rive r Valley, from the tim e of the earliest explorers to the present day, including stories of sloops and steamers, railroads and regattas, famous legends and families, artists and writers, stately mansions and scenic splendor.

98 illustrations hard cover $10.00 "He writes clearly and well, and he succeeds adrn irably ... in his stated aim to evoke life along the Hudson .... " Publishers Weekly " In tracing the history of this waterway, Keller provides a highly inter· esting and readable account of life along the Hudson."

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Visit Sleepy Hollow Restorations Three historic sites along Route 9 in the beautiful Hudson River Valley:

South Street Seapo~t Museum is where the tides of past and present meet in lively confrontation on the historic waterfront of lower Manhattan. The quarterly journal, the Reporter, carries features and news of South Street's challenging history and life today. Join us!

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SEA HISTORY , SUMMER 1977

The Eppleton Hall Encounters a Gale

By Scott Newhall As voyagers gather in Clio's manor hall, to tell of tall deeds and ventures made across wide seas, who shall sing of the voyage of a Tyneside paddle-wheel tug from her North of England birthplace, across 11, 000 miles of ocean, to San Francisco? Who but the man who conceived and carried out the act, Scott New hall?

For this oceanic voyage by a harbor tug, accomplished under steam, under sail, and a little under oars, in the years of our Lord 1969-70, Newhall ga thered one of the more remarkable crews to come together since the Argo sailed unde r Jason 's command. Their characters shine forih in this excerpt Ji-om Ne1vhal/'s book about th e voyage.

Those memories live again, and will while men follow tall deeds at sea, in New hall 's "true and faithful narrative," The Eppleton Hall, which is available from the San Francisco Maritime Museum, Foot of Polk Street, San Francosco, Ca 94109 for $6.95 1/ you stop in, or$8.00 by post.

The ship herself? She steams San Francisco Bay today, as recounted elsewhere in this issue of SEA HISTORY, doing her wo rk now for the San Francisco Maritime Museum, whose president, Scott Newhall, feels it right that no w and then a sea museum put to sea. Š Copyright 1971 by Howe ll-North Books, Be rkely, CA 94710

SEA HISTORY , SUMMER 1977

Finishing her epic 11, 000-mi/e voyage, the "brave, invincible tug" steams into the Golden Gate.

Photo: Scott Nicoll

The fueling, as always, was finally finished, including the drums on deck, and the Epp/eton Hall steamed sluggishly out past the Manzanillo breakwater and headed up the last stretch of tropical Mexican coast for San Diego, approximately 1300 miles to the north.

By this time, the Eppleton Hall's company was showing signs of channel fever. Assured by the Captain that nowhere in the world was the weather more constant nor the winds more predictable at this time of year, the deck crew did not even bother to lash the fuel drums to the ship's rails.

For one entire day, sure enough, the weather was salubrious and the Eppleton Hall slogged on past some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, on her course toward Cabo Corrientes.

Next day, however, the gods of wind and sea decided to teach the overconfident tug a lesson.

With the Chief Engineer out of action with his gastrointestinal ailment, and Kip Waldo, the Second Officer, laid low as well, the most furious gale of the entire voyage swept down from the north, smashing at the Eppleton Hall, which was riding deep in the water with her fuel tanks and heavy deckload. Unbelievably, within a few hours, the wind was so frightful that, under full power, the tug could not even force her bow around against the tempest and change course. The waves were simply too huge and the wind too fierce. The rigging was

shrieking and moaning in the gale, and the situation soon deteriorated even further.

In the heavy seas, huge amounts of water spurted into the engine-room bilges through the paddle shaft glands.

The vessel was covered by spray and slop, and then solid sheets of water from the enormous breaking waves. The unlashed drums began to tumble over and some of them rolled around the deck. Eventually they were jammed fairly well together and blocked temporarily.

"Some of the crew . .. suspected their time had finally run out."

It was at this moment, with the Eppleton Hall laboring more doggedly than ever before during the preceding 9000 miles, that a steam gasket in the water injection valve of the port boiler chose to disintegrate, filling the engine room completely with live steam in a matter of seconds. The safety valves on the starboard boiler were tripped and all pressure released. After the water had been blown out of the boiler far enough so that the water feed lines could be disconnected and a new gasket installed, the furnace fires were shut off and the Eppleton Hall became a drifting hulk in heavy, smashing full gale (the wind 41

"

. her hull was sinking deeper and deeper as each hour of blackness crept by."

Above, ayach tlike Eppleton Hall sets forth on her stea ming trials in 1914.

Photo: San Fran cisco Maritime Museum .

Bill Bartz, at left, consults with skipper Newhall on restoring the burnt-out shell of Epp le to n Hall. Ph oto: K arl Kortum.

A tug is reborn ! Below, Harriso n 's y ard on the River Ty ne as Stanley R ooke's men put the Hall back together with "w1y Geordie ge niality . .. and a great atte ntion to detail," as K ortum notes.

velocity was easily more than eighty miles an hour).

Visibility was very poor because of the flying spray and driving rain. The old tug's foredeck was leaking substantially, and, in all, there were very few, if any, dry areas on the boat. Some of the crew later suggested that they suspected their time had finally run out. The entire ship's company was exhausted unto death, simply trying to brace themselves against the tremendous plunges of their beloved Tyneside queen. There was no use wasting energy trying to guide the ship. The wheel was lashed over and most of the crew, already suffering severely from abdominal cramps, lay groggily in their soggy bunks.

It was at this point that Richard Childress, the Second Engineer, the political science student, the man who hated grease and machinery, lived perhaps his finest hour. Together with young Billy Bartz, he tackled the job of dismantling the ancient, ailing, salt-caked valve joint that had to be fitted with a new gasket before steam could be raised in the boilers again. All the time, the bilge water was steadily rising . It already had reached the floor plates of the furnace room and, as the two young men worked most of the night with flashlights and whatever tools they could find in the pitching and plunging engine compartment, the water rose steadily, inch after inch. Even in good weather, this particular job of steam gasket cutting and fitting necessitates a fair amount of time, entailing the dismantling of an awkward and stubborn fitting, fabricating and installing a new gasket, and joining it all together again after covering the surfaces with a sticky sealing compound. And then, there is the long business of lighting the furnace fires and waiting for hours until enough steam pressure has built up in the boilers to start the paddle wheels turning.

Finally, at approximately two o'clock the next morning, young Childress and Bartz were advised to get some rest.

By this time, the tug had broached and was sluggishly riding broadside to the brutal wind and smashing breakers.

She still rose gallantly to crest the massive foam-topped swells which rushed toward her, curling and breaking only a few seconds apart. But her hull was sinking deeper and deeper as each hour of blackness crept by.

From high on the foaming wave crests, the tug would wallow down into the troughs between the seas, plunging soggily as if on a colossal runaway elevator. Then the next sea would crash

SEA HISTORY , SUMMER 1977

against her starboard paddle box, a solid sheet of water would stream across the decks, the tug would pause as if stunned by the blow, and then doggedly she would climb up the sheer face of the comber, streaming water from her ports, and pause momentarily on the frothy summit ¡before her next lunge down and down.

While his ship fought for her life, the Captain followed the Manzanillo physician's instructions and every four hours he pulled himself along the deck back to the stern quarters and stabbed the ailing crew members with a large hypodermic injection (each syringe had its victim's name painted on it) . Then he clambered up into the wheel house to his favorite spot, the settee across from the chart table, and, with bleary eyes, watched for any approaching vessels that might be traveling on a collision course. Occasionally he would nod, then he would lurch to his feet and press against the wheel house windows, with his bloodshot, purple-ringed eyes staring through the spume-swept ports into the blackness, towards the cascades hammering at the ship. From time to time, he would climb down to the engine room to judge the depth of water that was, by this time, steadily pouring in through the paddle shaft glands .

The two auxiliary Diesel pumps, that normally would have handled the inrushing waters, had been put out of commission by the heavy rainfall and even heavier breaking seas that completely soaked them. Furthermore, some of the fuel drums had broken loose again and crashed to the deck, rupturing the bilge suction hose so that it could no longer function.

Before daylight the bilge water was more than a foot above the floor plates and the heavy galvanized steel tanks of lubricating oil next to the furnaces were floating back and forth with each gigantic surge of the vessel. The Eppleton Hall could live just as long as the level of the water stayed below the fireboxes in the furnace and below the Dieseldriven fuel feed engines. If these went under water, it would become impossible to fire up the boilers even after the blown out gasket had been replaced.

After these engine room inspections, the Captain would clumsily climb up again to the pilothouse, where he sat staring at the pitch black rain and spraysplattered pilothouse windows. Just as dawn broke, the Captain hobbled down from the bridge and worked his way on hands and knees to the galley. By this time, his wooden leg had fallen off and

SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1977

''The water, by this time, had risen to within a few inches of the .fireboxes. " the ship's motion was so violent, and he was so weary, he did not bother to put it back on. He simply let the leg drag behind him, held by his trousers.

In the galley, Franci ¡was up, so the two of them had a hot cup of tea. Then the Captain crawled back to the crew's quarters to awaken Rich Childress and Billy Bartz. In an apologetic but urgent way, he explained over and over that it was really time to finish the job on the gasket, since it would be most helpful to fire up the boilers as soon as possible.

The water, by this time, had risen to within a few inches of the fireboxes.

Wordlessly - the two young men forced themselves out of their relatively comfortable bunks, clambered back into their soggy, filthy work clothes, and went back to work.

This was the magic moment of triumph. Within little more than an hour, with the bilge water beginning to surge into the furnaces, the gasket was replaced and the starboard boiler could now be fired up. (The port boiler was still almost empty and could not be filled until the starboard boiler had gained high enough steam pressure to turn over the engines, which, in turn, would inject water into its empty mate.)

Furthermore, and most important, the water that would be injected into the empty port boiler would be the rising bilge water. All other bilge pumping methods had failed-this was the final chance. The old Tyne grasshopper engines were so designed that, in case of emergency, bilge water could be fed directly into the boiler feed system and the ship pumped dry.

Rich Childress went below into the fireroom with water, tanks and lubricating oil drums sloshing around above his knees. He carefully and casually changed over the necessary feed valves, then lighted up the starboard burner.

The Diesel-powered fuel feed engine, by some miracle, started up with a minimum of trouble . Then the three exhausted crewmen, hypnotized by the pressure gauge needle, sat and watched dazedly as the boiler steam pressure slowly rose.

Rich was deliberate and careful in everything he did that wretched, stormy morning. He patiently and surgically *Franci Neale, ship's purser and cook.

raised the steam pressure to about seven pounds, then slowly opened up the starboard main steam inlet valve and purposefully began pumping the control lever-backward and then forward. Almost imperceptibly at first, then more stoutly, the piston rods began to travel up and down . The paddle wheels began to turn and, in a few minutes, Rich was able to switch the engines on to automatic control. The Eppleton Hall was a live ship again.

Even more rewarding was the sight of the bilge. Within a matter of minutes after the starboard engine began turning over, the level of the murky, surging, splashing water had begun to drop and, within ten minutes, the bilges were basically dry. Then Rich stopped the starboard engine in order to build up more steam pressure and, at the same time, fired up the port boiler (which was still without steam) because enough bilge water had been pumped into it.

From that point on, the fight turned downhill. Slowly, the pressure rose in both boilers and, within an hour, the Eppleton Hall's engines were turning over slowly but faithfully.

A few hours later, someone in the galley announced with a cheer: "The wind is dropping. You can tell it from the sound of the rigging. It has a much lower pitch."

Happily, this meteorological prediction proved to be quite accurate and, by early afternoon, the gale had abated considerably, the storm ceiling had lifted, and, through occasional breaks in the clouds, a series of headlands painted in the reddish glow of an afternoon sun could be made out ahead, off the starboard bow . As the wind died, the Eppleton Hall began to make headway once more and, by nightfall, the tug was steaming steadily and patiently north to Cabo Corrientes with her destination changed to the Mexican commercial re.t sort city of Mazatlan.

SCOTT NE WHALL gre w up paddling about California lagoons, but was early dra wn to deepe r waters. H e lost his leg as a result of an unfortunate shore exp edition in M exico during a planned roundth e-world honeymoon trip in a 42' ketch at age 21, and went on to serve with distinction in the Royal Navy fighting in the No rth Sea in World War 11. At th e tim e of this narrative he was editor of the San Fran cisco Chronicle. T oday he publishes the Signal , a pape r originating f rom the to wn of New hall in Southern Califo rnia, and serves a preside nt of the San Francisco Maritim e Museum.

43

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY ABRAHAM & STRAUS Brooklyn, New York AMERICAN BUREAU OF SHIPPING New York, New York JACK R. ARON J. Aron Charitable Foundation New York, New York PETER B. BAKER New York, New York JOHN B. BALCH Annapolis, Maryland BANKERS TRUST New York, New York RUSSELL BANKS Grow Chemical Corp.

New York, New York FRANCIS J. BARRY Circle Line New York, New York FREDERICK W. BEINECKE, II New York, New York WM. F. BUCKLEY, JR. New York, New York JOSEPH CANTALUPO Cantalupo Carting Company New York, New York MEL CARLIN Scarsdale, New York CHEM ICAL BANK New York, New York 0 . CAREY New Y-ork Railway Brooklyn, New York J. FERRELL COLTON Tahiti Polynesie Francaise CON EDISON Brooklyn, New York ALICE DADOURIAN New York, New York F. BRIGGS DALZELL New York, New York VmGINIA DARE EXTRACT Co. Brooklyn, New York DIME SAVINGS BANK Brooklyn, New York THOMAS P. DOWD N . Y. Marine Fuel Co. New York, New York JEREMIAH T. DRISCOLL N. Y. Marine Fuel Co. New York, New York R. J. DUNPHY Dick Dunphy Advertising Specialties New York, New York REYNOLDS DUPONT Wilmington, Delaware WILLIAM W. DURRELL Barnstable, Massachusetts EAST NEW YORK SAVINGS BANK Brooklyn, New. York FARRELL LINES New York, New York MR. & MRS. CHARLES GALLAGHER Oceanics School New York, New York ROBERT G. GAMBEE Investment Banker New York, New York

EVA GEBHARD-GOURGAUD FOUNDATION New York, New York J . T. GILBRIDE Todd Shipyards New York, New York ROGER GILMAN Port Authority of New York & New Jersey MARK GREENE Artist New Rochelle, New York GYDNIA AMERICA LINE New York, New York MRS. MARGARET S. HECTOR Fargo, North Dakota E. J. HEINE United States Lines New York, New Y9rk HELLENIC LINES New York, New York TOWNSEND HORNOR Osterville, Massachusetts ROBERT W. HUBNER IBM Corp.

Armonk, New York GEORGE IVEY Charlotte, North Carolina R. c. J EFFERSON Wayzata, Minnesota BARBARA JOHNSON Princeton, New Jersey IRVING JOHNSON Hadley, Massachusetts NEILS W. JOHNSON Central Gulf Lines, Inc. New York, New York J. M. KAPLAN FUND New York, New York JAMES c. KELLOGG, III Spear, Leeds & Kellogg New York, New York PROF. JOHN HASKELL KEMBLE Pomona College Claremont, California A. ATWATER }(ENT, JR. Wilmington, Delaware NORMAN KJELDSEN Cardwell Condenser Corp.

Long Island, New York KOBRAND CORPORATION New York, New York LINCOLN SAVINGS BANK Brooklyn, New York JAMES MACDONALD FOUNDATION New York, New York

PETER MANIGAULT R. J. SCHAEFER Charleston, South Carolina Larchmont, New York MANUFACTURERS HANOVER TRUST REAR ADMIRAL WALTER F. New York, New York SCHLECH, JR., USN (RET.) Annapolis, Maryland MRS. WALTER MAYNARD New York, New York MR. & MRS. PETER SEEGER Beacon, New York CAPTAIN J. McGOVERN Sandy Hook Pilots Assoc.

SEAMEN'S CHURCH INSTITUTE New York, New York New York, New York J. RUSSELL Mom MRS. AVICE M. SEWALL Transway International Corp.

Redlands, California New York, New York SHIPS OF THE SEA MUSEUM MONTAN TRANSPORT (USA) INC. Savannah, Georgia New York, New York JAMES R. SHEPLEY MR. & MRS. EMIL MOSBACHER, JR. Time Inc. New York, New York New York, New York ROBERT G. MURPHY ROBERT P. SHERMAN Spear Leeds & Kellogg Savanah Marine & Shipyard Co. New York, New York Savanah, Georgia OGILVY & MATHER HOWARD SLOTNICK New York, New York Gotham Auto Lease New Rochelle, New York JAMES O'KEEFE Wallington, New Jersey A. MACY SMITH WALTER H. PAGE Houston, Texas Morgan Guaranty Trust THOMAS SOULES New York, New York The Port of San Francisco D. K. PATTON P ETER STANFORD The Real Estate Board National Maritime of New York Historical Society New York, New York EDMUND A. STANLEY, JR. PHILADELPHIA MARITIME MUSEUM Bowne & Co., Inc. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania New York, New York CAPTAIN W. R. PETERSON EDNA & ISAAC STERN FDTN. Sandy Hook Pilots Assoc.

Brooklyn, New York New York, New York JOHN STOBART CAPTAIN E. J. PIERSON Artist Moore-McCormack Lines Potomac, Maryland New York, New York MR. & MRS. MARSHALL STREIBERT PINKERTON'S The Fund For Yale New York, New York New York, New York RICHARDSON PRATT, JR. )OHN THURMAN Pratt Institute W. R. Grace & Co. Brooklyn, New York Washington, D.C. RICHARD RA TH GILBERT VERNEY Boating Magazine Bennington, New Hampshire New York, New York SHANNON WALL HON. FRED RICHMOND N at ional Maritime Union Congressman New York, New York Brooklyn, New York MRS. ELIZABETH WEEDON MR. & MRS. RODMAN ROCKEFELLER Charlottesville, Virginia New York, New York WESTLAND FOUNDATION Portland, Oregon ALLEN S. RUPLEY W. R. Grace Foundation ADMIRAL JOHN M. WILL, New York, New York USN (RET.) Arthur Tickle Engineering WILLIAM SAWYER Brooklyn, New York Buffalo, New York CAPT. & MRS. JOHN M. WILL, JR. USN USS Canopus LOUIS WINSTON The Print Shop New York, New York CHARLES WITTHOLZ Naval Architect Silver Springs, Maryland

T. H. WRIGHT, JR. Wilmington, North Carolina YOUNG & RUBICAM New York, New York

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To All Who Cherish the Brotherhood of the Sea: One important ship in last year's Operation Sail did not make it to New York: the schooner Ernestina.

Built in 1894 as the Gloucester fisherman Effie M. Morrissey, she became famous in her voyages of Arctic exploration under Captain Bob Bartlett. In 1947, she joined the Brava Packet fleet, sailing under Cape Verdean ownership from the Cape Verde islands off West Africa to New Bedford and Providence until 1966.

Defying 4,000 miles of rough Atlantic in the hurricane season each year, she became the last ship in the world to carry immigrants to the United States the hard way-under sail.

Through the generosity of the President of the Republic of Cape Verde she was refitted in 1976 and began the long voyage home to the United States. She was dismasted in high winds and seas en route, and forced to return to port.

Since then, through a remarkable effort involving many people, new masts and sails have been supplied. The Cape Verde Government has acquired the ship and intends to make a gift of her to the people of the United States.

As managing director of Operation Sail, and as one of the founders of the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, we have joined in the National Maritime Historical Society's campaign to honor this gift and to see the Ernestina/ Morrissey preserved as a superb monument to a proud seafaring tradition.

The National Society proposes that the Ernestina/ Morrissey be used in marine science and sail training programs reaching particularly the Cape Yerdean communites to whom this vessel means so much, and who have worked so hard to save her for posterity. The cooperation of diverse citizen groups in this effort has been inspiring: â&#x20AC;˘ New masts secured through the Providence Corporation have been transported to Providence by Seaboard Shipping Company and Canad ian Transport. Fairhaven Marine has given a boom . Rick Miller of the National Maritime Union, has given three thousand feet of rope for runnin g rigging, a foresail , and other gear. Other sa ils have been donated by ' the Peking restoration al South Street Seaport Museum , Ted Miles of the National Society, and Carl Beam. * The Providence local of the International Longshoremen 's Association has agreed to load materials for the ship free of charge; the port of Providence wi ll provide berthing and water for the ship that picks up materials to take them to the Ernestina. Norman Baker, Thor Heyerdahl's navigator, is organizing a volunteer crew. * The Massachusetts Maritime Academy has agreed to act as custodian for the sh ip and provide berthing and maintenance. A Schooner Authority is being established by the

Massachusetts legislature to provide ultim ate ownership and governance. * The Friends of the Ernestina/ Morrissey , a committee of the National Society, has active chapters in New York , Boston, New Bedford, Providence, Scituate and Wareham. Fund-raising events have been held. A photo exhibition on the vessel and her heritage is on display at the National Society's Brooklyn headquarters, and she is featured in, "The Cape Verde Connection" at the AfroAmerican Institute, United Nations Plaza, New York.

We appeal to all who value the brotherhood of the sea and the proud heritage of the Ernestina/ Morrissey to join in support with contributions in kind or funds to bring her to a new and most productive life.

Will you join us in this campaign?

FRANK BRA YNARD

PETE SEEGER

YOUR TAX-DEDUCTIBLE CONTRIBUTION MAY BE SENT TO"NMHS-ERNESTINA," 2 FULTON STREET. BROOKLYN, NY 11201

The first naflle for the Illartini.

The last "W"ord in gin.