No. 46
NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY
WINTER 1987-88
THE SHIP As MusEUM THE JEREMIAH O'BRIEN THE EMERY RICE ENGINE THE SCHOONER ERNESTINA THE 1987 MYSTIC INTERNATIONAL THE CHRISTMAS TREE SCHOONER
______ Exp. Date ______ Signature _______________ Name - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Address - - - - - - - - - - - - - - City _ _ _ _ _ _ State ___ Z i p - - - -
ISS N 0146·9312
No. 46
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 additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Sea History , 132 Maple St., Croton, NY 10520. COPYRIGHT © 1988 by the National Maritime Historical Society. Tel. 914 271-2177. MEMBERSHIP is invited: Plankowner $10,000; Benefactor $5,000; Sponsor $1,000; Donor $500; Sustaining Patron $250; Patron $I 00; Contributor $50; Family $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. Individual copies cost $2.75. OFFICERS & TRUSTEES are Chairman: James P. McA llister; Vice Chairmen: Alan G. Choate, James Ean, Schuyler M. Meyer, Jr. ; President: Peter Stanford; Vice President: Norma Stanford; Secretary: Spencer Smith; Treasurer: Robert W. Elliott, Ill; Trustees: Henry H. Anderson , Jr. , Alan G. Choate, Robert W. Elliott, ill, Capt. Robert E. Hart , Karl Kortum, J. Kevin Lally , Richardo Lopes, Robert J. Lowen, James P. McAllister, Schuyler M. Meyer, Jr. , Nancy Pouch , Spencer Smith, Peter Stanford; Chairman Emeritus: Karl Kortum ; President Emeritus: Alan D. Hutchison . OVERSEERS: Chairman: Henry H. Anderson , Jr.; Charles F. Adams, Townsend Hornor , George Lamb , Clifford D. Ma ll ory , 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. Carr, William Main Doerflinger, Harry Dring, John Ewald , Joseph L. Farr, Timothy G. Foote, Richard Goold-Adams , Walter J. Handelman , Mel Hardin, Robert G. Herbert , 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 Sm ith , Ralph L Snow, John Stobart, Albert Swanson, Shannon Wall, Robert A. Weinstein, Thomas Wells, Charles Wittholz. American Ship Trust, Secretary: Eric J. Berryman. WORLD SHIP TRUST: Chairman: Frank G. G . Carr; Vice Presidents: Henry H. Anderson , Jr. , Viscount Caldecote, Sir Rex Hunt , Hammond Innes , Rt. Hon. Lord Lewin , Sir Peter Scott, Rt. Hon. Lord Shackleton; Dep. Director: J. A . Forsythe; Hon. Treasurer: Richard Lee; Mensun Bound, Dr. Nei l Cossons, Maldwi n Drummond , Alan McGowan , Arthur Prothero, Peter Stanford. Membership: £ 12 payable WST, c/o Dep. Dir. , 129a North Street, Burwell , Cambs. CBS OBB, England. Reg. Charity No. 27775 1. SEA HJSTORY STAFF: Editor: Peter Stanford; Managing Editor: Norma Stanford; Associate Editor: Lincoln P. Paine; Advertising Manager: Barbara Ladd; Advertising & Production Assistant: Joseph Stanford; Accounting: Veronica Gnewuch; Membership Secretary: Patricia Anstett; Assistant to the President: Susan K. Sereni; Corresponding Secretary: Marie Lore.
WINTER 1987-88
CONTENTS 4 6 8 12 16 18 20 22 25 26 32 34 36 38 40 42
46
EDITOR'S LOG, LETTERS & QUERIES NMHS PROJECTS, Lincoln Paine THE LOSS OF THE PAMIR, Ralph W. West THE SHIP AS MUSEUM , Peter Stanford HOW WE SAVED THE JEREMIAH O'BRIEN, Thomas J . Patterson FROM UGLY DUCKLING TO MUSEUM SHIP, Gretchen Grover THE EMERY RICE ENGINE, Lauren S. McCready SCHOONER ERNESTINA: HISTORY UNDER SAIL, Daniel Moreland MARINE ART: NEWS THE 1987 MYSTIC INTERNATIONAL, J. Russell Jinishian SEAPORT EXPERIENCE, Peter Stanford SAIL TRAINING: TE VEGA IN THE MEDITERRANEAN, David Buchanan SAIL TRAINING NEWS SHIP TRUST ACTIVITIES REPORT FOR 1987, Frank G. G. Carr & Eric Berryman THE CHRISTMAS TREE SCHOONER ROUSE SIMMONS, Joseph A. Nowak, Jr. SHIP NOTES: A PEKING HAND SALUTES HIS SHIP, Irving M . Johnson THE CHANTY MOVEMENT IN EUROPE, John & Christine Townley SHIP NOTES , SEAPORT & MUSEUM NEWS REVIEWS: THE BOOK LOCKER, Hal Fessenden
COVER: Though the museum ship sails to a new purpose , with ballast and ventilating fans in her hold and her tweendeck stuffed with artifacts, she has an important voyage to make and an important cargo to deliver. (See pp. 13-22.)
The National Maritime Historical Society is saving America's seafaring heritage. Join us. We bring to life America's seafaring past Won ' t you join us to keep alive our nation 's seafaring legacy? through research , archaeological expediMembership in the Society tions and ship preservation costs only $25 a year. You ' ll efforts. We work with musereceive Sea History, a fascinums , historians and sail training m11mm~ groups and report on these ating magazi ne filled with artiactivities in our quarterl y cles of seafa ring and historical journal Sea History. lore . You ' ll a lso be eligible for discounts on books , prints We are also the American arm of the World Ship Trust , an and other items. Help save our seafaring heritage. Join the international group working National Maritime H istorical worldwide to help save ships of historic importance. Society today '
TO: Natio n al Mar it ime Historical Societ y, 132 Maple St. , Croton-on-Hudson, NY 10520 YES I want to help. I under,tand that my contribution goes to forward the work o f the Society 'and that I'll be kept informed by receiving SEA HISTORY quanerly . Enclosed is: 0 $1,000 Sponsor0 $500Donor0 $100Patron 0 $50Contributor0$35Family 0 $25Regular0 $12.50Student/Retired NAME
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SEA HISTORY , WINTER 1987-88
3
EDITOR'S LOG "More power to you-and to all of us! " says Frank Braynard, a founding member of the Society, as we come up to our 25th anniversary this year. So much has happened in these twenty-five years , one finds it hard to imagine what the next quarter century will hold. Come to our Annual Meeting in South Street this 21 May, and let us know your thoughts. And if you can'tcome in person, please write. No birthday gift is more important than the contribution of your concerns and your thoughts. One present we have already is an index of authors published in Sea History since SH I was published in April 1972. These are people who bring us great gifts! There are the real Cape Hom sailormen like Fred Klebingat, Karl Kortum or Alan Villiers , and men brought up in the coasting schooner trade like Biff Bowker of Mystic , John Noble of New York, or Charlie Sayle of Nantucket. Veterans of the New England fisheries like Bob Herbert or Sterling Hayden (who went on to achieve fame as movie actor and writer) and veterans of tugs and schooner barges, battleships , Liberty ships and their deadly foe the U-boatsall meet in the pages of Sea History. They give us the testimony of their lives. And we gain insights and information we treasure. A letter from A. 0. Jones in South Africa concerning a water-logged issue of Sea History he had received (via "one of those wondrous containers on deck"), led to his memory of how things were done in an earlier day, and particularly how the Clydeside shipwrights, of the breed that built the square rigger Balclutha (seep 12), would argue out how to do things in local pubs, whose proprietors learned to keep a chalk handy for these master-craftsmen to sketch out their elegant solutions to the problems of bending and rivetting iron and steel plates to the delicate shapes called for in such ships . Our job is to provide such a comer of the world, where people can meet to remember and enter into the living heritage of seafaring, with its hard, graceful learning gained in service to the ship.
* * * * * I became editor of Sea History in 1976, following in the footsteps of Frank 0 . Braynard and Norman Brouwer. With the next issue Lincoln Paine becomes editor. He needs our help and support for the work ahead . As do I, in my work as president to see the Society no longer at risk but properly ballasted and standing up to its canvas as it sails into its next quarter century. PETER STANFORD 4
LETTERS More Power to All of Us! Three cheers for the Maritime Alliance and the National Maritime Historical Society's work to pull it together. It is precisely what I think, and have long felt, the field needs to keep moving forward the work of the many fine groups who are at the heart of the maritime history movement in this country-and the world! My own best recollection of how vital this community of groups and individuals is to our work comes from the success ofOpSail '76, which owed so very much to the grass roots effort we were ablewith relative ease-to mobilize, and whose members went on to carry out some great successes on their own. The little Jennie is one example from near home that stands out. And the Society should do the work of bringing these numbers together. We started in 1963 (I was a founding member of the effort) to save the Kaiulani, which did not tum out as we would have liked. But through SEA HISTORY and other Society efforts, we have brought maritime awareness to so many people and made things happen . So why not go on doing what we've been doing all along? I say more power to you-and to all of us! FRANK
0.
BRAYNARD
Curator American Merchant Marine Museum Kings Point, New York Mr. Braynard, a founding trustee of the NMHS, now serves as co-chairman of the Advisory Council. A prolific author and artist, he was the director of Operation Sail 1976, among many other important efforts in our field.-ED .
"Necessary Lines" I would like to thank you for publishing Captain Frank F. Farrar's review of my novel A Northern Saga (see SH44). Captain Farrar did a fine job in seeing my intent in writing the novel, to show both the convoys of the Battle of the Atlantic and Murmansk Run, and the type of seamen who sailed the merchant ships during World War II. We are hoping to get Saga into high school or college courses. Little or no attention is paid to the part that merchant ships played in the Allied victory. Today, one of our nation's weaknesses is the lack of a maritime policy which will ensure full logistical support to our armed forces in case of war. Russia now has a large and ever expanding fleet of tankers and cargo vessels that can support any military effort anywhere in the world . My airh in writing A Northern Saga was to show how necessary continuous supply lines were during World
War II, and how we must again have a merchant marine that will ensure constant support of our military in any operation, if that operation is to be a success. LAWRENCE A. MURPHY Brockton, Massachusetts A Fire Rekindled Your visit to Biloxi has re-kindled the fire of enthusiasm for maritime preservation in our area. We really appreciate your taking time to help us in our schooner project and in promoting the maritime preservation movement along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. If we can be of any assistance in your efforts nationwide, please call on us. MAYOR GERALD BLESSEY Biloxi, Mississippi Mayor Blessey' s enthusiasm was evident in the National Society's reception for the bark Elissa in Biloxi last October and in the good works going forward in that Gulf Coast seaport with his encouragement.-Eo.
Manning the Constitution I can sympathize with George F. Campbell's position (SH45, Letters) that the Constitution-Guerriere battle counted for little in determining the outcome of the War of 18 I 2, but I feel compelled to say something in refutation of his remarks concerning the Yankee ship's crew and guns. Isaac Hull's crew was recruited mainly in the Baltimore-Washington area in June and early July I 812, at a time when Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton had issued a directive seeking to eliminate both French and English men from warship crews. Granted that such directives were not strictly enforced, still it seems unlikely that there was a significant number of Englishmen in the crew and even less likely that many were "ex-Royal Navy seamen who had fought at Trafalgar." As for a considerable number of Constitution's guns also being ex-Royal Navy, that is completely wrong. According to primary documents in the National Archives and the Naval Historical Center which spell out where the ship's 1812-15 batteries came from, the 24-pound long guns were produced at Colonel Samuel Hughes' Cecil Iron Works in Havre de Grace, Maryland, during the winter and summer of 1808. The 32-pound carronades were cast at Henry Foxhall's Columbia Iron Works in Georgetown, DC, during the spring and early summer of 1808. All of these guns were shipped to the Constitution in New York at the direction of Commandant Thomas Tingey of the Washington Navy Yard. Mr. Campbell may have been misled, as countless others have been, by the preSEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
sence of the so-called " English guns " on the ship since her 1927-31 refit. As is the case with many of the things he did, Lieutenant John Lord has left us no explanation as to why he cast the guns in the patterns he did. TYRONEG. MARTIN , Cdr, USN (ret) Cohasset, Massachusetts Commander Martin , Captain of the USS Constitution from 1974 to 1978, is the author of That Most Fortunate Ship (Globe Pequot Press, 1978). His fresh appraisal of that remarkable battle which had such a great impact on American morale, ''Isaac Hull's Victory Revisited, '' appeared in The American Neptune , Winter 1987.-ED .
The First Salute In the caption to William Gilkerson ' s picture of John Paul Jones' s Ranger beating through La Motte Piquet's squadron in Quiberon Bay, 14 February 1778 (' 'The Ships of John Paul Jones, '' SH45) you state that this is the first foreign recognition of the American flag . I wish to call your attention to other earlier reported salutes to the American flagboth naval, by the way . In her book St. Croix Under Seven Flags , Florence Lewisohn notes a salute to an American schooner by the fort at Frederiksted on 25 October 1776. And she records that a month later off the Dutch island of St. Eustatius, the American privateer Andrew Doria seized an English vessel within cannon shot of the island, saluted Fort Orange, and received a 9-gun salute in return before sailing away. Both these events occurred two years before the Ranger salute. E. I. WILLIAMS Washington, DC
The Ruth M. Martin Found I could hardly believe my eyes when I glanced at the Letters in SEA HISTORY 45 and read Leo Gullage's enquiry about the Ruth M . Martin . A little book was published about a fishing voyage she made in the summer of 1904 out of the Fulton Fish Market at South Street in New York City. A Fisherman's Breeze is a day-by-day account of the trip, written by a young stockbroker, Alfred Graham Miles, who shipped aboard as a passenger. It was republished in 1973 by the South Street Seaport Museum; I was editor for the reprint. Her captain for the 1904 voyage was Nels Larsen. The book is full of photographs Miles took during the trip . They show the Martin to be a handsome, twomasted, clipper-bowed Gloucester-type fishing schooner, similar to the Lettie G. Howard now at South Street. The book is out of print now , but it is SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
possible that the Seaport Book Store (209 Water St., New York, NY 10038) could find a copy for you . If not, the museum' s library at the same address does have it. Good luck in your research on the vessel. She has a special place in my heart, too. ELLEN FLETCHER Brooklyn, New York Ms . Fletcher, editor and author of a number of books about South Street and environs-including Walking Around in South Street-is an Honorary Trustee of the NMHS. - ED. According to a recently completed list of vessels built in Essex, Massachusetts, the Ruth M. Martin was launched from the yard of Tarr & James on 9 June 1892. She was built for George E. Martin of Boston, and was registered in that port. The List of Merchant Vessels of the United States gives the vessel ' s port of registry in 1895 as Provincetown , Massachusetts. It changed back to Boston in 1899 . In 1903 her port was New York City , where she remained until 1911 . Her name does not appear in the registry after that year, suggesting she was either lost in 1911 or sold to foreign registry . When launched, her registered gross tonnage was 98.80 tons, while her net tonnage was 93 .86. In 1903 , her net tonnage dropped to 63 tons, which indicates that an oil engine was installed at that time. J1MWITHAM Chairman, Steering Committee Essex Shipbuilding Museum Essex, Massachusetts
QUERIES AND CORRECTIONS I am looking for copies of the log or other records of two ships I sailed in during World War II. The Great Republic was a I 0-11 ,000 ton refrigerated freighter built in 1942. The Turrialba was a 7-8,000 ton refrigerated freighter and passenger ship built probably around 1922 and used in the banana trade by the United Fruit Co. Now that I am retired , my children want me to write down my experiences aboard these ships ; but I find my memory is not so good as it once was. Although I was purser aboard these ships and kept many of these records at the time , matching the dates and places escapes me. I have tried to piece it all together from general history , but very little is written about the maritime service. HARRY BURUM 461 Bates Ave . Dinuba, CA 93618
I am seeking information about the attack transport USS Barnett and her officers and crew . The Barnett served in frontline amphibious operations from Guadalcanal to Normandy, with many significant and colorful incidents in her career. I would be delighted to hear from anyone who sailed in her. STUART K. WIER 4555 Martin Drive Boulder, CO 80303 For a number of years I've been trying to locate a photograph of the Koln of 1870. I have contacted over forty sources worldwide without success. Since the Koln carried immigrants to America, I believe that my last resort is snapshots or photos passed down through the families of those immigrants. Does anyone have any suggestions? ROGER H . PUTNAM PO Box 2076 Tulare, CA 93275 I would appreciate any available information about the American ship India , 433 tons burthen, which cleared Penang 23 March 1842, for Boston , William Nott commanding . She was most likely registered in Boston or Salem. SIADHAL SWEENEY Ardagh, Newport Co. Mayo, Ireland Vice Admiral Thomas R. Weschler, USN (ret), somehow emerged as RAdm (Rear Admiral) in SH45, p4. The gremlin who generated this error was careless in his work , however, for three pages later, in the report on the Maritime Alliance to which Admiral Weschler contributes so much, we find his title correctly cited. The Navy has had wonderful Rear Admirals, among them Selfridge, Mahan and our own Wally Schlech (NMHS Chairman, 1972-78) . But they would be the first to insist on recognizing the next step up in rank. This may not matter particularly to Admiral Weschler, but it does to us and we are glad to set the record straight-ED.
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5
NMHS PROJECTS
Recognition and Resolve: Carrying a Message to the American People On Thursday, 17 December, President Reagan presented the Maritime Heritage Medal to USS Constitution on behalf of the World Ship Trust and the National Maritime Historical Society. The ceremony, which recognized the outstanding preservation of the oldest commissioned warship still afloat anywhere in the world-and the flagship of the historic ships movement in the United States-took place in the Oval Office of the White House. ''As a nation, we can take special pride in the fact that our citizens' efforts to preserve 'Old Ironsides' have received this distinguished international tribute," said President Reagan. He went on to congratulate NMHS President Peter Stanford for the Society's leadership in the citizen effort to preserve America's maritime and naval heritage . British Ambassador Sir Antony Acland represented Admiral of the Fleet Lord Lewin, vice president of the World Ship Trust, at the presentation. Sir Antony drew a comparison between USS Constitution and HMS Victory, the British ship-of-theline of 1765 dry-berthed in Portsmouth, England. Noting the remarkable number of citizens who visit the two ships each year-more than a million visitors are expected to cross Constitution's decks in 1988--he added that both ships are "symbols of the commitment by the American and British navies to the cause of freedom of navigation." Because 1987 marks the bicentennial of the Constitution of the United States, it was thought especially appropriate to present the Maritime Heritage Medal to USS Constitution this year, 190 years after her building. In SEA HISTORY 44 (Summer 1987), we published a series of articles about USS Constitution and
6
President Reagan presents the Maritime Heritage Medal to Commander David Cashman, USN, commanding officer of USS Constitution, in Oval Office ceremonies at the White House, 17 December, while NMHS President Peter Stariford stands by. Also present were Secretary of the Navy James H. Webb, Jr.; former Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger; British Ambassador Sir Antony Acland; former Secretary of the Navy J . William Middendorf, II; Major James A . Forsythe, Deputy Chairman of the World Ship Trust; NMHS Chairman James P. McAllister; and Charles Francis Adams, Chairman Emeritus of the USS Constitution Muse um .
the citizen museum founded a decade ago to interpret her history, preservation and continuing service to the nation as an active commissioned vessel in the US Navy. The lead article ''USS Constitution: Reaching Out Over the Horizon," was reprinted in The Boston Globe on the occasion of the Constitution's annual turnaround cruise in Boston Harbor at which former Navy Secretary J. William Middendorf, II, announced the Maritime Alliance, which the Society has had an active role in pulling together. * * * * * Since the summer, we have continued to work on establishing a unifying force in the field of maritime preservation and heritage in this country, particularly through the Maritime Alliance. In October, the Alliance was again discussed at the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, DC, and acting on a resolution put forward at that time, Captain Daniel Moreland convened the first working session of the Alliance aboard the historic schocner of 1894 Ernestina (ex-Effie M. Morrissey) in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on 4-5 December. (An article about the Ernestina appears pp22-24.) The guiding purpose of the Alliance is to summon all Americans to the cause of maritime heritage and to enlist them in our vital and important ventures. Letters of support for the Alliance from
museum and sail training directors in this country and abroad repeatedly echoed the theme sounded best, perhaps, by Frank 0. Braynard, curator of the American Merchant Marine Museum and chairman of the NMHS Advisory Board, who wrote: "It is precisely what I think, and have long felt, the field needs to keep moving forward the work of the many fine groups who are at the heart of the maritime history movement in this country-and the world! I say more power to you-and to all of us!"* The twenty-four people attending the first working session of the Alliance represented a broad range of interests and expertise in our work. Besides Peter Stanford and Lincoln Paine of NMHS, those present were David Brink, director of Sail, Inc., and former project director of the Elissa project in Galveston; Marcia Myers, vice president for Maritime Preservation, National Trust for Historic Preservation; Rafe Parker, executive director of the Sea Education Association (SEA); Lance Metz, historian of the Hugh Moore Historical Park and Canals in Easton, Pennsylvania; Stephen Heavers, a trustee of the Baltimore Museum of Industry; Nick Benton of the Colonial Maritime Association; and Peter Neill, representing the South Street Seaport *Mr. Braynard' s letter appears p4.
SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
The Ernestina with her young sisters of the fishing fleet at New Bedford this winter. Photo by Capt. Dan Moreland.
Museum, of which he is president, and the Council of American Maritime Museums (CAMM). At the meeting, under the direction of Acting Chairman Harry Anderson , four working groups were formed to address the primary concerns of the Maritime Alliance: Governance, chaired by Ms. Myers; Constituents, chaired by Mr. Stanford; Projects, chaired by Mr. Brink; and Communications , chaired by Mr. Neill. Although the first round of meetings has taken place on the East Coast, it is expected that in 1988 the Alliance will hold meetings on the Great Lakes and inland rivers , the West Coast and in the southeast. The Society has also redoubled its commitment to reporting the on-going progress in the field of maritime heritage, and in July we inaugurated the Sea History Gazette, a fortnightly newsletter which reports on a wide range of matters about developments in the maritime heritage. Topics covered in the Gazette include announcements of major funding for maritime organizations, exhibit openings, new publications, conferences, annual meetings and lectures, and noteworthy developments in the shipping industry. As always, we welcome suggestions from our readers and members. t
* * * * *
For all of us involved in the Society's work, 1988 holds even more promise than usual , for this year marks the 25th anniversary of the National Maritime Historical Society. The Society came together in 1963 to save the last American square-rigger to round Cape Hom, the steel-hulled bark Kaiulani . That effort was not the success it should have been, although interest in the ship has by no means faded. The National Maritime Museum in San Francisco has announced a plan for an outdoor exhibit to celebrate this last of the Down Easters that helped spin the web of Yankee commerce around the globe in the last century and on into the early decades of this one. Though we did not succeed with the Kaiulani, or with the paddle steamer Alexander Hamilton, or the French square-rigger Champigny, we can and do look with satisfaction and gratitude on those projects to which we were able to lend a hand: the restoration to sailing condition of the iron bark of 1877, Elissa ; the saving of the tug Mathilda and the
opening of the Hudson River Maritime Center in Kingston, New York, where she lies today; establishing the American Society of Marine Artists, today an independent organization with its own active membership .. . . The list of our accomplishments is by no means endless, but we cannot enumerate them all here. But it is fitting to note that President Reagan ' s presentation of the Maritime Heritage Medal to the USS Constitution this year marks the first time since 1964-to our knowledge-that a sitting president has recognized the maritime heritage movement in the United States. In that year, President Lyndon Johnson presented the hulk of the Kaiulani to the National Maritime Historical Society to hold in trust for the American people. "We did not save Kaiulani," as President Stanford never wearies of reminding us. "But the effort to save her has not died. It lives on, in growing strength, and is helping to save a whole imperilled heritage.'' With your help and guidance, let's carry that impulse forward in the LINCOLN PAINE next quarter century.
t Subscription to the Gazette, available only to current members of the NMHS, is $35 for one year-26 issues sent first-class mail.
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SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
7
The Loss of the Pamir by Captain Ralph W. West, USCG (ret)
In reviewing the tragic loss ofthefourmasted bark Pamir, Alan Villiers once suggested to us that her sinking was due to the bad stowage of her cargo, and that the deaths of so many young men were probably avoidable. The catastrophe put an end to the service of these big barks in sail training with cargos to help offset the expense of the voyage. The Pamir's running mate, Passat, was withdrawn from service and made a museum ship in Travemiinde; and work to ready the Moshulu for the same trade was halted. She is now a restaurant ship in Philadelphia. In addition to the Passat, two other veterans of F. Laeisz's "Flying-P Line" survive. The Kruzenshtern (ex-Padua) today works in sail training in the Soviet Union, and the Peking, after service as a stationary school ship in England, is a museum ship at the South Street Seaport Museum in New York (see p44). It was 2 1 September 1957 when a radio message crackled out over the airwaves of the central Atlantic: " HEAVY HURRICANE, ALL SAILS LOST , FORTY FIVE DEGREE LIST , IN DANGER OF SINKING. " The
giant four-masted steel bark Pamir was nearing the end of her death struggle with a vicious hurricane 600 miles southwest of the Azores. With the first report , silence fell over the West German radio stations. All light entertainment was cancelled as the nation stood by for news of their great sailing ship now in distress in a violent Atlantic storm . Thousands of Germans flocked to their churches to pray for the safety of the Pamir crew. Under the West German flag the Pamir
was one of the steel-hulled cargo ships that had in years past taken part in the annual grain race from Australia, around Cape Hom and up to England. She was fifty-two years old, a tall beautiful vision from bygone days. On this day she was headed home from the Argentine with a cargo of barley. Her crew of eighty-six, including fifty-two teenage cadets of the West German merchant marine, had just finished their evening meal when the full blast of hurricane Carrie struck . Eighty foot waves and a screaming wind battered the Pamir. The ship was thrown broadside into the trough of the sea where she lay helplessly . Her cargo shifted as she rolled deeper and deeper, taking on water until she lay with a forty-five degree list with the angry seas breaking over her. At this point Captain Johann Lubsitsch realized that it would not be long until his ship would go down , and he began transmitting the distress message . He then called the crew together on deck and led them in prayer. Down to the southwest 360 miles away the ocean station vessel USCGCAbsecon, under my command, had been fighting her own battle with Carrie for two days as the storm center passed directly over us. The seas had just begun to moderate when our radio room picked up the distress call from Pamir. The cutter's course was immediately laid for the distressed vessel and in a matterof minutes Absecon was banging down the still rough ocean at her maximum speed. It would be a long twenty-two hours before we could reach the area, and radio silence from the stricken ship indicated there would be little to find once we arrived.
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The Pamir charges along on a broad reach under upper and lower topsails.
Back on the Pamir we pick up the story from survivors. One told how after the Captain had led the crew in prayer, cigarettes and liquor were issued and an attempt was made to lower one of the lifeboats under almost impossible conditions. This boat was smashed in launching and soon drifted off and disappeared in the raging seas. Wind velocity was estimated at 127 knots and the deck was a tangle of wire rigging and spars that had fallen from aloft. An attempt to lower two more boats was made and
At the end of the fourth day of the search, Gunter Hasselbach leaps from his lifeboat (left) as help approaches. He was the sole survivor of twenty-one men originally in this boat. At right, Absecon' s pulling boat returns with Hasselbach.
8
SEA HISTORY , WINTER 1987-88
although they were immediately swamped and damaged they eventually provided flotation for twenty-one men in one and ten men in the other. The remainder of the crew clung to cargo nets on the weather side of the ship, but many dropped off and were gone before the Pamir finally went down. Two hours after the storm first struck, the huge square-rigger, with Captain Lubsitsch still directing abandon-ship efforts from the bridge , rolled over and went to the bottom. As described by Gunter Hasselbach , a surviving crew member, ''The end took thirty seconds. The mast snapped and her sails blew away. It was impossible to keep the bow head-on to those tremendous waves . She was lying broadside on . In the trough of a giant wave the ship rolled over and went down slowly, like a submarine." Karl 0. Duemmer, who sailed as the ship's baker, reported , "The ship rolled , hurling men into the water. Others dropped almost vertically into the sea, one on top of the other. We saw twentyfive men climb into a smashed lifeboat lying awash." The next day Absecon arrived in the area and assumed on-scene command for search and rescue operations. The seas were still rough and visibility was poor. Portuguese and US Air Force planes from the Azores and long-range navy aircraft from Bermuda reported in to assist with the search. In addition, all merchant vessels passing within 200 miles of the area were ordered to report to Absecon for assignment to the search pattern. On the average each ship would spend one or two days on this duty. All vessels assisting in the search were under the operational command of Absecon for the duration . In all, some fifty vessels from thirteen nations took part in the search for survivors over the course of seven days. It was the third day after the sinking and still no survivors had been seen. Then in the afternoon the cargo vessel Saxon of the Isbrandtsen Steamship Company found five men, up to their waists in water, lying in a smashed lifeboat. They were almost too weak to move. Five other men had been in the boat until the night before but had died of exhaustion and exposure . The survivors told how at night they would see the lights of the search vessels passing nearby but had no means of attracting attention. Some men in desperation had jumped from the lifeboat and tried to swim through the dark choppy waters to the passing lights but had <lfowned. By dawn of the fourth day the ocean SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
had flattened out to an almost glassy condition and it was hard to imagine the giant seas that had slammed through only a few days before. After a day of fruitless searching it was decided to turn back to the center of the area for the night. During a wide sweeping turn, reversing course, Chief Damage Controlman Watson reported an object far off to the south across the glassy sea. He said that at fust he thought it was a seagull sitting on a piece of driftwood. As we drew closer, it turned out to be a water-filled boat with a lone survivor standing and waving wildly. A boat was lowered away and we soon had him safely on board. He was Gunter Hasselbach , a twenty-yearold seaman from Kiel. He seemed surprisingly strong considering his long ordeal. He told us how prior to the ship's sinking he had been on the foremast trying to cut the foresail loose . When the ship finally rolled over he had made his way to a swamped lifeboat. Out of the twenty-one men originally in that boat he was the only survivor. He related how some men had been knocked out of the boat by breaking waves, some had died of exposure and others had gone mad with thirst and leaped screaming into the sea. Hasselbach attributed his survival to a continuous conscious effort to keep the salt water out of his system by blowing out through his mouth and nose when waves would break over him and also to a bit of advice his father gave him when he left home to go to sea: "Always look danger in the eye." The search continued for three more days, but no other survivors were found. The area was thick with sharks that had been drawn into the area by the many men in lifejackets lying helpless in the sea. Many jackets were sighted with the belts tied closed , indicating that someone had been in them at one time. Disasters under sail such as this have occurred in the past and will occur again in the future . But they will never lessen the enthusiasm of the young sailor for training under¡ sail. It is a widespread belief that only under sail can the true sailor be trained. This is demonstrated by the many countries throughout the world that continue the tradition with their tall square-rigged training ships, and by the long lines of adventurous young men waiting to be given the chance to prove themselves against the unforgiving sea. J,
The four-masted bark Pamir glides along in light airs with two seamen on her fore topgallant yard.
Although someone rigged this mast and flag, there was no one aboard when Absecon' s men picked up this lifeboat.
USCGC Absecon. All Photos courteSY the author.
Capt. West served in the US Coast Guard for thirty years before retiring from his fifth command in 1969. When not ocean racing, he writes for Sailing magazine.
9
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11
The Ship As Museum by Peter Stanford "After several years in small coasters," said Norman Pearce, "I thought it was time to do something more." That "something more " was nothing less than to go deepwater in a square-rigged ship trading foreign. Well, he was twenty-one and presumably knew his own mind, so he went to a friend of his father's, a ship broker in Cardiff. This person told him: ''We are brokers for a new ship loading coal in Penarth for San Francisco and she will sail this week. She is a new ship called Balclutha, and we can get you a berth as AB on her. '' Well, young Norman packed up his kit and signed on as one of a polyglot crew including an Australian, a Brazilian, some Scandinavians, several West Indians, and the rest British. They all bunked down together in the ship 's cramped forecastle, forward where the anchor chains came through the hawsepipes. The ship then proceeded down the Bristol Channel and stuck her nose out into the Irish Sea. Norman Pearce was to remember the occasion over half a century later . ''The first incident I remember well,'' he said, " was my bed, bedclothes and some of my kit being washed out on deck through the door. " Writing to a friend he 'd never met , who was interested in his story, he went on to explain: As it was a new ship there were no plugs for the hawsepipes and with the
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The far-gazing figurehead of the Balclutha was first doused in salt water in the Irish Sea in the distant spring of 1887. This is the original, replaced recently by a replica carved by the Cornish sculptor and craftsman Greg Powles land. Today, she faces inland on the hilly streets of San Francisco , still dreaming, perhaps, of far horizons. Photo by John Kortum.
first dive she made in the Irish Sea, she shipped most of it (or so it seemed to me) through the pipes, and as my bunk was well forward, it was quickly washed out with the flood. We tried stuffing with empty bags and some of our clothes, but we made a poor job of it for they were washed in again. We just had to make the best of it until the carpenter made plugs to fit and then we had to wait for the cable chain to be unshackled from the anchor and drawn inboard through the pipes, which was always done at the beginning of a long sea voyage.
Karl Kortum, dean of American ship savers, stands before the ships at the Hyde Street Pier, from the left, the Tyne paddle tug Eppleton Hall (he was mate in her on her trip from the north of England to San Francisco) the scow schooner Alma, the schooner C. A. Thayer and the giant paddlewheel ferry Eureka. The steam schooner Wapama is absent, undergoing refit. Photo by John Kortum.
12
The 256ft full-rigger visited San Francisco again in her seventeen roundings of Cape Horn, and she lies in that worldinvolved seaport today. And for the past 34 years, Pearce's letter has greeted visitors to the Balclutha's forecastle, compelling the reader to look up at the gaping hawsepipe and imagine the blast of salt water that flushed bed and bedding out of the forward bunks. A Friend in Need The friend to whom Norman Pearce was writing in I 954 was Karl Kortum, who had founded the San Francisco Maritime Museum with a few like-minded souls three years before , and who in that year 1954 had succeeded in buying the Balclutha, to restore her as a museum ship. Kortum had sailed in the last Cape Horn voyage of a Yankee square-rigger in 1941, round the Horn from Washington State to Australia. This was in the Kaiulani of 1899, the ship that the National Maritime Historical Society was founded to save. Kortum was a friend in need to old sailors and old ships in this time of museum-building and ship-saving, as indeed he remains today . He put his credo into memorable words, once, writing to a bunch of us working in SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
New York City to save a ship similar to Norman Pearce's Balclutha, the ship Wavertree . He said: A ship properly invested as a museum or set up as a display sends out emanations of lore, humanity, history, adventure, geography, art, literature and so on . These elements have brought me pleasure and they seem capable of doingthe same thing for other people. The 268ft full-rigger Wavertree , discovered by Kortum in a backwater in Buenos Aires in 1966 (see SH20, pp 1823), was eventually at his instance, pulled back over time's horizon and towed back up around earth's curve to New York . The act of stretching to make this grand recovery of a classic ninteenth-century full-rigger, led by the New York shipping man Jakob Isbrandtsen, rallied the young South Street Seaport Museum to its task of reclaiming several blocks of old shipping waterfront as a restored historic district and center of learning and lively commercial activities. So one of the ships that helped build the city helped inspire its citizens to reclaim a whole waterfront neighborhood for history . It would seem that ships from out of the voyaging past have the power to command people's service long after their first careers, trekking across wide oceans under sail, are over. This was certainly true in the Wavertree's case. Dismasted off Cape Horn in 1910, she entered into a long half-life as a barge , first in Punta Arenas, up the Straits of Magellan behind the Horn, and after 1947 in the Riachuelo in Buenos Aires. In the Boca, the old waterfront district of Buenos Aires, people called her not ponton ("barge"), like the other hulks strewn about the Riachuelo, but el gran velero--the great sailing ship! And when the ship came through the Narrows into New York Harbor, where an early morning party went out in a tug to meet her, the men aboard the tug stopped kidding around and fell silent as the ship's unmistakable and unconquerable shape came up through the mist. An Oceanic Culture It is the ordinary merchant ships of Balclutha' s or Wavertree's ilk that made history at the most basic level, moving the cargoes and people, and ultimately the ideas that shaped the world we know today. Anonymous for the most part, so far as the larger public is concerned, these ships were served by their own small societies in which the governing rule is: "The ship comes first." Based on that overriding rule and the loyalties and standards of behavior it generates, a unique seafaring culture came into being-a culSEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
The wooden whaleship Charles W. Morgan awaits new planking during the summer of 1978. Preventive maintenance and renewal of the historic fleet is a year-round process at Mystic Seaport, and the restoration shipyard is a popular feature for visitors there. Photo by Ken Mahler , Mystic Seaport.
ture which came to hold in it the learning of 5,000 years of traffics across wide waters under sail , and which to a quite surprising degree has transcended national boundaries and developed its own language, ethos and continuities across changing generations. " They see the wonders of the deep," said the Psalmist, of the people who go down to the sea in ships, a sentiment echoed a couple of millennia later by the New York Harbor artist John A. Noblewho simply observed when an old sailors' home was converted to a contemporary cultural center: ''It housed a great culture before , an oceanic culture." We latter-day inheritors of the traditions of deepwater sail, who sing its songs and use its language and who have recorded its stories and customs, moved slowly to preserve its ships--despite that most basic rule of seafaring: ' 'The ship comes first.' ' In 1925 , as the era of deepwater sail was ending, the great Down Easter Benjamin F. Packard romped into New York having outrun her tug in gale winds on the way up from Hatteras, on her final voyage back from the West Coast. The New York Shipping Association announced plans to save her as the last of a noble breed. Those plans came to nothing , and the great ship was sold at auction for less than the price of a ship model put up in the same auction. (That sale has become famous among ship savers as the nadir in recognition of the real thing.) But news of the interest to save the graceful ocean carrier inspired a group of sports fishermen in San Diego, egged on and abetted by the young Jerry MacMullen, to save the Star of India , a British iron ship that, today in sailing condition , is the cynosure and centerpiece of the very healthy San Diego Maritime Museum. And Carl Cutler, one of the three founders of Mystic Seaport Museum, seeing the Packard in the late 1930s in her final awful days as a dance hall and deciding,
sadly, that she was too much ship for his fledgling museum to take on, persuaded his trustees to acquire the much smaller New Bedford whaling ship Charles W. Morgan of 1841 instead. The Morgan b<;came the symbol and centerpiece of Mystic Seaport Museum , and the interest the centenarian ship attracted helped Mystic to become the leading maritime museum in the United States-where, incidentally, the carved and gilded after cabins of the Benjamin F. Packard are preserved today. The Charles W. Morgan's role at Mystic inspired later generations of ship savers, including the young Kortum, who wrote Cutler brash letters from the top floor of the WP A casino he commandeered in 1951 to open a maritime museum for San Francisco. Cutler answered those letters, and Kortum came to regard himself as Cutler's student and in some sense the executor of his mission in historic ships. There is a good deal in common between the two men, as a matter of fact. Cutler, too, had shipped out in square rig, knowing that the breed was passing from the oceans. Cutler admired sailorly qualities and sought to instill them in Mystic, as Kortum was to do in San Francisco. Above all, both men were devoted to "the real thing"-real ships , telling the story ofreal people. Both saw the need to keep a seafaring culture alive, with its robust and generous qualities . Their museums, in Connecticut and California, were set the challenge of expressing those cultural values, avoiding at all costs anything meretricious or sensational in presenting the seafaring world. It could be said that Cutler and Kortum both had a strong sense of the dimensionality of the seafaring experience, its depth and roundness and its people's dedication to solidity in the work. I believe both men took very much to heart Joseph Conrad's memorable observation: Of all the living creatures upon land 13
and sea, it is ships alone that cannot be taken in by barren pretenses, that will not put up with bad art from their masters. Another Kind of Voyage One comes back to the ship as museum, the ship preserved-to what purpose? One thing immediately noticeable about the working ship alongside a pier is that she attracts people. And that attraction can be harnessed to build museums , as the Mystic, San Francisco and New York museums were built, or to improve waterfronts through commercial development supported by that traffic of interested visitors. From the educational point of view, the historic ship as museum may be said to open a door on the wider world of history. And this marvelous power of attraction goes beyond the Sunday visitor. The historic ship equally well attracts scholars, historians and craftsmen , and is the natural centerpiece for a cluster of related activities. Boat builders, chanty singers, riggers, wood carvers and sail makers expand the ship's story and culture. Alone such activities or displays might founder, but as part of a maritime center with the ships as the focal point, they reinforce and nourish each other. It is not only the ship-specific trades but the whole epoch in which these trades flourished that comes to life in the presence of these ships. Evolving plans for a maritime museum in Bristol, England, to complement Isambard Kingdom Brunel's iron steamship of 1843, Great Britain, Richard Goold-Adams writes of his impressions of Mystic Seaport and the maritime museum in San Francisco: The main lesson borne in on me in both places, was that almost everything which helps to illustrate the contemporary background of maritime lifebuildings, tools , equipment, people's customs-against which a vessel operated is likely to make a visit to her in the present day more interesting and comprehensible, provided that its proper significance is brought out by the way it's shown. A second most noticeable thing about the museum ship is that she is vividly real and speaks to visitors in a language that all can understand. The ship is twelve inches to the foot and needs far less interpretation and conceptualizing than does a model, photo or painting . Youngsters eagerly ask where people slept and ate; and from that almost universal starting point, they then become curious about how the ship worked and why she went to sea. Most grown ups follow the same pattern. The spaces of a ship are radically differ14
No model, no drawing or description can convey the conditions of a warship's gundeck like the real thing , whether it' s HMS Warrior's gundeck of68 pounders (above) , the USS Constitution or HMS Victory . Once seen, the conditions of life, so different from ours today, will not be forgotten .
ent from the rooms in a building , and no model can convey the cramped feeling of the Charles W. Morgan's tweendeck, the fore-and-aft sweep of the Victory's gun decks , the immensity of the aircraft carrier lntrepid' s flight deck, or the antediluvian shape of the Great Britain's engines , nonworking replicas , to be sure, but in their proper place. But in addition to having the real spatial dimension of the ship, whatever her type, her purpose or her size, the ship as museum is the keeper of the ship 's-and her people's-legacy of purpose. Frank Carr, savior of the tea clipper Cutty Sark and chairman of the World Ship Trust calls ships "cathedrals of the sea": We go to a cathedral and see a beautiful building . We go into a ship and see a beautiful vessel. But, in the cathedral there is something more-something of the religious spirit and something of the spirit of the people who have worshipped there, who have served there, who may have been buried there-that remains . So, to me, when I go aboard the Cutty Sark, she is not a dead ship, she 's not just iron and elm and teak and hemp. [She is pervaded by] something of the spirit of the men who created that ship , imagined her, built her, put their loving craftsmanship into her because the shipwrights were proud of their skills. And the men who sailed in her, who hated her, who suffered in her, and yet, who loved her. I do not believe that all those generations of people left Cutty Sark with nothing of their spirit behind . To me, she's alive, and when I go aboard I feel as I feel when going into a cathedral. Because the ships are attractive and exciting, people tend to linger on them . Good shipboard displays take advantage of this and entice the visitor to stay even longer and understand even more . Some criticize the displays as interfering with
the authentic look of a ship. But well designed displays that respect the fabric and space of the vessel are a way of keeping the ship's seafaring culture, which pervaded the ship in her working life, alive and present on the ship today . By filling the vessel with her people's personal belongings, their work gear, their photographs or portraits and, most important, their words, the ship comes back to life in a way that is direct, personal and specific ... in a word, real. These displays become, in effect, a materialization of the vanished culture that lived on and around the ship in her time . \ Finally, while the real ship requires labor, money and expertise to an extraordinary degree, it is also able to inspire the devotion that can provide for its needs . Most ships are saved because of the determination of one person who will not take no for an answer. That person engages others of like mind to help find solutions where none are apparent. Devotion and determination are at the heart of most ship saves, which is as it should be, because the initial saving of the vessel is just the beginning. The restoration and long-term preservation are equally demanding . And the ship's demand for archaic skills and expertise means that those skills and that knowledge will survive because they must. Her expensive repetitive maintenance, her need for renewal makes it essential that her culture, as well as her fabric , stay with us. Most historic ships depend on a loyal support group-both paid and volunteerto provide the variety of skills , from the commonplace to the arcane, which they need for their existence. Whether it's the paid crew learning to splice wire rope, or the old salt bringing in his memorabilia and sharing stories from his youth, or the hardbitten rivetter passing on his skills to a new generation, or the vol unteer office SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
worker scraping out the ship' s hold, or the teenage student happy to grapple with wood and iron as a respite from algebra and social studies , each is helping to keep the ship afloat literally and figuratively. The ships need people, but it is also true to say that people need their ships . As the actual experience of sailing the big square-riggers died out in the world , the question arose , what would happen to the skills that maintained them? Harry Dring, who had sailed with Kortum on that voyage in the Kaiulani in 1941 , had kept the Balclutha in shipshape fashion, and tended to the growing family that gathered round her-the steam schooner Wapama, the schooner C. A. Thayer and other vessels . The skills of old-time sailormen , Captain Fred Klebingat of Falls of Clyde, his friend "S miling Jack" Dickerhoff the master rigger, and others had been mustered to restore Balclutha, Star of India, Falls of Clyde-but who would step in behind them when they were no longer there to summon the old skills and give things about the decks the shape and style of a vanishi ng culture? Kortum noted this concern recently: "I wondered what was goi ng to happen to the vessels when the old-timers passed from the scene. That question has happily been answered. " The same force that draws people to the ships drives people to give the best that is in them to their ship-and that includes learning the old ways, learning them and passing them on . The rebuilding and sailing of the Elissa, Alexander Hall's beautiful iron bark of 1877 , which Kortum and other National Maritime Historical Society leaders were concerned to save even before the Society existed, speaks volumes for the vitality of this culture. The Elissa sails, bringing life to Conrad' s observation that it is good to be alive in a world in which such a vessel has her being (he was speaking of the very similar bark Otago , which he had commanded under sail), and bringing life to the concerns and memories and aspirations of all who share in the dream of voyaging which has so occupied mankind since people first set out on the waters that cover most of earth's surface , and which has so reshaped mankind's world. We do demand more of museums these days, and we should . They are not just attics full of junk, though junk can be rewarding to explore. They are vital centers of-what was it Kortum said?-lore, humanity, history . ... And they are more vital as the old world of work under the open sky gives way to the world of abstraction, not even paper any more, but electric impulses stored away in hidden circuitry. That's progress , perhaps. But it is not well to see the world always through a screen. SEA HISTORY , WINTER 1987-88
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The museum ship delivers her message with great force and utter directness . And she reaches multitudes, with a message that is fresh and full of challenge-as challenging as having the sea come crashing through your room one morning, sweeping your bed away, as challenging as the wi ld dawn breaking over an utterly untamed sea, and the great freedom old sailors speak of, in service to the ship . .i,
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ROSE is U.S. docume~ted - 2899 11
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R~E Underway on 1June1988 The Largest Sailing School Vessel in America For facts regarding : •Educational Programs • Port visits • Corporate use • Licensed crew • Apprentice crew
The Continuing Story Surprisingly, this remains a very sparsely documented field , despite the public interest so unmistakably shown in public visitation to historic ships. The only accounts of the historic ships movement are the 55page booklet The Ships That Brought Us So Far (1971) by Peter Stanford, available in xerographic form from NMHS for $4. It is supplemented by another NMHS booklet, "Take Good Care of Her Mister ... " Frank Carr and the Ship Trust Movement (1974) , also by Peter Stanford , available for $2. Both works , little more than a decade after their publication , are seriously in need of updating. Individual histories for only a few ships as museums do exist. The best accounts of actual ship saving are undoubtedly Richard Goold-Adams' s classic account of the saving of the Great Britain, The Return of the Great Britain (1976) , and Ernie Bradford' s Story of the Mary Rose, which treats the subject of the recovery and display of Henry VIII's flagship through 1982. Steven E. Levingston's Historic Ships of San Francisco, A Collective History and Guide to the Restored Historic Vessels of the National Maritime Museum (1984), with a foreword by James P. Delgado , is perhaps the best single book about the purposes that underlie the saving of a group of ships in one place . Last, but by no means least, is Norman Brouwer's encyclopedic International Register of Historic Ships ( 1985) , published by the World Ship Trust in conjunction with the US Naval Institute and the NMHS . This single volume treats more than 700 existing historic ships-whether working, in museums or unmai ntai ned- with capsule histories for many of the vessels and brief bibliographies for nearly all of them.
Contact "HMS" ROSE Foundation 1 Bostwick Avenue Bridgeport, CT 06605 (203) 335-1433
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15
How We Saved the Liberty Ship Jeremia_h O'Brien J. Patterson, USMS (ret.) as told to and set down by Karl Kortum by RAdm Thomas
I came out here with MARAD, the Maritime Administration, in 1962. I was one of two captains and two chief engineers given the job of surveying 300 Liberty ships. They were laid up in fleets at Olympia, Washington; Astoria, Oregon; and Suisun Bay in California. Some 500 other Liberty ships were to be surveyed at the same time on the East and Gulf coasts. Our task was to rank them in condition-best to the worst. The government was going to sell them; that meant most of them would go to the scrapyard. The process was about to start. Our orders were to hold the best to the last. The reason for the exercise with these vessels was that in 1962 the Navy had informed the Maritime Administration that Libertys would not be required in their future strategy. At ten knots, they were too slow. . The four of us "walk-over surveyed" fifteen Liberty ships a day. We inspected the whole vessel, from the flying bridge to the engine room. We went down in every hold . Did the ship have wooden booms or steel booms? Had the ship been reinforced? What kind of ballast? Did she have any visible damage? What was the overall condition? I had the strongest legs I ever had in my life. Up and Down. Fifteen a day .... I noticed the Jeremiah O'Brien. She was completely unaltered except that, like the others, her guns had been removed. All the World War II equipment aboard was undisturbed. All the charts were there,
from Normandy to the Pacific. The glass was intact in the license frames on the bulkhead. The wartime instructions were posted alongside the Mark XIV gyro. The station bill, signed by the captain, was in place. The captain's night order book at Normandy beach was in a desk drawer. There were only minor indents in the Jeremiah O'Brien's plating and little hull pitting. The blueprints of the ship were mounted in the passageway abaft the wheelhouse, intact. The oak joiner work throughout her quarters was beautiful to behold. The ship was a time capsule. I didn't know whether some way to save her could be contrived, but something told me to try to hang on to her. We began a little exercise to keep her off the scrap list. The problem was that the Jeremiah O'Brien would have been scrapped in the first group because she was not reinforced . She did not have a "crack arrester"-that is a steel band rivetted right around her hull at the sheer strake. A half dozen Libertys had broken up in heavy weather and finally it was decided to add a reinforcement of this sort as a precaution. The "crack arrester" cost about $50,000 to add to a ship during the war; it would cost a million dollars today. So the O'Brien was vulnerable. Some Libertys were sold for' 'non-transportation use" such as fish canneries, floating drydocks, crane barges. A few were towed out and sunk for fishing reefs . But most were cut up. The price they brought the
government averaged $50,000. We kept moving the Jeremiah O'Brien down the scrap list. .. we kept shoving her back ... kept dropping her name down. There was another reason. A ship on "scrap row" was subject to being "raided" by the Navy. People came up from Treasure Island . The Navy still had eight Libertys on each coast, AGRs , fourhatch Libertys-they were ocean radar picket ships. (I might point out here that I was skipper of the first of the four-hatch Liberty ships, the USS Guardian, AGR-1, ex-James G. Squires.) With some logic, a ship that was going to be broken up was picked over for equipment and furniture that would enhance the still operational AGRs. The Navy had this access. So we kept the Jeremiah O'Brien in another row. The game went on for years. We kept her from being raided. We also protected her from vandalism . Finally, like the dwindling of the ten little Indians, Jeremiah O'Brien was the last one. The Maritime Administration said, "You've got to do something with that ship." They said they had no authorization to hold her for historical purposes. From now on it was up to me. I went out to industry-the companies, the unions, the shipyards. I went to Tom Crowley: ''What is so special about a Liberty?'' he wanted to know. I tried to explain. I went to Bob Blake, King' s Point alumnus, now in ship repair; to Admiral Jim Gracey and Captain Ernest
Karl Kortum, Chief Officer of the US Army Transport Octorara , took this photograph as that vessel entered the Reserve Fleet on Suisun Bay for layup in July 1946. In the foreRround are a couple of Liberty ships, the most numerous type of vessel in this vast flotilla.
D Murdoch of the Coast Guard; to Harry Morgan; to Dave Seymour. John Pottinger, who as Fleet Superintendent up at Suisun kept people off our favorite Liberty, had helped me all along in the chess game we played with the O'Brien. He protected that ship for years. The idea caught fire with people I talked to. Tom Crowley (Crowley Maritime Corporation) said, "I guess you're right. " His help has been very important to us . In 1977 I went back to Washington and met Captain Harry Allendorfer of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He told us how to get the ship on the National Register. And he told us how to apply for a grant. The first grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation was $10,000. We had to match it. Bob Blake did that with contributed work. We decided to overhaul the joiner work first and Bob hired a joiner just to do it. So then Allendorfer advised us there would be a one-time grant for the fifty states. We asked for $550,000 for the Jeremiah O'Brien and explained what we were trying to do. That was in 1979. Across the nation we came out #3. First was the USS Constellation in Baltimore. Second was the Elissa in Galveston. Third was the Jeremiah O'Brien in San Francisco. We got $436,512. The catch was that we had to match it with funds, labor, services or material from the private sector. Barney Evans who was then our secretary, was a big help in lining up these contributions . We made it! When we got word that we had the grant, it gave us more steam than ever before. Literally. We were up there looking the ship over, figuring how we would rig the towing bridle and Ernie Murdoch says, "Let's steam her down!" Now Maritime Administration had stopped all maintenance in 1963-the ship had been sixteen years with no preservation at all. But she was well preserved, just the same. There was some surface powder rust on the outside and her appearance wasn't too smart, but inside was a different matter. There was almost too much preservation. The pipelines had been flushed out with consul oil and this and other kinds of preservatives had congealed inside. One engineer I could mention had come up to Suisun Bay and after looking the situation over shook his head and told us we were nuts. He disappeared and never came back . But Harry Morgan came up and after also saying that we were crazy said that he would give it a go. Harry became our chief engineer. One of the reasons we decided to get SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
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The Jeremiah O'Brien leaves the reserve fleet under her own power in October 1979. "One of the reasons we decided to get steam up in Suisun Bay was ... the challenge; no one had ever steamed up a dead ship that had lain there thirtyjour years in a reserve fleet!' '
steam up in Suisun Bay was that a diver had gone down and inspected her intakes. They had not been blanked off. She had not gone to a drydock (where this was usually done) before being towed up San Pablo Bay and through Carquinez Strait; her last wartime crew had steamed her into Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet for lay up. Grace Line was her general agent for MARAD back in those days and had maintained the ship properly during her wartime service. The other reason was the challenge. No one had ever steamed up a dead ship that had lain there thirty-four years in a reserve fleet! We received a little Knot ship, a ClMAV -1, from the Army operation up at Rio Vista. Her name was the Resolute. We put her alongside and put aboard her some of the heavy air compressor equipment that Pottinger had for maintenance of the lay-up fleet. Harry Morgan finally got the main engine and the windlass to tum over with air. We got diesel oil and water off Resolute to light off the boilers. The whole thing was a long process. There were 135 man-days put in up at Suisun Bay to get the O'Brien ready to steam. We could never have done it without monkey wrench engineers like Pottinger, Blake and Morgan. I might mention that the climate up there at Suisun Bay contributed to the O'Brien's fine state of preservation. There is a dependable prevailing westerly blowing most of the time and we had taken advantage of this over the years by leaving her portholes open and letting her ventilate inside . This kept the ship from getting musty and mildewed, particularly in her
living spaces. Well, meanwhile I had approached Gayne Marriner, General Manager at Bethlehem, San Francisco, and he said, "Tom, bring her down." I can' t say enough for the role that Gayne played in the whole thing. He and his company, Bethlehem, were the only yard that would take her. They extended credit too! The Liberty ship Jeremiah O'Brien blossomed once again in that Bethlehem yard-she came out of it looking like she did when she was launched. Or very close to it. We worked against a deadline of Maritime Day, 1980, and we made it. (That day was declared National Liberty Ship Day by the White House.) We got the ship underway and proceeded out the Gate for the ceremonies; Captain E. A. MacMichael was master. The Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Maritime Affairs , Samuel Nemirow, was on board to dedicate the ship in her new role, the National Liberty Ship Memorial-a reminder of the largest fleet of oceangoing ships of a single type that this or any country has ever launched. Those 2751 Libertys were the cargo-carrying key to winning World War II and bringing peace and liberty to the world. Long may this splendid ship float. And steam. And to her volunteer crew ... Bravo Zulu! They are the best.
RAdm. Patterson, a veteran of both the US Merchant Service and US Navy, was Deputy Superintendent ofthe USMerchant Marine Academy, his alma mater, from 1982 to 1985. 17
From Ugly Duckling to Museum Ship by Gretchen Grover
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Built in 1943 in South Portland , the Jeremiah O'Brien was one of the work horses of World War II , and saw duty in the North Atlantic, Caribbean, Pacific and Indian oceans. The highlight was probably the eleven round-trips made in shuttle service between the United Kingdom and the Normandy beachheads in support of the D-Day invasion forces. At the end of the war, she was in the Pacific , so she came home to San Francisco. With nothing left to do, she was mothballed in the National Defense Reserve Fleet, Suisun Bay, northeast of San Francisco , on 7 February 1946 . It was there , in 1962, that Thomas J. Patterson found her and began the fifteen-year effort to save her as a living museum-an effort he describes in the
a preceding account. ~
After exterior work on the O'Brien ~ had been completed at the Bethlehem z yard in San Francisco in 1980, she took up residence at Pier 3, Fort Mason on S: San Francisco Bay. Restoration of the ship's vast interior got under way slowly. Small groups of volunteers worked diligently on the vast task using donated materials and whatever they could beg or borrow from the waterfront. From time to time they showed off their work on special open ship days. As work progressed, so did public access to the ship-from the occasional open houses, to regularly scheduled monthly open ship weekends, to being open daily year-round. Now, in place of z the open ship weekends, the feature is Q "steaming" weekends when the engineers ~ light off the boiler and run the engine, the ...J stewards fire up the galley's coal stove 8 and the ship lives again. 0 ~ On these weekends visitors can feel, ~ hear and sense the spirit of a Liberty : ship. Children of all ages can experience ·· the thrill of blowing the steam whistle, of aiming the 5-inch 38-caliber stem gun S: at passing targets, or of hearing sea stories from the crew. The ship hums . At top, the Jeremiah O'Brien slides down the ways at the New England Shipbuilding yards Of course the most often asked quesat South Portland, Maine. It is 19 June 1943, only forty-five days since her keel was laid on 6 May, and just eleven days till her trials-fifty-six days from start to finish! Above, the SS tion is '' Where do you go on your steamJames M. Wayne in May 1943, deep laden with war cargo and carrying ten gun emplacements, ing weekend?" Although perhaps disaplooks much as the brand new O'Brien would have appeared. Below, the O'Brien cruises San pointed to find that the ship steams pierFrancisco Bay. Aboard are the people who made her new life possible . side each month, visitors are delighted to find that the O'Brien does make public cruises each year. Since the first Sea"' men's Memorial Cruise in 1980, the ~ Jeremiah O'Brien has sailed San Fran,:;) cisco Bay on the third weekend in May each year in recognition of National 5 ..: Maritime Day, 22 May) and to honor the American maritime industry by paying tribute to the men and women who built, worked on and sailed the Libertys. S: The O'Brien has also sailed in cere-
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SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
monies marking the 30th anniversary of peace in the Pacific, and the 50th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge. The ship serves as a platform to bring together maritime interest groups. The O'Brien has hosted reunions of the World War II Armed Guard (including a special cruise in 1986) and the Women Shipbuilders . Bay area alumni associations of the California Maritime Academy and the US Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York , hold their monthly luncheons aboard. A special memorial service in 1987 paid tribute to the 45th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Stephen Hopkins, the only Liberty ship credited with sinking a German raider. Now that most of the restoration is complete, project attention has moved to establishing a museum. With the assistance of the San Francisco Conservation Corps, the #3 tweendeck hold was sandblasted in preparation for building office and museum space . A naval architect has begun plans and construction will begin soon. The biggest project will be the design of the museum. Over the years the ship has been collecting materials, all of which must be retrieved from storage and cataloged before exhibits can be designed. The museum design effort will bring new life to the ship ... from dark closets, attics and storage shelves will come artifacts which will help tell the story . It is a tremendous undertaking, but for the Jeremiah O'Brien volunteers it is just one more project. None of the restoration efforts would have been possible without the volunteers . The ship's successes in the first eight years are due to the nearly quarter of a million hours of volunteer labor that have gone into the project. Today there is a core group of around 100 volunteers who contribute their time and energy each month. They come from all walks of life and many commute some distance to get to the ship . From the oldest, an 85-yearold relief engineer, to the youngest, a high school student who works during summer vacation, the volunteers have one thing in common: they believe in what they are doing to preserve a little bit of history. That' s what counts!
Ms. Grover serves as business manager for the National Liberty Ship Memorial, the O'Brien's parent corporation. For more information, contact the memorial at Pier 3, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, CA 94123; 415 441-3101. SEA HISTORY , WINTER 1987-88
INTREPID
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Se,~/· Air· Space
SAIL ON ERNESTINA
MUSEUM
After decades of worldwide service, this historical vessel now rests peacefully in New York harbor. Today, Intrepid no longer makes history . Instead, she is the storyteller for America/'s history and technology on the sea, in the air and out in space. • Five major exhibit theme halls • Continuous movies & videos • Hundreds of artifacts, models and dioramas • More than 70 historic aircraft, rockets, capsules and satellites NATIONAL IDSTORIC LANDMARK Open Wed. thruSun. , year'round, IO:OOA.M. to5 P.M. Adults $4.75, Children $2.50, Seniors $4.00 Children under? , uniformed military and Museum members FREE.
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EX-EFFIE M. MORRISSEY, 1894
Famous as a gloucester fishing schooner, explorer, and as the last sailing ship to bring immigrants to America
an arctic
VISIT THE SHIP AND MUSEUM ON NEW BEDFORD'S HISTORIC WATERFRONT
Write for details on our 1988 sea experience voyages for all ages to NEW ENGLAND, CANADA, WEST AFRICA and THE CARRIBEAN to Schooner Ernestina Commission 30 Union St., New Bedford Massachussetts 02740 (617) 992-4900
Join the Friends of Elizabeth II. The Elizabeth II is a sixty-nine foot, square rigged sailing ship. A representative 16th century English vessel, the Elizabeth II is typical of those which brought the first English colonists to the New World over 400 years ago. As a Friend of Elizabeth II, your membership fees help support; the Elizabeth II and her interpretive programs. Members of the F~1ends of Elizabeth II receive the BOS'N'CALL; a quarterly newsletter, free admission and discounts in the gift shop. For more details write Friends of Elizabeth II, Post Office Box 1SS, Manteo, North Carolina 279S4. Telephone 919-473-1144.
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The Emery Rice Engine by RAdm. Lauren S. McCready The ship herself, a bark-rigged iron gunboat built in the decade after the Civil War, was scrapped in 1958, but through what Admiral McCready calls "memorable foresight,'' her 61-ton steam engine was saved by museum curator Karl Kortum in San Francisco in 1958. The iron mastadon was shipped back to the East Coast, and is today a working exhibit at the American Merchant Marine Museum at Kings Point, New York. The back-acting steam engine from
the Emery Rice represents a vital, but almost forgotten, stage in the evolution of steam power for ships. The earliest steam vessels were powered by huge vertical-cylinder steam engines driving equally huge paddles. Such a configuration, with all the integral parts exposed, was completely unsuited to naval requirements; and between the 1840s and 1870s, parallel efforts in the United States and England saw the development of screw propulsion and low-pro-
file, direct-drive compound engines built to fit below a warship's waterline. The advent of the significantly more efficient triple-expansion engine and rapid advances in the development of annor plating rendered these engines quickly and absolutely obsolete. In the Science Museum in London there are eight models of back-acting engines ranging in scalefroml:8to1:18. Sofaras is known, the Emery Rice engine is the only one of its type to survive today.
The training ship Emery Rice was conceived as a gunboat by special act of Congress, 10 February 1873 , which authorized the Secretary of the Navy to construct eight vessels whose aggregate tonnage would not exceed 8,000 tons, and whose aggregate cost would not exceed $3,200,000. They were¡ to be "Steam vessels of war with Auxiliary Sail Power." Three of the eight, the barks Alert, Huron and Ranger, had measurements of I 75ft between perpendiculars, 32ft beam, 23ft depth and 13ft draft. The Ranger was built by Harlan and Hollingsworth of Wilmington, Delaware , and was some 1120 tons displacement. These ships were built in a transitional phase in the history of naval ship construction . Ships of wood and sail were still commonplace and the ironclads had not yet given way to the "steel Navy" which lay just over the horizon . In fact Ranger was one of the last four iron ships built for the Navy . The other four of the eight authorized by Congress were steel hulled. The Ranger was a staunch , trim vessel, honestly framed and plated , strongly
riveted and very tough, even if she had no inner double-bottoms and only sketchy watertight compartmentation. Rigged as a bark , she was a good-looking square-rigger but her sails were, in fact, auxiliaries . It was her comprehensive steam plant-fired by soft coal whose grimy smoke coated the sails and rigging nearest her stack-that drove her most of her life. The Ranger's long career spanned eighty-two years and included service in both the navy and merchant marine. Though given naval armament, she never fought anything or anyone. Much of her early career was spent as a survey ship in the Far East, and by the time she was retired from that service in 1905, she was reputed to have crossed the equator more often than any other ship. In 1899 she underwent a major rebuild and was recommissioned with a barkentine rig. Six years later, she was based in the Philippines and serving as a training ship for the Philippine Nautical School; but in 1908 she was requisitioned by the Massachusetts Nautical School. Renamed Rockport, she began her most
famous role--one that would last nearly half a century-as a training ship for young United States merchant marine and naval reserve officers. Deck and engine officer cadets underwent a two-year course in the Rockport. The rigorous training offered aboard her went deep . It was not necessarily the technical level of the training, for she was an old ship, radically different from the world of the merchant marine and navy of the early twentieth century. No matter, a ship is a ship, and it takes discipline and obedience to get the job done , and that was what counted . The conditions were less than inviting. Cadets slept in hammocks, were rationed one quart of water per day for all purposes, and the work was demanding. Andy Gibson, who rose to be the Maritime Administrator in Washington, remembered the ship well , and not so fondly. The hazing was often brutal, he recalled; but he attributed his endurance in months of rugged convoy duty during World War II to the hard knocks he took on board the ship as a cadet. When the United States entered World
The Nantucket in the Bay of Naples, 1937. Photo courtesy David O'Neil.
At left, the Emery Rice engine arrives in San Francisco in 1959. The engine, saved through the efforts of Karl Kortum when the ship was scrapped, was stored in the Naval Supply Depot for the next quarter-century. At right, the author's drawing of the engine described as a "horizontal back-acting compound steam engine" of 560 indicated horsepower. Steam pressure was eighty pounds per square inch, high pressure cylinder 281/.in diameter, low pressure cylinder 42 1/iin, stroke 42in, Stephenson link valve motion and "Meyer's riding cutoff' in each valve chest to adjust for power of economy of steam. Key: 1 High pressure cylinder and head, 2 Low pressure cylinder and head, 3 Low pressure valve chest, 4 Main steampipe to engine, 5 Main gauge panel, 6 Reverse gear controls, 7 Engine order telegraph, 8 Adjusting wheel, ''Meyers riding cutoff, ' ' 9 Copper exhaust pipe, 10 Atmospheric relief valve on condenser, 11 Condenser water box cover, 12 Cover, condenser salt water circulating pump, 13 Crankshaft coupling to propeller shaft, 14 Stephenson link , reverse gear, 15 Eccentric rods: ahead, astern and one to Meyers valve rod, 16 Indicator, 17 Crankshaft, 18 Rockshaft and arm, 19 Hand levers (2) to assist reverse, 20 Ornamental cast iron steps.
War I, the Rockport was recommissioned by the Navy as the Nantucket and fitted out as a gunboat for the First Naval District. In addition to patrolling in the Atlantic, she served as a training vessel for naval midshipmen. After the war, from 1921to1940, and still named Nantucket, she continued her work with the Massachusetts Nautical School , carrying thousands of young men and turning them into good, practical seamen, licensed deck and engineering officers . Her long summer cruises included voyages to Europe, the Mediterranean and the Azores . Another graduate of the Nantucket's program was Richard R. McNulty , a Gloucester boy who trained in the Nantucket in 1919. McNulty was taken with the idea that there had to be a better way to train young men for sea duty . He envisioned a program that would make the opportunity available to youth in all the states, and one that would offer a real education instead of just training . For two decades he nurtured his concept of a federal program that would train young men for sea while at the same time giving them a broad-gauge education that included English , history , the sciences and economics. In 1938, the US Maritime Commission's Merchant Marine Cadet Corps was born, followed two years later by the founding of the US Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York , on the estate of the late Walter P. Chrysler. In 1942 the Ranger*-now renamed the Emery Rice after a Massachusetts Nautical School graduate who *In I 941 , while still at the Massachusetts Nautical School, she was briefly renamed the Bay State.
SEA HISTORY , WINTER 1987-88
as master of the freighter Mongolia let fl y our first shot at a German U-boat in World War I-became the father of the United States Merchant Marine Academy. Retired from active sea duty in 1944, the Emery Rice was stationed at Kings Point as a museum ship until 1958 when, in a wave of economizing, she was towed to the ship breakers . Had this fate threatened her today , the ship preservation movement would have certainly taken steps to save her. As it is , though, the Emery Rice's steam engine was saved through the efforts of Karl Kortum of the National Maritime Museum (then, the San Francisco Maritime Museum). Unable to find a home for the 61ton engine on the East Coast, Kortum arranged for the engine to be shipped gratis to Oakland, California, by the Pope and Talbot shipping company. Once in Oakland, the engine was put into storage at the Naval Supply Depot where it lay for the next quarter century. In 1983, Rear Admiral Thomas J. Patterson, who while working with the Maritime Administration had been instrumental in saving the Liberty ship Jeremiah O'Brien, began the effort to have the engine taken out of storage to become the centerpiece of the Marine Engineering Hall of Fame at Kings Point. He succeeded, and in 1984 the engine was carefuJly dismantled into three pieces and shipped back East, again free of charge, by the now-defunct US Lines . The following year, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers designated the engine a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark . Today the engine is on view in the Berger Hall of Marine Engineering, an annex of the American Merchant Marine
Museum on the grounds of the academy at Kings Point. Although at the time of its building screw or propellorengines weren't all that new , theEmery Rice is quite special. Described as a " horizontal back-acting compound condensing main propulsion steam engine'' (known in England as a' 'return connecting-rod engine") , she represents an intermediate step in the evolution of steam engines from the huge, low-pressure, single-expansion engines developed to drive paddlewheels in the early days of steam navigation to the final development of the vertically oriented, more powerful and efficient triple-expansion and quadruple-expansion engines. (Compound engines, in which the same steam expanded and worked in two cylinders in succession, were just coming into use in the 1870s, before the famous era of the triple-expansions which began in the 1880s and lasted until after World War II.) The Emery Rice engine was designed by the Bureau of Steam Engineering of the US Navy Department and constructed by John Roach & Son of Chester, Pennsylvania. It developed 560 indicated horse power (ihp), which meant that after accounting for its own friction, it gave a little less than 500hp to the shaft. But even at 60hp or so, it could drive the Emery Rice's clean-lined hull at about 10 knots . In principle, the engine worked much as did any compound steam engine: The high-pressure cylinder expanded the steam part way; then the low-pressure cylinder took the same steam and expanded it to the lowest pressure it could before exhausting it into the vacuum of the condenser. The condenser itself was an integral part of the machine, all of heavy cast iron with
(continued on page 37) 21
Schooner Ernestina: History Under Sail by Captain Daniel Moreland In the summer of 1894 the Effie M. Morrissey returns to Gloucester after her maiden voyage under the command of William E. Morrissey. His son, Clayton Morrissey, served as deckhand and later as captain. Courtesy Cape Ann Historical Association.
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The schooner Ernestina (ex-Effie M. Morrissey) has always sailed to use/ul purpose. Built for the Grand Banks fishing fleet in 1894, she sailed in that trade until 1914, when fishermen started referring to her as "an old plug." So she went freighting for ten years, until Captain Bob Bartlett bought her for Arctic voyaging, in which she sailed-with great success-through World War II. Once again considered obsolete, she went on to serve as a Cape Verde packet carrying passengers and cargo between the Cape Verde Islands and New England. She was the last vessel to carry immigrants to this country under sail in regular service. In the 1970s, the newly independent Republic of Cape Verde gave the Ernestina to the United States as a bicentennial birthday present. This year, in recognition of the "excellence of workmanship and authenticity of the restoration," the Ernestina was awarded a Preservation Honor Award by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Here Captain Dan Moreland, the person responsible for the Ernestina's latest comeback, tells her story. The reasons for saving an historic artifact often have less to do with its design or use than with the human story behind it. 22
Mount Vernon might have been important architecturally, but it stands today because it was George Washington's beloved home. The USS Constitution may have been a splendid frigate, but she was saved -and saved again- because her exploits during the War of 1812 stirred the American spirit when little else could. The same is true of the schooner Ernestina, ex-Effie M. Morrissey , a veteran of the Grand Banks fishing fleet, of Arctic gales and the hot dusty winds of the Sahara in the grueling Cape Verde packet trade. The Ernestina's story is not that of some curious relic brought out of obscurity and preserved by virtue of her longevity. She started out pretty well known, and then she became famous. In 1894 the United States was prosperous, expanding and naive. The popular notion in the gay nineties was that everything was great and things would stay that way-maybe even get better. . The Civil War was a long time in the past and planned obsolescence and European wars that would strip us of our innocence were a long time in the future. Ships then were built to last, with heavy frames, heavy long planks and a pride of craftsmanship not just good enough to sell but good enough to brag about to your fellow craftsmen. The shipwrights of Essex, Massachusetts, where the Ernestina was
built as the Effie M. Morrissey, strove to outdo each other just for the sake of it. This competitive edge certainly contributed to her durability. But it was also reported in her day that her skipper, William Morrissey , one of the older highliner skippers, built her more expensively and strongly than usual. She had Jots of knees: hanging knees under every full deck beam and lodging knees throughout, and no butt joints in the foredeck planking. Full length planks of quartersawn old growth hard pine in excess of thirty feet ran from the break of the poop all the way forward to meet the margin plank as it curved in at the bow. Not only was there strength, there was refinement. Although it was painted over in later years, her after cabin was panelled in brightly varnished birdseye maple and black walnut, pretty fancy stuff for a prosaic fishing boat. And she was built with other details that make one wonder: the underside of the deck planks are hand beaded, even in the fish hold. The Morrissey exemplified the best of the Fredonia-type Gloucestermen-the finest working fore-and-aft sailing vessels-with a design that felicitously combined speed, carrying capacity, maneuverability, sea kindliness and elegance in a balance that is rarely achieved. Although later extreme schooners were often faster, the Morrissey and her sisters were regularly capable of twelve-to-fourteen knots, and it is recorded that the Morrissey herself once made sixteen knots in 1912 , when veteran fishermen were calling her "an old plug ." Under ideal conditions, she can still sail within forty-five degrees of the direction of the wind, and she can hold at fifty-five degrees most of the time. As a fisherman, she was also known for her capacity. She typically brought in in excess of 200,000 pounds of fish. This was due in part to the fact that she gave up no space for an auxiliary engine. A large catch for modem draggers of comparable size is under 100,000 pounds because so much of their carrying capacity is taken up by the engine room. She is also seakindly. I have never been so comfortable at sea. As the fishermen used to say, "She shames the gulls." In 1914, the Morrissey was purchased by Harold Bartlett who sailed her in Newfoundland and Labrador with genSEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
Ninety-three years after her maiden voyage the Ernestina sails in the Traverse City, Michigan, Parade of Sail. Here, as in OpSail '86, she is the only participant to have earned her way bringing immigrants to America under sail-until 1965! Photo by Ed McKinney.
era] cargo and coal; occasionally she would sail the fishing banks. Harold Bartlett was the uncle of Captain Robert Bartlett, the Anglo-American explorer who had sailed with Robert Peary and Vilhjalmur Stefansson on a number of their expeditions to the Arctic. In 1926 he acquired the Morrissey from his uncle and began sailing her in annual expeditions to the Arctic and Greenland. The first published feature story about the Morrissey was an amusing account of a voyage between Portland, Maine, and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, in December 1912 by the Canadian maritime historian Frederick William Wallace. The Morrissey served as a platform for a National Geographic article about the Grand Banks fisheries in 1922, and she was the subject of another National Geographic piece about the Bartlett expeditions published in 1946. If you paid a nickel to see matinee pictures in the 1930s, as often as not the film of your choice was preceded by a Pathe News Reel about Captain Bartlett and his "little Morrissey,'' inspiring youth to adventure and popularizing the pursuit of science by telling about his trips to the North. Bartlett and his ship were probably as well known in their day as Jacques Yves Cousteau and the Calypso are today. SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
Youngsters in the Ocean Classroom program pitch in to furl the foresail. Photo by Gayle Sanders. Below, the Ernestina' s ship-shape forecastle, looking aft toward the galley. Photo by Barry Rich.
During her years in the packet trade between the Cape Verde I stands and the United States, the Ernestina would arrive at Providence in the spring and sail again in the fall. Here she is seen at Providence during the summer of 1957. Her sails have been unbent while she waits for another cargo to the islands. Courtesy Gordon W. Thomas Collection.
First mate Carl Brown at Ernestina' s helm . The ship's wheel emblazoned BUILT BY A. p_ STODDART GLOUCESTER MASSACHUSETTS-is original. The ship herself was built at the yard of James & Tarr, Essex, Massachusetts, in 1893-4.
tion at that time to take on the challenge of maintaining such a ship. She was purchased by a group of ex-Navy men who painted her white in anticipation of sailing her in the South Pacific, but she burned at Flushing, New York, and was only saved by being intentionally sunk . With their enthusiasm for sailing the old schooner dampened , her owners sought a new buyer. In 1948 she was purchased by Captain Henrique Mendes, a seaman and entrepreneur from the island of Brava in the But reading any of Bartlett's numerous Cape Verde archipelago some 300 miles accounts, one realizes that his trips were off West Africa . The islands have strong not some gentleman's yachting trip but ties to New England which date back to bang-up voyages to the unforgiving Arcthe heyday of whaling in the nineteenth tic reaches . Descriptions of groundings, century. Through the 1800s, Cape Verfog, ice and completely uncharted waters deans had been working on American with terrific currents made his voyages whaling ships, and many had settled in of exploration as informative and excitsoutheastern New England to work in the ing as those undertaken earlier by Capmaritime industries that flourished there. tain Cook or Roald Amundsen. His Regular traffic in immigrants to the twenty voyages in the Morrissey sponUnited States and general cargo to the sored by the Smithsonian, the American Museum of Natural History, the US islands developed. In about 1902, Captain Mendes bought his first ship and Navy and Vassar College, among others, were not simply stunts for the record started out in this trade . With the help of his sister, who was an American citibooks, but honest efforts to gather artifacts and information. Bartlett gathered zen and could own a vessel with Amerizoological specimens, completed coastal can registry, Captain Mendes bought the and hydrographic surveys-sometimes Morrissey and took her to New Bedford, with deep-sea wire sounding equipment, in the heart of the American Cape Verand sometimes with the Morrissey's dean community. There he repaired her keel-and made valuable ethnological fire damage, put a galley on deck and recordings . The Peary-McMillan Arctic entered the immigrant trade with his new Museum has 110 reels of 16mm film vessel, which he named the Ernestina recording Inuit dances and folkways all after his daughter. Although 300 years taken on expeditions in the 1920s. * separated the two ventures, Ernestina was carrying on essentially the same Although during World War II the Morrissey had been kept in good repair work as had the Mayflower, and in conby the Brooklyn Navy Yard between ditions which bore striking similarities to those of the earlier ship. Mendes retrips as a supply vessel for the US Navy, moved the engine to meet obscure laws there was not much use for a 120-ton, 52-year-old wooden sailing ship in post- of maritime commerce, and she sailed with neither radar nor radio on board. war America. On the death of Captain Bartlett in 1946, she was offered to Mys- - But for the Cape Verdean community, tic Seaport, but they were not in a posiit still made sense, in the middle of the twentieth century, to make their trip to *The Peary-McMillan Arctic Museum is seek- the New World under sail. And the Ering funds to undertake the duplication of these movies to modem safety film so that these nestina sailed between Providence and priceless records can be preserved for future the islands until Mendes retired from the scholarly research. For further information , sea in 1965, at the age of eighty-six. The Ernestina tried to revive the immigcontact the museum, located at Bowdoin College , Brunswick, ME04011 ; 207 725-3289. rant trade in the 1960s, but steamship com24
petition was too stiff, and little was heard about her until 1976 when the newly independent Republic of Cape Verde decided to refit her so she could participate in Operation Sail 1976. En route to New York she was dismasted , but the following year the Cape Verdeans decided to give the ship to the United States. Thanks largely to the efforts of the Cape Verdean community in New Bedford and throughout New England, under the sponsorship of the National Maritime Historical Society, she was returned to the United States in 1982 . The Ernestina then underwent an extensive four-year refit, which ended in time for her to sail in Operation Sail 1986, the Statue of Liberty centennial. She was unique in the parade of ships as the only vessel to have actually carried immigrants to this country . And in 1987 she received the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Preservation Honor Award. Every twenty years or so since her launching, the Ernestina has been considered obsolete and has turned her head back to the sea ,with a new gang aboard. This summer, she will begin work in sail training running short trips out of New Bedford. In the coming fall, we hope to retrace her packet route in two fourteenweek programs. The first of these will take the Ernestina to the Azores, Canary Islands , Senegal and back across the Atlantic to Barbados. On the second voyage, she will travel along the coast of northern South America and through the Caribbean. In addition to sail training, the apprentices in these voyages will participate in seminars aimed at orienting them to the cultural milieu in which the Ernestina sailed in her various trades , as well as to the new lands that she will make for in her new seafaring career. u,
For further information about the Ernestina, contact or visit the ship or the ship's museum located in the offices of the Massachusetts Schooner Ernestina Commission, 30 Union St., New Bedford , MA 02740; 617 992-4900. The commission welcomes letters and memorabilia from or about former crew or passengers of the Ernestina. SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
MARINE ART NEWS "Jacob's Ladder" is the title given to a monument in bronze to the American Merchant Mariner of World War Il . Designed by the late Jasper D' Ambrosi, the work is being completed by his two sons, Mark and Michael. Born in Wilmington, California, Jasper D' Ambrosi was for many years a longshoreman before taking up sculpting full-time in Arizona. "Jacob's Ladder" represents an experience with which anyone of a merchant ship's crew, whether AB or officer, could identifytwo seamen climbing a wildly swinging rope ladder to safety. The sculpture was commissioned by the American Merchant Marine Veterans Memorial in San Pedro, California, where it is scheduled for installation 22 May-Maritime Day. (Ted Kedzierski, President, AMMVM, PO Box 1659, Wilmington, CA 90748-1659; Mark and Michael D' Ambrosi, Arizona Bronze, 1820 East Third St., Tempe, AZ 85281; 602 968-4011) ''A man of compassion, his greatest works may be ahead of him,'' so says William Barth Osmundsen of Tristan Jones, whose portrait he recently sculpted. Bronze castings of the bust are on sale to benefit the one-legged sailor Jones in his further voyaging, always with handicapped in crew. As we go to press , Jones, who has recently circumnavigated the globe, is departing on a "3500 mile river odyssey" to Ho Chi Minh City , Vietnam. (W. B. Osmundsen , Bronzes from the Sea, PO Box 6 1, Allendale , NJ 0740 1; 201 327-9 152) The December issue of the American Society of Marine Artists newsletter, ASMA News, reports that the Maryland Historical Society wi ll host the 9th ASMA exhibition in Baltimore from March to June of 1989. Artists are urged to submit slides of completed work to ASMA by I September 1988 so that the jury may decide on works to be included in the major catalogue planned to accompany the show. ASMA has also released an I I -minute promotional video of the 8th exhibition mounted last year at The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, VA. The narrative text for the video was taken from the exhibit catalog , The Sea Perceived, written by Frank Handlen . The price is $35 , postage paid. (Nancy Stiles, ASMA, 91 Pearsall Pl., Bridgeport , CT 06605) w
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SEA HISTORY , WINTER 1987-88
Night sailing of liner Mauretania from New York in 1932.
WILLIAM G. MULLER FELLOW, A.S .M .A. • S.A.H .A .
Represented in New York by Smith Gallery 1045 Madison Ave.
Sunrise Over Nantucket in 1835.
New York , NY 1002 1 {2 12) 744-6171
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JOHN ~TOB.ART G.ALls&RY This antucket scene is one of John Stobart's six new 1988 prints. Moonlit scenes of Pittsburgh and Savannah and daylight views of Appleton's Wharf in Marblehead, Mass.; Scull Creek in Hilton Head, So. Carolina; and Monteray Bay are among the new releases. 31 No. Summer St., Edgartown, Martha's Vineyard, MA 02539 • (617) 627-9066 The Gallery is closed until May, but orders can be taken by phone at (6 17) 645-3634. A catalogue featuring all current and rare works is available for $7.50.
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---''The Ranger Capturing Drake" by Derek G.M. Gardner, watercolor, 20 x 24 inches.
The 1987 Mystic International by J. Russell Jinishian
Nineteen eighty-seven marked the eighth annual Mystic International, an exhibit that has come to be regarded as one of the single most important juried exhibits in the field. Marine artists from around the world are invited to enter painting, drawing, sculpture, scrimshaw or graphic design whose theme relates to any aspect of the maritime experience. Since the beginning, the gallery's review process¡ has had the assistance of some of the most distinguished members of the maritime art community. This year's jury included America's Cup navigator, Halsey Herreshoff; the marine artist and co-founder of the Museum of Yachting, John Mecray; and former senior curator of The Mariners' Museum, John Sands. This year's Mystic International includes ninetyseven pieces by eighty-four artists from the United States, England, Ireland, West Germany and Australia.
A great many pieces came to us this year from England where we established contact with many artists in 1982 by sponsoring the first American exhibition of the Royal Society of Marine Artists . These pieces were terrifically varied, from the scholarly authenticity of the painting of the American privateer Ranger under the command of John Paul Jones capturing the British sloop Drake on 24 April 1778 off Carrickfergus, Ireland, by the dean of English watercolor, Derek Gardner, to the small, jewellike impressionist landscapes of contemporary English riversides by plein air painter Trevor Chamberlain. Two particularly charming watercolors were submitted by Dennis Hanceri who, although a member of the Royal Society of Marine Artists since 1968, was showing for the first time in the gallery . His painting " East Coast, Low Water Near Al burgh" was worked up from many sketches he had made
''Thermopylae at Petropavlovsk' ' by David Thimgan, oil, 20 x 30 inches.
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SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
" The Old Island Steamer" by William G. Muller, oil 13 x 18 inches .
on site, and it has the fresh atmospheric quality that has distinguished British watercolor for centuries. Here on a small inlet from the North Sea, the eight-foot tide has run completely out leaving the sand on the bottom exposed, rendered in a delightful purple hue, and the boats on the wharlside resting snugly on it. Beautifully drawn by this former advertising artist, the solid feel of buildings on shore complement the delicate curves and rigging of the fishing boat and Thames fishing barge in the right half of the picture. The majority of artists shown in the International hail from the US , but they represent interests in just about every aspect of marine life past and present. John Atwater's "Early Morning" is a colorful panorama of the docks of South Bristol , Maine , as they appear today , populated by boats of all kinds which work the waters of St. John ' s Bay. David Thimgan is a young Californian artist who concentrates on documenting the maritime history of the West Coast and Pacific Ocean. His painting "Thermopylae at PetropavIovsk" depicts the Russian harbor in 1876 when the former tea clipper carried coal from Sydney, Australia, for the Russian navy . Thimgan has beautifully recreated the. harbor with the rolling hills leading down to the small village , the golden light breathing warmth into the entire scene which centers on a steam-powered paddlewheel tug towing the Thermopylae. A paddlewheel steamer of a ilifferent sort is featured in William G. Muller's painting of the " Old Island Steamer" Martha's Vineyard as she makes her way on her passenger run between Martha's Vineyard and Woods Hole on a beautifully calm day
in 1905. Mr. Muller is one of the most respected scholars of the passenger steam era and he designed the sightseeing boats the Andrew Fletcher and the DeWitt Clinton which run out of South Street Seaport. As a painter his touch is light and sweet, qualities which in combination with his unerring accuracy make his paintings much more than dry historical documents . Another painter working in this documentary style is Thomas M. Hoyne, III, who has made a lifetime project of researching and painting scenes of the Gloucester fishing schooners. His painting entitled " The Uninvited" depicts the fishing schooner Stiletto , a semi-knockabout of John McManus design which was lost off New Jersey in 1930. It is a glassy calm day on the Grand Banks when out of the haze the steamer Tuscania emerges breaking the silence and endangering the lives of the men in the dories hard at work . This was a not uncommon scene on the Banks in the '20s , and it is a sad fact that in 1925 the Tuscania cut the schooner Rex in two , a tragedy that resulted in the loss of fifteen men . William Ryan's painting of the tug Edmond J . Moran was the winner of an award given annually in memory of Rudolph J. Schaefer, collector and author of the definitive monograph on James E. Butterworth, to honor the work '' that best documents our maritime heritage past or present for generations of the future." Mr. Ryan's portraits combine accurate observation , exciting color and energetic brushwork and his formal training at the Pratt Institute is complemented by his firsthand seagoing experience in tugs , freighters and liners. Built in the 1940s in Beaumont, Texas, as an ocean-going rescue tug for
f
" Bear" by Victor Mays , watercolor 12 x 21 inches.
SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
27
" The Uninvited" by Thomas M. Hoyne Ill , oil, 27 x 37 inches .
wartime use, the Edmond J. Moran saw action in the Atlantic and Pacific, and logged more than 100,000 miles, on the way sinking two U-boats and towing hundreds of vessels with her 1900 horsepower diesel engine. It is not surprising that the work of Victor Mays is probably more sought after than that of any other American marine watercolorist. His award-winning painting of the research vessel Bear is testimony enough to his extraordinary talents. Built as a brigantine in 1879 at Dundee, Scotland, and fitted with auxiliary steam power, the Bear spent ten years in the sealing trade, until the US government purchased her to search for the missing Adolphus Greely expedition to Greenland. She next went into service patroling off the Bering Sea, and then spent a few years as a museum ship in Oakland , before Admiral Byrd purchased her for his second Antarctic expedition in 1933. In this painting the Bear is seen set in the blue ice just off the frozen Antarctic cliffs . Smoke rising from her stack and her canvas sails provide the warmth in this picture as members of the Byrd expedition and a dog team gather on the ice. What makes his work so unique is May's combination of atmosphere and meticulous craftsmanship which breathe life into every detail in the picture. But today's marine art is not all historical in nature. Take for example James Harrington 's impressionistic ' 'Celebration.' ' Harrington' s work, which has been featured in American Artist Magazine, never tries to capture the details of a particular place, but rather evokes the mood and feeling of an experience. In "Celebration," Harrington blends color, light and gestures of the figures to create, as the judges of this exhibit said, ''the kind of Fourth of July that everyone would like to remember having ." Sculptor Wayne Holsopple focuses on the particular, but raises it to the symbolic as in his tour de force wood carving of "Ahab" in full figure grasping his harpoon and fixing the viewer with a menacing stare. This piece, carved out of a single piece of cherry, epitomizes the single-minded determination behind Ahab's search for the white whale . It represents, too, the kind of monumental courage that keeps men returning to the alien and forbidding environment of the sea. Whales and marine mammals are a strong part of the contemporary marine art scene and this year' s International features works by two of the country's finest artists working with these subjects. Ex-Coastguardsman Don McMichael's paintings are characterized by a waterline perspective which allows the viewer to see both under and above the water at the same time. ' 'Whales Bear Watching" depicts mother and baby bowhead whales and a small pod of beluga whales seen under the water, while just above the surface are seen a polar bear and a starry sky. Very charming and anatomically correct views of these gentle giants are also achieved by sculptor Randy Puckett. His most public work to date is a life-sized gray whale and calf
28
on exhibit in the recently opened aquarium in Monterey , California. His entries in this show include three fine scale sculptures of narwhals, dolphins and a huge humpback with a small pod of dolphins respectively. Once the pastime exclusively of sailors at sea, scrimshaw has now become another medium of expression for today ' s talented artists . Contemporary scrimshanders employ all the skills of highly trained artists to create original compositions of everything from sailing ships to harbor scenes and ship portraits using the traditional needle and ink on ivory. In the process, they have transformed this sailor's craft into a fine collectible art. Because of the strict federal laws governing trafficking in whalebone , many of the scrimshanders are turning to work on walrus, elephant and fossilized ivory . David Smith ' s three-part scrimshaw of America's Cup defender Resolute is a fine example of this new use of the medium . It features two highly detailed views of the Resolute , one in profile and the other underway (adapted from photographs by Morris Rosenfeld) mounted together with a portrait of her designer, Captain Nathaniel Herreshoff. Just as the drama of recent America's Cup competition has created a new interest in contemporary marine art, so too has it created a new level of interest in the history of the Cup itself. Artists are exploring the many aspects of the story of yachting ' s most heralded race like never 'before: English artist Tim Thompson ' s painting of the 1866 race between Fleetwing and Vesta from Sandy Hook to the Needles off the coast of England which predated the first official America's Cup defense; Australian artist Ian Hansen's spectacular depiction of the schooner America in 1851 , and Reliance versus Shamrock /II in 1903; Len Pearce' s highly detailed depiction of the 1885 race between Puritan and Genesta; and Willard Bond ' s large, nearly abstract dramatic watercolor displaying the power and fury of today ' s twelve meters. There is much more of course , from West Coast fishing boats , to the Fastnet light, to beluga whales in translucent white alabaster and colorful racing scenes of Bahamian sloops . But like all good art, marine art is about much more than the objects it depicts. Although steeped in tradition, it's an art form fully alive in the present. The elemental struggle between man and nature, the spreading of civilization across great oceans, the sweet sadness of a voyage's end-it is these experiences and many more that today's marine artists endeavor to portray . Just as we find ourselves drawn again and again to the water's edge, so these artists draw us back again and again to the memories and promise it holds. '1 J. Russell Jinishian is the Director of Mystic Maritime Gallery at the Mystic Seaport Museum Stores, Mystic, Connecticut. SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
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In the dead of winter, we have made it a habit to creep away to the icebound harbors and snow swept beaches of southern New England. I met a man once in the long defunct Lido Bar on Third Avenue who said that each New Year's Day he went to the deserted beach at Far Rockaway, where Brooklyn meets the Atlantic, to watch the New Year dawn . The grandeur of sea, sky and snowbound land comes home to one on such trips and, of course, the heart of winter is not dead at all. On the contrary , it' s alive with memories whose dim colors gather strength against the prevailing grayness of things, as one walks the empty shore leaning against the winter wind and hardly able to talk or hear anything over the seas booming in to crash on the primordial rock and sand. Talk is for later, for an evening, before an open fue, in the cellar of. one of those fine old sea captain 's houses in Nantucket, where the Brotherhood Restaurant keeps open fires burning. I remember such an evening spent with Joe Cantalupo of the Friends of South Street. What sweet ideas we conceived, and how brave we felt about them all! Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod , seems to gather its skirts chastely around itself, as if to make up for the wild profligacy of its summers . There's an excellent bookshop there , which deserves quiet exploration without sandalled crowds pushing through . It's called The Provincetown Bookshop and is a worthy stopping place or even a goal of a winter visit. There used to be a restaurant in Wellfleet which also was worth a journey of many miles to get to . What heaven when we came in there one blustery day and found that the restaurant opened into a considerable secondhand bookshop, including some volumes from the libraries of such distinguished litterateurs as Edmund Wilson and others , presumably put on sale after their deaths or removals. Well , the books were sold off and replaced with garish tourist stuff. Then there's the famous-the justly famous-Landfall Restaurant at Woods Hole, where you get the boat for Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard. The Vineyard now holds a special festive winter week in the Christmas season , usually in mid-December. This island, like her remoter sister Nantucket, seems to step gently backward into a plainer and more thoughtful time when the temperature falls, and wintry gusts chase each other across the icefringed harbors . On th1e way back west there are a gaggle of greatt waterfront restaurants in New SEPA HISTORY , WINTER 1987-88
Experience
______..&..
Bedford, that largely Portuguese city which is today home to the last of the Brava packets, the Ernestina, which our Society had some role in saving, with Pete Seeger, Frank Braynard and the joyously creative Cape Verdean community. And there is Mystic Seaport Museum, surely at its best when you have to crunch through the snow from exhibit to exhibit, and when the topmast of the L.A . Dunton seems to scrape audibl y against the overhanging cloud bank that gathers on our coast each winter. The duPont Restoration Shipyard-well, that's always a treat, but surely more so than ever in winter, the traditional shipbuilding season when there are no birds whistling or gentle waters lapping around the comer just outdoors, but life comes down to the work at hand and a stove stuffed with odd scraps of wood. On across the Thames and Connecticut Rivers, some twenty miles to the westward is the seaport town of Essex , which like the other villages mentioned here , tends to draw into itself in winter to leave the bare river anchorages and the coves that flank the town to north and south looking much as they did in the winter months when the young Captain Henry Champlin, driven upriver by the British blockade of the coast in the War of 1812, successfully courted Amelia Prudence Hayden , daughter of old Uriah who built ships and kept the waterfront tavern. The Hayden house still survives, kept today as a private club. But just a little inward you will find the Griswold Inn of 1776, a great haunt of sailing people, at least since the 1930s when the likes of Hubert Toppin and Sam Wetherill held forth at its bar. It still radiates the atmosphere of openhanded hospitality which it had then under Frank Ladd-a tradition worthily upheld by Bill and Vicki Winterer, who served as volunteers in the early days of South Street Seaport Museum in New York. The Gris is a bit expensive, and in summertime tends to be very crowded; but at least have a quiet mug of ale there. Here , as elsewhere, you' II meet tourists, in winter a quieter breed. But who, finally , is going to scorn tourists? Isn't that who we all are, searching our bearings, searching out meanings in the experience of our lives and grateful for gathering places along the ways we are each following?
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Dine in relaxed elegance in the heart of the South Street Seaport. Yankee Clipper's Wavertree Room The Yankee Clipper, one of South Street Seaport's finest restaurants, recently dedicated an opulently refurbished room to honor the historic Wavertree , a tall ship now berthed just outside the restaurant's multipaned windows. The dedication of the Wavertree Room goes beyond its physical proximity to its namesake, however, for the room actually once served as the office of Baker, Carver & Morrell, general agents who represented the Wavertree in the 1800s. -VIA PORT OF NY-NJ, March 1986
P ETER STANFORD
>per SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
33
SAIL TRAINING
Te Vega in the Mediterranean by David Buchanan The big German-built Te Vega presents a considerable challenge in hard work and seamanship to the young people she takes to sea, with her huge sails and elaborate rigging .
t.'C
The 156/t gaff-rigged schooner Te Vega was built in 1930 at the Krupp Steelworks in Kieli Germany. Originally designed as a yacht, she served as a weather ship for the US Navy during World War II, and after the war, as a research vesselforStanford University. Jn 1982, the Landmark School purchased her for use as a training ship. Although she has since been sold, she continues in . the same work, under charter to the Landmark School, carrying students in programs that run through the academic year. The wind saunters about the horizon undecidedly as we depart Malaga, Spain , bound for the Canary Islands. Before long , though, it settles in easterly to allow an easy downwind run-a schooner breeze. The morning haze recedes to reveal the converging coasts of North Africa and Spain. The distant mirage of Gibraltar, ahead to starboard, sparks excitement at the wheel. The rock's sheer stone face , a giant water catch, defiantly reflects the stare of the African sun. Traffic increases. Tankers slide by, bound for the oil fields of the Middle East. United States naval vessels form a convoy, also on a crusade to that region . Suddenly, a spiked formation of British Harrier jets rocket close overhead, their hostile sonic thunder ricochets off the steel hull: patrolling air space. It is as if all the frantic activity of humanity has converged 34
on this passage between continents. The wind shares our sudden energy and builds. By the noon watch change, Te Vega charges westward wing and wing, her straining sails stretched out on either side: 156 feet of steel schooner flying before a massive spread of canvas. Tormented by the collision of wind and current, the waters of the strait glisten like burnished metal. The mysterious dark shores of Africa, punctuated only by a few minarets, and the sketchy details of Gibraltar fade astern. The bow boldly plows a foaming furrow as we roar for the horizon and nightfall.
*****
Te Vega is a schoolship. This spectacular passage was the result of many people's efforts and the never waning energy of Steve Wedlock, the ship's master, and his wife Kim Pedersen, the academic director. They operated Te Vega as part of the Watermark Program , for the Landmark School of Prides Crossing , Massachusetts, an institution with an international reputation for teaching leamingdisabled adolescents. Students ip the program range in age from thirteen to twenty . All of them are of average to above average intelligence , but they share a common learning disability, dyslexia . This affliction impairs their ability to process material in reading and writing. But the immediacy of daily demands aboard the ship counteracts these de-
ficiencies by building self-confidence and imposing a special discipline that reinforces academic goals. Students take classes in English, math, history or science as well as a language tutorial and a bosun 's class in either the galley, the engine room or on deck. Surrounding the vessel, though, is the ocean, tirelessly reminding each of us that its curriculum is the most rigorous of all . My own association with the Watermark Program began soon after I graduated from college in 1982. I was fortunate enough to serve as the mate aboard Landmark's original sailing vessel, the 63ft schooner When and If. A year later, when I returned to teach at the school , I applied for a position aboard Te Vega as the history instructor. By September, I found myself on a cement pier near Athens about to commence a year at sea. During the course of that year the ship sailed from Greece , westward through the Mediterranean Sea, transatlantic to Bermuda, and on to Beverly, Massachusetts. Many of the occasional less savory aspects of that period have faded in my memory . What endures is a fascination with the adventure and grace of the craft of sail. One experience, in particular, will always stick in my mind. Late one afternoon, 15 knots of wind sprang up . It was no trade wind, but worth celebrating all the same. Te Vega dug in and romped westward, her massive tonnage exuding a peaceful power. The smooth regularity of her motion resembled that of a silently propelled train. The trickling flow of the Atlantic skimming by her hull recalled the soothing sensation of a summer rainstorm, whispering potency. Toward sunset it was time to shorten sail, so Chris, my cabinmate, and I climbed aloft to furl the main topsail. And we stayed there for an hour. The immensity of the ship 's 10,000 square feet of canvas made the crew's job one of taming monsters. Our shipmates on deck took in the jib topsail-but Chris and I remained wrestling billowing lobes of sail. Ninety feet in the air it's every man for himself and the ship. It's a peculiar type of self-reliance; we worked as a team , but the ultimate responsibility SEA HISTORY , WINTER 1987-88
Arching headsails pull the schooner along over a sunlit sea . The new topmast, shown at right with its traditional gear at the doubling , supports the mighty pull of all that canvas. All photos by the author.
for our safety was in our own grip. The slippery tallow on the leathered shrouds added a new dimension to the footing, no mean proposition anyway, due to the whip-like action of the masthead in the unrelenting head sea. Eventually, we clambered around, lassoing stray ballooning sail, gaining the upper hand. While aloft, we had the chance to look around. From so far off the water, the Atlantic appeared much the same as it did when we flew across to meet the ship in Greece, eight months earlier. Dark shadows of clouds passed over the glittering surface, stretching into the distance for eternity . A ship is a remarkable phenomenon. She plows forward, transporting forty-two people and all they need to live in this beautiful but potentially perilous environment. Te Vega nodded into the head sea , haltingly reared back , paused , then plunged forward: a unicorn on a fantastic campaign. As the sun set behind buxom purple cumulus clouds ringing the horizon, I recalled that first bright day I had encountered the. schooner, on the dock in Athens. At that point, she had a severe case of baldness , as she was in the process of having her masts replaced . Ten miles across the bay, in Athens' commercial harbor, Piraeus, lay the new masts radiant in their bed of shavings. Sticks that size-85 feet-hadn't been fashioned in Greece for fifty years. Participating in the project, finishing and rigging them , was a step into history, to a time when quality hand work was at a premium . Every morning , four of us, two mates and two crew members, would load the SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
launch to navigate across the bay to "mast land ." On the way we would pass the Long Walls built by Pericles twentyfour centuries earlier in preparation for the Peloponnesian War. Having negotiated the less picturesque sewage line in Piraeus ' s harbor and the shipping lanes, we would set to work, surrounded by derelict ships sadly corralled for the scrapyard. Clearly , this was far removed from the carefully orchestrated atmosphere designed for tourists . We varnished and mounted Te Vega's gargantuan mast fittings, stitched leather chafe protection on the shrouds, and spent days immersed in Stockholm tar while worming and serving her miles of standing rigging. We all knew that the work there would determine the rig's endurance for years to come. That satisfaction of a job well done somehow mitigated the fatigue at the end of the day, though we dreamt of marline and splices . With the groundwork finally completed, the time of reckoning commenced. During three intense days, two cranes wrestled the five-ton jewels into place. The ship took on a new majesty, far beyond anticipation: Te Vega' s corona-
ti on. When we stepped her topmasts several months later, she fairly towered above the town and raked the sky. w
Mr . Buchanan joined the Te Vega as a teacher in 1983 and later sailed as third mate . Today he serves as an Academic Supervisor at the Landmark School. Students interested in learning more about the sail training programs offered aboard the Te Vega are invited to contact the Watermark Program, c/o Landmark School, Prides Crossing, MA 01965;617 927-4440.
Embodying the aristocratic grace of a vanished era of yachting , the lissome schooner sails confidently into her second half-century, doing easily the most important work of her career.
35
SAIL TRAINING NEWS
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The Sea Education Association (SEA) has taken delivery of the Corwith Cramer, a 135ft brigantine built by Astilleros y Talleres Celaya (ASTACE) in Bilbao, Spain. Named for SEA's founder, the new vessel joins the research schooner, Westward, in carrying oceanographic and scientific expeditions to sea. The Cramer will rendezvous with the Westward in the Caribbean before they sail together into Woods Hole on 14 May . Sea Semester class No . 100 will set sail on the Cramer on 20 May. The Cramer is the first vessel built according to standards set forth in the Coast Guard's sailing school vessel regulations. The ASTACE yards have built a number of sail training ships in recent years, including Mexico's Cuauhtemoc, Colombia's Gloria, Venezuela's Simon Bolivar and Ecuador's Guayas. (Susan E. Humphris , Dean, SEA , PO Box 6, Woods Hole, MA 02543; 617 540-3954) Launch of the Pride of Baltimore 11 is set for late April. The new Baltimore clipper will replace the original Pride, which was lost with four hands in 1986. Pride 11 is built to improved standards of safety and will be eligible to carry passengers. This will allow her to expand on her predecessor's mission of promoting Maryland's industry , tourism and maritime heritage, and it will enable her to work in sail training. (Mary Sue McCarthy, Dir. of Public Relations , Pride of Baltimore 11, JOO Light St., Baltimore, MD 21202; 301 625-5460)
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Square Rigged Services, Ltd. , have announced plans to build a 4-masted bark to sail with young offenders in adventure training. The ship is to accommodate 80 trainees and an afterguard of 40 officers, teachers and professional personnel , and it is to have the capacity to carry 1,000 tons of general cargo. The cargo, it is thought, will give the trainees a more crisply defined sense of purpose than they might have in a more purely adventure training program such as that undertaken by the Sail Training Association and other European sail training schemes. In developing plans for the program, director Morin Scott cites the American VisionQuest program as an example of the success that can be obtained through sail training with youthful offenders. Naval architect Colin Mudie has prepared plans for a vessel with a hull length of280ft. (H.F. Morin Scott, Square Rigged Services, Ltd., Commercial House, Station Rd., Bognor Regis , West Sussex P021 IQD, England; 0243 826-877) .t
•
SEA HISTORY , WINTER 1987-88
THE EMERY RICE ENGINE (continued from page 21) hundreds of bronze tubes which carried the cool seawater through them . The condensed steam was fed back into the boilers as feed-water. The engine had enormous heft and its builders were liberal in their use of sturdy materials in its construction. The condenser's saltwater boxes and the seawater-circulating pump casings were made of heavy fine cast iron well over an inch thick. These endured the action of saltwater for eighty-two years of service. What makes the engine unique is its configuration-strange, to our eyes, when compared with other compound engines of the day . Because it was built for a warship, its design very sensibly made it low in the ship, below the waterline and "out of the way of shot and shell." The back-acting part came from the need for getting enough distance from the cylinders to the crossheads and connecting rods to work smoothly. Working along a horizontal axis, double piston rods reached from the cylinders , straddled past the crankshaft, and met at the crossheads on the other side of the engine. There, crossheads and their slippers moved back and forth on the flat guides. The crosshead pins carried the connecting rods which finally met the crankpins of the big crankshaft to tum the shaft like any well behaved steam engine. The oilers had to crawl into this tight space to reach the oil cups. To reverse the engine, the big Stephenson links had to be thrown open from ahead to astern, which was brought about here by a steam piston ram. If that failed, a big hand wheel and screw would do it. When the links were thrown over, the steam acted to drive the engine in reverse. Another curious feature of the engine, now recognizable only to devotees of old engines, is the so-called "Meyer's Riding Cutoff." This was a device that supplemented the Stephenson link motion and afforded the engineer a way to regulate the amount of steam in using the engine. The old iron steam engines, with so many parts in clear view and moving rhythmically , indeed cast a spell on those attending them. The warmth, the smell of steam and oil combined, the gleaming steel, iron and brass parts moving almost silently in unison had an aura about it. Diesels have a measure of convenience about them ; but for mystique, they cannot hold a candle to steam. w RAdm . McCready served as head of the Department of Engineering at the US Merchant Marine Academy from 1942 to 1969 . Now a consulting engineer, he oversaw the restoration and installation of the Emery Rice engine. SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
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37
SHIP NOTES
Ship Trust Activities Report for 1987 by Frank G. G. Carr, World Ship Trust and Eric J. Berryman, American Ship Trust Plans to restore the iron-hulled bark of 1879, Lady Elizabeth, in Port Stanley, Falkland Islands, have been renewed . The most recent proposal is for the work force at Hartlepool-which undertook the magnificent restoration of HMS Warrior and is now at work on HMS Foudroyant, the 46-gun Leda-class frigate of 1817-to reconstruct all of the gear, rigging , deck fittings and cabin furniture for the Lady Elizabeth in England . This would then be shipped out to Port Stanley together with a small nucleus of skilled craftsmen who would rig and fit out the bark.
the project director, Fred Yalouris. The section and a variety of related artifacts are now housed in the new Spring Point Museum in South Portland , the director of which is Nick Dean. Although the World Ship Trust had a role in the early stages of this effort, everyone can share in the triumph of its great success. The state of Maine and the nation have been much enriched by the recovery of this alltoo-rare segment of an American clipper. (Spring Point Museum, SMVTI, Fort Road, South Portland, ME 04106; 207 799-6337)
''Harpies of the shore,'' as Karl Kortum, quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes, calls them, are omnipresent but not omnipotent. The Charity Commissioners denied the petition of The Yavari Project to be registered as a public charity in the UK on the grounds that the Yavari is of only local Peruvian interest. The WST protested this narrow interpretation and pointed out that the Yavari was over 100 years old and British-built, in sections small enough to be carried by mules up to Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable body of water in the world. The Charity Commission reversed its decision , and The Yavari Project is now registered as the Asociaci6n Yavari . Further research into the ship's history has revealed that the Yavari and her sistership Yapura were not built by Laird Brothers at Birkenhead (as reported in SH41) , but by the firm of James Watt & Co., London . Construction of the hulls was subcontracted to the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Co., Ltd. The story of Lairds' involvement seems to have arisen because it was Lairds who built one of Peru 's most famous ships, Huascar (1865), and in 1957 Cammell Lairds put their name to a general arrangement drawing of the Yavari. (Asociaci6n Yavari , Meriel Larken, 61 Mexfield Rd ., London, SW15 2RG England; 01 874-0583)
The full-scale Revolutionary War replica vessel Rose is one of the extraordinary success stories of our day . So completely rebuilt as to obscure her Canadian origins and fitted with watertight compartments, she is on the verge of being certified as a Sailing School Vessel by the Coast Guard. The HMS Rose Foundation has determined that the Rose will sail for the state of Connecticut as a self-supporting goodwill ambassador promoting maritime and historical education, trade and industry, and tourism. Applications for qualified crew , from ABs to master of sail (500 tons) are invited . (Capt. Richard Bailey, HMS Rose Foundation , I Bostwick Ave., Bridgeport, CT 06605 ; 203 335-1433)
A South Pacific branch of the World Ship Trust was announced in June at the New Zealand Boat Show in Auckland. This initiative was actively pursued by Bill Deed , the able and successful organizer of the Jane Gifford Restoration Project in Waiuku. Other members of the board include Ron Bird of the Traditional Sail Trust (New Zealand) and Peter Brook of the Jane Gifford project. E. N. Brough is Hon . Solicitor. (Bill Deed, 9 Martyn St., Waiuku , New Zealand) The bow section of the American clipper Snow Squall (1851) returned to Portland , Maine, from the Falkland Islands after six years of much hard work and planning by 38
The Army Corps of Engineers , New York District, included the American Ship Trust in its coordination of a Cultural Resources Mitigation Plan for the Port Johnson Historic Sailing Vessels, part of the New York Harbor Collection. Seven vessels are classified as hulks retaining between 50% and 75% of the visible portion of their hulls . They were abandoned in the waters of Kill Van Kull off Bayonne, New Jersey . The Occidental, Estelle Krieger and James Howard are Maine-built sailing ships of the late nineteenth century . The remaining four-Maceratta, City of Austin, Molfetta and Penrose-are World War I-era Gulf Coast barkentines, designed to accommodate engines and among the largest sailing vessels ever built. (Roselle Henn, Environmental Analysis Branch, Corps of Engineers , 26 Federal Pl ., New York, NY 10278-0090; 212 264-4662) Project Liberty continues to build a head of steam in its effort to move the Liberty ship John W. Brown from the James River Reserve Fleet in Virginia to New York Harbor. With the Jeremiah O'Brien (see pp 16-19) on exhibit in San Francisco, the establishment of the Brown would give the nation one example on each coast of the more than 2,700 Liberty ships built during World War II. Members of Project
Liberty have at last discovered the John W. Brown's eponym . He was a native of Woolwich, Maine, born in 1867. A shipjo iner by trade, he worked at the Bath Iron Works and was a union organizer for Local 4 , Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers . He died 21 June 1941; the ship was launched 7 September 1942. (Jim Ean, Project Liberty, Ste. 261 l, 1 World Trade Ctr., New York, NY 10048; 212 775-1544) One of the vessels in Alexandria, Virginia, for the first annual meeting of the Colonial Maritime Association (ex-Council of Colonization Period Ships}--was the Little Key, an 18ft ship's boat built by the Kalmar Nyckel Foundation in Wilmington, Delaware. The group's larger effort is the building of a full-size replica of the 90ft Swedish armed pinnace Kalmar Nyckel which brought the first settlers to the Delaware Valley . Under the command of Peter Minuet, formerly governor of New Amsterdam, on her first voyage in 1638 she brought Swedes, Finns, English , Dutch, French Huguenots and a West Indian to the area around what is today Wilmington. The shipwright in charge of the building is Alan Rawl, working to plans drawn up by Thomas Gillmer. The construction of the Kalmar Nyckel is expected to cost $1.8 million, and will be completed in 1988, the 350th anniversary of the original ship's arrival in North America. (Malcolm Mackenzie, Kalmar Nyckel Foundation, 823 East Seventh St., Wilmington, DE 19801 ; 302 429-0350) The AST is looking to a number of new initiatives to carry forward the Society's educational program , ''Opening the Ocean World." Chief among these is an educational kit to be called The American Astrolabe, the emphasis of which is the western hemisphere, and the completion of which is set for sometime before 1992, the quincentennial of Columbus' voyage to the New World. This report closes with a quotation from James Forsythe, Deputy Director of the World Ship Trust, who addressed the Sixth International Reunion for the History of Nautical Science and Hydrography which took place in Sagres this past October. Major Forsythe spoke for all of us when he told the conferees: " The great importance of preserving the historic ships of the world must be recognized-for without the ship, there would be no navigation and no navigators and we should not be gathered here today ." And that is the history of the world.
u, u, u, SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
NEW Y9RK CITY THE NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF PORTS, INTERNATIONAL TRADE AND COMMERCE Improving cargo operations in New York City: •Marine •Rail • Warehousing
• Air •Truck • Foreign Trade Zones
Attracting foreign trade and investment to New York. Developing new international opportunities for local firms. Increasing commerce through the Port of New York. Battery Maritime Building New York, NY 10004 (212) 806-6700
Edward I. Koch , Mayor Alair A. Townsend Deputy Mayor for Finance and Economic Development
Michael P. Huerta, Commissioner
Corporate events in the grand style and elegant private affairs can be arranged aboard our traditionally-styled boats sailing out of South Street Seaport.
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Pier 16, South Street Seaport Museum, New York, NY 10038 Telephone: 212 406-3434 SEA HISTORY , WINTER 1987-88
39
THE CHRISTMAS TREE SCHOONER
Rouse Simmons by Joseph A. Nowak, Jr.
The Rouse Simmons during the Christmas tree season at Chicago, from a painting by Charles Vickery .
There was a time when the advent of Christmas in Chicago was marked not by Thanksgiving but by the docking of the Rouse Simmons, better known as "The Christmas Tree Schooner," near the Clark Street Bridge. Her arrival served notice to all tum-of-the-century Chicagoans that Christmas was near. August Schuenemann and his younger brother Herman began hauling Christmas trees from northern Michigan and Wisconsin to Chicago for the holidays in 1884. It was a most profitable venture for the Schuenemann brothers. This voyage marked the end of the shipping season because of the stormy nature of the Great Lakes. Insurance on marine bottoms ran out at noon on the last day of November, and the Coast Guard gathered up buoys and aids to navigation for the winter. The November storms that made travel on the Lakes so hazardous, proved fatal to August Schuenemann in 1898. His ship went down near Glencoe, Illinois, with all hands and a load of trees. Herman Schuenemann picked up the reins of the family business and continued the Christmas tree tradition. He used several different schooners to ship the trees , until 1910, when he bought an operating share in the Rouse Simmons . The Simmons was a three-masted schooner, built in 1868 at Milwaukee and named for a prominent Kenosha merchant of the time. She had a length of 124 feet, breadth of 28 feet and depth just short of 8 1/z feet; her gross tonnage was listed at 205 . Herman Schuenemann used the Simmons as a tramp freighter during the summer shipping season. She would travel from one port to the next 40
picking up cargos of lumber, logs or cedar posts . In her declining years, there were many who suggested that the only thing keeping her afloat was her wood cargo. In the latter part of September or early October, Captain Schuenemann would sail to Thompson , Michigan, and pick up a load of sapling pine and balsam trees from nearby Manistique. With a Christmas tree lashed to the mast, he would set sail for Chicago where families would go down to the dock and pick up a Christmas tree. For a quarter or fifty cents , a family could pick the tree of their choice from the deck of the Simmons . The Christmas tree venture was one in which the entire Schuenemann family participated . Schuenemann's wife and daughters would make Christmas wreaths from the bales of lycopodeum that were also part of the Christmas cargo. Nothing was wasted or went unsold. By the 1890s, the Simmons' trip was so profitable that Captain Schuenemann and his partner, Captain Nelson, were operating as many as three different schooners each season. November 1912 was a violent month for the Great Lakes . But on 22 November, Captain Schuenemann sailed for Chicago in time to arrive there by Thanksgiving, when he would get the best press notice. Schuenemann made a difficult decision. The Simmons would make only one Christmas tree run this year. After filling the hold of his ship to capacity , he deckloaded his ship with even more trees . Perhaps it was profit. Perhaps-as he told the press-it was the joy he found in the eyes of the Chicago children that came aboard to find the "perfect" tree for
Christmas. Nonetheless his ship was heavily overloaded. An early winter storm threatened as the Rouse Simmons prepared to leave port. Captain Schuenemann thought he could get ahead of the storm and make the journey. When rats were seen leaving the ship, obviously a bad omen, two or three men refused to go on the journey even though they would forfeit their bonus. Setting sail from Thompson on 22 November, Captain Schuenemann found himself in serious trouble. The storm was more than he could hope to handle. Rain soaked the trees on the deck and froze when the temperature dropped below freezing. Rough waves washing over the deck and into the hold freezing and added considerable to the weight of the Simmons . On 23 November, the Rouse Simmons was sighted under shortened sail and flying a distress signal near the shore of Kewaunee, Wisconsin. The local lifesaving station had only a rowboat which was not up to a November storm rescue . They telephoned the Coast Guard station down the coast in Two Rivers. A Coast Guard vessel, Tuscarora, tried to come to her aid but reported ''nothing to be seen of the schooner." She continued her search, along with other vessels, into December. It was weeks before the search was finally abandoned. After the last confirmed sighting, reports came in concerning a ship that could have been the Simmons sighted near Milwaukee. Another theory suggested the resourceful Captain Schuenemann may have steered for Pentwater, Michigan, to escape the storm. When the shoreline of Two Rivers slowly filled with SEM HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
The Kewaunee life-saving station (upper left) was the first to sight the Rouse Simmons in distress. In 1971 , diver Kent Bellrichard recovered the remains of a tree and an urn (right) and her nameboard (left) , now in the Roger's Street Fishing Village Museum . Lower left, The Schuenemann gravestone in the Acacia Park Cemetery, Chicago.
waterlogged Christmas trees over the next several weeks, however, the outcome of the Simmons' last journey was tragically clear. According to affidavits filed by Mrs. Schuenemann and others, thirteen men lost their lives on the voyage. Early newspaper accounts said the Simmons left with a crew of five as well as the first mate and his wife, but this was never confirmed. There may have been as many as a dozen assorted lumberjacks on board hitching a ride to Chicago for the holidays. Shortly after the loss of the Simmons, a newspaper published a message found in a bottle and said to have been written by Captain Schuenemann himself. "Friday-Everybody goodbye. I guess we are all through. Sea washed over our deckload Thursday . During the night the small boat was washed over. Ingvald and Steve fell overboard Thursday . God help us. Herman Schuenemann.'' Repeated requests to produce the message were unavailing. But the "bottle boys" have a long and sordid history of coming up with bottles enclosing notes that conform to already published accounts .
* * * * * Captain Schuenemann left a widow and three daughters. Finding herself alone with the responsibility of providing for three children, Mrs. Barbara SchueneSEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
mann decided to carry on her husband's work . The year after her husband 's death saw a new Christmas tree schooner at Chicago's Clark Street Bridge but this was a showcase ship loaded with trees shipped to Chicago via rail. Mrs . Schuenemann had personally supervised the harvesting of the saplings in Manistique and Thompson, Michigan . Her twenty-year-old daughter, Elsie, and two younger daughters made the preparations in Chicago and the tradition was born again. The Christmas tree tradition would continue until Mrs. Schuenemann's death twenty years later in 1933 . Twelve years after the Simmons went down, Captain Schuenmann 's wallet, wrapped in oilskin and held tight by a rubber band, washed up on the shore. This was not the last of the schooner's memorabilia. For decades local fishermen would complain of Christmas trees in their nets and rigging which they claimed came from the Rouse Simmons. A Lake Michigan legend speaks of a Flying Dutchman seen during violent storms trying to complete one final delivery of Christmas trees to the people of Chicago. For fifty-nine years, the final resting place of the Rouse Simmons remained a secret. In 1971, a diver, Kent Bellrichard, found the wreck more than 180 feet down and several miles off the coast of Two Rivers, Wisconsin . Mr. Bell-
richard donated the name plate, a section of the mizzenmast with cross tree, a twenty-gallon stone jar and a waterlogged Christmas tree he recovered from the wreck of the Simmons to the Roger's Street Fishing Village Museum in Two Rivers . Additional trees and a 1900-vintage light bulb that still worked were retrieved and likewise donated to various other maritime museums. Many historians consider the loss of the Rouse Simmons to symbolize the end of the commercial sailing era on the Great Lakes. The schooners were being replaced by steam-powered vessels. An even bigger storm in the year 1913 destroyed many of the remaining schooner freighters of the Great Lakes. Those that survived were eventually lost due to neglect or ended up as barges with their masts cut off. While Captain Herman Schuenemann' s body was never found, his name as well as Barbara's appears on the headstone of the Schuenemann grave in Acacia Park Cemetery in Chicago. The only other adornment to the tombstonea single carved Christmas tree . J>
Mr. Nowak is a free-lance writer with a special interest in Great Lakes-and especially Lake Michigan-history. He lives in Chicago. 41
"A Living Connection"
The Chanty Movt: by John and
A Peking Hand Salutes His Ship by
Captain Irving M. Johnson
PHOTO BY JOEL GREENBERG
In 1987 the South Street Seaport Museum in New York City celebrated its twentieth anniversary. A high point of the year was the hauling out for bottom work of the museum's four-masted bark Peking. The work was undertaken by the Caddell Dry Dock and Repair Co., Inc., of Staten Island, which came into being in 1903 when sailing ships still crowded the port of New York. In that year, John B. Caddell, a shipbuilder from Nova Scotia, moved to New York and started in the drydock business at Pier 2 in Brooklyn's Erie Basin. The company passed to his son, Leroy W., in the 1930s, and thence to Leroy's son John B . Caddell, II, in 1967-the year South Street was founded. The picture of Peking towering above the floating drydock on Arthur Kill gave rise to this communication from our senior advisor, Irving Johnson, who shipped aboard her in 1929 for a voyage from Hamburg, Germany, to Talcahuano, Chile-a voyage well and truly told in his book Peking Battles Cape Horn, published by the NMHS. In 1975 I made a special trip to England when Peking was drydocked there in preparation for her crossing of the Atlantic to come to the South Street Seaport Museum in New York. The drydock company sent out a hurry call for rivetters and quickly rounded up some of the oldtimers, minimum age seventy-six. You should have seen those fellows proudly showing up the young squirts who couldn't do a proper rivetting job. Several yachtsmen , especially Americans, showed up at the dock exclaiming about that long flat run aft which made them feel she should be driven through a storm to the limit of any captain's daring. One thing we must always remember: 42
these ships in line of business always sailed in ballast or down to their line. Neither of these extreme conditions was ideal of course, but what a dream it would be to tum Captain Jurs loose on a yachting trip around Cape Hom , ballasted to his orders and furnished with a set of Hood sails! I suppose her displacement when loaded must have been close to 8,000 tons. I remember joining her in 1929 in Hamburg with a quick look aloft and then at a pair of hands that with other hands and no other power of any sort were expected to sail this monster ship the wrong way round the Hom . Now I live on a Massachusetts farm where I used to stand on my head on telephone poles , dreaming a make-believe that they were tall masts . The old books made it sound so romantic. I am so tickled that those telephone poles gave me the confidence and extraordinary pleasure to sail into the teeth of Cape Hom storms aboard the great bark. Another dream fulfilled , of course, was the round-the-world voyages aboard the Yankee rigged as a brigantine, especially fitted for conditions where one could still discover an uncharted island or witness a volcano erupting with no one but our ship's company within 100 miles, or rescue Pitcairn Islanders who had been shipwrecked and perform a marriage ceremony. Meeting Exy at exactly the right time in Le Havre where she came aboard the motorless German pilot schooner Wanderbird fulfilled a life I wouldn ' t exchange with anyone in the world. All these and many other experiences are a great satisfaction now. And it is a great satisfaction to know that the Peking is kept at South Street where she can be an inspiration to young men and women who dream of the challenge of the sea today. J,
J,
J,
While American tall ship gatherings have been emphasizing the size, scope and hardware of historical ships (how American!), The Press Gang have had the opportunity to witness quite a different emphasis on the maritime heritage in our last few singing tours in Europe . The cultural-and particularly the musicalside of life at sea has been an expanding focus over there . Sea chanty festivals by the fistful have been springing up all over Europe, in England , France, Belgium , the Netherlands , East Germany, Finland and Poland, among other countries. Here, the life of the sea and the culture and camaraderie of the sailor is the focus of popular interest while the ships themselves are the stages for the action. This puts the seafaring life a little more in perspective and, one suspects, more closely resembles the way it really was. We first stumbled on the European sea music scene in 1984 when Tony Davis , leader of the English folk institution, the Liverpool Spinners, invited The Press Gang to perform at the Cutty Sark Tall Ship Festival in Liverpool. The chanty festival was the cultural end of the 1984 tall ship race, and it featured dozens of grand mini-concerts, workshops and evening dances and skylarks for the literally millions of festiva l goers who jammed Merseyside. The festival ended as throngs of people two million strong lined both sides of the Mersey to sing the tall ship parade out to sea with "The Leaving of Liverpool '' led by the venerable chantymen Tony and Stan Hugill on BBC radio. Incredible! We have since been back twice more to British festivals at Liverpool , Bristol and the tall ship gathering at Newcastle '86. This summer, we had the privilege of being invited for ten days to Poland for Gdynia '87, along with Stan Hugill and a handful of other British performers. British and American enthusiasm for things maritime and historical, particularly music , pales beside that of the Poles. Festivals highlighting the " chanty movement,'' as they call it, attract thousands who compete in contests for the best work chanty group , best focsle singers , best original songwriters, best instrumentalists and so on, before audiences of tens of thousands more who jam the auditoriums and outdoor festival parks where the events take place. To the Poles , the music means a lot more than just a good time on a summer night, as it might elsewhere. They do this all year long, crowding into sea music clubs in the dark winter months for rounds of song swapping and honing of other niautical skills. In fact, one of the major ssea song festivals takes place in SEJ.A HJSTOR Y, WINTER 1987-88
:m ent in Europe Christine Townley land-locked Kracow, nearly 300 miles from the sea, in the middle of February. Sea music represents a kind of ground swell peace movement and a hope for union and communion among all peoples, with the sea as symbolic common ground. "You can't see the politicians from the masthead,'' they told us-brave sentiments from a brave people slogging through the swamp of imposed socialist bureaucracy after picking up from the total devastation of World War II. It's folks like this that make you see that the tall ships are more than just history recreated, but a living connection among peoples and the sea. Indeed , the Poles do more than just sing about the sea. In addition to two major full-rigged ships (one, the Dar Mlodziezy, the largest in the world) and a host of smaller ones, they have four more fullrigged giants under construction at the steelyards in Gdansk. What can be said of the commitment of the world's wealthiest country to seafaring when one of the industrial world's smallest and poorest nations can so thoroughly outstrip us? In 1988 we have been invited back to England and Poland, and to Le Chasse Maree's fest ival at Douarnenez in Brittany. Although we can't wait to go, we're less than happy about being unable to return the favor and host some of the excellent performing groups from Europe. Currently, however, the United States has only two regular sea music festivals, one at Mystic and one in San Francisco; and neither has been able to afford to bring over more than one person from across the Western Ocean-that being Stan Hugill. One person in the last ten years! We propose a tour of representative groups from the European countries to accompany the tall ships to the United States for the massive celebrations in 1992. Wine them, dine them , film them , record them-let them be the voices of the tall ships as they arrive on our shores. Let our public hear them and feel the joy this music brings and the hope it holds out for a union of peoples outside of governments. Having organized several large-scale festivals ourselves, we know it's feasib le and would even pay back its sponsors in more than just good will. But what greater payback do you need? It' s cheaper and more profitable to live in peace. '1>
John and Christine Townley lead the singing group, The Press Gang. Their most recent recording, A Chesapeake Sailor's Companion, is available from The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, VA. SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
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SHIP NOTES, SEAPORT & MUSEUM INVENI PORTAM Anthony Rando, 1898-1987 "We were lucky to have him as long as we did, " said Harbor Curator Mel Hardin at the memorial service for Anthony Rando, who died on 12 November at his home in Staten Island, aged 89. Founder of the family lighterage business, Standard Boat Co., he led the Sea Day Parade in New York Harbor in 1984, at the helm of his boat Vernie S., a wooden harbor lighter of 1897 which he donated to the Society (see SH33). Deeply interested in the life of the harbor, and a great admirer of the sailing ships that still came into port when he was starting out in business in the 1920s, Rando was a notable raconteur and distinguished authority on New York Harbor history . Harris L. Kempner, Sr., 1903-1987 "A citizen beyond compare" is how the editorialist of the Galveston Daily News remembered Harris L. Kempner, Sr. , when he died on 24 September. Born into a wealthy cotton family with a strong philanthropic bent, he inherited a position of leadership in the community of the Gulf Coast seaport town. But of all the Kempners, said the News, it was Harris who ' 'made the greatest mark on Galveston.'' One of those marks is the presence on the Galveston waterfront of the restored bark Elissa. When Elissa showed up after her tow from Greece in 1979, she was an empty hulk-few outside the vessel ' s own devoted crew saw her future as an active sailing ship, as she pursues it today. Kempner was one of those few. He stepped forward with early, whole-hearted support of the radical undertaking to restore the hulk to sailing condition. Where he led, others followed . And few people indeed were happier than Harris Kempner, at the helm of Elissa when she stood out into the Gulf of Mexico under all plain sail in September 1982. Donald C. Ringwald, 1917-1987 On June 19, the famed steamboat historian Donald C. Ringwald died at his home in Loudonville, New York, after a brief illness. Author of the classic studies Hudson River Day Line (1965), The Mary Powell (1972) and Steamboats for Rondout (1981), he was at work on a history of McAllister Bros. Towing and Transportation at the time of his death. Born and bred in Kingston, New York, then a center of Hudson River steamboat and tugboat activity, Ringwald haunted Rondout Creek, home of the immortal sidewheeler Mary Powell and of the Cornell tugboat company, from an early date.
44
By age nineteen, Ringwald was out on the river as deckhand on the Cornell tugboat Pocahontas. He went on from that to serve aboard the big paddlewheelers Hendrick Hudson and Alexander Hamilton of the Hudson River Day Line. During the off-season winter months, he began the intensive studies of Hudson River steamboat lore which contribute so much to our understanding and public appreciation of a fast vanishing heritage. His subsequent career, including his leading role in building up the Steamship Historic~! Society of America, is well remembered by Roger Mabie in the fall 1987 issue of Steamboat Bill, the journal of the SHSA.
* * * * * The end of 1987 saw the retirement of two men who have contributed much to the celebration of the American maritime heritage. R. J. Holt stepped down after 17 years as director of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels , MD . The museum was founded in 1965 as part of the Calvert County Historical Society. When Holt came to the museum after 25 years with the Honeywell Corporation, it was housed in three small nineteenth-century buildings . Its first fulltime director, Holt guided the museum through a remarkable metamorphosis . Today the museum's collection includes 72 Bay craft, including the 99-year-old bugeye Edna E . Lockwood, a flourishing boat shop with five full-time boatbuilders , and a 12-acre site for a Watermen 's Village which will celebrate the life of the Chesapeake Bay watermen between the Civil War and the corning of industrialization in the early 20th century. A new director is to be announced. (Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, PO Box 638, St. Michaels , MD 21653; 301 745-2916) Thirteen years ago Charles Russell McNeill became director of what is today the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, NC . The museum was founded in the 1930s as the Hampton Marine Museum . Under McNeill's leadership , the museum moved from a rented storefront to a museum-owned complex which includes the museum building , a Watercraft Center and a small.:craft storage area; and visitors number more than 100,000 annually . Along the way, in 1984, it became the North Carolina Maritime Museum , operating under the aegis of the NC Department of Agriculture. A graduate of the US Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, McNeill was Operations Manager of the NC Ports Authority in Morehead City before .t.aking the helm at
the museum. He is succeeded by Rodney Barfield, former director of the Museum of the Cape Fear at Fayetteville. (NC Maritime Museum, 315 Front St. , Beaufort, NC 28516; 919 728-7317) The Peabody Museum has announced the opening of their new Asian Export Art wing in three days of ceremonies this coming May. "Asian Export Art" embraces a wealth of materials produced for export to Western markets in China, Japan, India, Ceylon and the Philippines over the past five centuries. The artifacts are "an extension of both Asian and Western cultures." A three-story building has been built to house the approximately 1,000 objects, which include furniture , ceramics, metalwork, textiles and carvings. (Peabody Museum, East India Square, Salem, MA 01970; 617 745-1876) After a number of setbacks and frustrations , the Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987 (S.858) was signed on 17 December 1987 . Sponsored by Senator Bill Bradley (NJ) , the act gives states the responsibility for management of abandoned shipwrecks to which the original owner has relinquished rights of ownership, and it states that' 'the law of salvage and the law of finds shall not apply to abandoned shipwrecks. ' ' The legislation tries ''to preserve and manage these finite and fragile resources, " and the Energy Committee unanimously rejected (19-0) arguments that the legislation was designed to " lock them up for one group-archaeologists-to the detriment of others ." The Abandoned Shipwreck Bill as amended by the Senate now goes to the House of Representatives where supporters hope it will be accepted in lieu of H.R.74, and without amendments, by both the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee and Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee. The Society for Historical Archaeology hopes that supporters of the legislation will continue to urge their congressmen to pass the legislation as it is . (Loretta Neumann, SHA, c/o Foresight Science & Technology, 2000 P St., NW, Washington , DC 20036; 202 833-2322) Merchant seamen who served in oceangoing merchant ships and Army Transports during World War II are eligible for veterans' status, the Pentagon announced in January. The new designation will apply to any seaman who served on an oceangoing merchant ship during the period of armed conflict in World War II-7 December 1941to15 August 1945 . The designation entitles merchant seamen to obtain military discharge certificates which, SEA HISTORY ,
WINT~R
1987-88
NEWS in tum, will make them eligible for such benefits as the use of Veterans' Administration hospitals. An estimated 250,000 men served in the merchant marine during World War II, although no one knows how many are still alive today. The merchant marine sustained a higher rate of losses than any branch of the armed forces but the US Marine Corps. The Kootenay Lake Historical Society of Kaslo, British Columbia, is raising $150,000 to qualify for a matching grant from the Canadian government to preserve the steam sternwheeler Moyie of 1898. The Kootenay region was first opened up by American miners in search of gold in the late nineteenth century, and the Moyie was brought into service to carry rri.ineral riches to Bonners Ferry, Idaho, the railhead for ore processors in the United States . Although the Moyie never was on the Bonners Ferry run, she carried ore, freight and passengers between mining communities on Kootenay Lake and, as part of the Canadian Pacific Railroad's fleet, had a part in the fierce rivalry for transportation supremacy between the CPR and the Great Northern Railway . The relatively modest goal of $150,000 cannot be expected to come from local sources only; the former boomfown of Kaslo has a modem-day population of only 800. (Mrs. Martin Lynch, SS Moyie Preservation Fund, PO Box 537, Kaslo, BC, VOG lMO; 604 353-2525) The Hawaii Maritime Center has received a matching grant of $25,000 from the Institute for Museum Services for the restoration of the focsle head deck of the 4-masted ship F a/,/s of Clyde. Work on the ship is to be completed by the summer of 1988. In addition, the center has received a grant from the Hawaii Hotel Association which will enable school children to visit the ship free of charge. Construction of the Kalakaua Boat House, the center's shoreside museum facility, is also proceeding on schedule and should be open to the public by the summer. (Tony Crabbe, Hawaii Maritime Center, Pier Seven, Honolulu Harbor, Honolulu, HI 96815; 808 523-6151) ''The rejuvenation of docklands and inland waterways" is the theme of Watersite 2000, an international congress on waterfront development convening in Bristol, England, 13-15 April. The primary concern of the congress is to deal with abandoned dock warehouses and docklands whose use has been superseded by the development of downstream container ports. Bristol was chosen as the meeting SEA HISTORY , WINTER 1987-88
of its Floating Harbour, which became obsolete for modem shipping in the mid1960s. The restoration of Isambard Kingdom Brunel's great iron ship, Great Britain, launched in 1843 at Bristol's Great Western Dock and returned there for restoration and preservation in 1970, has contributed much to the recovery of this depressed district. (Peter Arbury, CCWT, 15 Colston St., Bristol BS 1 SAP England; 0272 277-492)
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After seven years of planning, the Swedish government has announced plans to construct a new facility to house the seventeenth-century warship Vasa in Stockholm. The Vasa , which sank on its maiden voyage in 1625, was raised from the bottom of Stockholm Harbor in 1961 and has been on view at the Vasa Dockyard since 1962. The museum , designed by Stockholm architects Ove Hidemark and Goran Mansson, will cost an estimated $16 million and is to open in 1990. (Vasa Museum/Sjohistoriska Museet, S-115 27 Stockholm, Sweden) Artifacts recovered from the so-called Kas wreck off the coast of Southern Turkey have been dated to around 1350Bc, according to published reports quoting George Bass of the American Institute for Nautical Archaeology at Texas A & M University. The wreck has so far yielded artifacts from seven or eight Eastern Mediterranean cultures of the period. The diverse objects recovered from the wreck include an amulet in the shape of a beetle and bearing the name of Queen Nefertiti . Excavation of the wreck will probably continue for another two or three years. A detailed account of the work to date has been published in the December issue of National Geographic. (AINA, College Station, TX 77840; 409 845-6695) Norman Brouwer, curator of ships at the South Street Seaport Museum, has issued the second supplement to his International Register of Historic Ships . The Update is proof positive-if any were needed-that the maritime preservation movement is alive and well. In 19 pages of descriptive notes, Brouwer records 110 vessels for which information has come to light since the book appeared in 1985 . Perhaps the best news is that he records the demise of only three vessels . Brouwer also notes changes of status for sixteen vessels, and he lists an additional twenty-seven vessels whose inclusion in the Register is pending. The IRHS Update is available from Sea History Press for $3.50. (Sea History Press, NMHS, 132 Maple St., Croton-onHudson, NY 10520; 914 271-2177) .t
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REVIEWS
THE BOOK LOCKER: Beyond the Cold Shower There is a saying that sailing is like stand- ing and even, not marked by the distinct ing in a cold shower tearing up dollar bills, epochs which define our civilized lives." and while it is certainly that, it is also a Sailing-and his first love, canoeinggreat deal more. These three books reveal provide MacGregor a surcease from the distinct reasons for enduring that unprofit- demands of nineteenth-century life and a able shower; and in each the reasons are return to simple values. A century later, Frank Mulville also a reflection of their author's time. John "Rob Roy" MacGregor, author seeks in sailing relief from ''the petty of The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob moral dishonesties " of shore life. He is Roy'' (Sheridan House, Dobbs Ferry, NY, also very much in search of a forum in 1987; first published in 1867), was a well which to take command of a hostile enviknown nineteenth-century Protestant pros- ronment. In Terschelling Sands (Sheridan elytizer and avid canoeist. He was also a House , Dobbs Ferry, NY , 1987; origiprofessional enthusiast, traveller and a nally published in 1968), he and his famsupporter of such worthy societies as the ily cruise from England to Denmark in Protestant Alliance, the Shoeblacks, The their Essex fishing smack, Transcur. Lawyer's Prayer Union and, most notably , Mulville 's narrative is cogent and fothe Royal Canoe Club, which he founded cussed, as well it might be, for he has and which encouraged a generation of quite a story to tell. Off the coast of young Britons to take to the English water- Holland , the Transcur is driven aground ways in canoes of MacGregor's own de- at dusk in a squall , and in a self-confessign. Impressed by the wholesomeness of sed panic, Mulville sets his wife and chilMacGregor's followers, Napoleon ill in- dren adrift in a life raft a mile-and-a-half vited him to the Paris Exhibition of 1867 from the beach. Horrifyingly , the onto similarly inspire the youth of France. shore gale seems no match for the outgoMacGregor, a tireless self-promoter, im- ing tide. This tale briefly threatens to mediately set out from London amidst become a dreary , if tragic , metaphor for great fanfare in his eighteen-foot yawl, dis- man's impotence against nature. But it tributing Protestant tracts and penning quickly reverts to the archetypical heroic notes for The Voyage Alone, his account sailing yarn when the family is miraculof the excursion. ously saved and Mulville (also miraculMacGregor is a cheerful and indiscrimi- ously) rescues the Transcur unassisted nate narrator: one thing all too frequently from the murderous sands. The harrowing events on the Terschelleads to another, often a dated homily . But some of his sailing anecdotes are very ling Sands lead Mulville to reflect: much to the point, even eloquent. He I know that ashore I am at the mercy of catches strikingly the peace of shipboard circumstances I cannot controlroutine, "a contemplative oriental state in pushed from compromise to compromise, from half-truth to halfwhich both cares and pleasures cease to be acute, and the passage of time . . . glidlie .... But once away at sea all that is
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put aside . . . For a few brief weeks I live honestly and am dealt with by the sea impartially, sometimes sternly, sometimes with exquisite gentleness, but always with monumental justice. For Mulville, sailing is certainly an escape, but as this dramatic and well told story testifies, it is also an opportunity for a man to take the measure of his own life. Carol and Malcolm McConnell 's account of their voyage from Gibralter to Greece in Middle Sea Autumn (y./. W. Norton , New York , 1985) is an altogether different sort of sailing book. While they sail to relax and to present themselves to an impartial judge in a relative world, their appreciation is overlaid with a distinctly modem, almost materialist ethos. This is a fretful book , in some ways not at all about cruising in the traditional sense. The McConnells are determined that sailing should be a repudiation of middle-class values-"a political statement about our own moral and intellectual independence." They are fiercely proud that they have abandoned fast-track government careers to proclaim their love of the sea, and they deplore in strangely prurient terms the influx of tourists and despoilers of their beloved Mediterranean. They celebrate the rich past of the Middle Sea in thumbnail sketches of the ports they visit. But the presence in these ports of landlubbers in expense-account yachts, punk-haired deviants and thieving taxi drivers, elicits a torrent of complaints. Every fresh offense invites a reassertion of their own right-mindedness and of the purity of sailing in a crass, material world. The McConnells' reasons for sailing eerily reflect MacGregor's. But while MacGregor made morality his work and sailing his pastime, the McConnells affect the reverse. And for them , enduring the cold shower seems just that. HAL FESSENDEN
Mr. Fessenden, a fancier of small boat sailing, works in publishing in New York.
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REVIEWS Atlantic Four-Master: The Story of the Schooner Herbert L. Rawding 19191947, Francis E. Bowker (Mystic Seaport Museum , Mystic , CT, 1986, 96pp , illus, plans, $28 .00hb/$18.00pb) Built in the shipping boom that followed immediately after World War I, the 1100-ton four-masted schooner Herbert L. Rawding was picked up and put in service again in the boom times that followed World War II. Shorn of her canvas and reduced to three masts, she was outfitted with two 21-ton diesels which shook her up so badly that she foundered at sea, off Spain, a little short of her thirtieth birthday . Not a bad run for a big schooner, hard used through her whole life except when she was laid up , when she got no care at all . Captain Francis "Biff" Bowker was the Rawding' s bosun in her final run before the United States entered World War II, and in this book he has carefully and with true color and lively detail told the story of his time in her, and of the experience of others . The resulting work glows with life . It is a labor of love . Captain Bowker found photos of the vessel a-building in Stockton Springs , Maine, and ready to launch, her tall masts bedecked with flags, her hefty transom finished bright like a yacht's, in September 1919 . There are photos of her unloading scrap lumber in Miami, and logwood in Baltimore-and waiting at anchor off New London, her after sails keeping her head to wind, while the super J boat Ranger glides by under spinnaker. Talk about contrasts! And there are photos when Bowker was in her, outfitting in Perth Amboy, running in a gale, lying with the last of her kind in Newport News, where in December 1940, three big four-masters lay together at anchor¡ for awhile. Bowker knew them all, and knew their masters ~nd many of their crew by reputation when he did not know them personally . The schooners he sailed in were a way oflife to him , and he strove mightily to be proficient and earn himself a name. One incident of carrying sail a little too Jong in quest of the bubble reputation is poignantly told-his remembered shame for the danger he put the ship in bums through the pages recounting this bit of youthful excess . A literate youngster from inland Vermont, Bowker rose pretty fast in seafaring and reached the rank of mate in the big schooners he sought out to sail in. But he sailed before the mast too, and obviously fitted well in the crews he sailed with. He has a fine ear for their talk and a feel for their gripes, their SEA HISTORY , WINTER 1987-88
friendships and loyalties . To one familiar with the tag-end of sail in New York harbor, it is a distinct thrill to read of " Nigger" Charlie Hoyt sending aboard the crew for Bowker's second voyage in the Rawding-he was the last of the South Street crimps- and to find among the crew Eddie Moran, "a young Irish fellow from Boston." That same fellow , still young at heart twenty and thirty years later, worked to bring the fishing schooner L.A. Dunton into Mystic Seaport and was active in South Street in the 1970s, making rope fenders, typing his memoirs amid muttered imprecations and generally keeping sailorly interests and connections alive. ' 'A fine crew ,'. ' Bowker calls this gang that took the aging Rawding to Newport News for coal, and onward to Martinique in November 1941. Bowker lets his feeling for the old schooner speak for itself. Amid comments on cramped quarters and details of gear and handling arrangements, at the end, when the vessel has lost her lofty topmasts and massive jibboom, one comes on this comment on a picture of her in this shorn condition: "she retains the dignified appearance common to ships of sail." The essential dignity of the schooner and her people shine, indeed, through the pages of Captain Bowker's book. PETER STANFORD The American President Lines and its Forebears 1848-1984, John Niven (University of Delaware Press, Newark, DE, 1987, 327pp, illus, $39.SOhb) No other American ship line can claim the long heritage of American President Lines. Now approaching its 150th anniversary, the company has been equally famous under three different names, Pacific Mail, Dollar and APL. The current work can only begin to tell the story .. . but it is a fine beginning! Taking its tone from the excellent colored book jacket print of the transpacific liner Japan, the work fairly races through huge chunks of tremendously interesting maritime history, including the story of the Panama route, the arrival of the steamship on the West Coast, the Gold Rush, the opening of Japan, the SpanishAmerican and two World Wars-not to mention the frantic post-World War II era. Some of the sagas touched upon are well worth the fuller treatment of a major book-notably the story of the 502s and 535s, built too late to serve as World War I troopships, but which turned out to be the backbone of the inter-war American liner fleet. The somewhat tawdry story of how the second generation
of the Dollar family tarnished the reputation of their most aggressive and able parent-old Captain Robert Dollar-is barely hinted at; there just is not space . The book is fully annotated and future historians will bless John Niven for this extra effort as the notes alone will lead them into many different areas of productive research. The pictures are too few and too far between; the work should stimulate scholars to bigger and better efforts-for this reason it is particularly FRANK 0 . BRAYNARD important . Mr. Braynard, co-chairman of the NMHS Advisors, is curator of the American Merchant Marine Museum in Kings Point, New York . Always Good Ships: Histories of Newport News Ships, William A. Fox (The Donning Company Publishers, Norfolk/ Virginia Beach, VA, 1986, 387pp, illus, $27 .95hb) Since 1886 the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company has produced fleets of superb ships. The modem history of America's place in the world may be traced with the steel hulls that have come down this shipyard's ways, where the Chesapeake Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean. Both World Wars, Korea and Vietnam have been fought with ships that were made here; and in times between these conflicts, when commerce peaceably plied its trade from port to i:lort, the yard Collis Potter Huntington founded 101 years ago produced almost every conceivable type of vessel from steam yachts to ocean liners, cargo ships, dredges and cable layers, tugs, lumber carriers and Bay steamers. William Fox' s book records basic technical facts laced with some narrative history (one wishes for more) . But the whole history of the yard's ship construction is here, from the launching of Hull No. 1, the quadruple-expansion, single-boiler tug Dorothy of 1891 through to the largest shipbuilding contract in history-for the two nuclear-powered carriers Abraham Lincoln and George Washington , due for delivery in 1989 and 1991 respectively. Of course many of these ships made history, though not all of it for the best. The infamous tanker Torrey Canyon hit world headlines in 1967 when she ran aground near Seven Stones Reef off the southwest coast of England, and spilled 118,000 tons of Kuwaiti crude over an area of some 350 square miles . But most of what Newport News launched evokes the best this country has ever built: carriers like Ranger, Yorktown, Essex and Intrepid (now a museum ship in New York City); Great White Fleet battlewagons of the caliber of Kearsarge and Kentucky; and 47
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World War II veterans like West Virginia, Texas and Indiana . The book's author/editor is mi.red in US Navy-style prose, an occupational hazard when dealing with naval records, the hallmark of which is tedious repetition. For instance, the name Texas is repeated a dozen times in ten short paragraphs; and in a future edition , the auxiliaries "was" and " were" (for starters) can be safely purged . ERIC J. BERRYMAN Commander Berryman is Hon . Sec. of the American Ship Trust in Washington, DC.
The Naval War of 1812: or the History of the United States Navy during the Last War with Great Britain to Which is Appended an Account of the Battle of New Orleans, Theodore Roosevelt, intro. Edward K. Eckert (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1987 , 476pp, illus, $21.95hb) Reprinting old history books is risky business . Each succeeding generation of historians sifts through the facts again , discovers new documents, discredits old ones, and rewrites history to suit its own life and times . For a history to become a classic, its merits must transcend the whims or peccadillos of a single age. Such a work is surely Theodore Roosevelt's Naval War of 1812. Begun in lieu of an honors thesis at Harvard, it was completed when Roosevelt was only twenty-three years old. It remains a monument to those few political theorists and statesmen who struggled to bring America to leadership in world affairs. Like earlier naval historians, Roosevelt had a not-so-hidden agenda in his history . The US Navy was at its nadir; American foreign policy could not be enforced because it had no instrument abroad. Roosevelt felt that the lessons of the last war with England, both good and bad , were especially relevant to Americans of the last quarter of the nineteenth century . But unlike earlier writers, particularly the British naval historian William James , Roosevelt did not allow his didacticism to interfere with his writing of history . Although on rare occasions blunderingly condescending or irritatingly prejudiced, he strove at all times to be impartial and accurate. All historians owe a debt to their predecessors , and it is unfortunate that in the field of American naval history that debt has several times remained not only inadequately acknowledged, but deliberately understated or even ignored. In the introduction to the present volume, Dr. Eckert discusses Alfred Thayer Mahan 's slighting of Roosevcelt' s work when the former came to write h1is own account of the War of SEA JHISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
1812. That such a sensitive editor should then endorse Roosevelt's own belittlement of earlier naval historians is puzzling. Certainly William James deserved to be taken to task for his scurrilous propaganda; but whatever the shortcomings of James Fenimore Cooper's History of the Navy of the United States of America-published in 1839, 43 years before The Naval War of 1812 first appeared-neither Cooper's motives nor his abilities warrant Roosevelt's disparagement. Roosevelt's prose, like the man himself, is forceful and clear. The Naval War of 1812 was his first book, but it is written with the vigor and interest of African Games Trails (the best of his hunting books) and with the forthrightness of his remarkable Autobiography. As a writer of history, Roosevelt is immediately accessible without being pedestrian. ROBERT D. MADISON Mr. Madison is Assistant Professor of English at the US Naval Academy. He is currently preparing an edition of James Fenimore Cooper's History of the Navy of the United States of America to be published by the Naval Institute Press. The Marine Iron Works of Chicago (pub!. Clinton M. Miller, 920 Federal Ave. East, Seattle, WA 98102, 44pp, illus, $9.95pb) The last decade has seen a great increase in the number of reprints of historic technical literature. These are a source of information which is often difficult for the researcher or historian to gain access to, especially as much of it has fallen into the collector's item category or can only be found in specialized libraries. Reprints such as this are therefore doubly welcome and serve a valuable purpose in preserving data on little known companies and their products. This reprint is actually a collection of printed matter consisting of catalogs, parts of catalogs and single-sheet literature dating from between about 1902 and 1908. The Marine Iron Works of Chicago was one of the lesser known shipbuilders, and was only in existence for a little more than 30 years from its incorporation in 1895. Yet their output was quite prodigious and the works sold not only machinery but complete vessels, screw-, side- and stem-paddle powered. Their specialty was the small shallowdraft steamer and they listed sternwheelers from 50ft to 125ft in length . They also listed sternwheel engines in no less than 27 stock sizes; and they would build on order any of 32 different engine sizes . They catered heavily to foreign trade, making a point of the fact that they could supply their vessels either assembled or in SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
pieces for later assembly at the point of use. Although the actual output of the company is not known, one of their early catalogs states that over 100 of their vessels were in service in South America alone. The original text not only describes the works' manufacture, but lists sample specifications and advice to buyers as to what type of steamers are suited for what type of work. The booklet is a fascinating look into an area that has received little attention . It conveys the flavor of the subject through the medium of the original text written by quietly confident builders for practical boat owners and operators. CONRAD MILsTER Mr. Milster, an advisor to the NMHS, is Chief Engineer at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
Ships, Saints, and Mariners A Maritime Encyclopedia of Mormon Migration, 1830-1890 Conway B. Sonne Cloth, $19.50 Checks, Visa, or MasterCard accepted
Iii
University of Utah Press Department 250M Salt Lake City, Utah 84112 1-800-662-0062, ext. 6771
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W. WIEGAND & CO. Pacific Sail: Four Centuries of Western Ships in the Pacific, Roger Morris (International Marine Pub!. Co., Camden, ME, 1987, 192pp,illus,$29.95hb) In our time, Richard Schlecht of Annapolis, Os Brett of New York, Mark Myers of Cornwall, England, and William Gilkerson, lately transplanted to Nova Scotia, seem pre-eminently to be able to interpret the source of Solomon's wonder, " the way of a ship in the sea," with particular reference to the way things worked. To this select and not universally recognized company, let us welcome with heartfelt joy Roger Morris, painter and author of Pacific Sail. The history is sound, the paintings dazzling-not in some Disneyland "antiquity" but in their functionality , their dynamic presentation of the problems of seafaring and the solutions men evolved to meet them . In this work, you'll meet the caravela redonda, explained about as well as it has been in our literature to date, we believe. You '11 see ships changing as time passes, and you'll see them at work, in distress , fighting, merely waiting at anchor or returning from the South Seas in triumph .. . . You'll see the Charles W. Morgan, casually encountered among a pod of North Pacific whaleships, not enshrined as we see her in Mystic today, but as she was half a world away and a century or so before our time. Morris has commanded one of the more famous eighteenth-century replica sailing ships, and he is clearly fascinated with the story of man 's passages across his ocean, the Pacific (he lives in New Zealand). These things explain a loteverything except the sheer being-thereness and raw vitality of his portraits of the ships that opened the Pacific, caught PETER STANFORD in the act.
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REVIEWS Clyde Passenger Steamers 1812-1901, Captain James Williamson (Spa Books Ltd., Stevenage, Herts, Eng., 1987, 382pp, illus, ÂŁ15.00hb) The launching of Henry Bell's steamer Comet, the first steamer to run the Clyde, in 1812, marked the beginning of the Clyde's rise to prominence in the shipbuilding world. This book tells the story of the Clyde passenger steamers through the launching of the King Edward of 1901 . In all, the author describes some 309 ships, many of which are illustrated by period photographs. Following a detailed history of the ships, Captain Williamson devotes the final chapters to the owners, masters and crews of the vessels , and there is a short treatise on the development of boilers and engines for these ships over the course of nine decades. He closes with short chapters on Robert Napier and Peter Denny, two of the great names in Clydeside marine engineering. When first published in 1904, there was probably no one better qualified to write a history of the Clyde steamers than Captain Williamson . His first association with the Clyde began in 1868. He took command of his first vessel at the age of twenty, and he later served as secretary and manager of a. variety of successful
steamship firms . Highly regarded when first released and the basis for all subsequent books on the subject, this handsomely illustrated and authoritatively written book is quite worthy of this reissue , and commended to all with an interest in the formative years of steamship building JAMES A. FORSYTHE on the Clyde. Major Forsythe is Deputy Director of the World Ship Trust.
Whaling in the North Atlantic From Earliest Times to the Mid-19th Century, Jean-Pierre Proulx (Research Publ., Parks Canada, Ottawa, 1986, 117pp, illus, $7.80pb) Whaling has been the source of many enthralling tales, but Jean-Pierre Proulx treats his subject as an industry and not, like most other literature on the subject, as an adventure. In eighty-five pages of text, the book traces the development of the whaling industry from Neolithic Norway to nineteenth-century New England, with special attention paid to the Basques, English and Dutch, and North American colonists. The author has written a straightforward maritime and economic history based on extensive study of both English and French sources. For those interested
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50
in the topic, the bibliography of more than 200 entries alone justifies the acquisition of this book. GERHARD KETELS Mr. Ketels is an historian living in Germany.
The Sault Ste. Marie Canal: A Chapter in the History of Great Lakes Transport, Brian S. Osborne and Donal Swainson (Research Publ. , Parks Canada, Ottawa, 1986, 148pp, illus, $7 .80pb) This volume is a useful addition to the many books already published on the subject of the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes Waterway System. The authors have done considerable research and they develop well the history of the region from the earliest days of the fur-traders through the opening of the canal and its subsequent operation. The text is supplemented with charts , photographs and tables; but there are no area maps , which would be helpful to readers unfamiliar with the region between Lake Huron and Lake Superior. ScorrMEYER Mr. Meyer, a canal enthusiast, is president of Merritt Books in Millbrook, New York .
The Calendar of Wooden Boats is acclaimed for its combination of fine art and beautiful boats_. 12 breathtaking color photographs of everyone's dream boats. For each 1988 Calendar of Wooden Boats send $10.95 plus $2.50 for Priority mail. Orders will be shipped within 2 days of receipt. (Maine residents add 5% tax). Send check or money orders to: NOAH PUBLICATIONS P.O.BOX 14H, BROOKLIN.ME 04616
SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1987-88
,.
Great Books from 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 sh ips. This indispensible reference makes excellent reading. 368pp, 9"xl 11/.", 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 Judy 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, 12 1/i'xl0 1/2", $38.00hb/ppd. PEKING BATTLES CAPE HORN by Captain Irving Johnson, fwd. by Peter Stanford. A spirited account of a you ng man's voyage round Cape Horn in the Peking with an afterword written forty-eight years later and a brief history of the P eking 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, I 2 1/i'x I 6", 60 fullpage illustrations, $75.00hb (shpg. $3.00 <lorn., $4.00 for.) THE WAVERTREE: An Ocean Wandere~ 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. 134pp, illus, $25.00hb. (shpg. $2 .30 dom, $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 chronicle 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, 9 1/.''xl2 1/ / ' , illus, $40.00hb. (shpg. $2.50 dom., $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 adultery 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
SEA HISTORY PRESS
THE CAPTAIN FROM CONNECTICUT: 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 hqs 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 NA VY: 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 ~h · g Empire by James Dugan. An ent · g biography of one of the most C<illc9... and successful shippers ever t~l-'M.anhattan's Steamship Row. 305pp~~s, $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 Joseph Gribbins. The official OpSail '86 commemorative book includes descriptions of more than 100 of the participants in the parade of sail , a look ba0k 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 dom., $2 for.)
trade, exploration, slavery, piracy, jurisprudence, developments in navigation and shipbuilding and innumerable other subj ects. The text is arranged chronologically and historical commentaries set the various epochs in the perspective of world history. 2 vols, 960pp, 9"xl2", illus, maps, index, $135.00hb (shpg. $4.50 dom., $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 life 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"x l l 1/2", 235 illus, $50.00hb (sh pg. $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 dom., $3.00 for.) THE MEDLEY OF MAST AND SAIL: A CAMERA RECORD, Volume II by Alex A._Hur~t. 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 <lorn., $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 from 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. Embracing the period from 5000BC to the present, this major work by two leading maritime historians considers wars,
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AMERICAN CONSERVATION AssoclATJON H ENRY H . A NDERSON, JR. APEX MACHINE CORPORATION J . ARON CHARITABLE FOUNDATION VINCENT ASTOR FoUNDATION R. BARNEIT HARRY B ARON BEEFEATER FOUNDATION ALLEN G. B ERR IEN B OWNE & Co.. I NC. BROOKLYN UNION GAS COMPANY EDWARD & DoROTHY C A RLTON ALAN G. CHOATE EDNA M cCONNELL CLARK FOUNDATION R EBEKAH T . D AU.AS Lois D ARLING PoNCET DAVIS, JR . JAMES R. DoNALDSON JAMES EAN MORRIS L. FEDER R O BERT E. GAMBEE JAMES W . GLANVILLE M ELVIN CONANT TH E GRACE F OUNDATION MR & MRS. THOMAS H ALE MRS. D . H . HOARD ELISABETH S. HOOPER F OUNDATION CECIL HOWARD CHAR ITABLE TRUST MR . & MRS. A. 0 . H ULINGS ALAN H UTCH ISON INTERNATIONAL l.oNGSHOREMEN LCDR. ROBERT IR VING USN ( RET.) R. C. J EFFERSON IR VING J OHNSON J. M. K APLA N FU ND, I NC. HARRIS & ELIZABl:.TH KEMPNER FOUN DAT ION A. AlWATER KEITT. JR. DAVID H . K OUOCK H . THOMAS & EVELYN LANGERT J AMES A . M ACOONALD FOUNDATION CLIFFORD D. MAU.ORY. JR . MAR INE SOCIETY.PORT OF NY J AMES P . McALLISTER MRS. ELLICE M cDoNALD. JR . SCHUYLER MEYER, JR . THE H ON. & MRS. J . W . MIDDENOORF. fl MILFORD BOAT W OR KS. INC. M O BIL OIL CORP. R ICHARD I. MORRIS M ORMAC M ARINE TRAJ'\'SPORT. I NC. MR . & MRS. SPENCER L. M URFEY. JR. NEW YORK COUNCIL, NAVY L EAGUE OF THE U NITED STATES RI CHARD K . PAGE MRS. A. T. POUCH. J R. MR . & MRS. ALBERT f>RAIT QUESTER M AR IT IM E GALLERY L AU RANCE S . R OCKEFELLER J OHN G. R OOERS B ARB ARA SCHLECH S EA B ARGE GROUP A. M ACY SM ITH J EANS. SM ITH SETH SPRAGUE FOUNDATION NORMA & PETER STANFORD EDMUND A . S TANLEY. JR. J OHN STO BART BRIAN D . W AKE SHANNON J . W ALL. N.M.U. THOMAS l. W ATSON. JR . H ENRY PEN N W ENGER MR . & MRS. WILLI AM T . WHITE JO HN WILEY ANO S ONS. INC. W OODEN B OAT Y ACHTING Y ANKEE C LIPPER
DONORS
CAPT. R OBERT G. BRAUN JOHN C. COUCH H ENRY FAIRLEY. Ill R USSEL W . H ARRIS W . J . H ENTSCHEL CAPT. ALFRED H ORKA J ACKSON H OLE PRESERVE L EATEX CHEMICAL CO. loBSTER INN, INC. H OWARD C. M cGREGOR. JR. D AVIDM . MILTON TRUST M ARY K . PEABODY DoNALDW. PETIT THEODOREPRAIT H AVENC. R OOSEVELT JOH N F . SALISBURY J OSEPH & J EAN SAWTELLE HOWARD SLOTNICK SWISS AMERICAN SECURmES EDMOND B . THORNTON SKIP & R OOER TOLLE.."SEN JOHN VOLK GLENN E. WYATr B AILEY SMrrn EDWARD G. ZELINSKY
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SUSTAINING PATRONS
THOMAS AKIN PETER A. ANSOFF DAVID M . BAKER J OHN E. BAKKEN R ONALD BANCROFT BENJAMIN 0 . BAXTER K. L . BRIEL CRA IG B URT. JR . J AMES E. C HAPMAN MR. &MRS. DELOS B. CHURCH ILL CIRCLE LI NE PLAZA J AMES C. COOK ALICE DADOURIAN STAN D ASHEW JOHN H . D EANE P AUL DEMPSTER H . DEXTER. JR . THE EDSON CORP. COR . L. F. EsTEs J AMES P. FARLEY B RENT FOLL WEILER DoNALD B. FROST RI CHARD GALLANT GARDEN STATE F ooo DISTRIB UTOR I NC WILLI AM GILKERSON LCDR . B . A . GILMORE ROLAND D. GRIMM CAPT. WILLIAM H . HAMILTON THOMAS H ENRY H OWARD HIGHT T OWNSEND H ORNOR WILLIAM J. H URLEY J . LINCOLN JEWETI Russ J . K NEELAND ELIOT S. K NOWLES PETER LAHTI PAUL LAYTON MR . & MRS. T . E. LEONARD AARON LEVINE W. P . LIND ARTHURS. LISS CHARLES J. L UNDGREN PETER M AN IGAULT FRANCIS A. MARTI N PETER M AX BRUCE B. McCLOSKEY CLYTIE MEAD EDWARD M UHLFELD MICHAEL M URRO R AY M USTAFA R EV . EARLE NEWMAN. SSJ D AVID A. OESTREICH MRS. G. J . P ELISSERO ALEX ANDER PEL-rt. ESQ. STEPHEN PF0UTS RICHARD RATH JO HN H . R EILLY, JR . P ETER R OB INSON A. H ERBERT SANDWEN SANDY H OOK PILOTS, NY/NJ CHARLES W . Sl-IAMB AUGH R OBERT V. SHEEN , JR . LELAN F . S ILLIN MELBOURNE SMITH MR . & MRS. WALTER A. SMITH. JR . J ACK B . SPRINGER CDR . VICTOR B. STEVEN. JR . RI CHARD H . SWAN JO HN W . THO MAS MR . & MRS . GEORGE TOLLEFSEN J AMES D. TURNER TERRY W ALTON WATERFRONT CENTER ELDREDGE WELTON
c.
PATRONS
DR . & MRS. J. A. AARON C. F. ADAMS E. 00UGLAS ADAMS H ENRY ADAMS RAYMOND AKER PAUL 8. AKIN ALEXANDER ALDRICH P. M . ALDRICH R . MARK ALEXANDER, JR. JOHN W. ALLEN ROBERT & RHODA AMON MR. & M RS. W ALTER J . ANDERSON E. P. ANDREWS RICHARD ANGLES PETER ANSOFF ANDRE M . ARMBRUSTER R . STIJART ARMSTRONG PETER ARON ROBERT H . ATHEARN All.ANTIC CORD~GECORP. G. R. A1TERBURY BI LL AUBRY P ATRICK F. BABCOCK H ARRY K . BAILEY J AME.5 S. B AILEY J ACK ARON B ENJAMIN B . BAKER路 CHARLES P. B AKER JOHN B. BALCH ROBERT B ALY PETER BARTOK J . BURR BARTRAM. JR. JOSEPH A. BASCOM w. H . BAUER R AYMOND BAZURTO EDWARD L. B EACH JOHNC. BECKER E. MARK BECKMAN G. A. BECNEL J ANE R. BEDSSEM J EROME BELSON MR. & MRS. ALAN BENDELIUS JOHN H. BAITS J AMES R . BENNEIT CHARLES BE.NORE M R. AND MRS. J AMES A. B ERGONZI DUDLEY BIERAU J AN BJORN-HANSEN CARROLL N. BJURNSON ARTHUR BLACKETI BILL BLEYER H ENRY W . BLUE J ACK BOYD ERNEST S. BREED MR. & MRS. MAURICEJ. BRET7.AELD FREDERJCK B REWSTER LAWRENCET. BREWSTER Lum.ER N. BRIOOMAN PAUL M. B LOOM ThOMASH. BROADUS.JR . CARLK. BROGAN PETERL. BROSNAN J AME.S H . BROUSSARD DAVIDF. BROWN RAYMONDG. BROWN RAY BROWN MD THOMA.SO. BROWN DR . CHARLESM. BRIGGS FREDERICK H . BRUENNER H OWARD F. BRYAN. J R. JOHNS. B ULL PETER A. BURCKMYER BURKE B Uil.DiNG SALVAGE. INC. MIKE BURKE ROBERT J . B URKE J AY G. B URWELL DR . GEORGE C. B UZBY. JR. GEORGE F. BYARD ANDREW CARDUNER THOMAS P. B YRNES J OHN CADDELL. Ill J AMES R. CADY BOYD W. CAFFEY J AMES D. CALDWELL STEVEN BUlTERWORTH RALPH A. CALDWELL MR. & MRS. STEELE CAMERON M ARJORIE 0. CAMP ERIK C. CANABOU CANADIAN TRANSPORT, INC. J AMES R. CARMAN DAVID CARNAHAN MR. & MRS. R . E. CASSIDY CENTRAL GULF LINES JON H . C HAFE R OGER CHAMPAGNE A. CHAPI N ROBERT L. CHAPMAN T ERRY CHAPMAN J . K. CHARGOIS. JR. CHARLESTON NEUROSURGICAL Assoc. MICHAEL K. C HASE RICHARD D. CHASTAIN JOHN CHICHESTER ERBERTOCENIA ALBERT CIZAUSKAS. JR. M R. & MRS. THOS. CLAGE'IT. J R. CHARLES 0. CLARK JACK A. CLARK ROBERT B . CLARKE WILLIAM CLAYPOOL GEORGE f. CLEMENTS J AMES R. CLIFFORD JOHN COEN JOHN L. COLE EDWARD J . COLLI NS C HARLES E. COLLOPY J . FERRELL COLTON HERBERT A. CLASS COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETIS TREVOR J . CONSTABLE C HARLES P . COOK J AMES C. COOK L ARRY L. COOPER LCDR . M ICHAEL CORDASCO RICHARD C. CORRELL CHUCK COSTA WALTER J . COWAN DR. RAY w. COYE WILLIAM P . Cozzo J . w. CRAWFORD R . MYRON CRESSY W ALTER CRONK ITE O 路H?.STER & ANN CROSBY BOWDOIN B . CROWN INSHIELD DANIEL A. COWAN S. H . CUMMINGS BRIGGS CUNNINGHAM ALTON F. CURRY ALBERT L. CUS ICK Curry SARK SCOTS WHISKY P AUL L. DAIGNEAULT M ORGAN DALY PETER T . DAMON WILLIAM H. DARTNELL J AMES K. D AVIDSON J OAN D AVIDSON F. K ELSO D AV IS R AY D AWLEY J OHN N. D AYTON P . S. D EBEAUMONT L. P . D EFRANK DENNIS DEAN DOUG LAS H. D EAN ROBB & BOBBIE DEGNON MAGRUDER DENT J OSEPH D E P AUL& SONS CAPT. J OHN F. D ERR EARL W . D EW ALT BRENT DmNER M ALCOLM DICK J AMES D ICKM AN DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORP. ANTHONY DI MAGGIO DANIEL P AUL DIXON MRS . JOHN W. DI XON W.R. 0oAK A. J . 0oBLER D AVID L. DoDGE DR. JAMES M. DoNLEY 8tLL DOUGHERTY R. L. DoxsEE CAPT. ROBERT DREW J EREMIA H T . DRISCOLL R OBERT K . U UFF R EYNOLDS D UPONT LCDR . J . D UR BIN JOHN D USENBURY BRADLEY H . EATON JONATHAN H . DoUGHERTY FRANK EBERHART H OWARD H . EDDY DoNNA EDGEMAN ALBERT EGAN. JR . STUART EHRENREICH R AY EISENBERG CARL EKLOF P AUL E KLO F CAPT. RI CHARD 0 . ELSENSOHN DAVID 8. EATON GEORGE F. EMERY ENERGY TRANSPORTATION CORP. M R. & M RS. R . S. ERSKINE. JR. EsSEX B OAT WORKS J OHN & CAROL EWALD M R. & M RS. CARL EYMAN JO HN H EN RY FALK DR . & MRS H UGH L. FARRIOR GEORGE FEIWELL GERALD FELDMAN LYNN S. FELPS MR . & MRS . STEPHEN M. FENTON Ill HAROLD B . F ESSENDEN J AMES 0. FEURTADO DoUGLAS FIFE J EAN FINDLAY JOHNS. FISCHER DIELLE FLEISCHMANN ARLINE FLOOD MR. & MRS . BENJAMIN FOOLER JAMES J . FOLEY J R. F. FORD. JR . CAPTA IN ROBERT I. Fox CAPT WILLIAM FRANK LARRY B. FRANKLIN OR . & MRS . Louis FREEMAN FRED FREEMAN CHARLES M. FREY J. E. FRICKER. JR . D R. H ARRY FRIEDMAN D AVID FULLER GLENN GA.ECKLE ERNEST GASPARRI ALEXANDER GASTON PAT & CECIL GATES MR . & M RS. WALTER GEIER BERNARD M. GEIGER EDWARD GELTSTHORPE REGINALD H . FULLERTON. J R. GEORGE ENGINE COMPANY GEORGE F. A. GILLIS H ENRY GLICK J AMES E. GOLDEN PRODUCTIONS GEORGE E. GOLDMAN H ENRY GORNEY PETER J . GOULANDRIS OLIVER R . GRACE. J R. JOHN GRADEL PHILIP GRAF J AMES R . GRAFT ARTHUR S. GRAHAM MR . & MRS. TERRY GRANIER MAYOR & MRS. R OBERT H . GRASMERE JI M GRA y PETER L. GRA y L EONARD M. GREENE R OBERT H . GREGORY H ENRY F. GREINER DoNALD GR IM ES J OHN M. GROLL CAPT. M ARK H . GROSSHANS PETER GUARDINO CHARLES GULDEN C . WILLIAM GREEN II R . H . GULLAGE DR . J AMES GITTHRIE H ADLEY EXHIB ITS. INC. ROBERTS. H AGGE M R. & MRS . F. H AGGElT M ORTIMER H ALL STEPHEN E. H AM MARSKJOLD GEORGE B. H AMILTON J OHN R . H AM ILTON ROBERT K. H ANSEN ROBERT 0. H ARRINGTON. J R. FRED H ARTMANN FREDERICH. H ARWOOD CLIFFORD H ASLAM MARSHALL D E L. H AYWOOD CAPT. J AMES E. H EG D. HEMMERDINGER THOMAS C. H ENRY H AROLD H ERBER J AMES D . H ERWARD R OBERT J . H EWITI CARL W. H EXAMER COURTNEY H AUCK GUNNAR F. H EXUM DR ALBERT E. HICKEY CHARLES HI LL GEORGE H OFFMAN K ARENINA M ONTHEIX H OFFMAN W ALTER W . H OFFMAN ROBERT W . H OFFMANN H ELENE. H OLCOMB PETER H OLLENBECK Aux T. H ORNBLOWER CAPT. M . F . H ORVATH B . J . H OWARD THOMAS M . H OYNE Ill H AR RY H . HRYNYK R OBERT w . H UBNER CRAIG H OLBERGER W ILLIAM J . H URLEY CAPT. FRANCIS H URSKA R OBERT H UTION STUART INGERSOLL MR . & MRS. THOMAS INNES PER H UFFELDT D UDLEY C. H UMPHREYS INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF M ASTERS. M ATES & P ILOTS BRAD (VES GEORGE M . !VEY ROB ERT W . J ACKSON J . S. J ACOX T O BY J AFFE CAPT. GEORGE W . J AHN L EONARD C. J AQUES PETER E. J AQUITH COL. GEORGE M. J AMES P AUL C. J AMISON K NUD J ENSEN ROB ERT P . J ERRED CAPT. F . B. J ERRELL BOYD D . JEwETI DouGLAS JO HNSTON ARNOLD J ONASSE ELIZABETH FISCHER JONES H OWLAND 8 . JONES D ENNIS JO RDAN THOM AS H . J OSTEN W . J . JO VAN BEAN KA HN NORMAN K AMERMAN ARN ET KASER CLAYTON B. J ONES MR. & MRS. RUSSELL WM. K ASTE ED K AUFMANN NEIL KEATING K ELLY H UNTER & Co .. INC. CAROL J . KELLY D ANAE . K ELLY J. KELLY PATRICK K ENNEDY R . E. K ENYON Ill B REENE M . K ERR KIDD ER, PEABODY & CO. DAVID KI LLA RY GERALD KI NG JO HN KI NNEY DoNALD KIPP N ORMAN KJ ELDSON SAM KLA GSBR UN, MD HARRY KN OX LESTER A. KOCHER ARTHUR K OELLER K ARL KORTUM RICHARD W. K OSTER MR . & MRS . FRANK K OTIMEIER WI LLIAM KR AMER C. J AMES KR AUS ANDREW F . KR AV IC K ARL LANCE KREM ER KAI KRISTENSEN K.JELL KR ISTIANSEN C. N. KRITIKOS GEORGE P . K ROH STANLEY H . KURPIEWSKI EMIL L ANDAU J AY L ANDERMAN FREDERICK N. L ANG JO HN R . L ANGELER RI CHARD L AZARUS EDWARD C. LEE GUSTAV H . L ENGENFELDER BERNARD LESLIE H OWARD LICHTERMAN SALLY LI NDSAY MR . & M RS . F. M . LI NLEY L. D . LLOYD CAPT. L LOYD M . LOOAN CALEB loRING, JR . T. LAWRENCE LUCAS J EAN LUCY J OHN E. LUNDIN J OHN J . LYNCH. J R. K ENNETH L YNCH & SONS R oss D. M ACDUFFIE CAPT. W ILLI AM H . MACFADEN M. D. M ACPHERSON CLAY MAITI..AND LAWRENCE MALLOY MANALAPAN YACHT CLUB J OSEPH A. MANLEY M AR IN T ua & B ARGE M ARTITRANS OPERATING P ARTNERS JOSEPH B. MADISON DR . & MRS . RICHARD MARTIN R ICHARD W. MARTIN THOMAS f. M ASON DANIELL. M ASTER WILLIAM MATHERS WILLIAM R. MATHEWS, JR . PHILIP M AITINGLY J OHN M AY B RIAN M CA LLISTER G . P . McCARTHY H AROLD J . M cCoRMJCK FRANK McDERMOIT CAPT. E. M cDoNALD J EROME M cGLYNN PAUL McGoNJGLE RICK M CI NTOS H MR . & MRS. GEORGE A. MCLAUGHLIN VADM . GORDON MCLINTOCK J OHN L. MCSHANE THOMAS MENDENHALL PETERS. M ERRILL TOM & J ANET METZGER J . P AUL MIC HIE STUART MILLER CAPT. JOSHUA MILLS M ICHAELS. M 1us ARTHUR C. MI LOT R . K ENT MITCHELL CHESTER MIZE CAPT. Louis MOCK RI CHARD M ONSEES MD CHARLES w. MILLER KENNETH M ORAN WILLIAM M ORELAND JR . J AMES E. MORGAN DANIEL M ORONEY ROBERT E. M ORRIS. J R. J OHN R. M ORRISSEY ANGUS C . M ORRISON M R. & MRS. EMIL M OSBACHER. JR . W ILLIAM M UCHNIC KEN MULI.ER JOHN M UROCX::K D R WM . P. M URPHY CAPT. G. M . M US ICK CAPT. WALTER K . NADOLNY. J R. M . J . NAGY SCOTI NEWHALL MERRILL NEWMAN NEWSDAY R. NIBLOCK WILLIAM L. NICHOLAS R OBERT NICHOLS MILTON G. NomNGHAM MACEY NOYES CAPT. CARLISS R . NUGENT OcEANIC NAVIGATION R ESEARCH SOCIETY CLIFFORD 8 . O'HARA T . MORGAN O'HORA B . J . O'NEILL D AVID OESTREICH J AMES F. OLSEN CHARLES J . OWEN PATRICIA OWEN R OBERT B . OWEN P AC IFIC路GULF M ARINE, INC. W ALTER PAGE LI NCOLN & ALLISON P AINE SAMUEL T. P ARKS WILLIAM H . P ARKS R OBERTS. P ASKULOV ICH P ASTA TOWING Co. LTD. GIULIO C. PATIES J AMES A . P ATIEN JO HN J . PATIERSON. JR. FRA NK 0 . P AULO J OHN N. PEARSON EARL F . PEDERSEN MRS. G. L. PELJSSERO A. A . PENDLETON PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOLSHIP ASS ' N. CAPT. D . E. PERKINS TIMOTHY L. PERRY. JR . MILES & NANCY PETERLE PETERSON BUILDERS. I NC D AVID W . PETERSON 00NALD PElTIT HENRY PETRONIS f. N. P IASEC KI NORMAN PLUMMER MR . & MRS. WILLI AM T . POPE PORT A NNAPOLIS M ARI NA H ENRY POWELL H EINO H . PRAHL FR ANCIS C. PRATI G . A. PRATI FRANK C. PRlNDLE QUICK & R EILLY, INC. ALBERT F . Qui NTRALL R . E. WI LCOX, INC. BEN D. RAMALEY CAPT. JO MN W . R AND ARV I E . RATY SAMUEL A. REA COL. ALFRED J . R EESE FREDERICK R EMINGTON A. E. R ENNER P . R . J . REY NO LDS MR . & MRS. 00NALD R ICE MR & MRS. F . B . RICE W . MARK R IGGLE EDWARD RITIENHOUSE CAPT. JOSE R IVERA E. 0 . ROBBI NS. MD J AMES L. R OBERTSON CHARLES R . ROBI NSON PETER ROBI NSON H UG H D . R OLFE M ARK ROM ING ELIHU R OSE DA VID ROSEN L ESTER ROSENBLATI PH ILIP R oss EDM UND RUM OWICZ COR. K ENNETH RUSSELL J OSEPH D. R OB INSON S. M . R UST, JR . DAVID R . RY AN M . J . R YAN WILLI AM R . RY AN R . D . RYDER CHARLES I RA SACHS J AMES M . SALTER 1J S AN D IEGO YACHT CLUB ARTH UR J . SANTRY NORMAN SARGENT E. w. SASYBOLT & Co .. INC H . R . S AUNDERS. J R. DouG & MI NDY S AVAGE w . B. H . S AWYER CARL H . S CHAEFFER H . K. S CHA EFER JO HN D . SCHATVET DAVID & BARBARA SCHELL RI CHARD J . SCHEUER STEPHEN A. S CHOFF D ENN IS A. SCHULD H ELEN M . SHOLZ CHARLESE. SCRIPPS R O BERT SELLE WILLIAMR. SEYBOLD H UG HR . SHARP JR . MICHAEL T. SHEEHAN R OBERT P . SHEEHY K ENNETH W . SHEETS. JR . L EE W. SHINABARGER SHIPS OF THE SEA M USEUM S IGNAL COMPAN IES INC. FRAN K S IMPSON G EORGE S IMPSON LTJG . J . C. S INNl:.Tf EDWARD M . SKANTA FRANCIS D . SKELLEY EASTON C. SK INNER D AVID L. S LAGLE CHARLES R . SLIGH Ill STEPHEN SLOAN MR . & MRS. EDGAR F. SMITH H OWARD SMITH MR. & MRS. LARRY 0 . SMITI-I L YMAN H . SMITH THOMAS J . SMITH MR . & MRS. EDWARD W . SNOWDON E. P . SNYDER M AX SOLMSSEN J OSEPH SONNABEND CONWAY B. SONNE DR. J UDSON 0 . SPEER WU.LIAM A. SPEERS THOMAS R . SPENCER f. N. SPIESS J OHNS. W . SPOFFORD ALFRED STAPLETON P l-ll LIP STENGER SUS IE STENHOUSE JOSEPH W. SPAULDING. II W . T . STEVENS CAPT. J ACK T. STILLMAN LT. H . L. S TONE. lII R OBERT A. STRANGE M ARSHALL STREIBERT ST. CLAIR STRONG D ANIEL R . SUKIS W ALTER J. S ULLI VAN R ODERICK STEPHE.~S CAPT. JOHN 0. SvENSSON BRUCE SWEDIEN LCDR . THOMAS L. SWIFT EUGENE SYDNOR J .C. SYNNOlT H ENRY T ALBERT D AVIS T AYLOR OR . J AMES H . T AYLOR PETER G. THEODORE C. PETER THEUT B ARRY 0 . THOMAS CLARK T HOMPSON JOHN B . THOMSON. JR . J AMES THOR INGTON. II D ANIEL K . THORNE J OHN THURMAN R OBERT TICE DR . ROBERT L. T IMMONS J AMES TITUS MR . & MRS. ALLEN W . L. TOPPING NOAH TOTTEN AITT"HONY TRALLA ALFRED TYLER II UN ITED S EAMANS SERVICE J OSEPH URBANSK I, JR . R ENAUD V ALENTIN CAPT. R OBERT D . VA.LENTINE MR . & MRS. H ENRY VANDERSIP JO HN 0 . VAN ITALLIE EDSEL A. VENUS H ARRY 0 . VERHOOG FRANZ VON Z IEGESAR RAYM OND E. W ALLACE BR UCE E. W ARE ALEXANDER W . WATSON JOHN W . W EAVER H . ST. JOHN WEBB UI ELIZABETH B . W EEDON K EN ETH W EEKS RAYNER W EIR WILLI AM W EIR L. H ERNDON W ERTH R ANDY W ESTON CRAIG W. WHrrr: SIR GoRDON WHITE KBE MR & MRS. RAYMOND WHITE GEORGE H . WHITESIDE G. G . WHITNEY. JR . FR . J AMES WHITIEMORE L AURENCE WHITIEMOR E WILLIAM A. A. WIC HERT R. E . WILCOX J . S. WILFORD. JR . L AURENCE WILLARD B ETTIE Z. WILLIAMS R OBERT WILSON CAPT. J . M . WJ NDAS JO HN F . W ING THO MAS J. WI NG J AMES R . W IRTH W ILLIA M F . WISEMAN WILLI AM H . P . WITH ERS W ALTER G. W O t路IL EKING EDWARD WOLLEN BERG W O MEN"S PRO PELLER C LUB, PORT OF B OSTON RICK W ooo DoRAN R. WRIGHT J . L. WRIGl-IT WILLI AM W YGAITT J AMES H . YOCUM CAPT. ALEN SANDS YORK W O MEN'S PROPELLER CLUB. PORT OF NEW YORK JOHN YOUELL HENRY A. YOUMANS THOMAS R . YOUNG K IRK YOUNGMAN W . J . Y UENGLI NG DoNALDZUBROD
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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
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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
USNS Sirius (T-AFS 8) . Another IOMM&P Vessel.
This Is MM&P Country The USNS Sirius (T-AFS8) one of the Military Sealift Command support fleet returning from Mediterranean Duty commanded by MM&P member Captain Edwin Rudder and manned by MM&P Deck Officers, is one of the original UNREP vessels under the MSC Atlantic Command. Formerly the RNA Lyness of the British Royal Navy Auxiliary, the Siri us is 524 feet in length powered by 8-cylinder direct drive Sulzer diesels and cruises at 16 knots. She has UNREP Stations. When operating with the fleet she transfers supplies and spare parts from a 17,000 Navy line item inventory. The Sirius is computerized for the supplies operation. She also carries two Boeing Vertal H-46D helicopters for vertical replenishment operations. 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: BRIDGEDECK, Washington, DC• Telex: 750831