Sea History 045 - Autumn 1987

Page 1

No. 45

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY

THE PORTUGUESE INITIATIVE:

AUTUMN 1987

1487-1987

SAIL TRAINING SCHOONER ALEXANDRIA WM. GILKERSON ISTANBUL STEAMERS


WANT

YOU

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ISSN 0146-9312

No. 45

SEA HISTORY

OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE WORLD SHIP TRUST

SEA HISTORY is published quarterly by the National Maritime Historical Society, 132 Maple Street, Croton-on-Hudson, NY 10520. Second class postage paid at Croton-on- Hudson, NY , and add itional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Sea History , 132 Maple St. , Croton, NY 10520. COPYRIGHT © 1987 by the National Maritime Hi storical Society. Tel. 9 14 47 1-2 177. MEMB ERSHIP is invited: Pl ankowner $ 10,000; Benefactor $5,000; Sponsor $ 1,000; Donor $500; Sustaining Patron $250; Patron $ 100; Contributor $50; Fam ily $35; Regular $25; Student or Retired $ 12.50. All members outside the USA please add $5 for postage. SEA HISTORY is sent to all members. Indi vidual copies cost $2. 75. OFFICERS & TRUSTEES are Chairman: James P. McAlli ster; Vice Chairmen: Alan G. Choate, James Ean, Schuyler M. Meyer, Jr. ; President :Peter Stanford; Vice Presidem : Nonna Stanford ; SecretC/ly: John H. Reilly, Jr. ; Treasurer: Rohen W. Ell iott , ill; Trustees: Henry H. Anderson, Jr. , Alan G . Choate , Rohen W. Elliott , Ill , Capt. Robert E. Hart , Karl Kortum , J . Kevin Lally, Richardo Lopes, Rohen J. Lowen, James P. McAllister, Schuyler M. Meyer, Jr. , Nancy Pouch , John H. Reilly, Jr. , Spencer Smith , Peter Stanford; Chairman Emeritus: Karl Konum ; President Emeritus: Alan D. Hutchison. OVERSEERS: Chairman: Henry H. Anderson, Jr.; Charles F. Adams, Townsend Hornor, Harris L. Kempner, George Lan1b, Clifford D. Mallory, Schuyler M. Meyer, Jr. , Richard I. Morris, John G . Rogers, John Stobart. ADVISORS: Co-chairmen: Frank 0. Braynard , David Brink; Raymond Aker, George Bass, Francis E. Bowker, Oswald L. Brett , George Campbell , Frank G. G. CaiT, William Main Doerflinger, Harry Dring , John Ewald , Joseph L. Farr, Timothy G. Foote, Richard Goold-Adams , Walter J. Handelman , Mel Hardin , Rohen G. Herben , R. C. Jefferson, Irving M. Johnson, John Kemble , Charles Lundgren, Conrad Milster, William G . Muller, George Nichols, Capt. David E. Perkins, Richard Rath , Nancy Richardson, George Salley, Melbourne Smith , Ralph L. Snow , John Stobart , Alben Swanson, Shannon Wall , Robert A. Weinstein , Thomas Wells, Charles Wittholz. American Ship Trust, SecretC/ly : Eric J. Berryman . WORLD SH IP TR UST: Chairman: Frank G . G. Carr; Vice Preside111s: Henry H. Anderson, Jr. , Viscount Caldecote , Sir Rex Hunt , Hammond Innes , Rt. Hon. Lord Lewin , Sir Peter Scott, Rt. Hon. Lord Shack leton; Hon. SecretC/I)'.' J. A. Forsythe; Hon. Treasurer: Richard Lee; Mensun Bound , Dr. Nei l Cossons, Maldwin Drummond, Alan McGowan , Anhur Prothero , Peter Stanford. Membership: £ 12 payable WST, c/o Hon. Sec. , 129a North Street, Burwell , Cambs. CBS OBB, England . Reg. Charity No. 277751. SEA HISTORY STAFF: Editor: Peter Stanford; Managing Editor: Norma Stanford; Associate Editor: Lincoln P. Paine; Advertising Manager: Bai·bara Ladd ; Advertising Assista/l/: Joseph Stanford; Accounting: Veronica Gnewuch; Membership SecretC/ly : Heidi Quas; Membership Assista/l/: Patricia Anstett; Assista/l/ to the President: Susan K_ Sereni ; Corresponding SecretC/ly: Marie Lore.

AUTUMN 1987

CONTENTS 4 6 8 I2 13 18 23 26 31 32 33 34 39 40 45 46

EDITOR'S LOG NMHS PROJECTS: THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE MARJTIME ALLIANCE THE TOPSAIL SCHOONER ALEXANDRIA , Peter Ansoff THE PORTUGUESE INJTIA TIVE: BREAKOUT INTO THE OCEAN WORLD , Peter Stanford EARLY PORTUGUESE VOYAGES IN THE SOUTH ATLANTIC , A. Teixeira da Mota SAIL TRAINING AND THE PORTUGUESE EXPERIENCE, Antonio Cardoso THE STEAMBOATS OF ISTANBUL, Philip Thomeycroft Teuscher MARJNE ART: WILLIAM GILKERSON AND THE SHIPS OF JOHN PAUL JONES , Christine L. Parker MARINE ART NEWS SHIP NOTES: THE COUNCIL OF COLONIZATION PERIOD SHIPS , Nicholas S. Benton BILOXI SCHOONERS WILL SAIL AGAIN! Terese Peresich Collins and Val Hulsey SHIP NOTES , SEAPORT & MUSEUM NEWS SAIL TRAINING NEWS SCHOONER STRUCK: SAIL TRAINING IN THE MALCOLM MILLER Lincoln Paine THE SEAPORT EXPERIENCE, Lincoln Paine REVIEWS

COYER : A fa ir w ind fill s the sai ls of g reat merc h an tme n a t Lisbon in 1521 at the he ig ht of the Portug uese Century . Co urtesy , National Maritime Museum , London.

The National Maritime Historical Society is saving America's seafaring heritage. Join us. We bring to life America's seafaring past throug h research . a rc haeo logica l ex peditions and ship prese rvatio n efforts. We work wi th museums, hi sto rian s and sai l training groups and repo rt on these ac ti viti es in o ur qua rterly journa l Sea Histon-. We are al so the American arm of the World Ship Trust. an intern ati ona l group wo rking wo rld wide to he lp save ships of hi sto ri c impo rt ance .

Won't you join us to keep a live o ur nati o n ·s seafa ring l egacy~ Membership in the Society costs only $25 a year. You ' II receive Sea History, a fascinating magaz ine filled wi th a rti cles of seafaring a nd hi sto ri ca l lo re. Yo u ' ll also be e lig ible for di scou nt s o n book s , prints a nd o th er items. He lp save o ur seafa ring her itage. Jo in the Nationa l Ma ritime Hi sto ri ca l Soci ety today'

TO: National Maritime Historical Society, 132 Maple St .. Croton-on-Hudson. NY 10520 I wa nt to help . I understand that my contribution goes to forward the work of the Society and that I'll be kept informed by receiving SEA HI STORY quanerly . Enclosed is: D $1,000 Sponsor0 $500 Donor0 $100 PalIOn 0 $50 Contribu lor

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The National Maritime Historical Society proudly joins hands with the Sailors' Union of the Pacific in offering the centennial history of the Sailors' Union, Brotherhood of The Sea Richly illustrated, and covering 100 years of struggle and progress in achieving West Coast seamen's rights, by the distinguished labor histo1-ian Stephen Schwartz, with extensive consu ltation by Karl Kortum, Chief Curator of the National Maritime Musue m, San Francisco, this work is essential reading, and excitin g reading, for anyo ne who wants to understand the developme nt of maritime labor since the d ays of blood boats , bucko mates and the Red Record. To NMHS members only: $40 plus shipping, $1.25 domestic, $2.50 foreign.

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EDITOR'S LOG When a new Sea History is launched, we' re always left with the fee ling that we've got to come back to the subject and do more. And there is so much more to do on the Portuguese Initiati ve! What of Lisbon in the time of King Dini s (1 270- 1325), when the merchants of the Italian c ity-states were clustering in Li sbon to lay the fo undations of the great seaport . And what of the earlier Italian voyages, in the High Middle Ages, out into the broad Atlantic, to African ports and far south to the Canaries, where the northeast trades begin? These ventures are relegated to a kind of prehistory , not by design but because onl y hints and passing references have come down to us. The Portu guese breakout into the ocean world took place in what was sure ly a time of he ightened awareness. Like the Greeks of Periclean Athens, these people were well aware that they were do ing things not done before in mankind 's adventure on thi s pl anet. But even in that brilliantl y illumined era, we have uncertainties to resolve and more to learn to get a fa ir picture of what was happening and why. Out of the dust and confusion, and with the dazzle of a brilliant dawn in our faces , one thing emerges that has impressed all of us here at Sea History. That is the nobility of character of the Portuguese seaman. Bartolomeu Dias is an exemplar of the type-a man evidentl y of clear and steady vision, and the spirit to venture greatl y, undaunted by hazard and difficulty. It is on the backs of such men that the military conquerors rode to power. I remember Antonio Cardoso, who writes of a new caravel voyage to honor that of Dias in this issue, saying to me: " Dias is the true sailor. He's the one we look to, not j ust for what he did but what he was.' ' The clash of arms, the glory of empire, the riches of the Indies brought into the Tagus-these things have passed from the scene. But not the noble character of Bartolomeu Dias. That is forever--0r as long as we remember where we came fro m. Portugal still sends caravels to seashe is sending one out, after a gap of several centuries , thi s autumn . This is a project of APORVELA , the sail tra ining organi zation whose president, Dr. Luis de Guimaraes Lobato , is also president of the Museu da Marinha. Dr. Lobato is a first-class sailorman who for many years¡ raced the famous cutter Jolie Brise, now preserved (and sailed) at the Exeter Maritime Museum in England . In such. men a great tradition find s worth y continuance in our day. PETER STANFORD

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4

LETTERS A Minor Battle Please allow me to add a little background to the excellent articles in the summer issue of SEA HISTORY (SH44) on the career of the USS Constitution . Regard ing the encounter with the unhappy Guerriere, it should be noted that the Guerriere was a captured French shi p and had been on station with a squadron fo r a long time. Her stores were depleted and her powder was deteriorating. She was also badl y in need of overhaul : her bowsprit was sprung and having been struck by lightening in a heavy gale, her mainmast was tottering. At the time of her encounter with the Constitution she was detached fro m her squadron and making her painfu l way towards Halifax for a refit--0r perhaps even for scrapping. Her depleted complement of 244 men was pitted agai nst 460 in the Constitution , and many of the latter were ex-Royal Navy seamen who had fo ught at Trafalgar. A considerable number of the Constitution guns were also ex-Royal Navy. The losing side in those far-off naval engagements naturally always had some excuse fo r fa ilure. But the Constitution has enough fine exploits to her name for the Guerriere affair to be considered only a minor battle which, on enlargement, does her no great credit . GEORGEF. CAMPBELL Brighton, England Mr. Campbell, Advisor to the Society, first became acquainted with the Constitution when he prepared full detailed drawings of the frigate for the naval architect and historian, Howard Chapelle.-Eo. In the article " USS Constitution: Reaching Out Over the Horizon" (S H44) you state that our frigates duri ng the War of 18 12 were "generously manned, " able to " draw on an untroubled population base of 7 million,'' while the British fo und their '' population of some 13 million . ..stretched thin to meet the demands of world war." This statement is somewhat misleading, for during the course of that war, the US Navy was never able either to reach the manning levels authorized by Congress or to acquire the war materials it req ui red and for which it had appropriations. Indeed, when Commodore Isaac Chauncey was making his preparations to take command of our naval force on Lake Ontario in September 18 12, he ransacked the New York Navy Yard for necessary supplies and even decommissioned the light fri gate John Adams in order to transfer her gun batteries and crew to the inland theater. Later, in April 1813, at least 150 of Constitution's crew, fresh from their victories over Guerriere and Java, were transferred to Lake

Erie as a major manning component of the squadron Oliver Hazard Perry then was assembling there. They were in the forefro nt of his stunning victory in September 18 13. The reason most often cited for crew deficiencies is that privateering lured thousands of tars with visions of heaps of pri ze money. The material problem was primarily one of industrial inadequacy in this country. It was compounded in the latter part of the war by the thorough British blockade which severely limited our ability to deliver material from place of manufacture to user locations. I would like to compliment yo u on the quality of yo ur color reproducti ons. Corne's gouache of the Constitution, which you used on the cover, has never come through so well. TYRONE G. MARTIN, CoR , US N (ret.) Cohasset, Massachusetts Commander Martin, who served as the commanding officer of the USS Constitution, is the author of a fi rst-rate history of the world's most celebrated frigate, A Most Fortunate Ship.-ÂŁ0.

" Now For a Fresh Breeze" More power to Harry Anderson for writing-and to you for publishing- "Towards a Grand Alliance" (SE/\ HISTORY 43) ! Unfortunately, entrepreneurial sailors tend to be very biased and stubborn about approving or backing anyone else's program. We must submerge our individual identities somewhat in order to present a united front to the American public, and stimulate their continued interest in things mari time, traditional and educational. I recommend that the National Maritime Historical Society itself speak for the Alliance. This is a society of broad interests we all know and can support , and its magazine, SEA HISTORY, is a sounding board to get our message out fast and sure . Bravo Zulu for getting this started. Now we need a fresh breeze for awhile-but through the NMHS direct! THOMAS R. WESCHLER RAd m, USN (ret. ) Newport, Rhode Island We welcome the encouraging advice of Admiral Wesch/er, a trustee of the American Sail Training Association and of the Sailing Schools Vessel Council. We address his concerns-and ours-about the Maritime Alliance in our report on NMHS Projects (see page 6).-Eo.

" Make My Day" I want to tell you people I am very pleased for all the work you do to preserve the maritime heritage of America and of other sea powers around the world . I know it is a tremendous task to try to fulfill , and at SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987


such a tremendous price . I am glad to have been a member of such a great effort. I've been a boatbuilder and ship joiner for forty years now, working mainly out of City Island, New York. At one time or another I worked at almost every shipyard in New York Harbor, including six years at the Brooklyn Navy Yard . I have worked on ships and boats ever since I was a boy, and my love for the sea and ships is as fresh as when I first started. I am now on Social Security disability , as I cannot work my trade anymore, on account of my bad legs. I want to keep receiving your quarterly . It is a very informative magazine-something to learn a great deal from. Now , what I want to ask is can I still be a member for$ I0. 00? This would fit my small budget. This is all I can help you with, sorry to say . I hope you can understand my problem and let me carry on as a member of the NMHS. There are things in life that change that we cannot help; we have to do the best we can with what we have. I thank you for your time and trouble and look forward to your reply . Have a fine day; and I hope you can make my day. EDWARD LANG Hackensack , New Jersey The $12 .50 membership is available to anyone with difficulty paying the full membership. While the Society cannot afford to give the magazine away free, as part of the Maritime Alliance, we hope to establish a fund for members who should receive SEA HISTORY, but cannot afford it.- ED .

"The Excuse Stinks" I note in the letters section of SEA HISTORY 44 under " Drop Dead , Heroes, " C/M Edwin J. O ' Hara and C/M Arthur R. Chamberlin, Jr., were denied their Purple Hearts and other decorations on some offthe-wall excuse the Navy thought up . I have sailed with quite a few Cadet Midshipmen and I have high regard for them . I think the excuse stinks for the parents of these fi ne young men to be denied this honor. I am a parent and have a son who graduated from the Texas Maritime Academy and is now doing his country a service. I also have a daughter in the Navy in Iceland who is doing her part for our nation . I am ex-Navy , a boiler room sailor on a cruiser. I graduated from the US Maritime Officers School at Alameda as a licensed engineer and was in World War II . I reported back for Korea, and reported for Vietnam at the age of forty -five. My wife is an ex-Army Nurse and during World War II was in the South Pacific and has two Purple Hearts and Bronze Stars. When I read about the things like the situation described in the letter " Drop SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987

Dead, Heroes ," I think there is something wrong-very wrong. These fellows gave their all- their very lives . What more does the country want? SAM OGLE Houston , Texas I appreciate the attention you g ive to recognizing merchant seamen . The US Navy has never given the Merchant Marine its due place in history , even though we preceded them by many years . In August 1986 , the Merchant Marine Hou se Subcommittee held a hearing chaired by Walter B. Jones. I sent for a copy of the transcript. Seven-and-a-half pounds of paper arrived up at my house. Here was the testimony of ten oral witnesses and statements from eleven others. Any one of these presentations is fit for SEA HISTORY. Over 300,000 merchant mariners crossed into the combat zone three miles off our shores during World War II . SEA HISTORY has already written up a few of the ir stories. I, for one , would like to see a lot more. CHARLES C. TILLMAN Oakland , California

A Head of Steam? Although I have great respect for the writing of Michael Krieger, I feel he was a little off the mark in his article on antique frei ghters (see SH44). Not only are these remaining coastals much too expensive to purchase, but they are almost impossible to maintain or operate . He also noted that there are more square-riggers in museums than there are steam freighters. Well I, for one , certainly hope so. I'm quite sure that any museum curator would prefer to have any type of sailing ship over any power vessel. Although I sincerely hope that Mr. Krieger has success in saving these old steamers, the cost is much too much outlay for any maritime museum . DONALD SUTHERLAND Astoria , New York

A Call To Action Please permit me to offer my compliments on the outstanding summer issue of SEA HISTORY (SH 44) . The articles on both US and British naval history are excellent. Reading of the numerous ship preservation projects and the new , emerging sense of history within the US Navy gives renewed hope for salvaging the gracious steamship Alexander Hamilton, which is now on the National Register but foundered on Navy property. Many of us who worked together as the Alexander Hamilton Society , went on to found the Hudson River Maritime Center

in the hope that it might one day become, among other things, a home for as much of the Hamilton as may prove salvageable. Let us hope that the Navy does not act in a manner unworthy of its great traditions and allow legalistic and bureaucratic consideration to stand in the way of preserving the hull, engines and paddle wheels of the Hamilton. An adequate and loving home is waiting for the gracious White Swan of the Hudson and willing hands stand ready to undertake restoration . ARTHUR G. ADAMS Founding President Hudson River Maritime Center Kingston , New York

QUERIES

& CORRECTIONS

My grandfather, Captain Michael Francis Hogan , was the owner and master of the Ruth M. Martin, a vessel out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, prior to the tum of the century . He is mentioned in Edward Rowe Snow ' s book about shipwrecks on the East Coast as being the last person to have seen the Portland, the ill-fated ferry that went down with all hands in the winterof 1898. I know a great deal about my grandfather from Mr. Snow's work but I would appreciate any information about the history of his vessel, the Ruth M. Martin. LEO J . GULLAGE Northwestern Mutual Life 5709 Crafton Drive Lakeland, FL 33805

No Stonewalling Here A number of readers wrote to point out that in the lead article of SEA HISTORY 43 , "The Rivers of America ," we incredibly (to us) mixed up the nicknames of Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jonathan Jackson . Andrew Jackson, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans in 18 15 and later the President of the United States, was popularly known as " Old Hickory ." It was the later Jackson who , at the first battle of Manassas in 186 1, earned the moniker " Stonewall. "

In connection with Lincoln Paine's article on the opening of the Columbia River and the painting of George Davidson (also SH43) , we (again inexplicably) misstated the provenance of the works reproduced . They were used by permission of the Columbia Maritime Museum in Astoria, Oregon. In Ed Dennis's " The Oldest Ship in the War" (SEA HISTORY 44) , we misspelled the name of General Douglas MacArthur. But maybe he was right when he said , ' 'Old soldiers never die; they just fade away." No one seemed to notice.- Eo . J,

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5


NMHS PROJECTS

The CAMPAIGNfor the MARITIME ALLIANCE ~

Commodore Henry H. Anderson, Jr., was pleased when the National Society unan imously authorized a task force to act on hi s proposal for an alliance of all who share the values and traditions of A merican seafaring to work together for the common good. This was at our Annual Meeting held at Mystic Seaport in April this year. He fe lt the undertak ing shoul d be announced afloat-and where else but aboard America 's fa mous and well loved USS Constitution? Acco rdin gly, thi s was arranged-w ith the cooperation of the Constitutio n 's skipper, Commander Joe Brown ; Chairman of the USS Constitution Museum Charl es F. Adams; our Boston area Advisory Counc il member Captain Al Swanson; Director of the USS Constituti on Museum Richard C. Wheeler; vetera n maritime reporter fo r the Boston G lobe Bill Coughlin ; and many othe rs. And so on the Fourth of Jul y, forme r Secretary of the Navy J . William Middendorf, II , announced the Maritime Alliance as the National Maritime Hi storical Soc iety fl ag was run up the old frigate's foreyard , with people 's ears ring ing from the crashing twenty-one gun salute the ship fires every Fourth of Jul y in honor of the nation' s birthday.

"Reaching Out Over the Horizon" Ambassador Middendorf saluted Commodore Anderson on hi s proposal of the Alliance and leadership of the task force to bring it into being . He noted that Admiral Arleigh Burke, with whom he had the great pleasure of working during his tenure as Secretary of the Navy, had written in Sea History that "USS Constitution carries a message reaching out over the horizon." To this he added: " So does the maritime heritage the Constitu1ion represents." He went on to say: " Our country's legacy in ships and the sea is too little appreciated because too often it is thought of as a spec ial interest. But ships like the Constitu lion are the supreme technological ac hievements of their age . And when we learn to understand ships and the ir people, we learn things that g ive focus and meaning to the human ex perience." 6

Under the splendid folds of a ballle ensign, Commodore Harry Anderson stands ready to board the USS Constitut ion. It is the Fourth of July 1987, and before the day is over, those frowning 24-pounders will have spoken in fes tive salute, and 1he Marilime Alliance, Harry's projec/ (and ours), will have been announced.

In keep ing with the Soc iety's tradit ion of suiting ac ti on to words, two important first steps in the Alliance were then an no un ced: First, the publication of Sea His10ry Gazelle, a much needed , wide ly called-for biweekly report on mari time museums and other in stitutions which reach the public with an ed ucational message on American seafaring; Second , the institution of joi nt membership between the USS Const itution Museum and NMHS-a cooperati ve arra nge ment designed to reinforce the Museum 's membership program and to open the Museum 's doors on a wider world. A third most happy step was added to these two when the Boston G lobe two days later publi shed a full-page reprint of Cons1i1u1ion's story as told in Sea History, thus reaching the three million readers of that wo rthy news pape r with news of the sort we are in business to spread . Sad ly, a few days later the paper had to report the untime ly death of Commander Joe Brown: this had been hi s last crui se in USS Cons1 i1u1ion. Hi s name will now be inscribed in her wardroom with those of her other com manders, from Preble and Hull onward. Along with the ex uberance and hi gh spirits of the day, some serious forward thinking was tak ing place-as happens when people gather to shared purpose. Commander Brown had declared him self delighted with the spec ial message hi s ship delivered-we talked of future occas ions when she might carry our flag. And Ambassador Middendorf stopped by to offer a few thoughts as we ate lunch cam ped out as hore.

The Thing Needed: People " The most important thin g you want is people, isn' t it?" asked Ambassador Middendorf as we sat on the grass outside the Commandant 's House at the Navy Yard in Boston , reviewing the event-filled day of the Fourth of Jul y. He pointed to the crowds streaming across the way to board USS Constitution, now back in her acc ustomed berth but fac ing seaward . "There SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987


Former Secretary of the Navy J . William Middendo1f, II , announces the Maritime Alliance on the Constituti on ' s spar deck. He is flanked by the ship' s captain , Commander Joe Brown, ivho is making his last cruise. (For an appreciation of Cdr. Brown , see page 34.)

will be a million people going aboard that fr igate before the end of this year. What that tells us is that interest is there . "What we've got to do ," he continued, " is go out and meet that interest. " We are doing just th at in the balance of 1987: going out to meet the interest the American people show in the ir heritage in seafarin g, and inviting them to share in it more fully , j oining in support of our mu seums, hi stori c and sa il traini ng ships, and taking part in boatbuilding c lasses, marine art exhibits and songfests on hi storic waterfronts across the country . " Bravo Zulu for getting thi s started! " dec lares Vice Adm ira l Thomas Weschler, a leader in sail training and in the successful campaign to secure adoption of the Sai ling School Vessels Act. The National Society , he says in a recent letter, is indeed the ri ght spokesman for the Alliance. " This is a Society of broad interest we all know and can support ," he notes, "and its magaz ine Sea History is a sounding board to get our message out fast and sure ly.'' " The reverberations will be heard far and wide," adds Admiral Arle igh Burke, author of the idea of a message reaching out over the hori zon, "and we ' ll be g iving thanks that you continue o n with thi s important Maritime Alliance." GUIDO TOWBOAT

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''An Extraordinary Ship''

The Topsail Schooner Alexandria by Peter Ansoff

In 1984, Peter Ansoff volunteered as a tour guide aboard the schooner Alexandria recently acquired by the Alexandria (Virginia) Seaport Foundation. As the Lindo she had been sailed as a yacht for charter and sail training in US and Caribbean waters. Today she sails in sail training and carries a message of the maritime heritage of her homeport on the Potomac River. What follows is Mr. Ansoff's history of the ship-and how he came to uncover it. 0

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When I joined the Alexandria Seaport ~ . "' Foundation , tour guides were furnished ~ with a brief information sheet which in:i:: ;:.'i eluded a few sentences about the history : : ; of the foundation' s 80ft three-masted top~ sail schooner, Alexandria. Her origins 15:: were explained as follows: " Built for Capt. Karl Ogard at Gravarna in South Above, the Alexandria proudly represents her homeport and namesake Sweden. Named the 'Ingve' after Capt. at the start of the Tall Ships Parade, New York Harbor , July 4, 1986 . Ogard' s son. " It turned out that there was Below, 57 years earlier, the hull nears completion on the ways at Pukavik, Sweden in early 1929. no common body of knowledge about the ship-what information was in circulation tended to be inaccurate. I decided to look into her history myself and one day , after months of dead-end research through books and museums, I took the advice of a fellow volunteer and ::2 sent a letter addressed simply " Ingve (§ Ogard , Gravarna, Sweden." About two ·~ months later a postcard arrived from Mr. gs:i:: Thore Ogard of Kungshamn, Sweden. He f- explained that Yngve was his brother and ,: ~ that he had sailed in the vessel as a young ~ man. In subsequent correspondence he 8 supplied me with a fine collection of photographs and documents relating to his Captain Karl Ogard and his family aboard the spanking new Yngve in 1929 . The Captain's father's ship . son , Thore, is on the left beside his mother. Young Yngve, after whom the ship was named, The schooner Yngve was launched in is on his father's knee. Like his father, Thore stayed in fishing until his recent retirement. the early spring of 1929 at the small vilYngve did not go into the family business. lage of Pukavik , Sweden. Built by master ship-builder Albert Svensson for Captain Karl Ogard of Gravarna, she was named after Yngve Ogard, one of the Captain 's sons. Yngve's older brother, Thore, relates that their father took great personal interest in the construction of his new ship: My father . . . was there during the building to check out that nothing was skimped with. He was a very strict and accurate person . For example, he picked out all the knees himself. If he was not satisfied with something he brought an axe and broke it, so they had to start all over again. Noth~ ing was OK until he checked it and §? said it was good . ~ The Yngve was rigged as a three~ masted schooner with gaff sails and top~ sails on the fore- and mainmasts , a Ber8 muda-rigged mizzen and three headsails .

8

SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987


The Yngve in Denmark in 1935 has a cargo boom rigged on the mainmast and her international fishing registration numbers " LL26" on the bow.

Her auxiliary power was a 90hp two-cylinder Bolinder diesel engine. She was painted white with dark trim along the wales. Her oval-shaped transom was the characteristically Scandinavian type sometimes called a Marstal stern . Her accomodations consisted of tiny cabins aft for the master and mate , and bunks in the focsle for the hands . She had a small wheelhouse aft and a galley enclosure on deck just abaft the foremast. Her crew usually numbered four or five. ;:: Yngve's first homeport was Gravarna 0 •O (today called Kungshamn), a small town ;! on the west coast of Sweden , about fifty ~ miles south of the Norwegian border on ~ the Skagerrak . For ten years she sailed ~ between Ba1tic and Scandinavian ports

~

from Finland to Norway, with occasional runs to England and once as far south as Portugal. She developed a reputation for speed , once logging 12.5 knots . Between 1934 and 1938 , Yngve sailed for the fishing grounds north of Iceland where her crew (augmented to eight) fished for herring . The fish were salted and stowed in barrels in the hold, and a typical season's catch was 800-900 barrels. Thore Ogard signed aboard Yngve as a sailor at the age of fourteen and still recalls the hardships of life in the ship back then: The first thing you had to learn was how to cook, which I did when I was fourteen years old. In the beginning you had two buckets in front of you , one in which you had potatoes to peel and the other to throw up in. You see , it took some time to get used to the sea. In 1939 Captain Ogard sold his schooner to the Rederi A/B Sparo ofVastervik. Her new owner and skipper was Gunnar Andersson who made some alterations to the rig and renamed her Lindo ("Island of linden trees " ) after an island in the Vastervik archipelago. Although Sweden was neutral during World War II , freight rates were low, and it was hard to find cargos for the Lindo . Furthermore , there was the threat of being attacked by German or Russian warships . To alleviate this , her name and Sverige (Sweden) were painted along her hull in big black letters, together with a painted Swedish flag . Lindo changed hands at least twice more during her years in Vastervik , first to Ernst Fredrik Duner in October 1940 and then to AB/Osterhavet in December 1941. On 21 June 1942, she collided with

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the steamer Espagne near Ljungskars

Now a young man in his late teens, Thore (second from right) stands with the crew on the foredeck in 1937.

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°'::> 8 Below, the Lindo, ex-Yngve, off Gamely (near Viistervik) about 1940. Captain Gunnar Andersson, standing aft near the wheelhouse, has re-rigged the mizzen mast with a gaff. Note the wartime recognition markings .

6 ~

lighthouse and was so severely damaged ~ she had to be drydocked for repairs. In ~ 1944, Lindo passed under new ownership g SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987

9


The Lindo off Arhus in 1964. For the last twenty years of her merchant career she was a motor vessel with auxiliary sail.

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again , this time to Stockholm interests. Her new skipper and managing owner was Captain Erik August Holger Johansson. We know little about Linda's Stockholm years. Presumably she continued in the coastal trade, which must have imprgved somewhat after 1945. At some time during this period, her Bolinder engine was replaced with a 1OOhp JM Monte! diesel. This may have happened in November 1948 after she ran aground near Finnrevets lighthouse. It was also during this period that her original color scheme was changed to black with a white sheer band and trim , which is how she appears today. In 1955 Lindo was purchased by Tage and Hugo Gustafsson of Edsultshall. The Gustafssons removed the mainmast and added a new larger wheelhouse forward of the original. For the remainder of her career as a cargo vessel, she operated as a motor ketch in the general cargo trades with summers spent fishing the tempestuous waters between Iceland and Jan Mayen as before. Hugo Gustafsson, who eventually bought out his brother's share of the ship, recalls these voyages north. The longest period of time I was on board fishing uninterrupted was 53 days. . . . During Lindo' s time in Iceland we rode out many tough storms together. She was an extraordinary ship. I have fished herring in Iceland for 20 years and I must say: She was the best! Lindo changed hands again in 1963 and 1966, but by 1969 she had reached the end of her career as a merchant trader. In 1970 , an Englishman, Peter Wood, bought her for use in the charter trade. He was unable to complete the work needed to convert her and she was laid up at the shipyard of Gunnar Brink Christensen at Hobro , Denmark. A less fortunate ship might have ended

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reeling off280-mile days and carrying on cadet lessons in navigation , ship construction and rigging. We arrived at the Orkney Islands at the same hour as one of the incongruous fiberglass racing yachts also in the race. We placed second, behind a four-year-old fiberglass boat. Before returning to the West Indies, Lindo called at Goteborg, Sweden, where she had a brief rendezvous with her past. Captain Karl Ogard had died in J949; but his son Thore travelled down from Gravarna to visit the vessel in which he had first shipped in 1931 . In addition to charter work in the Caribbean, Lindo played a part in a movie and made a voyage to the Great Lakes. Lindo was once again up for sale in J982 and was bought the following year by the new Alexandria Seaport Foundation in Alexandria, Virginia. There she has been since June 1983, serving as a goodwill ambassador for the port and as a museum ship on the Potomac River. In June 1984 Lindo was re-christened Alexandria in a ceremony at Waterfront Park. Although Alexandria is the schooner's third name, it is possible that this was the first christening ceremony. There was none when she was launched as Yngve in 1929, and no record of one when she passed into Captain Andersson' s ownership in 1939. Thore Ogard recalls a conversation between his parents shortly after Yngve was launched. My mother asked my father, "Do you now have a sturdy boat like you have always dreamed about?" "You can count on that," said my Papa. "You could drop her off the Kungshamn mountain and she would hold up." Fifty seven years later, Captain Ogard's schooner is still a "sturdy boat,'' a proud testament to the skill of her builders and the care of her many owners . Her presence today reminds us that sail-driven wooden hulls played an important role in the world's commerce well into the twentieth century and are still, today, doing useful work.

' "' her days there but Lindo was lucky . In October 1973 she was purchased by a Canadian named Brian Watson for use in the West Indian charter trade. Watson had no information about her original configuration, so after a three-year refit and conversion at the Ring Anderson yard at Svenborg, Denmark, she emerged as a beautiful three-masted topsail schooner with red tanbark sails and a flying fore-course, in traditional Danish fashion. Although she had never flown the Danish flag, the orthography of her name was changed from the Swedish Lindo to the Danish Lind¢. Lindo departed Svendborg in the spring of 1976 , a true sailing ship for the first time in twenty-one years. Her first destination was Plymouth, England, where she joined the 1976 Sail Training Races. Manned by five permanent crew and nine trainees, Lindo placed third overall in her class, being bested only by the Sir Winston Churchill (England) and Gladen (Sweden), both modern, steel-hulled training ships . She went on across the Atlantic to join in Operation Sail 1976 in New York Harbor, celebrating the United States Bicentennial. After a year in the charter trade under Brian Watson, Lindo was sold to Drs. William Hardy, Jr. and Anthony Palminteri, two veterinarians who had seen her www in New York the previous sumrrier. They Thus far, Mr. Ansojf has been in touch continued to sail her in the charter trade. with four of the Alexandria's Swedish ownShe was a busy , hard-working ship, and ers or their families. He would appreciate her owners gave her the care required to additional memories, memorabilia and inkeep her sound and seaworthy. They also kept Lindo involved in sail training, and formation about the Alexandria, ex-Lindo, ex-Yngve, which can be sent to him at in 1980 they entered her in the ST A race 6353 8th Circle, Alexandria VA, 22312. series between Boston and Norway. In For further information about programs a letter to Sea History Captain Greg Biarra summarized her performance . involving the Alexandria or about memDuring the race, which generated bership in the Alexandria Seaport Foundmuch talk of sails blown out, vessels ation, contact them at 1000 South Lee St., Alexandria, VA 22314; 703 549-7078. hove to, etc., Lindo was consistently SEA HISTORY, AUTUMN 1987


JULIAN 0. DAVIDSON by LYNN S. BEMAN Director, Beman Galleries-Nyack, N. Y.

Julian 0 . Davidson (1853-1894) has long been an unrecognized genius of 19th century American Marine Painting. His work regularly appeared in . Harper's Weekly, The Century and other illustrated publications of the day. Many of his paintings of yacht ing and naval scenes were reproduced as chrom ol ithographs by Louis Prang and other publishers. Critics noted that Davidson knew American ships and shipping better than any other artist of this era. More than any other American artist he specialized in painting histo ri c American naval battles, all of which were carefully researched. Julian 0. Davidson: American Marine by Lynn S. Beman is the first definitive biography of the

1853-1894

artist and includes a comprehensi ve cata logue of the recent retrospective exh ibition on Davidson, plus a complete listing of his known work.The product of more than two years of original research, Julian 0. Davidson: American Marine Artist is a necessary reference fo r libraries, galleries collectors of American paintings and prints, and students of American naval history. Avai lable exclusively through Nyack Publishing Company, Inc. Julian 0 . Davidson: American Marine Artist is softbound , contains 72 pages, including a forwa rd by noted Art Historian Donelson F. Hoopes,

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45 illustrations and two color plates. Illu st rat ions incl ude Civil War naval battles and important pai ntings of "The U.5.5. Constitution", "The Battle of Lake Champlain" and Commodore Perry in " The Battle of Lake Erie ."

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Huge argosies practically jostle each other in eagerness to catch a fair wind and make another passage in Portugal's oceanic carrying trade, in this exuberant portrait of sea traffics in the Tagus in the 1520s-well into the "Portuguese century." The hilly city of Lisbon is the crossroads of the awakening Atlantic world. This painting, thought to be by Corne/is Anthoniszoon (ca . 1500-1555) may represent the carrack Santa Caterina do Monte Sinai, bearing the lnfanta Beatriz ofPortugal off to marry Charles Ill, Duke ofSavoy , in 1521. Courtesy the National Maritime Museum, London.

THE PORTUGUESE INITIATIVE:

Breakout into the Ocean World

by Peter Stanford ' 'The schooners came suddenly from the Atlantic mist,'' recalled Alan Villiers , "and the sun shone upon them in a clear patch where we were .... '' Villiers, the great seaman-author of the last days of deepwater commercial sail, never forgot his first glimpse of the Portuguese Grand Banks schooners sailing westward , moving " effortlessly and with grace across the sea" with a spring easterly in their sails. Twenty-odd years after that chance encounter in mid-ocean he went to sea in one of thqse sailing ships-departing in the spring of 1950 to sail out into the Atlantic world from the River Tagus in a deep-sea fishing trade dating back , perhaps , to the 1450s or earlier. Villiers had unbounded respect for Portuguese seamanship--a respect that was only deepened by his experience in the last Portuguese sailing fleet, engaged in the oldest North Atlantic trade. The Portuguese were the first to cross the seas to fish the North American coast, after the failed Norse settlement of around IOOOAD. They never stopped coming , and they were joined by Basques, Bretons and men of Bristol, who met on the far side of the Atlantic not only to fi sh, but to trade the goods of their native lands. Simultaneously, these doughty Portuguese seamen were breaking through into the South Atlantic world, discovering and populating islands, pushing up the great rivers of Africa to open trade with the interior, and ultimately, in the voyage of Bartolomeu Dias which began 500 years ago, in 1487, rounding the Cape of Good Hope and opening the pathway to the Indian Ocean and direct contact with the Far East. In the next thirteen years Portuguese-trained Columbus opened up the Caribbean , da Gama reached India by sea and Cabral claimed Brazil for Portugal-all in a dazzling eyeblink! How did all this come about? An important part of the story is the development of the ocean-going sailing ship . ' ' An exploring ship was no good," observes Daniel J . Boorstin in his engaging and thought-provoking recent book The Discoverers , "unless it could get there and back. Its i"mportant cargo was news , which could be carried in a small parcel, even in the mind of one man . ... " The gift of the lithe and lively Portuguese caravel, which was developed fro m Arab fishing models rather than the burdensome Italian and Northern European sea wagons , was that it could indeed travel far and return. " The best ships that sail 12

the seas," the Venetian Alvise da Cadamosta called his caravels in 1456 . He sailed these vessels in the service of Prince Henry the Navigator in those critical decades when the buildup for oceanic breakout was taking place. This hardy coastal nation had developed the sea chariot needed to open the ocean world-along with the will, the knowledge and the men to drive it further than mankind had been before.

Why the Portuguese? Why was it the Portuguese who led mankind's breakout into the ocean world , with consequences we are still trying to catch up with ? Luis de Cam6es, poet , voyager, dreamer and author of the national epic The Lusiads, had his answer: This is the story of heroes , who leaving their native Portugal behind them, opened a way to Ceylon and further , across seas no man had ever sailed before . As a well educated son of the lesser nobility, Camoes was steeped in the rediscovered fantasy and learning of the ancient world that flourished in Renaissance Portugal in the mid- I 500s when he travelled-and wrote . He embraced the literary myth that had Portugal settled by sons of Lusus, companion of Bacchus, the god of wine, and that had far-wandering Odysseus as the founder of Lisbon. But he took his epic a step further, insisting that the Portuguese exceeded all the ancients (who challenged the imagination of his Renaissance century in a way we can hardly imagine today)-they were a race of heroes . Well , why not? Phoenicians came this way, and Carthaginians, and Romans in their turn . . . and when the Roman empire collapsed, the Visigoths overran the land, and then the Mohammedan Moors, scything up from their North African empire, and only to be turned back in southern France. All of these came by ship, be it noted, except the original Celts and later Goths, who apparently came in over the mountains. Here, then, is something corresponding to the myth: it was a land populated by voyagers who came in to settle along a few broad rivers , Lisbon ' s Tagus chief among them. A polyglot fishing and trading people cut off from the rest of the world by precipitous mountains inland, living as it were on the doorstep of Europe-with nowhere to go out and play but the forbidding wastes of the broad Atlantic, called the Sea of Darkness in those early days. SEA HISTORY, AUTUMN 1987


This diverse people was united by a crusading surge of Christianized Visigoths , who captured Lisbon from its Moorish overlords in 1147 and completed the conquest of the remaining Moors in the Algarve, the southern shore, in the following century. Portugal was thus defined after 500 years of Moorish occupati-0n-which left a lasting imprint-and got a jump of more than two centuries on Spain, which was united by the upland horsemen of Castile only in 1492-Columbus's voyage to the Americas that year was authorized partly in celebration of the conquest of Granada, the holdout Moorish kingdom adjoining Portugal's Algarve in the south . The fberian kingdoms exploited the geographic position between the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds, and the Italian city states, most notably Genoa, Pisa and Venice , which had opened galley service across the Bay of Biscay to England and Flanders, and had pushed an unknown distance south along the African shore and out to some of the Atlantic islands, fell back . Their bankers and navigators (like the Venetian Cadamosta, who found the caravel so to his liking, or like the Genoese Columbus) worked with Portuguese ships and people , and are a significant presence in Lisbon from the late 1200s on. But these vigorous Italians , masters of the Middle Sea, were only one strand in the Portuguese hawser. In the process of the unification, crusading armies had been called in to help fight the Moors in Portugal-which was, after all, a lot easier to get to than the Holy Land at the far end of the Mediterranean! Year after year the European adventurers came--German ritters, French chevaliers, English knights, the lot. English bowmen, above all, who won such amazing victories in the plains of Northern France, played a critical role in victories over the Moors and in beating back Spanish incursions which threatened the early life of independent Portugal. Philippa , a daughter of John of Gaunt, married King John I, founder of Portugal's Aviz dynasty , as result of these chivalric carryings-on. Her son Prince Henry carried her dying blessing into battle when he landed at Ceuta, on the North African shore, to wrest it from the Moors in 1415. He had built the fleet that took his army (including the ubiquitous bowmen) there, and when, disappointed in further military designs, he retired to Sagres it was to found the school of navigation which made him known to history as Henry the Navigator. The seafaring world of the West today looks to Sagres as

its nursery . Jews exiled from Spain played a vital role in the ocean-mastering learning that was cultivated on that lonely headland , and Italians seeking fresh investment opportunity; Moorish rigs and boat design were studied, and English adventurers learned the grammar of seafaring which led them to worldwide sea empire in their turn-all these played a role in what sprang forth upon the world from Sagres.

* * * * *

In practical terms, the voyage of Bartolomeu Dias which accomplished the breakout into the oceans was soon recognized by sagacious Venetians as "very bad news," in the words of the diarist Girolamo Priuli. And in truth the banner of oceanic trade had passed to other hands, though Venice continued as master of the Mediterranean for a century or two to come. It was worse news for the princes and merchants of the Indian Ocean, whose ships were shattered by the broadsides of the Portuguese intruders. But Portuguese dominance, while it amazed the world, did not last long; the year of the Invincible Armada, 1588, is as good as any to choose for its supercession, just one hundred years after that good sailorman Dias finally rounded the Cape of Good Hope. But, what a hundred years it was! The Belem Tower at the mouth of the Tagus, guarding the approaches to Lisbon, was built at the glorious mid-morning of the Portuguese Century, between 1515 and 1521. Today it is a place of quietude and white stone reflecting the play of sunlight on the water outside the windows, in bare chambers where tbe sea, sometimes angry, sometimes playful, chants its unending lay of memory and promise. Ashore there is a monument to Henry and his captains who "discovered the pathways of the sea.'' Where those pathways lead us could not be foreseen, even by Cam6es, who speaks in the very rhythm and accents of the sea. E. H. Brandao, President of the Board for the Celebration of the Portuguese Discoveries, 1987-2000, speaks directly to those of us who have always felt that the great voyages have something to do with mankind 's direction and its purpose. He writes: Portuguese people were capable of clearing the way in which humanity would come face to face with itself. As long as the doors remain open, the work is not finished. Well, the door flung open by Portugal on the world's oceans has never yet been closed-and may it never be!

In April 1662, the English first-rate Royal Charles comes to fetch the lnfanta Catherine of Branganza to marry Charles II of England-the big ship flies the royal standard because the Ambassador, Lord Sandwich is aboard. In the foreground is a galley of the type that still carried on much of the first-class commercial and naval functions of the Mediterranean world. There is no caravel shown in this painting, nor in that on the facing page, a century and a half earlier. Portraits were not made of these workaday vessels, developed from lowly Arab fishing craft . The nearest thing to the type represented in these paintings is the small lateen-rigged river boat shown to the right of the Royal Charles. The descendents ofsuch vessels still ply the Tagus and Douro. This painting attributed to Jacob Knyff ( 1638-1681) shows a Lisbon no longer at the center stage in Realpolitik, but imbued with epic memories and dreams and a fairy-tale quality the seaport city retains today. Courtesy National Maritime Museum, London.

SEA HISTORY, AUTUMN 1987

13


&'&8Ullivan

Historic Rondout Waterfront

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SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987


Early Portuguese Voyages in the South Atlantic by A. Teixeira da Mota

As the world this year celebrates the SOOth anniversary of Bartolomeu Dias's setting out on his epochal voyage around the Cape of Good Hope, we are privileged to present the views of the late Rear Admiral Teixeira da Mota on the Portuguese voyages that opened the Atlantic world, both north and south, and linked that world by sea to India and the Far East. Admiral Teixeira da Mota (1920-1982) was a leading scholar of that era, and is held in immense esteem by his colleagues and students on both sides of the Atlantic. He served as president of the Portuguese Naval Academy and as a director of the Center for the Study of History and Cartography. This article is adapted from a paper delivered at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1964. Portuguese expansion began with the conquest of Ceuta, in 1415. The causes of this expansion were multiple-scientific, religious , political , social and economic. The Portuguese people, once they had consolidated their borders with Spain , and had brought about internal peace, felt restricted in their small territory, and realized that the only way they could expand , or even survive , was through the sea. Facing them, however, were two barriers: one was the Islamic power in North Africa, the other the Atlantic, which continued to bebeyond the narrow stretch of the European waters-the "Sea of Darkness ."

The Islamic Barrier The North African states, stretching through the Near East and through other Moslem states, constituted a barrier preventing direct access to the wealth of black Africa and tropical Asia . Several Italian cities, particularly Venice, lived in symbiosis with Islamic states, serving as middlemen in the trade of these riches with the rest of Western Europe. But Portugal, Spain , France, England, Flanders and the German states were, generally speaking , dependent on these intermediaries and on the North African and Levantine Islamic states for gold and spices. Gold came mainly from the goldfields of upper Senegal and the upper Niger, and was carried through the Sahara in caravans . The hunger for gold from which Europe suffered during the Middle Ages and the grave financial and economic consequences that resulted, are well known . If Portugal could not hope to break the Islamic barrier in the Mediterranean, its only recourse was to overcome the Atlantic , which had at that time been navigated southward only as far as the Canaries. During the fourteenth century, the Portuguese had successively lengthened their voyages along the coast of Morocco and multiplied their expeditions to the Canaries. They had even travelled round the northern regions of the Sahara desert, but they stopped short at Cape Bojador. From the end of the thirteenth to the beginning of the late fourteenth century there had been an attempt at Atlantic expansion by the Italians, with expeditions to the Canaries and the ill-fated voyage of the Vivaldi brothers in search of the East. Although the expedition of the Norman Jean de Bethencourt to the Canaries in 1402 failed in its main objective of establishing a settlement, it presaged the Atlantic movement that was then starting to grow. The Spaniards eventually conquered the Canaries, but not without the Portuguese having made an attempt, by diplomatic and military means , to take possession of them, only giving up their struggle with the treaty of Alcac;:ovas-Toledo (1479-80). It should be borne in mind that from the beginning of Atlantic expansion there was rivalry between Portugal and Spain. The establishment of the settlers on Madeira island after 1419 constitutes an important event in the history of Portuguese expansion in the Atlantic . An uninhabited island with rich SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987

Bjorn Landstrom' s reconstructions of Portuguese caravels in the vintage year 1500 shows the seaworthy shape of these vessels, which were the spearheads of the era of the great oceanic discoveries. Above, the original pure lateen-rigged type, and below it, the caravela redonda, fitted with squaresails for trade wind sailing. Christopher Columbus refitted the lateen-rigged Nina as a caravela redonda on a stopover in the Canaries on the way to his discovery of the Americas in 1492-she became his favorite ship and was the one he came home in.

Below, Bartolomeu Dias goes down in his caravel off Brazil in Pedro Cabral' s voyage of 1500, as shown in a contemporary record book. Dias, a true sailorman, carried the Portuguese flag around the Cape of Good Hope , opening the way into the Indian Ocean. in his epochal voyage of 1487-88. Scholars today suspect he made a second voyage which reached round to Sofala, inside Madagascar on Africa's east coast . He is on record designing the caravels that finally carried Vasco da Gama around the Cape to India in 1498. He was captain of a ship in Cabral' sfleet which formally claimed Brazil in 1500-but from this voyage there would be no return. He went down with his ship in heavy weather en route to the Cape. Photo courtesy the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

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15


soils and a temperate climate, it was a place where economic improvement was possible in a short space of time, and there was rapid population growth. Madeira island, like the Azores afterwards, offered an opportunity for interesting economic experiments, and what was learnt there was of great value to the Portuguese and to other peoples in subsequent ventures.

The pilot Diogo de Silves discovered the eastern islands of the Azores in 1427. Soon settlers were sent _there, after herds of cattle had been placed on the islands. This method was also used with the Cape Verde islands, discovered about 1460, and with the islands of the South Atlantic, discovered at the beginning of the sixteenth century. When the first settlers arrived

The Portuguese were among the first Europeans to seek a route to the Indies by the sea. Although they probably touched on the North American mainland in the mid-I400s, their main effort was to the south, along the barren Atlantic shore of West Africa. As they began to master the diverse winds and currents that skirt these shores, they discovered-or rediscovered-the Canary Islands , Madeira and the Azores, islands which had been reached by voyagers of the Roman and Moorish empires, and by the Italian city states two centuries before the Portuguese. The Portuguese persisted, however. By midcentury they had found the Cape Verde Islands and were well on their way to establishing trade with the Gold Coast-a trade rich not

only in gold, but pepper, slaves and ivory. Within fifty years, the Portuguese had rounded the Cape of Good Hope and traded directly with the King of Malabar in the Indian Subcontinent. In addition to breaking the Venetian monoply on trade from the East which helped to redefine the political and economic shape of Europe, they disrupted the hegemony ofBerber trading states in North and West Africa, and a host of Islamic trading enclaves throughout the Middle East and East Africa. In effect, their caravels competed with the overland caravans, travelling in long sea passages to achieve the first direct delivery systems between what had been quite separate worlds.

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The Atlantic had finally ceased to be a barrier . . . in the islands, the cattle had already multiplied providing an abundant food supply; even if no settlers were sent, fresh supplies of meat were always at hand for those who called there. Progress was also being made down the African coast. In 1434, Gil Eanes succeeded in passing south of Cape Bojador. Subsequent development was rapid. In 1441 Cape Blanco was discovered by Nuno Tristao, sai ling a caravel, which became the standard ship of the Atlantic explorations. The Venetian Cadamosto, who sailed the caravel a few years afterwards, called -it '' the best ship on the sea.'' It was fitted with lateen sai ls, and could make progress to windward. Thus, making headway by tacking against the trade winds, the Portuguese ensured their return from the Guinea seas to Europe . A route known as the "Guinea tack" enabled square-rigged vessels to be sai led home from Africa to Europe. The ships drew away from the coast with the wind abeam, heading northwest to gain latitude until they had left the zone of the northeast trade winds and entered the zone of variable winds, where it was easy for them to steer east towards Portugal. Caravels and Caravans Once the Portuguese had ensured their return from Africa by either of these two techniques, it was not long before they discovered the coast to the south. In 1444, Dinis Dias arrived at Cape Verde, and in 1446 Nuno Tristiio reached the vicinity of Gambia, where he established contact with the Mandingoes who had reached the sea at exactly that area. This first contact between the Portuguese and the Mandingoes was hostile, but in 1456 Diogo Gomes sailed up the Gambia with three caravels as far as the head of navigation at Cantor. He established peace with the people and learned about the operations of the gold trade in the interior. An important branch of the gold routes was shifted to Cantor for the convenience of the Portuguese. An important gold trade also developed in Senegal and along several rivers further to the south , as far as Sierra Leone, and a trading station was established on the island of Arguin . In the rivalry between the caravels and the caravan , the caravels attained an important victory. In the second half of the sixteenth century, the caravans made a return with the conquest of Timbuktu by the Moroccans. But by this time the Portuguese and Spaniards had reached richer goldfields, and Europe was never again to suffer the "hunger for gold" which it had felt in medieval times . After a few years ' pause following the death of Henry the Navigator in 1460, the advance along the African coast from Sierra Leone was taken up again. In 1471 Joiio de Santarem and Pedro de Escobar entered the Gulf of Guinea and arrived at the coast of present-day Ghana. The islands of Fernando Po , Sao Tome, Principe and Annobon were discovered, and by 1475 the equator had been crossed. The navigators found that in the region of Costa da Mina (Ghana), gold was much more abundant than elsewhere, and it was not carried away to the north . Consequently, the gold trade developed considerably, and Portuguese envoys arrived at Mali and Timbuktu along the valleys of Senegal and Gambia. Navigation in the Gulf of Guinea presented new problems. The trade winds of the northern hemisphere were followed by a zone of calms and near the coast by a strong equatorial counter-current that dragged the ships eastward. Further.south , the equatorial current flows in the opposite direction. The Portuguese_were quick to recognize the possible effects of these conditions, and they sketched the return route to Europe away from Costa da Mina to the south, to the westward flowing equatorial current and, after crossing the zone of calms with greater or lesser facility, across the region of the trade winds to the northwest as far as the latitude of the Azores. In this SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987

way the " Guinea tack " became the "Mina tack. " Both these tacks meant that ships had to spend several weeks-even months-at a time sailing out of sight of land. The system of navigation which the Portuguese had inherited from the Mediterranean was based purely on coastal piloting. The routes were followed and determined according to the indications of the compass , and were therefore magnetic and not true routes . The distance covered was estimated by sjght , as the log was still unknown . With these data, the Portulan chart originated in the Mediterranean . This method sufficed for navigation in the enclosed Mediterranean Sea, with its numerous islands and highly indented coastline; and it served as well for Atlantic coastal navigation between the Mediterranean and the North Sea. It was, however, insufficient for navigating out of sight of land . As their navigation was predominantly in a north-south direction , it was easy for the Po1tuguese to observe the great variation in the height of the stars at their culmination and to make use of this phenomenon to correct the estimated navigation . Thus the birth of astronomic navigation in the Atlantic took place between 1455 and 1475 , created by the Portuguese. Initially , latitudes were not determined . A mariner, on leaving port, recorded on the quadrant the height of a certain star on passing the meridian , and he repeated the observation at the end of several days ' sailing. The difference in degrees was converted into leagues and a check was thus kept of the distance they had travelled from north to south. Recording on the quadrant the heights corresponding to the culmination of a particular star from various ports or coastal landmarks, the navigator who sought a particular destination had merely to place himself on the parallel corresponding to the culmination of the star at that destination , and then to sail east or west. Shortly afterwards , mariners started to navigate according to absolute latitudes determined by observing the pole-star, and between 1480 and 1485 they evolved the system of determining latitudes by observing the meridian height of the sun. The observation of latitudes led to the creation of a new type of sea chart, and around 1485 John II sent a mission to Africa, with the purpose of surveying by means of latitudes, the coasts that were already known but which appeared on maps according to the old direction and distances. The new system constituted a revolution with incalculable consequences for the history of mankind. By discovering the wind and ocean current systems of the Atlantic, by establishing suitable routes to cross any zone in this ocean and return to the point of departure, and by developing a system of navigation according to the stars , which enabled sailors to not feel lost on the vast expanse of the ocean, the Portuguese laid the technical and scientific foundation for European maritime expansion. By the end of the fifteenth century, the Atlantic finally had ceased to be a barrier, and the arrival in India and the discovery of America in a few years were inevitable.

*****

In 1500, Portugal, which had a population of only one million , had before it the enticing monopoly of Eastern trade, safeguarded by papal bulls and by a treaty with its most powerfu l rival, Spain. In South America it had a tropical land of immense size , though the settlement of Brazil was only to begin thirty years later. Today there are 140 million people of all races speakin.g Portuguese as a national language and living within a Portuguese social, cultural and family structure, giving an example of racial tolerance and integration, which is perhaps the best way towards peace and towards the safeguarding of the dignity of all mankind . .i, 17


Sail Training and the Portuguese Experience by Commander Antonio Cardoso Translated by Rosa Silva. Beginning this year and continuing until the end of the century, Portugal will be celebrating five hundred years of maritime discovery. This year marks the quincentenary of the great Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias setting out on the voyage in which he rounded the Cape of Good Hope . This discovery of a sea route to India represents the culmination of the first great era of Portuguese-and European-maritime expansion and exploration. It climaxed almost a century of oceanic voyaging whose beginnings can be seen in the founding of a school of navigation at Sagres by the Infante D. Henrique, known as Prince Henry the Navigator. Through successive discoveries of new lands, increased understanding of astronomy , tidal phenomena, currents and winds, and the development of new shipbuilding techniques and advances in the art of sailing, the Portuguese navigators of the early fifteenth century became the first to systematically penetrate the South Atlantic and return to their port of origin from voyages into the virtually unknown ocean world . Pedro Nunes, who served as royal cos-

mographer to the Portuguese court and who was the leading authority on the Iberian voyages of the sixteenth century , embraced the magnitude of the Portuguese achievement in hi s Universal History when he wrote , " We have discovered new islands, new lands, new seas, new people and what is more , a new sky and new stars." The promontory of Sagres, the southwest comer of Portugal, and of all Europe, today symbolizes the Portuguese achievements initiated under the auspices of Prince Henry the Navigator. The school of navigation that he established at Sagres became a center of nautical learning for all of Europe . The Portuguese have honored many of their ships with the name "Sagres," the most famous of these being the two sail training ships which have carried that illustrious name in the wake of their ancestors. The first sail training ship named Sag res was built in Germany in 1896 as the Rickmer Rickmers, a three-masted full -rigged merchant ship. After losing a mast in a storm in 1904 she put into Capetown, South Africa, and was rerigged as a bark . Eight years later she was sold to Ham-

Her cadets wave farewell as Sagres leaves New York homeward bound. All photos courtesy the author.

18

burg interests and renamed Max. When Portugal entered World War I in 1916, the Max was seized at the port of Horta in the Azores . Renamed Flores (after one of the islands in the Azores) she entered Portuguese service for the first time . In 1924 the Portuguese Navy acquired the Flores for use .as a training ship and renamed her Sagres . Given a new figurehead-a likeness of Henry the Navigator- the 98m-long steel bark had a crew of 180, and in sail-training voyages she carried a full complement of up to 400 . I made my first voyage in the Sagres in 1940 together with twenty-four cadets in my class at the Naval Academy. It was a voyage which was to greatly influence my life . Following a tradition that reaches as far back as the great age of discoveries , after a trip to the Monastery of Jeronimos at Belem , we set sail for Brazil , via the Cape Verde Islands. Life as a cadet is not very easy at times . Seasickness affects a number of the cadets . Getting the sails right, maintaining the rigging , trying one's hand at everything from peeling potatoes to cleaning the heads and mending clothes-participating in these tasks (which at times seem interminable) Sagres cadets aloft in fair wind, above a summer sea. Photo by the author .

SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987


Below, the Portuguese sail training schooners Creoula (left) and Polar. At bottom, the sloop Vega slips along leaving an utterly clean wake.

helps to fonn character, humility and a sense of equality, traits which we come to appreciate later. In the Cape Verde Islands we were instructed in rowing and sailing, and were left with great memories , above all when we sustained damage under sail trying to beach a lifeboat in a heavy breeze , and in seas in which sharks were a constant threat. Infantry drills, with marches into the desert in the interior of the island of Saint Vincent under a scorching sun, also helped us recognize our limitations. Every Sunday we celebrated mass , followed by a concert by the ship's chorus. Proceeding south, we crossed the Equator-a first-time experience for cadets, who were subject to the harsh judgement of the veteran sai lors in a mock trial. Everyone's weaknesses and peculiarities were quickly discovered by the experienced hands and exploited almost to the point of cruelty. The next day it was as though nothing had ever happened . But the "accusations" remained as evidence for correcting bad behavior. ... In Brazil we landed near where Cabral had stopped in 1500 and afterwards stayed in the city of Salvador of the Bahia. We were warmly received in typical Brazilian fashion and there were many receptions , tours, balls and amorous adventures. After three months we returned to Portugal. It 's funny to think how thi s voyage in 1940 affected the group of cadets I sailed with. One is now president of the National Commission for Discoveries , another the director of the Naval Academy and the head of a project to build a replica of a caravel to commemorate the quincentenary of Dias' s voyage. Five years later, in 1945 , I sailed as an officer in the Sagres on a voyage which gave me my first memories of the United States. We left the River Tagus in May , again with the appropriate ceremony after mass at the church of Jeronimos. After calling in SetubaJ , FunchaJ and Saint Vincent , we arrived in Boston where we were greeted by enthusiastic crowds of ships and people. Aboard the Sagres it was customary to publish a small weekly paper , and in a few issues there were brief synopses of American history . There was a custom of rotating supervision of the trainees in the galley on a monthly basis , and when it was my tum I decided the menu should be written in English. I had great difficulty in translating "grao de bico" (chick peas), which traditionally accompany the Portuguese dish of cured codfish. In Boston there was a parade and some SEA HISTORY, AUTUMN 1987

of our men carried our flag alongside members of the American anned forces, the American Legion, the PortugueseAmerican Veterans of World War II, and other representatives of the PortugueseAmerican community . In Provincetown we took on board the Portuguese Amhassador to Washington, Pedro Teotonio Pereira, who loved sailing. When he was subsequently appointed Ambassador to Great Britain, he sailed to England in his yacht together with the Count of Barcelona-pretender to the Spanish throne and the father of the King of Spain-who was a great friend and a fellow sailing enthusiast. En route to Provincetown , an American ship manned by PortugueseAmericans offered us their fresh catch of codfish which they had just netted in Cape Cod Bay . It was the first time that many of us had ever eaten fresh unsalted cod! We also visited New Bedford, where there is a large community of Portuguese mostly from the Azores , a number of whom could recall the golden age of whaling out of that port. The great seaman and author Alan Villiers sailed as an officer in the Sagres. He came aboard directly after spending several months aboard the Argus , with the Great White fleet-the last Portuguese sai l-powered cod fishing schooners to fish off Newfoundland and Greenland. I re19


Not a replica, but a "caravel-type" adapted for sail training, this 77ft vessel will commemorate the voyage of Bartolomeu Dias with a voyage from Portugal to Mossel Bay, South Africa beginning this November.

member asking him if he had a craving for any dish in particular and he exclaimed, "Please! No codfish!" Villiers recognized, as have so many others, that the training one gets in ships is the best preparation for life at sea and for forming character in a young person for life at sea or ashore. The life aboard ship is one of discipline, and adapting to this way of life takes a great deal of effort and teamwork, while at the same time it develops the individual. The Sagres made her seventy-seventh and last voyage as a training ship in 1961 and was retired for use as a stationary schoolship. It soon became apparent that it was too expensive to maintain the ship, and when maritime hi storians in Germany expressed an interest in restoring her as the Rickmer Rickmers, she returned to Hamburg where she is on display today as a museum ship . When she left Portugal, thousands of sailors who had sailed in her at one time or another were sad to see her go. The Portuguese Navy replaced the Sagres with a second bark of that name. This one was also built in Germany and is a sister ship of the United States Coast Guard training ship Eagle . In addition, Portugal has three other sail training ships used to train young men and women: the sloop Vega, the two-masted schooner Polar, and most recently the four-masted schooner Creoula, one of the last of the wind-driven ships of the

20

cod fisheries. To this already considerable fleet of sail training ships, the Portuguese Sail Training Association (APORVELA), whose president is Dr. Luis Guimaraes Lobato, is adding a new ship which has been inspired by the quincentenary of the Dias voyage round the Cape of Good Hope . After lengthy discussions about how best to celebrate Dias's epochal achievement, APORVELA decided to design and build a vessel which would recall the ships used by Dias and his contemporaries. Headed by naval engineer Rear Admiral Rogerio de Oliveira, a group of APORVELA's members initiated studies into an appropriate design with the collaboration of, among others, Professor of Engineering Jose Rodrigues Branco, an historian of wooden shipbuilding during the Portuguese Age of Discoveries; Dr. Manuel Leitao, who contributed new ideas on the handling of lateen-rigged vessels of the day; Engineer Christopher Thomas North, who contributed valuable historical and technical assistance; and myself. We knew that there was little objective information available on fifteenth-century caravels , except what could be gleaned from artistic renderings in contemporary charts and documents. Moreover, the international project would have to offer some justification for the substantial investment it entailed beyond the mere wish to participate in the quincentennial com-

memoration of the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope. With this in mind, and in order to promote its objectives in sail training, APORVELA decided to research and build a "caravel-type ship" which could safely be used as a sail training vessel for young people after her inaugural voyage from Lisbon around the Cape of Good Hope to Mossel Bay, South Africa. As designed by Admiral Rogerio de Oliveira, a modem hull form is wedded to upper works which reproduce as closely as is practical the appearance and rig of a fifteenth-century caravel. The interior of the vessel is designed with due austerity to accommodate sixteen crew members. Plans for the caravel were submitted to the Portuguese Committee in South Africa for their approval, with the clear understanding that it did not represent an "archaeological reconstruction" of a caravel, and were enthusiastically approved .. The little ship has a length overall of 23.5 meters and a beam of 6.62 meters. She draws 2.88 meters, with a depth of hold of 3. 70 meters . Construction of the caravel-which incorporates a variety of woods, including cluster pine, stone pine and oak-is being carried out by the firm of Samuel & Filho in Vila do Conde. They are specialists in the building of traditional vessels and are located in an area from which many ships were launched during the heyday of the Portuguese voyages of discovery. The rig consists of main and mizzen masts crossing long single lateen yards. The main deck is flush from bow to stem with hatchways providing access and light below. There is a stem castle built above the main deck, whence the ship is navigated and steered by tiller, as of old. The ship will begin her voyage from Portugal in mid-November 1987 and is scheduled to arrive in Mossel Bay in early February 1988 . While in South Africa she will visit several ports at the invitation of the Portuguese communities whose support has been crucial to the success of this undertaking. The quincentenary of Bartolomeu Dias's voyage of discovery will thus be celebrated fittingly, at sea, in a gesture that will remind the world of the great achievements of the Portuguese navigators. .t

Commander Cardoso of the Portuguese Navy was until recently Deputy Director of the Maritime Museum in Lisbon; he is now on special assignment at the National Commission for the Commemoration of Portuguese Discoveries. SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987


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Geuing up steam on the little Kocatas, built in the 1930s in Istanbul. All photos by the author.

Istanbul 'un Buharli Gemileri: The Steamboats of Istanbul by Philip Thorneycroft Teuscher Travel posters always catch my eye, particularl y if they illustrate a waterfront scene. with boats and ships. Posters advertising Turkey seem to invariably focus on the splendors of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires. The standard views show the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and the Top Kepi Palace against a blue backgroundthe waters of the Bosporus. Straddling two continents, Istanbul is a city whose identity and raison d'etre derive from her waterways. The Bosporus separates Europe from Asia while connecting the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara and the eastern Mediterranean. Due to her unique geographical situation, Istanbul commands a position of strategic importance dating to pre-classical times. No less strategic today than in antiquity, her waterways also serve as the thoroughfare over which her people commute between the European and Asian sides of the city via harbor steamers. I first went to Istanbul to see whether, in the penultimate decade of the twentieth century , steam vessels still plied the waters of Lhe Bosporus. My interest centered on the Istanbul ' un buharli gemi leri--coalfired , reciprocating steam-engined ships of another era. These smoking, hissing samovars have throbbed their way into the 1980s thanks to the ready availability of cheap coal, cheap labor and the proven reliability of stean1 power. It was night when I first hit the streets of Istanbul. My nostrils were tantalized by the dank salty bouquet of a waterfront pervaded by sulphurous coal smoke. An occasional hooting answered by the drawnout moan of a steam whistle echoed SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987

through the cobbled streets and dark alleys of the Serkeci , the ancient waterside quarter of the city. At first light the next day I fo llowed the harbor sounds to the Golden Hom , the inlet penetrating the European side of Istanbul. This is where colonists from Megara founded Byzantium in 667Bc. More than a few plumes of coal smoke marked the passage of steamers moving purposefully over the waters of the Bosporus. Rafted three and four abreast at the Serkeci docks, still more steamers lay ready for their human cargos. Passengers elbowed and shoved across gangways like rushhour crowds in any major city . -But here smoke issued from tall buff funnels rising from varnished pilot houses while steam leaked from scape pipes and whistle mountings and hissed above the morning crowd. As I was just taking in this vignette, a siren honked from the outermost steamer. Billows of gray-black smoke rolled from her stack: the stokers were getting steam

up as she was readied for casting off. Two short whistle blasts signalled her departure and a couple of latecomers rushed across the gangway as it was handed aboard. From below the bells of the engine room telegraph sounded Astern One-Third. Quickwater roiled up and swept forward from her stem . The aft spring line stretched taut, wringi ng water from its strands, and the bow eased outward . Then the engine room telegraph sounded Stop Engines; Ahead Full. Erupting from under her fantail a veritable tidal bore churned and rushed astern . Driven by the twin triple-expansion engines , the broad-bladed props pushed her stead ily toward the shore. The smallest of the passenger steamers running on the Golden Hom is the jaunty two-decked Kocatas. The lower saloon is heated with steam radiators and the upper cabin sports an open-air promenade aft. Old-style wooden slatted benches with The pre-World War 1 Guzelhisar may have been built in Germany . Here she approaches the Serkeci against a backdrop ofAsian hills.

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Elderly sisters at rest on the Istanbul waterfront.

raised luggage racks reminiscent of thirdclass rail carriage seats provide accomodation, and a concession serving Turkish coffee and baklava completes the picture. Clinker-built pulling boats with raked wine-stem transoms hang from the gracefully curved iron davits port and starboard. Directly above, a green visor shades the windows of the varnished pilothouse and slightly aft two ventilators flank a squat funnel painted in white-and-orange bands . A raised escutcheon in red and showing crossed anchors under a crescent moon with star stands out in relief. Amidships the scrape of a coal shovel on iron grates, the clang of the fire door and the measured pulse of a reciprocating engine dominate the senses. Peering into this inferno with sun-struck eyes, one sees a fierce orange glow through the fire grate and wafts of coal dust floating through the slanted shafts of sunlight. A silvery gleam of oil-slick metal pumping rhythmically and counterweights and eccentrics turning in repetitive revolutions revealed a Brobdingnagian steam engine. No whine or vibration of a screaming diesel or the queasy stench of fuel oil here; only the ubiquitous thunkady thunkady thunkady of the tripleexpansion engine pulsing life through the fabric of the Kocatas in a refrain that stretches back through half a century. While the Kocatas plies the Golden Hom, her bigger sisters work the broader reaches of the Bosporus. These differ from the Kocatas in two major respects. They have twin-screw propulsion and they can be conned from two independent midships bridge stations. As the ferries shuttle back and forth in a zig-zag course between Europe and Asia, passengers can embark and disembark from alternate sides, and the pilots change their bridge station depending on what continent they are alongside. The "pierhead jump" method of picking up and discharging passengers seems to be more the rule than the exception. The twin screws facilitate maneuverability in the close quarters of the ferry docks, and the pilots' deft use of the immense torque of the engines to execute landings and departures is a thrill to watch. Just when you think that ramming the pier is 24

a dead certainty, the pilot rings down for Stop Engines, then Astern Full on the outboard screw and Astern One-Third on the inboard one . A deckhand lassoes a bollard with a spring line and the steamer's wales rub gently against the dock piles as she rides her almost spent forward momentum . Stop Engines is rung down; but before a gangplank can be thrown across the gap most passengers have jumped on or off.

"Some vessels were built during the twilight of the Ottoman Empire . .. and the newest date from the 1930s." The engine room telegraph speaks again, Astern One-Third outboard engine, Ahead Two-Thirds inboard engine. Vortices boil and swirl under the stem as the big props work against each other to pivot the bow outboard. And then with the order for All Engines Ahead Full she picks up speed with each revolution and slides quickly along, the smoke rolling from her funnel and casting an oblique shadow across an ever-widening wake . The age of these vessels attests to the durability of steam power and rivetted iron hulls. Some vessels were built during the twilight of the Ottoman Empire in the teens of this century. Others were built in the 1920s and the newest date from the 1930s . But their staid appearance hearkens back to the Victorian era. A two-tiered inland steamer profile with a centrally located saloon provides ample deck space and shelter for passengers. Rows of orange life rings are strung conspicuously along the handrails, and on either side a clinker-built pulling boat lies cradled under the gooseneck davits. An oversized carbon-arc searchlight mounted on a pedestal at the bow dominates the foredeck. The plumb stem, low-slung hull , proud smokestack flanked by cowl ventilators , varnished panelling, visored pilothouses and the raked masts form an image pleasing to the eye. The most distinctive of the Istanbul'un buharli gemileri are the diminutive steam tugs with hinged funnels which can be lowered when negotiating low bridges .

The Dutch-built Tescil #345 of 1935 sports a triple-expansion engine and a hinged funnel .

At one time this type of vessel was the standard small harbor towboat throughout Europe, and they have been immortalized in prints depicting the type passing under the bridges of the Seine River at Paris. Walking over the Galata Bridge, the oldest spanning the Golden Horn , I saw one of these miniature tugs about to pass below me . A couple of deckhands lowered the smokestack by hauling on a line attached to its top rim . When she emerged on the other side they released the reefing line and the stack swung back into an upright position under the weight of counterbalances at its base . There are few of these " little toot" tugs left in Istanbul. But one day I hired a rowboat to poke around the waterfront and located the Tescil #345. Built in Holland in 1935, the Tescil #345 is 18 .75m long, with a beam of 4.75m and a draft of 2.14m. Her triple-expansion engine can develop 180 "steam" horsepower. This little vessel has worked so long and hard that her deck has rusted through in some places. When the engine turns over, the worn bearings and out-of-balance shaft create a cacaphony of thunks and clanks and her stern shudders from the prop' s cavitation. On the foredeck there is a "Shipmate " type coal range where the crew brew their Turkish coffee. The teak wheel with brass bands is scalloped from fifty years of helmsmen 's calloused hands. The crew's reaction to my enthusiastic appraisal of their steamer was one of healthy skepticism. This is typical of what happens when a romantic , interested in relics of our past, confronts the everyday reality of such sailors . I am sure they would willingly trade their dirty , clanking Tescil #345 for an antiseptic, diesel-powered tug. Such changes to the scene are everywhere imminent. The waters of the Bosporous have silently witnessed the transition from oar to sail and, in more recent times, to steam. The Istanbul ' un buharli gemileri are living on borrowed time . The march of progress has doomed these dinosaurs of an earlier industrial age to extinction. Soon they will follow the Byzantine and Ottoman empires into the realm of hisSEA HISTORY, AUTUMN 1987


tory, and their only likenesses wi ll exist on faded , out-dated tourist posters in the windows of second-rate travel agencies .

An experienced deepwater sailor and student of Carib Indians and other seafaring people, ''Captain Torture' ' is currently at work on an oral history project called ' 'The Last Drift,' ' to record the ways and memories of the last Connecticut oyster dredgers.

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With her tired merchantman's hull shot through by the sturdy Serapis, the Richard continues the muzzle-to-muzzle engagement. The artist shows the infamous moment when the American frigate Alliance, under the command of the erratic Captain Landais, raked both combatants, killing or wounding a dozen Americans aboard the Richard. Despite signals and shouts from the Americans, Landais then loosed a broadside into the Richard causing Jones' s men to believe the Alliance had been captured by the British! Although an inquiry was held, no disciplinary action was taken against the well connected, French-born Landais. His crazed actions seem to have been the result of intense jealousy of Jones' s appointment as commander of the squadron and confidence in his politically protected position.

Wm. Gilkerson's Ten-Year Quest for

The Ships of John Paul Jones by Christine L. Parker In the fall 1978 issue of Sea History (#12), the artist-historian William Gilkerson published an article entitled "The Ships of John Paul Jones," an account of Jones's commands based on what little information was then known to exist. Out of this nutshell summary grew a decade-long quest by Gilkerson into the truth about these eighteenth-century ships. He writes: " I am very pleased that after all these years Sea History is to be carrying the work which it was instrumental in fomenting .... '' The fruits of this quest have been gathered in a new book, The Ships of John Paul Jones , published jointly by the US Naval Academy Museum and the Naval Institute Press . The names of Jones's commands-including the sloop Providence, the ship-of-the-line America and his most famous command, the Bonhomme Richard-are carved in stone around his sarcophagus in the crypt of the US Naval Academy Chapel at Annapolis. And now they are memorialized in Gilkerson's brilliant series of paintings , which will be on view at the US Naval Academy Museum through February 1988. Of all Jones's naval commands, least was known about the most famous, the ship Bonhomme Richard. Her loss following the terrific battle with HMS Serapis off Flamborough Head has given her a lingering air of mystery. Originally a French East Indiaman , the Richard was never painted from life, so far as we know. From the maintop of the Bonhomme Richard came a deadly hail of small arms fire that swept the decks of the Serapis and drove her surviving men below. In the foreground a sailor has lit a grenade and aims it toward the open hatch of the Serapis . The resulting explosion and fire on the lower gundeck led to the frigate's eventual surrender.

26 L

SEA HISTORY, AUTUMN 1987


Gilkerson found himself fru strated in his search for useful references. The illustrations and models in existence were at best merely conjectural, and this confusion of visual sources was repeated in the doze ns of biographies of Jones, each with . its own slant and its own inaccuracies . The only recourse was to first-hand accounts , from which Gilkerson compiled a list of all references to the Richard's appearance. Upon contacting English hi storian Peter Reave ley , who was also correlating all

"the French are terribly well organized; but it is ever so helpful if you are French." known acco unts of the Richard!Serapis battle , they found they had largely parallelled each other's efforts. Although they had collected an impressive mass of detailed information , the fundamental design of the ship remained a mystery . Somewhere, more information had to exist! The logical place to look was in Lorient , home of the French East Indies Company, the site of Richard's construction and of her refit by Commodore Jones. A number of American historians had already crossed the Atlantic in search of clues, but to no avail. ¡Leaning back in his swivel chair under the benevolent gaze of an eighteenth-century copy of the Houdon bust of the Commodore which graces his Rochester, Massachusetts, studio , Gilkerson observes: Ever since the end of World War II historians have been showing up in France seeking Bonhomme Richard. The French would show them the archives, which are vast beyond belief, so one and all returned complaining that there was no organization in the French National Archives. In truth the French are terribly well organized; but it is ever so helpful if you are French. Occasionally a fact or two was found by an itinerant American, but the body of information available remained virginal to American eyes. So it was that Gilkerson set off for Paris in 1983 to consult with the leading authority on eighteenth-century French naval architecture, Jean Boudriot, author of the four-volume La Vaisseau de 74 Canons. There in Boudriot' s library was the key that that Gilkerson had sought: Richard, ex-Due de Duras , an armed merchantman of the 900-ton class, had been designed and built by lngenieur-Constructeur Antoine Groignard to a rigid code of specifications. To Boudriot, these codes and conventions were well known , although they were of no particular interest to him

On the night of April 22, 1778, fifteen of Ranger's men in two boats, led by Jones, rowed silently into the small seaport of Whitehaven to set fire to the merchant fleet there. While only one ship was damaged, these raids tied up a squadron of naval vessels sent out to hunt down the Ranger, and coastal militia units were put on alert.

"the enigmatic Bonhomme Richard has become the most exhaustively studied American ship of her time.'' in his chosen life's work of drafting all the principal types of French naval vessels of the late eighteenth century. To Gilkerson, it was as though he had been given for the briefest instant a glimpse of Richard herself. After returning with briefcases of notes to be translated, Gilkerson began to gather questions. A copious correspondence ensued. He and Reaveley documented their data even more thoroughly and sent it on to Boudriot. There were more trips to Paris, more briefcases of notes . On top of the expenses of travel ,

Beating through La Mott e Pique!' s anchored squadron in Quiberon Bay, Ranger receives a nine-gun salute on February 14, 1778, the first foreign recognition of the fla g of the United States. Even Jones, with his famed elan and cool nerve might have thought twice about sailing close-hauled in this dense assembly of vessels.

SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987

27


"Gilkerson's crews are at least as important as his ships."

Unlike their officers, seamen did not wear uniforms , and their headgear reflected personal preference, from broad-brimmed to cocked hats, and a variety of kni11ed caps, including the watch cap which is favored by seamen today. A popular cap was the Phrygian cap, usually made of leather, whose top f olded forward toward the wearer's fac e. In ancient times it marked the wearer as a free man, and during this period it became a revolutionary symbol known as the liberty cap.

there were interpreters to be engaged, as each round of correspondence had to be translated . All the while Gilkerson 's sole source of support for this costly project was from the sale of his artwork. Having a living to make and a family, a farm and a boat to support, he could not quite give the Richard his full attention. He comments wryly, " I thought of seeking a grant to support the work , and then I realized that a grant application would entail more work than the work itself.'' Ultimately Gilkerson 's enthusiasm for the project proved contagious to Boudriot, who committed himselfto a full reconstruction of the Bonhomme Richard, taking a year-and-a-half from his own work to do so.* The upshot of these prodigious efforts is that the enigmatic Bonhomme Richard has become the most exhaustively studied American ship of her time . As Jean Boudriot has noted: For a marine painter to be worthy of his subject, what a formidable quantity of knowledge is required before he is intelligently able to address even the most insignificant representation of an historic ship! ... Gilkerson's art demonstrates a perfect understanding and knowledge of the naval world of the last decades of the eighteenth-century.. .. His ships sail naturally; the wind blows through his pictures , and in them the ocean is restless. In his treatment of light, sea and ship Gilkerson's work has been compared to that of earlier masters . In composition , however, he makes the kind of shrewd and highly original departures for which Commodore Jones (in other arenas) was also noted . As described by Kendall Whaling Museum Director Stuart R. Frank: " Scenes are framed in unusual attitudes juxtaposed in unorthodox configurations; several cardinal rules of drawing are deliberately and successfully violated; and the spatial organization and structure are sometimes reminiscent of the schematic diagonals of Winslow Homer and the Japanese printmakers , sometimes of the rigorous triangularity of Diirer and Brueghel." A vital feature that sets Gilkerson 's marine art apart from that of either his predecessors or his contemporaries is his view of the ship as a theater of human endeavor. Gilkerson's vessels are not self-steering, they are populated, and their people are always busy, whether with the ship' s business or with their own . A group of sailors standing on the quarterdeck of the sloop Providence is in casual conversation; aft, the Captain commands a swivel gun to be fired impudently at the pursuing British warship. In another scene, as Jones watches the last of the Bonhomme Richard sink beneath the waves, we can see repairs being made to the hove-to Serapis: carpenters are over the side boarding up her blown-away lower gundeck ports; aloft other sailors are at work on the rig; Midshipman Fanning returns with his boat's crew from the scene of the wreck. Gilkerson' s crews are at least as important as his ships. To this end he has made a thorough study of their clothing , side arms and even their musical instruments. In no small way, it is this lively interest in humanity that animates his work with such warmth . w *Boudriot's plans are published in John Paullones and the Bonhomme Richard, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis , 1987. The accumulated references and bibliographies for the reconstruction are so voluminous that they will be published separately as The Bonhomme Richard 1779, now in preparation .

Ms . Parker, a student of the age of wooden ships and hempen rigging, has been active in research work on the Pride of Baltimore, Californian and other historic ship replicas. Mr. Gilkerson, in addition to being a marine artist and scrims hander of note, is an experienced sailor, having sailed his own boats on both the East and West coasts and in European waters . 28

SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987


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" The Comin g of the 'Bostons,' " by Mark R . Myers.

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The Ships of John Paul Jones, Sept. 23~March I

MARINE ART NEWS From the studio of an American artist in an out-of-the-way corner in Corn wall , England , comes this lovely portrait of the opening of the Columbia River half a world away, by the Columbia Rediviva in I 792. Mark Myers, trained in deepwater sailing ships by the likes of Karl Kortum , Adrian Small and Alan Villie rs, was one of the exhibitors at the Kirste n Gallery's 13th Annual Northwest M arine Exhibition in Jul y. He will have a o neman show at Ki rsten, 6-3 1 Decem ber. (Kirsten Gallery , 5320 Roosevelt Way, NE, Seattle, WA 98 105; 206522-2011 ) Luckily fo r us the young seaman A nto n Otto Fischer did not admire the Ge rma n militaris m of our century, and when sum_moned to return from the US to Germany for military service shortly before W o rld War I, he refused . He went on to become a leading magazine illustrator of hi s day and a marine arti st whose day of recognition is onl y dawning now, a quarter century after hi s death at his home near Kingston , New York . He knew the brutality of life in the fo recastle of the old square-riggers, but he knew its comradeship and moments of grace as well. He caught on canvas the magic of its grey daw ns breaking as few other artists have before hi s time or since. Fischer' s time in the Cape Ho rner Gwydyr Castle was vividl y recalled in Focs' le Days, a slim volume publi shed with muddy bl ack-and-white reproductions of hi s paintings in 1947. Now the Hudson Ri ver Maritime Center has published a new edition with color pl ates made fro m the original paintings-and it's indeed like daylight breaking over a shadowed sea . Share the exc itement! Get this book fro m HRMC , I Rondout Landing, Kingston, NY 12401 . It' s $20 .95 postpaid . One of a handful of major marine art exhibits in this coun try each year, the eighth Mystic Intern ational will be on view at the Mystic Maritime Gallery th rough 1 November. The work of more than eighty arti sts representing fi ve countries offers a broad range of interpre tations of subjects covering nearl y the whole spectrum of seafaring , from vivid seascapes to scenes of merchant and navy li fe. (Mystic Maritime Ga llery, M ystic , CT 06355 ; 203 572-8524) .t SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987

"Frigate Alliance Chasing an English Brig: Cap tain John Paul Jones in Action "

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by Nicholas S. Benton When Gary Brown accepted the assignment as a vol unteer researcher for the Sea Lion project, he had no idea that he might come up against any problems that couldn 't be solved by dogged determination and perseverance in poring over endless pages of archival materials . Most of his work was, indeed, straightforwardget a sixpence minted in 1586 from England , photocopy a dictionary and so on. But now he was faced with a problem of extraordinary dimensions: Get an inventory of equipment and weapons copied from Oppenheim's Administration of the Royal Navy , Volume/: 15091660. But because of this particular work's rarity , it fell into a category at the library which forbade any reproduction whatsoever. In the end, Brown got his copy, but not through ordinary channel s. Hi s story, however, helps to illustrate one of the many diffic ul ties one encounters in researching and replicating pre-nineteenth century ships. Much of the difficulty stems from the simple lack of records. With much of the world illiterate or semi-literate, records were seldom made and much less often kept. Of those that do survive, most are vague in their description of details. And worse still, as in the case of Brown 's nearly inaccessible inventory, one cannot always gain access to rare documents . Behind the scenes at the Sea Lion project and other replica ship efforts such as the Mayflower, Elizabeth and Godspeed , one can hear the subdued grumblings of researchers who have exhausted every reasonable lead . Their consternation is shared by shipwrights , riggers and crews in search of authentic materials and tool s - ''What do you mean there is no more hemp houseline?" Rare materials are becoming more expensive all the time, and frequently when they are available one can only obtain them in quantities exceeding one's need or budget. After years of involvement in replica projects in both a personal and a professional capacity, I began to detect a universal need for a banding together to help overcome the logistical problems. Heretofore there has been very little communication between the far-fl ung members of this small but vital community. Most of the particular issues and problems that confront builders of pre-nineteenth century vessels are of little interest to the majority of general maritime organizations or publications. So , out of the need for an organization that can facilitate the nuts and bolts operations of groups involved in the building and sailing of replica ships, the Council of Colonization Period Ships was born .

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The Elizabeth II, autumn 1986 . The goals are diverse but precise. Objectives include compiling a period bibliography and index , bringing new archaeological evidence to print and publishing technical works for which there is no practical market. Organizing crew exchanges and visits, conferences and sailing functions are other goals. The joint ordering of rare materials such as hemp ropes , flax sail cloth, masting stock, iron, and so on is another priority. Providing advice to new projects so that they are spared the mistakes experienced by others is yet another purpose . With these objectives in mind , the interested parties have been corresponding-partially through a newsletter-and preparing for a meeting to be held 6-7 October 1987. The meeting will be held in association with the Alexandria Seaport Foundation , the National Maritime Historical Society, and as an affinity group of the National Trust for Historic Preservation just before the Trust's annual meeting in Washington . People involved with research and the operation of pre-nineteenth century ships from around the country will meet to establish a more formal structure and system of communications. A number of organizations will be bringing sailing and rowing craft for a " Rendezvous of Colonial Craft" on the Potomac. '!'he Council of Colonization Period Ships is an entirely volunteer organization open to virtually anyone. At present no dues or conference fees are required. All participants have come together out of a mutual desire to promote better conditions under which these historical reproductions can thrive. Address membership inquiries to: Council of Colonization Period Ships, c/o The Rigging Gang, 1134 Wapping Rd., Middle town, RI 02840, 401 846-0102 SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987


Biloxi Schooners Will Sail Again! by Terese Peresich Collins and Val Hosley, PhD. For a time they seemed an extinct type, but a new Biloxi schooner is to be launched in November, and a race of two of Biloxi's "White Winged Queens" is now scheduled for 1988-the first such race in over fifty years . The schooners reflect the heritage and the unique coastal environment found along the north-central shore of the Gulf of Mexico--Mississippi 's south coast. This is one of the most fertile estuarine areas in the world, and the wealth of marine life in the shallow waters of the Mississippi Sound attracted settlers to the region from the late seventeenth century onward. Here they developed unique watercraft capable of harvesting the bounty of shrimp, oysters and crab from the shoals. By the late 1800s, the most popular vessel in use was the Biloxi schooner, in which local fishermen plied the waters of the Mississippi Sound and adjacent Louisiana marshes south and east of New Orleans. With its shallow draft, broad beam and great sail area, the peculiar design of the Biloxi schooner allowed it to dredge oysters in less than six feet of water and to virtually fly back to Biloxi factories with tremendous loads. During the summer off-season these sc~ooners had another job--they raced. Weekends found the factory-owned vessels engaged in fierce competition as they vied for a coveted trophy and whatever side-bets the crews could muster. These races were equal in excitement to and as competitive as America's Cup races today. Thousands lined the shore to watch these events. Each vessel carried from thirty to forty crew members during a race, the majority as human ballast. But man's passion for progress, specifically the coming of the gasoline engine, brought an end to the schooners . When oyster harvesting laws were changed in the early 1930s to allow harvesting by motor-powered vessels , the final gun was fired for the schooners. The last race was held in 1933 . The fond memories that coast residents had of these beautiful vessels persisted, however. A popular coffee-shop topic for years centered on reviving the construction and racing of the schooners. The Biloxi Schooners Project was launched by Gerald Blessey, Mayor of Biloxi, at the grand opening of the Seafood Industry Museum in March 1986, when he announced the construction of two vessels to revive the great tradition of Biloxi schooner racing. A few months later, the dreams of many approached reality , as the Museum signed a contract for the construction of a Biloxi schooner featuring traditional design and rigging, including sawn SEA HISTORY, AUTUMN 1987

The Julia Delacruz in light

airs.

cypress frames, pine keel, carved bowsprit and clipper bow. This schooner , the first of the two, is nearing completion and is scheduled to be launched in November by master boatbuilder William Holland. Construction of the second hull will then begin at the hands of Neillious Covacevich, with completion scheduled in time for the schooners to race each other in the fall of 1988 . Money for constructing and outfitting the two vessels comes from donations from citizens , businesses , civic groups , and a variety of Museum-sponsored fundraising events. Heading the fundraising effort is Mayor Blessey assisted by a number of local schooner enthusiasts , Museum board members and volunteers. Several fundraising events have been held , and are planned. The tall ship Elissa is expected to visit Biloxi on the launch of the first of the two schooners, and the National Maritime Historical Society will sponsor a reception for the historic occasion . Two local world-class yachtsmen, G.

Shelby "Buddy" Friedrichs and Gene Walet, will sail the vessels in their initial drive next year , and each is active in helping to raise interest in and funding for the project. Once launched and operational, the Seafood Industry Museum's schooners will be available for charters, educational field trips, sai l training and civic activities. The newly opened 300-slip Point Cadet Marina located on Biloxi's eastern tip will be home port forthe schooners. While many people in the United States think that wooden boatbuilding exists primarily on the East and West coasts, the construction of the two Biloxi schooners bears witness that the nation's third coast, the Gulf Coast, also has a great maritime heritage and that it is very much alive in Biloxi, Mississippi, a community which traces its maritime heritage back to 1699. .t Terese Collins is a research and development specialist for the Point Cadet Development Corporation . Val Hulsey is Director of Museums for the City of Biloxi.

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33


SHIP NOTES, SEAPORT & MUSEUM NEWS Commander Joseph Z. Brown, commanding officer of the USS Constitution died unexpectedly only five days after putting Old Ironsides through her paces during the ship's annual turnaround cruise in Boston Harbor this Fourth of July . It was during this cruise that Commander Brown invited former Secretary of the Navy J. William Middendorf, II , to announce the Maritime Alliance on behalf of the National Maritime Historical Society (see p6) . Commander Brown is especially missed by his colleagues at the Charlestown Navy Yard where the ship is berthed and which is home to the USS Constitution Museum . Noting the delicate relationship between the museum , the Navy and the National Park Service (which maintains the Navy Yard) the museum ' s director Dick Wheeler credited Brown with being " the only one who made it all pull together. .. and at the same time always stood up for the Navy." Eric Berryman, a colleague of Brown's and secretary of the American Ship Trust, said of his long-time friend, "Some captains are a little indifferent. Not Joe. He always tried to enhance the exhibit, making it accessible to the public .... '' Commander Brown will be missed for his enthusiasm , good cheer and not least, his dedicated service to his ship. On 24 August more than 1,000 people gathered for a memorial service for Thomas Tew Benson , the energetic and engaging founder/director of the Museum of Yachting who died unexpectedly at the age of fifty. In the seven years since the museum 's fo unding, he led it in developing a fine collection of yachts-the outstanding example of which is Sir Thomas Lipton' s J-boat , Shamrock V-and in establishing a variety of educational exhibits. On the national scene, Benson was also a vigorous advocate for national recognition of the traditions of American yachting and yacht design by maritime historians and preservationists.

Nicholas Dean has been appointed director of the Spring Point Museum , which was established to house the 35ft bow section of the extreme clipper Snow Squall returned to South Portland, Maine , from the Falkland Islands last spring. Built at South Portland in 185 I, the 800-ton Snow Squall sailed out of New York for thirteen years to San Fran34

cisco and (direct or via Australia) China and Singapore. In 1864, she put into Port Stanley and was condemned after sustaining severe damage trying to round Cape Hom . She lay there more than a century until Fred Yalouris initiated the Snow Squall Project, under the aegis of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and the Ethnology in 1979. Restoration and preservation of the bow and other artifacts recovered from the ship will continue at the Snow Squall's new home , the Spring Point Museum . (Spring Point Museum , SMVTI, Fort Road, South Portland , ME 04107 ; 207 799-6337) The Mariners' Museum has received two important collections which will soon be available to researchers. The first consists of thirty file cabinets full of records from Chris-Craft Industries , whose reputation for sleek powerboats dates from the turn of the century. The records , which go through 1960, include some 45,000 photographs , boat equipment records , boat speed data , corporate records and information on Chris-Craftbuilt World War II navy patrol boats. After reviewing several proposals from museums around the country, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has designated The Mariners ' Museum custodian of nearly 100 artifacts from the Civil War ironclad Monitor. NOAA and the US Navy are still studying options for retrieving additional artifacts from the wreck site, which has been designated a National Marine Sanctuary. Among the artifacts going to the museum are the ship's anchor and the lantern used to signal her distress when she sank in a gale off Cape Hatteras in 1862. (The Mariners ' Museum, Newport News , VA 23606; 804 595-0368) The National Rivers Hall of Fame has announced plans for an audio-visual program that will include holographs, life-size displays, wall-mounted transparencies and a sound/slide presentation using up to six slide projectors. Individuals and institutions are invited to contribute 35mm color slides-in sharp focus and labelled-which help tell the story of American rivers to American people. Among the many types of images sought are scenes of natural beauty, commercial shipping, fishing and recreational boating of all kinds , from Sunfish to schooners and iceboats to cigarette boats. (National Rivers Hall of Fame, Second Street Harbor, Dubuque , IA 52001; 319 583-1241) The hulk of the three-masted ship (later bark) Jhelum which has lain at Port Stan-

ley in the Falkland Islands since 1870 has been stabilized. The effort was led by the Merseysi~e Maritime Museum and the Falkland Islands Foundation, with the help of volunteers from the Kings Regiment (Liverpool) and the Snow Squall Project in Maine (see above). The Jhelum was buiit in 1849 at a site on the Liverpool South Docks only 200 yards from where the Merseyside Maritime Museum stands today. The museum hopes to continue research and restoration of the ship. (Merseyside Maritime Museum, Albert Dock, Liverpool L34 AA, England; 051 709-1551) As we go to press, volunteers in Aberdeen, Washington, are preparing for a keel-laying ceremony for a replica of the Lady Washington , a 72ft sloop (later a brig) which was one of the first two American vessels to visit the Pacific Northwest. The Lady Washington sailed in company with Columbia Rediviva (a replica of which is planned for next year) under the joint command of Robert Gray and John Kendrick in 1787. Although sent out for the fur trade, the vessels' arrival on that coast helped establish an American claim to the region. Captain Gray went on to circumnavigate the globe in the Columbia (the first American vessel to do so) and to discover the. Columbia River in 1792. He is remembered today in the name of Grays Harbor at the mouth of the Chehalis River. (Grays¡ Harbor Historical Seaport Authority , PO Box 2019, Aberdeen , WA 98520-0330; 206 532-8611) Tall Ships Australia 1988 is one of the major international events of Australia's bicentennial celebrations scheduled for the coming year. The bicentennial commemorates the arrival of Australia's first European settlers-the First Fleet, which put into Botany Bay at what is today Sydney. More than seventy ships representing at least fifteen countries have confirmed their participation. These include the United States bark Eagle, Uruguay's Capitan Miranda, West Germany's Gorch Foch, the 44m brigantine Young Endeavour, Britain 's gift to Australia on the bicentennial and the Netherlands ' 23m sail training sloop, Abel Tasman, named for the first person to circumnavigate Australia. Vessels will rendezvous in Hobart, Tasmania, for a fi\ie-day race to Sydney starting 14 January. The ships' visit will conclude with a Parade of Sail in Sydney Harbor on 26 January , Australia's National Day. (Tall Ships 1988 , Australia Bicentennial Authority, GPO Box AUS 1988 , Sydney, NSW 2001, Australia; 02 236-1988) .t SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987


Great Holiday Gifts from SEA HISTORY PRESS~ INTERNATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC SHIPS by Norman J. Brouwer. More than 700 vessels are included in this authoritative historical and photographic guide to the world's surviving historic ships. This indispensible reference makes excellent reading. 368pp, 9"xl JI//', illus, $28.95hb (shpg. $2.75 <lorn., $3.50 for.) TRAMP: Sagas of High Adventure in the Vanishing World of the Old Tramp Freighters by Michael J. Krieger, fwd. by Peter Stanford , photos by Jud y Howard. This intimate record of the last surviving tramp freighters draws the reader into the lives of the coastal freighters and their crews in the Baltic, the Mediterranean and the Far East. 143pp, J2I /2"x JOI /2", $38.00hb/ppd. PEKING BATTLES CAPE HORN by Captain Irving Johnson, fwd. by Peter Stanford. A spirited account of a young man's voyage round Cape Horn in the P ek¡ ing with an afterword written forty-eight years later a nd a brief history of the Peking by Norman Brouwer. 182pp, photos by the author, $11.95hb. (shpg. $ 1.50 <lorn., $2.25 for.) STOBART: The Rediscovery of America's Maritime Heritage by John Stobart with Robert P. Davis . The leading marine artist of our day sets forth his life and achievements in his own words and pictures . The fine art reproductions are accompanied by extensive notes. 208pp, l 2I'2''x 16", 60 fullpage illustrations, $75.00hb (shpg. $3.00 dom. , $4.00 for.) THE WAVERTREE: An Ocean Wanderer by A.G. Spiers, fwd. by Alan Villiers, drawings by Oswald L. Brett. Captain Spiers's firsthand narrative of a voyage round Cape Horn in 1907-8 recalls the late voyaging of one of the last square-riggers to trade to New York. Spiers's account is complemented with period photographs and a history of the ship . I 34pp, illus, $25.00hb. (s hpg. $2.30 <lorn , $3.30 for.) BROTHERHOOD OF THE SEA: A History of the Sailors' Union of the Pacific by Stephen Schwartz, intro. by Karl Kortum. A richly illustrated chron icle of the SUP's struggle for seamen's rights, this work is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the development of maritime labor since the days of blood boats, bucko mates and the Red Record . 157pp, 9I//'xJ2 I/.'', illus, $40.00hb. (shpg. $2.50 <lorn. , $3.50 for.) THE SEA CHAIN by John E. Duncan. The author has restored the seafaring story of his ancestors, a story which begins in the early years of the last century. Members of the clan sailed with Mark Twain to the Holy Land and with Robert Louis Stevenson to Samoa, and sided with the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher in his famous adu ltery trial in Brooklyn-all the while raising children, comparing notes and moving cargo around the world in tall Yankee ships. 439pp, illus, $14.95pb/ppd . SEA HISTORY PRESS,

132

THE CAPTAIN FROM CONNECTICUT:

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The Life and Naval Times of Isaac Hull by Linda Maloney. "A brillant new biography of the USS Constitution's best-loved Captain who was also, as most people now recognize, her ablest skipper and most dazzlingly effective combat commander. Linda Maloney shows us a great man in the round, with his hurts and disappointments as well as his triumphs and the deep affection and loyalty he elicited from his crews and officers .... Maloney has done a signal service not only to Isaac Hull's memory, but to an important chapter of naval history," Peter Stanford, National Maritime Historical Society. 549pp, illus, $45.00hb (shpg. $2.25 dom., $3.00 for.) THE SHIP'S BELL: Its History and Romance by Karl Wede. With descriptions of more than 130 ships' bells, Wede's highly readable monograph is a fascinating compilation of historical information and anecdotes. 62pp, illus, $5.00pb/ppd . BRIGS AND SLOOPS OF THE AMERICAN NAVY: Ten Original Lithograph Prints from the International Historical Watercraft Collection by Melbourne Smith, intro. by Dr. Vernon D. Tate, text by Thomas C. Gillmer. Portraits of ten sailing warships from the Wasp of 1806 to the Germantown of 1846 represent the Federal Navy of the first half of the nineteenth century. Unpaged, 12"x l6'!.'', color, $20.00pb/ppd. AMERICAN VIKING: The Saga of Hans Isbrandtsen and His Shipping Empire by James Dugan . An enthralling biography of one of the most colorful and successful shippers ever to walk Manhattan's Steamship Row. 305pp, illus, $15.00hb/ppd. SHIPWRECKS AND ARCHAEOLOGY: The Unharvested Sea by Peter Throckmorton. Considered by many the dean of underwater archaeology, Throckmorton offers a firsthand account of the earliest efforts to bring a scientific method to the recovery of submerged shipwrecks and their artifacts. 260pp, illus, $17.75hb/ppd. SAIL TRAINING SHIPS AND PROGRAMS: 1987 Directory edited by Nancy Hughes Richardson. The fifth edition of the American Sail Training Association's directory includes essential information about 125 sail training organizations, 135 ships and more. lOOpp, illus, $8.00pb (shpg. $1.50 <lorn., $2.00 for.) OPERATION SAIL 1986/SALUTE TO LIBERTY ed. by J oseph Gribbins . T he official OpSail '86 commemorative book includes descriptions of more than I 00 of the participants in the parade of sail, a look back at the Fourth of July 1886, a history of the Statue of Liberty and a list of maritime museums and collections around the country. 64pp, illus, $5.00pb. (shpg. $ 1 <lorn., $2 for.)

trade, exploration, slavery, piracy, jurisprudence, developments in navigation and shipbuilding and innumerable other subjects. The text is arranged chronologically and historical commentaries set the various epochs in the perspective of world history. 2 vols, 960pp, 9"x l 2", illus, maps, index, $135.00hb (shpg. $4.50 <lorn., $7.50 for.) ANTON OTTO FISCHER, Marine Artist by Katrina Sigsbee Fischer and Alex A. Hurst. A comprehensive and loving book of the artist's li fe and work as seen by his daughter. Illustrated with many personal photos, the artist's preliminary sketches and 200 of his finished works. 259pp, 9"xl J I/!', 235 illus, $50.00hb (shpg. $2.75 <lorn., $3.50 for.) DAMNED BY DESTINY by David L. Williams and Richard P. de Kerbrech, fwd. by Arnold Kludas. A survey of projects for large passenger liners which never entered service, but some of which were possibly the greatest liners ever conceived. 350pp, illus, $28.00hb (shpg. $2.25 <lorn., $3.00 for.) THE MEDLEY OF MAST AND SAIL: A CAMERA RECORD, Volume II by Alex A._ Hurst. Photographs of working sailing ships with essays by the men who sailed them make this a mine of image and information. Hurst's acknowledgments alone make up a priceless memory of vanished ships and seamen . 473pp, illus, $25.00hb (shpg. $2.75 dom. , $3.00 for.) SHIPS AND MEMORIES by Bill Adams. Written about his experiences in the fourmasted bark Silberhorn at the turn of the century, this is considered by some to be the finest book of those days in sail ever written. 490pp, illus, $20.75hb (shpg. $2.75 dom. , $3.50 for.)

From Teredo Books, UK

THE PASSAGE MAKERS by Michael Stammers. The author separates truth fro m myth in this scholarly and absorbing history of the Liverpool Black Ball Line, whose fleet included some of the greatest clippers of the age. Ship-owning and shipbuilding, the Australian emigrant trade and the Gold Rush years, it is all here, and the truth is better than any fiction. 530pp, illus, $31.75hb (shpg. $2.75 <lorn., $3.50 for.)

THE MARITIME HISTORY OF THE WORLD by Duncan Haws and Alex A. Hurst. Embracini;s the period from 5000BC to the present, this major work by two leading maritime historians considers wars,

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SAIL TRAINING NEWS The 88ft schooner Bowdoin has a long history of sailing to educational purposes. Designed as an Arctic research vessel by Admiral Donald B. McMillan and William Hand , she was built in Maine in 1921. Over the next thirty-two years, the Bowdoin sai led to the Arctic on more than thirty-two research expeditions. Carefully restored in 1980-84 and certified under the Sailing Schools Vessel Act, the Bowdoin has recently been leased to the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School foreighteen months . Bowdoin's itinerary this fall will take her to the Chesapeake under the command of Cate Cronin who has skippered the Hudson River sloop Clearwater and served as course instructor for Outward Bound . (Hurricane Island Outward Bound School, PO Box 429, Rockland, ME 04841; 207 594-5548) Australia's bicentennial ce lebrati ons next year mark the two-hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet, a squadron of eleven ships (including six convict transports) sent out from England under the command of Captain Arthur Philip. In keeping with the maritime significance of this occasion , Great Britain is presenting her former colony with the 115ft-long sai l training brigantine , Young Endeavour. Designed by Colin Mudie and built in Lowestoft , the Young Endeavour carries twenty-four cadets and eight permanent crew and instructors. She sailed from Cowes on 3 August with twelve Australian and twelve English trainees. After participating in the events of Tall Ships Australia '88 (see p34) she will be given to Australia to be operated by the Royal Australian Navy in sail training and marine biological work. Colin Mudie also designed the STS Lord Nelson (launched in 1986), the first ship built to afford ha ndicapped youth and ad ults the opportunity to participate in sai l training programs off soundings. (Colin Mudie, FRINA, Bywater Lodge, Pierside, Lymington , Hants., SO 14 5SB England; 0590 72047) The American Sail Training Association's annual meeting is scheduled for 12-14 November in Newport , Rhode Island. Among the topics under consideration are new directions for AST A and the work being undertaken in preparation for Ocean State Maritime Week scheduled for next fall. The Providence Waterfront Festival has already agreed to lend administrative and other support to the effort, and funding is being sought. (ASTA , 365 Thames St. , Newport, RI 02840; 401 846- 1775) SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987

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The Nautical Clock Co. P.O. Box253, Dept.S2 , Bristol, CT06010

1988 NAVAL CALENDAR A unique collec tion of hand selec ted photos of vi ntage WWII ships, subs and planes from the National Archives, includes: DE, DD, C L, CA, BB, CV, Mineswee pe rs, Support Ships, Nava l Aircraft, Submarine, Patrol Craft, Escort Aircraft Carrier and a shot of Omaha Beach -Normandy In vasion . With eve ry flip of the ca le nda r yo u w ill find : battle stories of that month 's featured shi p including specs: size, arm., etc.) and how that type of s hip contributed to the World's Most Powe rfu l Navy. On the in side cover a g ripping 4-page account of the Naval Ba ttle off Sa mar- Leyte G ulf with sma ll photos of a ll th e ships (Taff y-3) involved in the battle. All research done through the Nava l His tor y Dept. Printed on high quality 65 lb. gloss paper (s uitable for framing) with white spiral binding. We a re very proud of this ca lendar(which we believe is even better than last yea r's) and hope yo u'll show it to all your fri e nd s before you C hristmas wrap it. A very special gift. Allow 3- 5 weeks for delivery

To order, please send $8.50, check or m.o. for eac h ca le ndar (price includ es all taxes, postage and handling) to:

Bourland Calendars P.O. Box 3749 Redwood City, CA 94064

39


Schooner by Lincoln P. Paine

Above, going aloft 10 secure rhe fore course as we sreamed up rhrough Sourhampton Warer.

,tf;Jj~!jiiiiii•lj

Ar left , rug-of-war on rhe Miller's foredeck against rhe jib topsail.

Below, securing the fore gaffat nigh!.

40

Two days of storms in the North Sea held us in Amsterdam. Gusts of wind as high as fifty knots blew plumes of spray off the JJ and across de Ruijterkade, the road that runs along the river. Low puffy clouds raced across the sky and the sporadic hard-driving drizzle leaked through every chink in our faul weather gear as we walked in the city . The closest comfort was the Cafe de Zeilvaart ("seafaring cafe") directly across the road from where we lay. On the street outside the cafe an old leeboard sloop undergoing restoration was lying on its beam ends and inside piles of pamphlets describing this and other projects were stacked neatly on the window sills. Despite the interludes of entertainment laid on by the STA representatives in Amsterdam-not to mention the city's own offerings-we were all very glad when Captain Allenby announced on Sunday morning that we would take a pilot for the twenty-five kilometer passage down the Noordzeekanaal to JJmuiden and then make for the open water of the North Sea. I was sai ling as supernumerary in the three-masted topsail schooner Malcolm Miller , one of two such vessels owned and operated by the Sail Training Association in England, the other being the better known Sir Winston Churchill. Saturday night about half the trainees and a few of the afterguard had spent several hours at the local seamen's mission . The proprietress was Olga , a gregarious girl with crooked teeth in whose name many toasts were made . She spoke fluent English with a come-hither voice and her abi lity to play potential suitors off one another-two of our crew made increasingly heroic plays for her affectionswas excellent entertainment. But that next morning, despite our fervent wish to clear Amsterdam, few of us were eager to meet the weather. We left about 0930 and at I 000 it was the afterguard's hour to keep the watch while the trainees cleaned ship. My bunkmate, John Blackwell and I shared the unenviable duty of standing lookout , fully exposed to the bitterly cold wind and sleet that came blasting in over the Dutch flats . Of all the watches I stood in two weeks, in port or underway, day or night , tacking or under power, that morning 's, staring out over the roofs of farmhouses in the polders to the virtually uninterrupted flatness of the Netherlands , was the most wearing. At IJmuiden we tied up in the Yisserhaven (that part of the harbor reserved for the fishing fleet) to wait for the seas to calm down a bit. It was still blowing SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987


Struck: Sail Training on the Malcolm Miller strong and a gang of us were sent up the foremast to secure the gaskets on the topsail yard. Everyone feels differently about going up the mast. Although all trainees are expected to go over the mast the first day-that is , to climb the ratlines , maneuver through the foretop and descend the opposite ratlines-no one is required to then or any other time. Nearly all do and, whatever reservations many feel the first time up, by the end of,the voyage a few of the trainees have to be ordered back down on deck. For my own part, I much preferred to go up the mast when underway. Lying alorigside, the scene below is of pilings and concrete or the deck with its unpleasant assortment of pinrails , bollards and other fittings . At sea, you climb the weather ratlines and have the advantage of gravity as the ship heel s; and when the sail is bellying out beneath your feet, you cannot see straight down however far to the deck . But one makes fast friends aloft either in seeking a helping

hand or in offering one. The gaskets secure, we arranged a tugof-war on the wharf for the trainees. The trainees are grouped in three watches of thirteen each, named the fore, main and mizzen . ¡ The strength seemed concentrated in the forewatch. Although one might assume that the watch that does best in a tug-of-war would do best handling lines under way, that is not necessarily the case. A gang that feels itself at a disadvantage in power will , as often as not, make up for it by being more deliberate in its actions-to take an extreme example, in choosing the correct line to pull on at the right time . One quickly learns that a few heaves on a fouled line is a huge waste of effort, and it pays to make damn sure that the line you're on is doing what you want it to do. A number of the permanent crew in both the Miller and the Churchill say that the girls' crews are measurably more efficient than the boys' crews. (The STA runs sail training voyages for boys and for girls,

but not for mixed crews.) After an hour or so of pulling each other back and forth along the quay, to the amusement of the local IJmuideners who happened by, it was time to thread our way out of the narrow channels to the sea. When we came punching our way out of IJmuiden, the seas were still kicking up . For the information of those setting the headsails, the chief officer, Mark Boyl in , estimated that the bow was pitching some twenty-five or thirty feet as we plunged from crest to trough and reareo back again. To starboard we could see the shoreside factories trailing long ribbons of smoke to the southeast, while just offshore there was a clutch of oil rigs which even at a distance stood huge against the overarching sky. At first it was exhilerating enough to be ploughing through the seas again, but once the sails were set and the ship had settled into her uneasy rhythm with the waves, a number of us began to feel miserable. At dinner, a lot of meals went

At left, the author on the iron canopy helps stow the main. It was cold and wet and soon hard to sense where fingers ended and canvas began. Lower left, the view from aloft while running down from Cherbourg to Southampton. Below, teamwork, a stiff breeze and a well found ship-heaven!


"When we came punching our way out of IJmuiden ... the bow was pitching some twenty-five uneaten or were thrown up over the way through the ranks of the trainees and side . Even in the main cabin where the was on his first voyage as officer of the afterguard ate and which was relatively forewatch. isolated from the sights and smells of the I became good friends with our watch galley (which always produced excellent leader, Oliver Kellett, a chemistry student meals, except for a pudding accidentally known to one and all as Piglet, after Winprepared without sugar) , I was all but nie-the-Pooh's companion. Piglet was on overwhelmed by the smell of food and his seventh voyage in the schooners and could barely choke down a slice of bread in Amsterdam we had celebrated his birthand some tea. day at the Cafe de Zeilvaart. Despite his Later that evening, when I was back being eminently qualified to be a watch on deck with the mainwatch (as super- officer, he preferred the life of the halfdeck numerary I had no set assignment except where "you see people coming out of to fetch the blankets in the event of an themselves and beginning to work as a emergency, and so I attached myself to group. It's quite something when a trainee the mainwatch) we had a fair northwest realizes the fundamental thing about sailwind . All around us we could see the ing. You've got to be there; you are neceslights of other ships and , most entrancing sary." Oddly enough, for all his enof all, the brilliant flares of bum-off from thusiasm and ability, he loathed going up oil rigs in the Rijn Fields. It had been the mast under any circumstances and did almost four days since the ship had put so only grudgingly. into Amsterdam and we were happy to By morning the wind had died to an be sorting ourselves out again. innocuous and useless Force 2 or 3 and The hierarchy in the schooners is made it had backed to the southwest, the diup of a combination of permanent crew , rection in which we were heading, so experienced and not-so-experienced vol- we had to put on the engines . But a few unteers and trainees. Of the total comple- of the sails were still set and flapped ment of fifty-five, only the captain , chief noisily. That afternoon we had an exofficer, cook , bosun and engineer are tended man overboard drill during permanent crew. Assisting the captain which the chief officer and two of the and chief officer in the supervision of watch officers took turns at the helm the watches is the navigator, usually a so we could all see how well they could serving officer in the navy or merchant manage the ship in an emergency . On marine . The three watch officers are , top of the sluggish progress we were generally speaking, professional marin- making at that point , it was dispiriting ers or accomplished yachtsmen ; they are to realize how long it really takes to assisted by the watch leaders , graduate bring the ship around-already under trainees who bunk with their watches in power, with no wind and relatively flat the half deck forward . seas-and how far one can get from the In addition to leading the trainees in victim. We continued under engines the running of the ship , individual mem- through the traffic separation zone in bers of the afterguard are called upon to the Strait of Dover through the next lecture on rules of the road , marlinespike day . It was hazy and the Cliffs of Dover seamanship , safety at sea and related were a bleak smudge. The only ships subjects. Those trainees who are in- we could see were sailing more or less terested in being certified as having at- parallel to us. By Tuesday evening after a day-and-atended the lectures can have the fact recorded in Royal Yachting Association half of motorsailing, everyone was becom(RYA) logbooks, along with information ing a little restive. Chugging along with about the length of the voyage, ports of only makework to preoccupy one (or worse, nothing at all) is maddening . After call, hours on watch and so on. The mainwatch officer, David Nor- dinner, I went below for a shower and a man, a retired Royal Navy lieutenant wash of clothes. Behold, but didn't the commander, had infinite patience in in- ship begin to heeJ and the sound of the structing our watch in helmsmanship and engines give way to the rustling of lines in tracking other ships , and he helped us along the deck and the muffled cry of all pass a long uneventful watch with his "Two-six-HEAVE! Two-six-HEAVE!" recollections of wartime service in the as the forewatch began to make sail. And Royal Navy . The mizzenwatch officer so, towards sunset, we began to sail was a retired psychiatrist named John again , on a flat sea to a fair wind and heading due west. Stead. He had done his "sail training " as a young man sailing from England to Once clear of the separation zone , just the Baltic in the four-masted Archibald west of the Isle of Wight, we made for Russell. Ralph Oxborrow , a young the coast of France with as much canvas policeman from London, had worked his as we could spread . We were on the mid-

42

die watch when , to take advantage of the wind and tide , we had to tack. To bring this off, we first had to hand the topsail jib . At 0330 with nothing but the running lights and a flash-light to show the way this is exhilerating, in an easy seaway". Just before this I had been in the Petty Officers' mess just off the galley talking with members of the mainwatch . The members of our watch ran the gamut of the STA's recruiting policy. Two had been put aboard by their probation officers: One was guilty of petty larceny, another of ABH , GBH and assault on a policeman. ("What's all that?" I asked . " Actual bodily harm , grievous bodily harm and assault. I'm not proud of it ," he said.) There was a slightly older fellow who worked for a company that makes hydraulic systems for submarines and who was sent because he showed promise as a young executive. His counterpart sold underwear; his employer had given him an alternative of quitting or sailing in the Miller for two weeks , as he put it , " to be improved. " Still others in the watch were in the Miller on their own recognizance , as it seemed, paying their own way or taking advantage of opportunities offered by their local schools and in one case the office of the lord mayor. The fact that no one seemed to know anything about his messmates' lives testified brilliantly to the success of the program. Not all the trainees come up through the same hawsepipe, but they were all in it together. Whatever their backgrounds , except in a very few cases the trainees are all strangers to one another when they embark . Mike Barnes, an apprentice shipwright sent by his company , summed up the potential and process of sail training . " If you get a good set of lads and they stick together then that makes it. It ' s difinitely a team effort. You have to get used to the fact that you can't get more than twenty-five feet away from someone . Of course , it helps if you enjoy a bit of hard work and a good laugh. " Beyond the satisfaction of the experience itself, a trainee can also benefit from a watch officer's report. "A bad report won 't hurt, but a good one will help-and being asked back is aces ." Diversity is not limited to the halfdeck. Among the crew and afterguard in the Miller there were a doctor, a sailmaker, a policeman, retired and active duty personnel from the Royal Navy (both ratings and officers) and merchant marine, an editor and an historic house preservationist affiliated with the National Trust. If they have nothing else in SEA HISTORY, AUTUMN 1987


or thirty feet as we plunged from crest to trough . .. " common, they share a love for the sea and a firml y rooted belief in the a ims and principles of sail training .

* * * * *

Setting out from !Jmuiden, we knew onl y that we were westward bound a nd that before arriving at Southampton , w here the voyage would end , we wo uld call at one more port. We had orig inall y hoped this might be one of the Channel Islands or an English port dow n Channe l. But the contrary winds d ictated that we make , instead , for Cherbourg, where we landed on Wednesday evening. The only other North American aboard was the Canadian bosun , Bob Lamoureux. In search of a quiet evening of bad wine and weak beer, we set out for the lights of Cherbourg in hopes of elud ing any groups of trainees and talking of baseball , the English and other curiosities. We fetched up in a dark cafe of which we were the onl y patrons. W ithin half an hour our party was augmented by about ten of the ship' s company, mostl y the afterguard and permanent crew. Over endless glasses of ordinary red wine, I came to know and almost to fear Nobby Hall , the ship's cook. Nobby had sailed in the schooners for years, mostly as bosun , and he objected to being referred to solely as the cook. He had been asked to sail as a replacement cook at the last minute and had rushed from Guernsey, where he lived and worked as a sai lmaker, to Chatham , where the Miller had begun the voyage now nearl y ended. W ithout prompting he offered an explanation for why he had dropped everything to jo in the shi p fo r this voyage. "I' m schooner struck, that's why. Do you know what that means, to be schooner struck? It's pure mag ic ." I had shied away from Nobby o n board shi p fo r the simple reason that he k new exactl y what he and everyone e lse was do ing and because I evidently did not. He had the roughest exterior imag inable. His hair was cropped short , he was lithe and muscular and ageless, and hi s gestures were inseparable fro m his speech . It was virtuall y im possible to fo llow his soliloquies without lookin g as well as listening. Our conversation started off badl y . Nobby abhorred pretense, and he could not understand what exactly I was do ing aboard the Miller as a supernumerary. My uninspired explanation , that I was going to write about it for an American magazine with a keen interest in sail tra ining , rather than mo llify ing hi m, launched him into an impass ioned monologue about what he perceived as the nearl y negligent inacti vity of the American Sail T rai ning Association. SEA HISTORY, AUTUMN 1987

' 'Whatever became of that lovely bri gantine the Black Pearl? I saw her in Newport for that O peration Sail in 1976. She was a lovely ship ." Nobby took the Black Pearl's apparent di sappearance from the scene as the embodiment of all that was wrong with the Americans, who with all their corporations, the ir ta lent , their need , could not begin to develop a progra m to rival the schooners. I offered what description I could of the success of the more diffuse aims and ambitions of the ASTA and spoke of the individual programs which were doing their work , though on a smal ler and sometimes philosophically narrower scale; and I told him how the Black Pearl, after years of inacti vity, was slated to begin sail training again in the coming summer. The conversation bac ked around to a di scussion of the relati ve merits and responsibilities of each crew position and , ul timately, whether I could survive life as the cook's ass istant-or cook ' s ass, as he is generall y known. L ike the watch leaders and bosun ' s mate, the cook's ass fo r our voyage was an ex-trainee, someone I remember onl y as G iddy. (He had cut himself, the story goes, and had fa inted only after bei ng bandaged. Nobby had dubbed him G idd y and the name stuck .) It was ag reed that G iddy would take my place in the main cabin and I wo uld be cook ' s ass fo r a day. G iddy and I retu rned to the ship. Even as I tried to absorb the detail s of the day's routine, I was regretting the arrange ment. It was very late by both shi p' s time and local time. I knew that we wou ld be sailing down wind fo r the fi rst time and I wouldn ' t have a hand in setting the square sails. I remembered the heavy smell from the galley as we had pounded our way out of IJmuiden. I could not begin to conceive of the chaos in the galley at meal time . What of the propriety of thi s prince-and-the-pauper swap? The who le idea seemed foo li sh. My shake came at 0545 , as promised , and the firs t task was to go find breakfast for the ship 's complement. Although Giddy was to have enjoyed the luxury of sleeping in , he was no more convinced of my ability than I was. So, together with the th ree day workers, we trudged off in search of a boulangerie . While the others huddled by the door, I waited in line behind madame's reg ul ar patro ns and under my breath prac ticed what I wo uld say in my tarnished French . Finall y she turned to me. " Good morning. How are you? Can I have sixty croissants, twelve baguettes and twenty quarts of milk , please? " The order was filled without question , although the proprietress kept repeating

my French to make sure I had my numbers ri ght. W ith arms full of bread and milk , we troo ped back to the ship in time to set the tables fo r the first sitting . The primary responsibility of the cook's ass is to ride roughshod over the galley rats-the three dayworkers (one from each watch) ass igned to the galley. Since these change day-to-day , this means teaching them how to set the tables (two settings each in the halfdeck, PO 's mess and main cabin), overseeing the dishwashing, fetching food from the various stores lockers , making sure that everyone is at his proper seating on time and that the galley passes the chief officer' s inspections after lunch and after dinner. All this in a clanging, slippery inferno rolling up to 25 degrees off perpendicular. The cook is the one person all trainees have something to do with on a regular bas is. He serves each tra inee at every meal, and can tell at a glance how a trai nee is progressi ng as a member of hi s watch or with the uncertainties of shi pboard li fe. For many tra inees, the Miller was the first boat of any description they had ever been aboard; and many trainees had never spent any time away fro m home before signing on. Nobby had sized up everyo ne in the halfdeck and could pick out the good , the bad and the ind iffe rent without hesitation. And if No bby shouted down and cajoled the tough guys who thought they knew it all , he could be as soothing as mother' s mil k to anyone who hadn ' t got his sea legs or was overwh elmed by the strange jumble of lines, people and orders that was his world fo r two weeks. In my preoccupation wi th the galley I had all but mi ssed our departure fro m Cherbourg, but after lunch Nobby allowed me time off fo r good behav ior to go up the mast and hang out on a yard. I cl imbed the ratlines and worked my way awkwardl y through the top. Out on the lower yard l clipped onto the jackstay . We were fl ying along under course , square topsail and raffee, and the Miller was fa irly charging along towards England. The course bellied out below me . There was no sound but the wind , no sight but our stout ship , a wide hori zo n and the blue dome of heaven. I was schooner struck.

To secure a berth in the sail-training schooners Malcolm Miller or Sir Winston Churchi ll , contact The Schooners Foundation, 16 East 69thStreet, New York, NY 1002 1; or The Sail Training Association, 2a The Hard, Portsmouth PO J, 3PT, England.

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Seaport Experience Workday evenings I drive home down Manhattan island 's FDR Drive along the East River , the tidal estuary that runs between Manhattan and her sister boroughs on the western edge of Long Island . The East River always boasted an impressive array of ships-tugs and small tankers , freighters, barges and boats of the municipal services and , especially in the lower reaches, an assortment of boats offering the public a chance to get afloat , one way or another. No more than a year or so ago, it was possible to take in the regular traffic at a glance. There were the schooner Pioneer and replica steamboat Andrew Fletcher out of South Street Seaport, the Staten Island ferries running. between lower Manhattan and St. George , the graceful yawl Petrel and the Liberty Island ferries sailing from the Battery . From the berths on the Hudson River there were the dinner boats of World Yacht Enterprises, the Hudson River Dayliner and , in their red and green livery , the yac hts of the Circle Line . Today, the scene has changed dramatically . To thi s not incon siderable fleet have been added a companion to the Fletcher , the De Witt Clinton, the elegant dinner boats Spirit of New York, Dolly Madison and, doubling World Yacht 's fleet , the Duchess of New York and Princess of New York. There are also a host of new ferries running trans-Hudson, to southern Brooklyn , to Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey , and even to La Guardia Airport. A slew of private , club and corporate yachts al so cater to people 's yearning to get out on the water, to take in the sights, sounds and rhythms of the sea and ships. Thi s sudden profusion of passenger shipping is by no means a local phenomenon . One perso n who know s about this , and who willingly shares his knowledge , is Ted Scull. Historian , raconteur, ship enthusiast and, not least , a writer , Scull' s most recent book is Watertrips: A Guide to East Coast Cruise Ships, Ferryboats, and Island Excursions (International Marine, Camden , ME, 1987 , 264pp, illus , $14.95pb). At once coherent and discursive, Watertrips covers as much as its title suggests and then some- from open-deck car ferries on the Connecticut River , to harbor cruises in Newport News, windjammers along the Maine coast, and fall foliage cruises in New England and upstate New York . To the practical information one might expect-prices, addresses , and seasons- Scull adds suggestions about what to see, accomodations, restaurants and even connecting bus and train service. Just SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987

how much he covers can be judged from the index of more than 175 ports of embarkation . In recent years, the numbers of USflag companies offering overnight coastwise and river passages has grown considerably, and Scull devotes the second part of Watertrips to descriptions of the routes , service and hi stories of nine East Coast companies, six American and three Canadian: American Canadian Cruise Line , American Cruise Lines, Clipper Cruise Line, Exploration Cruise Line , Mid-Lakes Navi gation Co . , Rideau St. Lawrence Cruise Ships, Ontario Waterway Cruises, Marine Atlantic and Prince of Fundy Cruises. Between them , these ships can get you almost anywhere from Florida to Nova Scotia , the St. Lawrence River or the Finger Lakes of upstate New York . Watertrips is a joy to read , e ither to wonder at the innumerable options, to plan a trip or alternate route to a favorite destination , or even to see what the author might have left out (and that, be assured, isn ' t much). Best of all , Scull conveys a real love for hi s subject and a sense of being there , on the watersomewhere accessible to us all. L. PAINE

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Stoddert's War is a history of a nearly forgotten struggle, the Franco-American undeclared naval war of 1798-1801. This is a critical study of com mand and operations, as directed by the first secretary of che navy, Benjamin Stodden. Under Stoddert's direction, the navy proved itself ship for ship as, if not more, effective agai nst French privateers th an the Royal Navy. C loth, 300 pp., #499, $24.95

WHAT FINER TRADITION: The Memoirs of Thomas 0 . Selfridge, Jr., Rear Admiral, U.S.N. by Thomas 0 . Selfridge, Jr. Selfridge (1836-1924) was the first officer to receive a diploma under the permanent naval academy system when he graduated from Annapolis in 1854 at the head of his class. Selfridge was the only one of the six Monitor commanders co write his memoirs. This is a thorough accou nt of a career in the early U.S. avy. Cloth, 296 pp., #507, $19.95

CONFEDERATE SHIPBUILDING by William N. Still, Jr. In Confederate Shipbuilding, Still cogently demonstrates the real grounds for the Co nfederacy's failure to build a navy. This study contributes co our understanding of the failure of the Southern shipbuilding program but also to our knowledge of the reasons for the downfall of the Co nfederate States of America. Cloth, 132 pp., #551, ~17.95

To Order: Send check or money order (SC resident add 5% tax) along with $1.50 per book for postage and handling to : UNIVERSITY OF sourH CAROLINA PRESS 508 Assembly Street Columbia, SC 29208 or call (803) 777-5243

Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise oflslam to 1750 , K. N. Chaudhuri (Ca mbrid ge University Pre ss, New York , 1986 , 269 pp , illu s, $44.50hb/ $ 17.95pb) Until the coming of the Europeans at the close of the fifteenth century , the Indi an Ocean was the preserve of a farflung , but unified , trading system reaching from East Africa to Southeast Asia and thence to China and Japan. The exte nsive trade routes were disturbed only by pirates who operated from outside the me rcantile establi shment centered on g reat ports and emporia such as Malacca , Hormuz and Zanzibar. Then, suddenly , this network was shattered by a handful of Portuguese ships whose " Mediterranean style of trade and warfare, by land and sea, was a violation of the agreed conventions and certainly a new experience," as K. N. Chaudhuri writes in his Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean. " [M]ost Asian rulers with a stake in the long-di stance seaborne trade were totally taken by surpri se at the single-minded determination of Lisbon in seizing the most profitable ports in East Africa, the Malabar, Konkan , the Persian Gulf, and the strait of Malacca." The subseq uent decline of the Asian traders was not due to clear technological inferiority: the indigenous ships were idea ll y adapted to local conditions , and sh ipbuilders were quick to adopt superior European techniques. Indeed , by the eighteenth century they were producing ships for sale to Europeans. The decline seems rather to have been due to social structures and their political ramifications. l n the great powers of the regionthe Ottoman , Moghul and Manchu empires-th e predominant classes held merchants in low esteem and gave them little backing . On the other hand , the kings of Portugal were directl y involved in trade , and the governments of Holland and England saw it as their lifeblood . European merchants received full political and military support and they used it to suppress Asian rivals. K. N. Chaudhuri divides his work into two parts. The first deals primarily with the chronological history of the region from the rise of Islam to the coming of the Portuguese, Dutch and English. The second treats related subjects such as seafaring communities, navigational techniques, ships and shipbuilding. As the full title indicates , the book is concerned above all with economic history. But although the emphasis is on trade, by both land and sea, those interested in purely SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987


mant1me subjects will find a wealth of material in descriptions of the sailors and their ships-the dhows, prahus and junks that made the trade possible. In constructing his well reasoned synthesis and analysis of this complex subject, Chaudhuri draws masterfully on a great variety of sources, Arab , Indian , Chinese and European. The maps, illustrations and bibliography are all excellent. G ARY K ETELS

Mr. Ketels is an historian living in Munich.

European Naval and Maritime History, 300-1500, Archibald R. Lewis and Timothy J. Runyan (Indiana Univers ity Press, Bloomin gto n , 1985 , 192pp, illus , $22.50hb) Perhaps the most noteworthy hi storical development in the last 500 years was the European expansion throughout the world-an expansion which, excepting Russia' s advance in Asia, rested on control of the sea. The origin s of Europe ' s dynamism are important , and Lewis and Runyan here offer a cogent survey of medieval naval and maritime history during the period in which Europe's unrivalled sea power evolved . The book is only 192 pages long , and it does not attempt to provide an a ll-inclusive account of the period from 300 to 1500. Nevertheless , it does present a balanced treatment of the salient developments of the epoch. The seven chapters deal with the later Roman world, the Byzantine Empire , the Latin sea powers of the Mediterranean , the Irish , Frisians and Vikings , the English and the Hansa , and the Iberian states. There is a good deal of emphas is on the relationship between the then technologically more advanced Mediterranean world and the more primitive but dynamic Atlantic one. Initially quite distinct , these two maritime tradition s came closer together over the centuries and the Iberian peninsula , where the two met , became the spearhead of Europe 's worldwide expansion. The authors ' prose is lucid ; the maps are useful and illustrations in black and white complement the text. The bibliography is excellent. One shortcoming is that the authors over condense and leave out non-maritime features that should probably be mentioned. For example , a discussion of the rivalry between Venice and Genoa ought to point out the geographic advantages of the former. Venice had far better access to the rich territories in the Po Valley and to Northern Europe, and it could more easily acquire and maintain a SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987

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The Ships of John Paul Jones Written and Illustrated by William Gilkerson A talented painter, writer, and historian, Gilkerson provides an engaging historical record of the fledgling navy that helped make John Paul Jones America's first naval hero. Filled with exquisite reproductions of sixty-four oil paintings, watercolors, ink drawings, and pencil sketches this book visually reconstructs all the vessels that played a significant role in Jones's career. · "' d 52 black & 12 color an 88 pag es · ,, ll" white illus. 9 x ·

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John Paul Jones and the Bonhomme Richard A Reconstruction of the Ship and an Account of the Battle with HMS Serapis By Jean Boudriot English-language edition by David H. Roberts

- ck & white and 128 pages. 4N60 ~~: 90" x12" color illus. ·

The author's painstaking research provides a detailed look at the construction, co nfiguration, and fittings of the Bonhomme Richard at all stages of its career as well as in-depth coverage of the ship's bloody battle with the Serapis. His highly detailed line drawings reconstruct the ship timber by timber, while a collection of masterful paintings by William Gilkerson breathes new life into the Bonhomme Richard and into the events recounted in this study.

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REVIEWS Back in p rint after 3 0 y ears in a n ew color edition

FOCS'LE DAYS by Anton Otto Fischer with paintings by the author A n enduring tale , w ith 19 colo r illus trati o ns, o f two y ears aboard a B ritis h limejuicer b y the no te d m arine artis t.

Please send c heck o r m o ney o rd er for $20.95. A dd Sl.50 for pos tage. Y residen ts add 7% sales tax.

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territorial base in northern Italy. The power of the Hansa also deri ved in no small measure from geography; it controlled a convenient la nd route between the North and Baltic seas , as well as a canal connecting the two. Hanseatic traders were able to avoid the dangerous tri p around Denmark , and they used the ir pos itio n betwee n the two seas to ga in conside rable contro l over bo th . Although such observa.tions may put medi eva l m ari t ime hi sto ry in a be tte r perspective, they are not absolute ly necessary to an understanding of it. The authors have written a good , brief survey of their subject and their book is ti ghtl y reasoned , pac ked with information and highl y recommended. GARY KETELS Wherries and Waterways , Robert Malster (Tere nce Dalton Ltd ., Lavenham, Suffo lk, Eng., 1986 (revsd . 197 1ed.), 176pp , illus, £9 .95hb) It used to be said in Britain that anyone who had not seen a wherry and a windmi ll had not seen East Ang lia. It is now some seventy-fi ve years since the last trad ing wherry was built (the Ella) , and over fo rty- fiv e years since the last of these fin e craft traded under sail. Deri ved fro m the Norfo lk keel (whi ch , in its turn , is thought to have evolved from the Saxon caels or war keels), the wherry is a sing le-masted sailing barge, clinker built of oak. Bob Malster , an acknowledged authority o n the wa te rways a nd sma ll c raft of East An g li a, spe nt so me tw e nt y- fiv e yea rs co ll ecting mate ri a ls for a definitiv e book on whe rri es a nd the No r fo lk Broa ds -the wa te rway s they once traded . Originally published in 197 1, thi s revi sed edition inc ludes a number of additional illustrations as we ll as new textual materi al. I can who leheartedl y commend thi s book- and the story the author has to tell- to anyone with even the re motest interest in the vast coastal and inl and waterborne trade on which Britain depended until the early decades of this century. JAMES A . FORSYTHE

Major Forsythe is President of the Norfo lk Wherry Trust and Deputy Chairman of the World Ship Trust . Picture History of the Normandie , Frank 0 . Braynard (Dove r, Mineola , NY , 1987 , 133pp , illus, $9 .95pb) Was there ever a liner that skimmed the Atlantic with more grace than the Normand ie? Frank 0 . Braynard , an hi stori an of passenger shipping, meticulously de ta il s the life of the proud French ship that linked Le Havre and New York SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987


between 1935 and 1939. She was the first liner longer than l ,000 fee t, o ne of the onl y three ever to gross more than 80 ,000 tons, the fi rst of the mammoth breed to sport a clipper-type bow and a raki sh hull that encased the apogee of Gallic lu xury. The Normandie was not a money-maker in her short life, and she came to a sad end . The enemy didn ' t sink her at sea; she burned and went down ignominiously at her West 48th Street pier in Manhattan in 1942, while incompetents were transformi ng her into a troop ship . Navy salvage experts learned their trade by raising her, but she was a dowdy hulk , useless for war or peace , and was hauled off to a knacker' s yard in New Jersey to be demoli shed. Mr. Bray nard captures the spi rit that people in ves ted in this queen of the seas. The Normandie was a nova that bri ghtened the firmament of ships for a moment , only to fade a few years before her pro ud contemporaries , the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth , also were lost in a storm of travel innovation. RI CHARD F. S HEPA RD Mr . Sh epard was fo r many years maritime reporter fo r The New York T imes. This review originally appeared in The T imes and we gratefully ackno wledge their permission to reprint it here . The Last Grain Race, Eric Newby (V iking-Penguin , New York , 1986 (repr. 1956 ed .) , 25 lpp , $7.95 pb) After reading Eric Newby's colorful yam of his voyage round Cape Horn in the Moshulu just before World War II , I happened to lunch aboard the great bark , now fi tted out as a restaurant ship in Philadelphia. The fine food did not excuse what had been done to the staunch Cape Homer, winner of the last Grain Race from Australia to the United Kingdom. I went on deck and tried to see past the phony riggi ng and spars. Everywhere, one was reminded that she was now a dead ship . Trivial wire lawn fu rnitu re stood on the now spongy rotted decks. It was hard to believe that thi s was where the seas broke gree n and deadly as the big fo ur poster ran th ro ugh the roaring forties. Her bell caught my eye. On it was inscribed " Kurt , Hamburg ." As I looked at that piece of well tra velled bronze I saw the ship again , her spars towering over the shipyard cranes on Belfas t Lough . This time 1 saw her through the eyes of young Eric Newby. Eric Newby is a likable writer. H e was not, however, the most popul ar me mber of the crew- at least not according to other Englishmen who sailed with him SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987

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49


REVIEWS and who are all but missing from hi s narrative, nor, by his own admission , in the opinion of Scandinavian and Baltic seamen aboard. Whatever the opinion of the those who sai led in 1938 with the nineteen-year-old Newby, I doubt anyone can read this book (written twenty years later) without liking the author heartily. One finds oneself seeing things his way even when he breaks cardinal rules of seamanship. You see the muddled sense when he asks the mate if he can change his shoes before going aloft, and share his outrage when he is charged the price of a hammer he loses over the side. Eric Newby, you feel , is an island of sanity in a world of Vikings run amok . He writes with the humor that truly awful experiences often take on after the years have past . Fights , bad weather, infestations of bugs and generally loathesome conditions are all described with good natured wit. He describes the condition of things below the focsle head deck in terms of his subsequent experience as a pri soner of war: Not even the pits beside the railway tracks so thoughtfully provided by the Germans for our convenience when we were being moved westwards in chains from Czechoslovakia equaled the lavatories in the Moshulu. The ship is a study in anachronisms. Well kept and seaworthy, and yet with hellish living quarters and bad food-she is beautiful and gruesome at the same time . We see a collection of men from countries soon to be facing each other across the battlefield , sailing around the world in the last year of peace. The reader knows that with the end of this voyage , the coming of World War II will bring an end to the world of great sailing LARRY OTWAY cargo ships. Mr. Otway, Director of the St . Brendan Project in New York, spent many happy hours aboard the Moshulu when she was at the South Street Seaport in the early 1970s.

Masters of the Sea: British Marine Watercolours , Roger Quarm and Scott Wilcox (Phaidon Press w/ National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, UK, and Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1987, 96pp, illus, $17.95/ÂŁ1 I .50pb) The tradition of British marine watercolors began as a practical undertaking by British seamen to illustrate the topography of ports and coasts they visited. Its development was profoundly influenced by the Dutch marine artists William Van de Velde the Elder and the Younger, who moved to England in the late seventeenth century. Their greatest 50

contribution to the genre was their objectivity in rendering the appearance of ships and shipping. The conventions of this tradition were carried on by a number of sai lor/artists whose apprenticeship was served not in the studio but at sea. In the nineteenth century , marine watercolors began to shed this conventional style in pursuit of a more purely aesthetic and painterly interpretation of seascapes until , ultimately , ship portraiture and seascapes became almost two distinct genres . Published as an exhibition catalogue for the National Maritime Museum and the Yale Center for Marine Art, Masters of the Sea illuminates the technical and aesthetic issues involved in the development of British marine watercolor paintings over the last four centuries. The essays by Roger Quarm, of the museum , and Scott Wilcox , of the center, together with the beautifully reproduced illustrations in color and black and white , make this an exceptional guide to the subject. PAMELA VOSBURGH Ms . Vosburgh has worked as an archivist at the National Museum of American Art in Washington, as well as for a variety of fine arts publications.

The Down Easters: American Deepwater Sailing Ships, 1869-1929, Basil Lubbock (Dover Publications, Mineola , NY , 1987 (repr. 1930 ed.), 284pp, illus , $7.95pb)

American Clipper Ships 1833-1858 (2 vols) , Octavius T. Howe and Frederick G. Matthews (Dover Publications, Mineola, NY, 1986 (repr. 1926 ed.), 780pp, illus, $8.95pb each) When the young Basil Lubbock came home from the Klondyke in 1899 , he came by way of Cape Hom , before the mast in a square-rigger. He chose a British vessel , preferring the poor grub and relatively easy ways of a latter-day limejuicer to the belaying pin soup served up aboard the crack American Down Easters in the Cape Horn trade . But he felt then , as he did to the end of his days , that these hard-driven , flawlessly maintained Yankee ships made up an admirable chapter in the story of deepwater sail. And in years to come , as he wrote of the vanishing world of the sailing ship, he collected stories, photographs, letters , clippings-anything and everything he could to preserve the heritage of these handsome, more burdensome successors to the clippers which flouri shed from the mid- l 840s to the mid-50s. Lubbock ' s appreciation of the Down Easter which finally appeared in 1929 , is largely anecdotal , but includes valu-

able statistical material and rings with the authori ty of a true seafaring man. Some cognoscenti have carped at minor errors picked up in the act of retrieving sailors ' memories of vanished ships and crews-but Lubbock cannot be faulted , indeed cannot be matched in his feel for the life in these proud Yankee ships, and the wide-horizon perspective he brings to their sai ling. Howe and Matthews set out to catalogue that earlier, more famous breed of ship , the lithe , heavily sparred clippers that broke records in all oceans just before the Civil War. In research dating back to 1877 , they assembled biographies of 352 ships, complete with extensive quotations from contemporary letters, memoirs and newspaper accounts of these ships that for a brief, shining decade showed the world what was possible under sail. Dover is to be congratulated for bringing out these classy reprints of these classics-works not just of their age but for the ages. A new generation is in for a treat when it gets these well produced volumes to study and dream over. PETER STANFORD

Brotherhood of the Sea: A History of the Sailors' Union of the Pacific, 18851985, Stephen Schwartz (Transaction Books, Rutgers University, New Brunswick , NJ , 1986, 156pp, illus , $40.00hb) Born with a "Sailors ' Declaration of Independence'' on 6 March 1885 amid the trul y terrible conditions of labor then prevailing aboard US-flag merchant ships, the Sailors' Union of the Pacific has struggled through a hard-fought, stormy passage to arrive at the quite different scene of today , when conditions of US-flag seafaring are the best of any nation in the world, but when there are hardly any US-flag ships left on the oceans. The scene on which Stephen Schwartz's outstanding history of the union opens is one in which American sailors for two years running refused to participate in the American celebration of the Fourth of July, saying that " the spectacle of a slave worshipping his chains would be less ludicrous than that of the American seaman celebrating Independence Day." If this sounds like left-wing propaganda, try some objective statistics: "The U.S. merchant marine, with less than 10 percent of world commerce , reported over half as many cases of scurvy and beri-beri as the British merchant fleet , with 67 percent of world shipping ."' Scurvy? Beri-beri? If this sounds medieval , well , it was. In the drive to roll back early gains made by the union , SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987


the Supreme Court , in the year of our Lord 1897 , upheld imprisonment fo r qui tting a ship , which in pl ain language spell s involuntary servitude, a thing supposedl y not tolerated in the United States since the Civil War. The authority under whic h the Court acted? The Consolat de Mar, a maritime code evolved 12001400AD in Catalonia to set rul es for the burgeoning medieval sea trades of the Mediterranean. Stephen Schwartz, veteran of merchant marine service in the 1970s, and of work in railroad labor unions since, labored some years to produce this sweeping history of a hundred years of the maritime labor movement on the West Coast-a work that also sheds interesting light on East Coast labor history . The National Society's founding trustee Karl Kortum , Chief Curator of the National Maritime Museum , San Francisco, worked with Schwartz from his own knowledge of the movement and the conditions of seafaring. The result is a powerful and compelling history that does a much to fill a long-felt gap--a gap resulting fro m the absence of any gatheri ng-up of the strands of the long fight for social justice and fa ir working conditions aboard the ships the of US merchant marine. Some of these ships earned the name " blood boat" from the conditions of unspeakable brutality prevailing aboard. This was no figure of speech but a recorded reality-blood literally spilled on deck by

A. T. Pouch Endowment Fund In me mory of A. Timoth y Po uch , Jr., an endo wme nt fund has been set up to ensure the future of the National Soc iety . Thi s fund is espec ially suitabl e fo r bequests, and me mbe rs may want to conside r leav ing a gift to the NMHS . Bequests of thi s sort can decrease or eliminate Federal and State estate a nd inheritance taxes while benefittin g the Soc iety. A bequest can be a sum of money, shares of stock , o r othe r property; or it can be all or a portion of what remains after other gifts have been made . For more in fo rmatio n call o r write: John H . Reill y, Jr. , Esq . c/o Natio nal M aritime Hi storical Soc iety Mr. Re illy, an atto rney and trustee of the Society, w iII answer your questi ons.

SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987

rampaging, out-of-control bucko mates. " A kick by fate is one thing," says Karl Kortum at the end of his introd uction. "A kick by your fellow man is something else . That is the time to organize ." This book is about the decision of brave men to do just that, and what flowed fro m PETER STANFORD that decision.

THE NEW YORK HARBOR BOOK by Francis J. Duffy & William H . Miller A thorough his tory, punctuated by 96 grea t photos o f the New York Harbor, this book brings the read er up thro ugh the economics of luxuryliner days to our e ra of s ky tra vel and conta iners hips. " The reader could not pick up two be tter pilots than Fra nk Duffy a nd Bill Miller to nav iga te these waters," says Ri chard F. She pa rd of the New York Times. $24.25 ppd hardbound. $19.70 ppd pa pe rbound .

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LOST PARADISE Ian Cameron $24.95 cloth 248 pages Salem House 462 Boston St., Topsfield, MA 01983 617-887-2440

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NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY SPONSORS AMERICAN CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION APEX M ACHI NE CORPORATION ARON CHARITABLE TR UST VI NCENT A STOR F OUNDATION R . B ARNEIT H ARRY B ARON B EEFEATER FOU NDATION ALLEN G. B ERRIEN B OWN E & Co .• I NC . BROOKLYN UN ION GAS C OMPANY EDWARD & D OROTHY CARLTON Au. NG. CHOATE EDNA M cCONNELL CLARK FOUNDATION M EL VIN CONANT R EBEKA H T. D ALLAS LOI S D ARLING PONCET D AV IS, JR . J AMES R . DONA LDSON J AMES EAN MORRIS L. F EDER ROBERT E. GAMBEE EvA 0EB HA RD-GOURGAU D FOUNDAT ION J AMF.S W . G LANVILLE W. R . GRACE F OUNDATION MR & MRS. THOMAS H ALE W . J . H ENTSCHEL MRS. 0 . H . H OARD ELI SA HETH S. H OOPER FOUNDATION CECIL H OWARD C H ARI TABLE TR UST ALA H UTCHISON INTERNATIONAL l..oNGSHOREMEN LCDR . R OBERT IRVING USN ( R ET.) J AMES P . M c ALLISTER R . C. JEFFERSON BARBARA JOHNSON IR VING JOHNSON J . M . K APLAN FUND, I NC H A RRIS K EMPNER A . AlWATER K ENT. JR. W A RREN K OCH. PC D AVID H . K OLLOCK J . K EV I L ALLY H . THOMAS & EVELYN L ANGERT JAMES A. M ACDONALD FOUNDATION CLIFFORD 0 . M ALLORY . JR. M ARINE SOCI ETY. PORT OF Y M ARITIME O VERSEAS CORPORATION J . P . M CALLISTER MRS. fa.LI CE M cDoNALD. JR . SCHUYLER M EYER, JR . TH E H ON . & MRS. J . W . MIDDENDORF. II MILFORD B OAT WORKS. INC. M OBIL OIL CORP. M OORE-M CCORMACK R ESOURCES MR . & MRS. SPENCER L. M URFEY. JR . NEW Y OR K COUNCIL . NAVY L EAGUE OF THE UNITED STATES RICHARD K. PAGE MRS. A. T. POUCH. JR. MR . & MRS. ALB ERT PRATI L AU RANCE S . ROCKEFELLER JOHN G . R CKiERS B A RBARA SCHLECH A . M ACY SMITH JEAN$. SM ITH SETH SPRAGUE FOUNDATION NORMA & PETER STANFORD EDM UND A . STANLEY , JR . JOHN STOBA RT SHANNON W ALL. N . M . U . H E.NRY PENN W ENGER MR. & M RS . WIUIAM T . WHITE JOHN WI LEY AND SONS. I NC. W OODEN B OAT Y ACHTING Y AN KEE CLIPPER

DONORS CAPT. ROBERT G . BRAUN CHARLES A . B ENORE P . S. DEBEAUMONT MRS. JOHN W. DI XON JAMES P . F ARLEY H ENRY F. GREI NER CAPT. ALFRED H ORKA JACKSON HOLE PRESERVE L EONA ROC. JAQUES L EATEX C HEM ICAL CO. LoBSTER INN. INC. C . N. MILLER D AVID M . MILTON TRUST H ARRY L. NELSON M ARY PEA BODY 0oNA LD W . PETIT E . A. POSUN IA K PETER R OBINSON H AVEN ROOSEVELT JOSEPH & JEAN SAWICLLE H . K . SCHAEFER H OWARD SLOTN ICK Swiss AMERICAN SECURITIES EDMOND THORNTON SK IP & R OGER T OUEFSEN JOHN C. V OLK EDWARD ZELINSKY

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SUSTAINING PATRONS THOMAS AKIN D AV ID M . B AKER R ONALD B ANCROFT B ENJAM IN BAXTER CIRCLE L INE PLAZA CHARLES D . CLAR K A LICE D ADOU RIAN STAN D ASHEW JOHN H. DEANE PAUL DEMPSTER M ALCOLM DICK DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORP. THE E DSON C ORP. H ENRY F AIRLEY. III BRE T FOLL WEILER R OLAND GR IM M CAPT. WILLI A M H . H AMILTON R USSELL W. H ARR IS THOMAS C . H ENRY H OWARD HIGHT T OWNSEND H ORNOR R uss K NEELAND ELIOT S. K NOWLES AARON LEVINE P . Li ND CLYTIE MEA D EDWARD M UHLFELD TH EODORE PRATI PETER R OBINSON J OHN H . D EANE CHARLES W . SH AMBAUGH MELBOU RN E SMITH J ACK B. SPRINGER CDR . VICTOR B . STEVEN. J R. MR . & MRS. GEORGE T OLLEFSEN JAMES 0 . T URNER J . 0 . VAN I TALLI E THOMAS W ATSON ELDREDGE W ELTON THOMAS J . WI NG GLENN E . W YATI

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PATRONS WIWAM K . AB ELES E. DoUGL.AS ADAMS H ENRY ADAMS RA YMOND AKER JIM ALDERMAN P. M . ALDRICH ROBERT& RHODA AMON H ENRY H. A NDERSON. JR. MR . & MRS. W A LTER ANDERSON CAPT. S . ANDERT E . P . A NDREWS RICHARD ANGLES PETER A NSOFF ANDRE M . ARMBRUSTER R . STUART ARM STRONG JACK ARON PETER ARON A SSOCIATION OF M A RYLAND PILOTS R OBERT H . ATH EA RN G. R . ATIERB URY BI LL A UBRY P ATR ICK B ABCOCK H A RR Y K . B A ILEY JAMES S. B AILEY B ENJA MIN B . B AKER JOHN E . B A KK EN JOHN B . B A LCH B . A. B A LDWIN, JR. R OBERT BALY C HA RLES P . BARKER PETER B A RTOK J . BURR B A RTRAM . J R. J . H . B ASCOM JOHN H . B ATIS W . H . B AUER R AYMOND B AZURTO EDWARD L. B EACH JOHN C. B ECKER E. M AR K B ECKMAN G . A. B ECN EL JANE R. BEDSSEM JEROME B ELSON MR . & MRS. A LAN B ENDELI US MR . AND MRS. JAMES A . B ERGONZI D UDLEY BI ERAU JAN BJORN-H A SEN C A RROLL N . B JURNSON ARTHUR BLACKETI BI LL BLEYER PA UL M . BLOOM JACK B OYD E RNEST S . BREED FREDERICK BREWSTER L AWRENCE B REWSTER L UTHER N B RIOOMAN K . L. BRI EL OR . CHARLES M . BRIGGS THOMAS H . B ROADUS, JR . M R. & MRS. M AUR ICE J . BR ETZAELD CARL K. BROGA PETER L. BROSNAN JAMES H . B ROUSSAND D AVID F . B ROWN R AY MOND G . B ROWN R AY BROW MD THOMAS 0 . BROWN FREDERICK BRUENNER H OWAR D F . BRYAN. JR. JOHNS. B ULL PETER A. B URCKMYER B URK E B UILDING SA LVAGE. I NC. ROBERT J . B URKE CRAIG B URT. JR. JAY G. B URWELL STEVEN B UTIERWORTH DR . GEORGE C. B UZBY. JR . G EORGE F . BYARD JOHN H . BYR NE ANDREW CARDUNER THOMAS P . B YRNES JAMES R . CADY B OYD W. CAFFEY R ALPH A . CALDWELL MR . & MRS. STEELE C. CAMERON M A RGA RI E 0 . CAMP .ERIK C. CANABOU CANADIAN TRANSPORT , I NC. JAMES R . CARMAN DAV ID CARNAHAN MR . & MRS. R . E. CASS IDY CENTRAL G ULF LI NES JON H . CHAFE ROGER CHAMPAGNE C. A . CHAPIN JAMESE. CHAPMAN R OBERTCHA PMAN TERRY CHA PMAN J . K . CHARGOIS. JR . C HARLESTON N EUROSU RGICALA SSOC. RICHARDO. C HASTAIN JOHN CH ICHESTER A u.NG. CHOATE ERBERT CICENIA ALBERTCIZAUSKAS. JR . M R. & MRS. C.THOS. Cu.GETT. JR. C HARLF.S D . CU. RK JACK A . CLARK ROBERT B . CLARKE H ERBERT A. CLASS GEORGE F. CLEMENTS JOHN COEN JOHN L. COLE JOHN J . COWNS CHARLES E . COUOPY J . FERREU.. COLTON COMMONWEALTH OF M ASSACHUSElTS CDR . & M RS . R . E. CONRADY TR EVOR CONSTABLE DoNALD G . COOK JAMES C. COOK L ARRY L. COOPER LCDR . MICHAEL CORDASCO RICHARD C. C ORRELL C HUCK COSTA D ANIEL COWAN W ALTER J . COWA N DR . R AY w . COYE WILLI AM P . Cozza J . w. CRAWFORD R . M YRON C RESSY W A LTER CRON KITE CHESTER & A NN CROSB Y B OWDOIN B . CROWNINS HI ELD H . CUM MI NGS BRIGGS CUNN INGHAM ALTON F . CURRY ALBERT L. C US ICK Curry SA RK SCOTS WHISKY P AU LL. D AIGNEAU LT H . DA V ID D ALQUI ST M ORG AN D ALY PETER T . D AMON WILLI AM H . D A RTNELL JAMES K . D AVIDSON JOAN D AV IDSON F. K ELSO D AV IS JmtN N . D AYTON D ENN IS D EAN D OUGLAS H . DEAN JOHN H . DEANE R OBB D EGNON A NNE D EI KE JOSEPH DE PAUL & SONS CAPT. JOHN F. D ERR H . D EXTER. JR . BRENT DIBNER MICHAEL DICK JAMES DI CKMAN A NTHONY D IMAGGIO DA NIEL PAUL DIXON D EBORA H D EMPSEY w. R . DoAK D AVID L. DoDGE WILLI AM M A IN DoERA..INGER DoLPHIN B OOK CLUB N . DoNALDSON DR . JAM ES M . DoNLEY WI LLIAM DoNNELLY BILL DoUGHERTY JONATH AN DOUGHERTY R . L . DoXSEE CAPT. R OBERT DR EW JEREM IA H T . DRISCOLL R OBERT R . D UFF R EYNOLDS D UPONT JOHN D USENBURY WILLI AM A. D YER . JR. JAMES EAN BRA DLEY H . EATON D AV ID B . EATON FRAN K EBERHART H OWARD H . EDDY DoNNA EIXiEMAN M R. & M RS . FLETCHER EGGERT. JR. STUA RT EHR EN REICH R AY EISENBERG CARL EKLOF PAUL EKLOF CAPT. RICHA RD 0 . ELSENSOHN GEORGE F . EMERY FRED EMMER ICH ENERGY TR ANSPORTATION CORP. DAMON L. ENGLE MR . & MRS. R . S. ERSKINE. JR . EsSEX B OAT W ORKS CDR . L. F . EsT ES WILLIAM E VERDELL JOHN & CAROL EWA LD :JOHN H ENRY F ALK GEORGE F EIWELL GERALD FELDMAN LYNN S. FELPS MR . & MRS. STEPHEN M . FENTON Ill H AROLD B . F ESSENDEN JA MES 0 . F EU RTADO DouGLAS FI FE JOHNS. FISCHER DI ELLE FLEISCHMANN ELLEN F LETCHER AR LI NE FLOOD MR . & MRS. BENJ AM IN FOGLER JAMES FOLEY F. S. FORD, JR . CAPTAIN R OBERT I. Fox CAPT. WILLI AM FRANK DR . & MRS. Louis FR EEMAN FRED FR EEMAN CHARLES M . FREY J . E. FRICKER DR . H ARRY FRIEDMAN D AVID F ULLER REGINA LD H. FULLERTON. JR . JOSE GARCIA· R AM IS ERNEST GASPARRI BERNARD M . G EIGER EDWARD GE.LTSTHORPE GEORGE ENG INE COMPANY WILLI AM G ILK ERSON G LENN G AECKLE R ICHARD GALLANT LCDR . B . A . GILMORE H ENRY GLICK JAMES E . G OLDEN PRODUCTIONS H ENRY G ORNEY PETER J . GOULANDR IS OLI VER R . GRACE. JR . PHILIP GRA F JAM ES GRA FT ARTHURS. GRAHAM MR . & MRS. T ERR Y W . GRAN IER M AYOR & MRS . R OBERT H . GRASMERE JI M GRAY PETER L. GRAY C . WILLI AM GREEN II LEONA RD M . GREENE ROBERT H . GREGORY D ONALD W . GR IMES JOHN M . GROLL CAPT. M ARK GROSSHANS PETER G UARDI NO CHARLES GULDEN R . H . G ULLAGE DR . JAMES GUTHRIE H A DLEY EX HIBITS, INC . MR . & MRS. F . H AGGETT M ORTIMER H ALL GEORGE B . H AM ILTON JOHN R . H A MI LTON ROBERT K . H ANSEN BR UCE E. F . H ANSON A. B . H ARDING. JR R OBERT 0 . H A RRI NGTON. JR . F RED H ARTMANN CLIFFORD H ASLAM COURTNEY H AUCK M A RSHALL DEL. H AYWOOD CAPT. JAMES E. H EG D . H EMMERDINGER H A ROLD H ERBER R . H ERVEY JAMES D . H ERWARD ROBERT J . H Ewrrr CARL w. H EXAMER Gu NAR F. H EXUM DR . ALBERT E. H ICKEY CHARLES HI LL GEORGE H OFFMAN K AREN INA M ONTHEIX H OFFMAN W ALTER W . HOFFMAN R OBERT W . H OFFMANN C RA IG H OLBERGER H ELENE. H OLCOMB PETER H OLLE 'BECK Aux T. H ORNBLOWER CAPT. M . F . H ORVATH B . J . H OWARD THOMAS H OYNE Ill H ARRY H . H RYN YK R OBERT W . H UBNER PER H UFFELDT WILLI AM J . H URLE Y CAPT. FRANCIS H URS KA R OBERT H lJITON JAMES M . H UTTON Ill H YLAND GRANBY A NTIQUES STUART INGERSOLL JA MES B. I GLEHEART D UDLEY C. H UM PHREYS INTERN ATIONA L ORGAN IZATION OF M ASTERS. M ATES & PILOTS BRA D I VES GEORGE ! VEY J . S. JACOX T OBY JAFFE CAPT. GEORGE W. JAHN PETER E. JAQU ITH COL. G EORGE M . JAMES P AU L C. JA MI SON K NUD JENSEN R OBERT P. JERR ED CAPT. F. B. JERRELL B OYD JEWETr ARNOLD JONASSE JON C. JOHNSON D OUG LAS JOHNSTON CHA RLES M . JONES ELIZABETH FI SCHER JONES D ENN IS JORDAN W . J . JOVAN B EA K A HN NORMA N K AM ERMANN AR NET K ASER N EIL K EATING K ELLY H UNTER & CO ., INC. CAROL J . K ELLY D ANAE . K ELLY PATRICK K ENNEDY JOHN K ENNEY R . E. K ENYON III B REENE M . K ERR KIDDER. PEABODY & CO. D AVID KILLARY R OBERT J. KIMTIS G ERA LD KI NG JOHN KI NNEY SAM K LAGSBRUN. MD H A RRY K NOX L F.sTER A. K OCHER K ARL K ORTUM RICHARD W . K OSTER MR . & MRS. FRAN K K OITMEIER W ILLIAM H . KR A MER C. JA MES KR AUS A NDREW KR AV IC K ARL L ANCE KREMER K A I KRISTENSEN KJ EU KRI STIANSE GEORGE P. KROH EMIL L ANDAU JAY L ANQERMA N FR EDER ICK N. LANG ROBERT L A RSEN W . D . L AURIE RICHARD L AZARUS EDWARD C. L EE G USTAV H . LENGENFELDER PHILIP L EONARD B ERNA RD L ESLIE H OWARD L ICHTERMAN SALLY LI NDSAY MR . & MRS. F . M . LI NLEY ARTHURS. LISS L. D . L LOYD CAJTJ'. L. M . LoGAN RICHARDO loPES CALEB LoR ING T . L AWRENCE L UCAS Jt-.A N L UCY C HARLES L UNOOREN JOHN J . LYNCH. JR. K ENNETH LYNCH & SONS RADM. H ARVEY LYON MICHAEL J . M ACARIO G EORGE M ACDoNOUGH R oss M ACDUFFIE C APT. WILLI AM H . M ACFADEN M . D . M ACPH ERSON JOSEPH 8. M ADISON LAWRENCE M ALLA y MANALAPAN Y ACHT CLUB JOSEPH A . M ANLEY M AR IN Tua & B ARGE DR . & MRS. RICHARD M ARTIN RICHARD W . M ARTIN THOMAS F. MASON WILLI AM M ATH ERS WI LLIAM M ATH EWS, JR . PH1L1P ,MAmNGLY PETER MAx JOHN M AY BRIAN M cAu1STER G. P . M cCARlliY H A ROLD J . McCORMICK FRAN K M c D ERMOTI CAPT. E. M c DoNALD JEROME M cGLYNN PAUL McGoNIGLE H ow ARD McGREGOR. JR. M R. & MRs. GEORGE A. McLAUGHLIN JAMES M cNAMARA JOHN L. M cSHANE PETERS. M ERR ILL T oM & JANET M ETZGER JOHN MILLER STUART MILLER MICHAEL MILLS R . K ENT M ITCHELL CHESlCR M IZE CAPT. Louis M OCK R ICHARD M ONSEES MD K ENNETH M ORAN C. S . M ORGAN JAMES E. M ORGAN MR . & MRS. D ANIEL M ORGENSTERN DANI EL M ORONEY R OBERT E. M ORRIS . JR. J . R . M ORRISSEY ANGUS C. M ORR ISON MR. & MRS. EM IL M OSBACHER. JR. WILLI AM M UCHNIC JAMES W . MULLEN II K EN MULLER JOHN C . M URDOCK MICHAEL M URRO CAPT. G. M . M USICK CAPT. W ALTER K . NADOLNY . JR . M. J . NAGY NANTUCKET SH IPYARD, I NC. H ARRY L . N ELSON. JR. SCOlT NEWHALL M ER RILL NEWMAN M ORR IS W . NEWMAN R EV . EARLE NEWMAN NEWSDAY W . R . NIBLOCK WILLIAM L. NICHOLAS R OBERT NICHOLS J EREM IAH NI XON ROBERT J . NOLAN MI LTON G. NOTIINGHAM M ACEY NOYES CAPT. CARLISS R . NUGENT O CEANIC N AV IGATION R ESEA RCH SOCIETY CLIFFORD B . O'HARA T. M ORGAN O ' H ORA B . J. O'N EILL JAMES F . OLSEN C HARLES J . OWEN PATR ICIA O WEN ROBERT B. OWEN R OBERTS OWEN PACIFIC-GULF M ARINE. I NC. D AVID OESTREICH LI NCOLN & ALLISON P AINE L AIRD PARK. JR. D AVID J . PAR KS S. T . PARKS WILLI A M H . PARK S RICHARD H . PARSON R OBERTS. P ASKULOVICH GI ULIO C. PATI ES JAMES A. P ATIEN JOHN J . P ATIERSON, JR . JOHN N. P EARSON E ARL PEDERSEN MR S. G . L. f>ELI SSERO A. A . PENDLETON TIMOTHY L. PERR Y. JR. PASTA T OWING CO. LTD. MILES & NANCY PET ERLE PETERSON B UILDERS. I NC DoNALD P ETTIT H EN RY PETRON IS MR . & MRS. N ICHOLAS PHILLIPS F. N. PIASECKI AUR A- L EE PrrrENGER MR . & MRS. WILLIAM T. POPE PORT A NNA POLIS M AR INA H EN RY POWELL H EINO H . PRA HL FRANCIS C. PRATI IR VING PRESTON Q UICK & REILLY . I NC. ALBERT QUI NTRALL R . E. WI LCOX. INC. B END. RAMALEY CAPT. JOHN W . R AND RICHARD RATH AR VI E. RATY W ILLIAM R AY SAM UEL A. R EA COL. ALFRED J . R EESE JOHN R EILLY R AY R EM ICK FREDERICK R EM INGTON A. E. R ENNER P . R . J . R EYNOLDS MR . & MRS. 0oNALD RICE MR & M RS. F . B . RICE W . M A RK RIGGLE EDWA RD R ITIENHOUSE C A1YI' . JOSE RI VERA E. D . R OBBINS. MD R EED ROBERTSON JAMES L. R OBERTSON CHARLES R . R OB INSON RICHA RD L. ROB INSON H UGH D . R OLF D AV ID ROSEN L F.sTER R oSENBLATf PETER R oss PHILIP R oss JAMES W . R OYLE . JR . EDMUND RUMOWICZ D AVID R . R YAN M . J . R YAN WI LLIAM R . R YAN R . 0 . R YDER CH ARLES I RA SACHS JAMES M . SALTER Ill SAN DI EGO Y ACHT CLUB A. H ERBERT SANDWEN ARTHUR J . SANTRY E. W . SASYBOLT & Co .. I NC H . R . SA UNDERS, JR. DouG & M INDY SAVAGE w. B . H . SAWYER CARL H . SCHAEFFER JOHN D . SCHATVEL D AV ID & B ARBARA SCHELL RICHARD J . SCHEUER STEPHEN SCHOFF H ELEN M . SHOLZ D ENNIS A. SCHULD R OBERT SELLE WILLI AM R. SEYBOLD H UGH R . S HARP MICHAEL T. S HEEHAN ROBERT P . SHEEHY R OBERT v. SHEEN. JR. K ENNETH w. SHEETS, JR . L EE SHI NABA RGER Srnrs OF THE SEA M USEU M SIGNAL COMPAN IES I NC. FR AN K S IMPSON EDWA RD M. SKANTA FRANCIS D . SKELLEY EASTON C . SKINNER CHARLES R . SLIGH Ill STEPHEN SLOAN MR . & MRS. EOOAR F . SMITH H OWA RD SMITH MR . & MRS . L AR RY D . SMITH LYM AN H. SMITH THOMAS SMITH MR. & MRS. EDWARD W. SNOWDORF MR . E . P . S YDER M AX SOLMSSEN JOSEPH SONNABEND CONWAY B . SONNE DR . JUDSON S PEER WILLIAM SPEERS THOMAS R . SPENCER F. . SPIESS PHILIP STENGER SUSIE STENHOUSE F rrz H . STEVENS. JR. W . T . STEVENS WILLI AM STEWART J . T . STILLMAN R OBERT A . STRANGE M ARSHALL STREI BF..RT D ANIEL R. S UKIS W ALTER J . Sut.U VAN CAPT. J OHN SVENSSON BRUCE S WEDIEN LCDR . THOMAS L. Swwr EUGENE SYDNOR J . C . SYNNOTr H ENRY T ALB ERT D AVIS TAYLOR PETER G. THEODORE C. PETER TH EUT BARRY D . THOMAS JOHN W . THOMAS CLARK THOMPSON JOHN 8 . THOMSON . JR. JOHN TH URMAN GERALD A. TIBBETS R OBERT TICE MR . & MRS. ALLEN L. TOPPING NOAH T orr EN A NTHONY TRALLA JAMES THOR INGTON ALFRED T YLER II CAPT. H . N . TWEEDLE UNIVERSA L M ARITIME SER VICES C ORPORATION JOSEPH URBA NS KI RENAUD V A LENTI N CAPT . ROBERT D . V ALENTINE M A RION V ALPEY T ED V ALPEY M R. & MRS. H ENRY VANDERSIP EDSEL A. VENUS H ARRY D . V ERHOOG FRANZ V ON ZIEGESAR R AYMO/'\ D E. W A LLACE T ERR Y W ALTON BR UCE E. W ARE ALEXANDER W ATSON JOHN W . W EAVER H . ST. JOHN WEBB Ill MR . & MRS. TIMOTHY F. W EBER ELIZABETH B . W EEDON K ENNETH W EEKS R AYNER W EIR WILLI AM W EIR R ANDY W ESTON CRAIG W. WHITE SIR G OROON WHITE KBE JOHN R OBERT WHITE R AYMOND D . WHITE GEORGE WHITESIDE G. G . WHITNEY. JR . FR . JAMES WHITIEMORE WI LLIAM A . A . WICHERT J . S. WILFORD LA URENCE WILLARD B i:.TflE Z. WILLI AM R OBERT WI LSON WILLI AM F. WISEMAN WILLIA M H . P . WITH ERS L AURENCE WH!TIEMORE W ALTER G . WOHLEK ING EDWARD W OLLENBERG WOM EN'S PROPELLER CLUB. PORT OF BOSTON WOM EN'S PROPELLER CLUB. PORT OF NEW Y ORK RICK W OOD DoRAN R. WRIGHT J. L . WRIGHT T . H . WRIGHT. JR . WILLI AM C. W YGANT JAMES H. Y OCUM JOHN Y OUELL H ENRY A . Y OUMANS Tt·IOMAS R . Y OUNG KIRK Y OUNGMAN DoNALD ZUBROD

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MODEL

SUCCESS STORY' "The Maritime Prepositioning Ship program is a model success story, and I couldn't be more pleased . MPS is on schedule and proving to be an extremely valuable strategic asset ." . - General PX. Kelley Commandant U.S. Marine Corps

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DISTRICT 2 MARINE ENGINEERS BENEFICIAL ASSOCIATION -ASSOCIATED MARITIME OFFICERS AFFILIATED WITH THE AFL-CIO MARITIME TRADES DEPARTMENT 650 FOURTH AVENUE BROOKLYN, N.Y. 11232 (718) 965-6700

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RAYMOND T. McKAY PRESIDENT

JOHN F. BRADY EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT


"Pilot Boat GEORGIA" is reproduced from an original acrylic by Captain Brian Hope. Captain Hope, an MM&P member since 1965, is a Kings Point Graduate, a Baltimore Harbor Pilot and a member of the Association of Maryland Pilots. He is a self-taught artist and holds an artist m e mbership in th e Am erican S ociety of Marine Artists.

This Is MM&P Country Twenty four hours-a-day, in fair weather or foul , American pilots provide their local knowledge and shiphandling skills to keep all kinds of ships moving to and from our ports safely and efficiently. The workhorse of the service is the pilot launch, here represented by the Savannah Pilots' 77' GEORGIA, shown running for home before a rough sea after placing a pilot aboard an inbound American tanker. Pilot boats differ from port to port, but the radar-equipped GEORGIA is typical of the fast, seaworthy launches which help guarantee that a pilot will be on station when neededevery time. Today's pilots regularly register for courses such as All-Weather Navigation , Electronic Navigation and Ship Handling so they can enhance, in the safe environs of the land-based ship simulators and other classrooms, the skills necessary for guiding vessels through our nation's harbors. At any time you will find MM&P Pilots enrolled in these and other courses at MM&P' s Maritime Institute of Technical and Graduate Studies (MITAGS) at Linthicum Heights, Maryland. ROBERT J. LOWEN

F. ELWOOD KYSER

International President

International Secretary-Treasurer

International Organization of

Masters, Mates & Pilots 700 Maritime Boulevard, Linthicum Heights, MD 21090 •Tel: (301) 850-8700 •Cable: BRIDGED ECK, Washington , DC• Telex: 750831


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