Sea History 052 - Winter 1989-1990

No. 52

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY

WINTER 1989-1990

THE ART, LITERATURE, ADVENTURES, LORE & LEARNING OF THE SEA

OPERATION SAIL 1992: The Tall Ships Are Coming Again, and People Will Face Seaward with Wonder

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No. 52

SEA HISTORY

OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE WORLD SHIP TRUST

SEA HISTORY is publi shed quarterly by the National Maritime Historical Society, 132 Maple Street, Croton-on-Hudson NY I0520_ Second class postage paid at Croton-on-Hudson NY 10520_ POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Sea History, 132 Maple Street, Croton NY 10520_ COPYRIGHT © 1989 by the National Maritime Historical Society_ TeL 9 14 27 1-2 177_ MEMBERSHIP is invited. Plankowner $ 10,000; Benefactor $5,000; Sponsor $ 1,000; Donor $500; Sustaining Patron $250; Patron $100; Contributor $50; Family $35; Regular $25; Student or Retired $ 12.50. All members outside the USA please add $ 10 for postage_ SEA HISTORY is sent to all members_ Indi vidual copies cost $3_75 .

OFFICERS & TRUSTEES are Vice Chairmen , Henry H. Anderson, Jr. , Alan G. Choate, James Ean , Schuy ler M. Meyer, Jr. , Richard I. Morris ; President, Peter Stanford; Vice President, Nom1a Stanford; Secretary, Spencer Smi th; Treasurer, Richard I. Morris; Trustees, Henry H_ Anderson, 1L, Alan G. Choate, Wilbur Dow, Robert W. Elliott, Ill , Karl Kortum , Richardo Lopes, Robert J. Lowen , Sch uyler M. Meyer, Jr. , Richard L Morris, Nancy Pouch, Ludwi g K. Rubinsky , Spencer Smith , Peter Stanford , Edward G .

Zelinsky; Chairman Emeritus, Karl Kortum OVERSEERS: Chairman , Henry H. Anderson, Jr.; Charles F. Adams, Townsend Hornor, George Lamb, C li fford D. Mallory, Schuyler M. Meyer, Jr. , J. William Middendorf, II, Richard I. Morris, John G. Rogers, John Stobart ADVISORS: Co-Chairmen , Frank 0. Braynard, Melbourne Smith; Raymond Aker, George F. Bass, Franci s E. Bowker, Oswald L. Brett, David Brink, Frank G_ G. Carr, William M. Doerflinger, John S. Ewa ld, Joseph L. Farr, Timothy G_ Foote, Richard Goo ld-Adams, Walter J_ Handelman, Robert G. Herbert, Jr. , R. C. Jefferson, Irving M. Johnson, John Kemble, Conrad Milster, Edward D. Muhlfeld, William G. Muller, David E. Perkins, Richard Rath , Nancy Hughes Richardson, Timothy J. Runyan . George Sall ey, Ralph L. Snow, Albert Swanson, Peter Throckmorton, Shannon J. Wall , Robert A. Weinstein , Thomas We lls, Charles Wittholz. American Ship Trust .

I-Ion. Secretary, Eric J. Berryman WORLD SHIP TRUST: Chairman, Wensl ey Haydon- Bai lli e; Vice Presidents, Henry H. Anderson, Jr. , Viscount Caldecote, Sir Rex Hunt , Hammond Innes, Rt. Hon. Lord Lewi n, Rt. Hon. Lord Shackleton; Dep. Director, J. A. Forsythe; I-Ion. Treasurer, Michael C. MacSwiney; Trustees; Eric J. Berryman, Mensun Bound. Dr. Nei l Cossons, David Goddard, D.R. MacGregor, Alan McGowan , Michael Parker, Arthur Prothero, Mi chael Stammers, Jayne Tracy. Membership: £ 12 payable WST, c/o Dep. Dir., I 29a North Street, Burwell, Cambs. CBS OBB, England. Reg. Charity No_ 277751 SEA HISTORY STAFF: Editor, Peter Stanford; Mana ging Editor, Norma Stanford; Assistant Editor, Michael J. Netter; Advertising, Michelle Shuster; Production Assistant, Joseph Stanford; Accounting, Martha Rosvally; Membership Secretary, Patricia Anstett; Membership Assistants, Linda Phelps, Grace Zerella; Assistant to the President, Sally Kurts

WINTER 1989-90

CONTENTS 3 5 8 8 9 9 1I 12 13 15 16 20 20 22 25 26 30 36 38 39 42 46

LETIERS AND QUERIES DECK LOG FORUM: MARINE ARCHAEOLOGY MANAGING SHIPWRECKS AS CULTURAL RESOURCES , Christopher E. Hamilton WRECK PRESERV ATJON IN CANADA, Robert Og li vie NMHS COMMENTARY, Michael J. Netter THE RNLI AND LIFEBOAT DAY, Mary Reed THE SAILING CANALBOAT GENERAL BUTLER, Herbert K. Saxe ... AND HER SURVIVORS , Arthur B. Cohn HONOLULU SEES FIRST ACTION IN WORLD WAR I, Robert B. Hope HERMES'S DESTINY, Frederick Klebingat OPERATION SAIL 1992 INTRODUCTION , Emi l Mosbacher, Jr. PICTORIAL SALUTE TO OPERATION SA IL MARINE ART NEWS MARINE ART: S. FRANCIS SMITHEMAN , Gladys Marie Smitheman SAIL TRAINING: SQUARE RIGGERY , H.F. Morin Scott A SKYSAIL-Y ARDER FOR OPERATION SAIL 1992, Peter Stanfo rd SHIP NOTES , SEAPORT AND MUSEUM NEWS SA YING THE NOBSKA , Meredith A. Scott REVIEWS SEARCH FOR THE TALL SHIPS, Frank 0 . Braynard

COYER: Tall ships stirring to life in the morning mist, seen through the rigging of the schooner Deliverance, July 4 , 1976-a scene that will come to life again in American waters July 4, 1992. See "Operation Sail 1992 ," page 20. Photo by Peter A. Burckmyer.

The National Maritime Historical Society is saving America's seafaring heritage. Join us.

We bring to life America· s seafaring past th rough research , a rchaeologica l expeditions and ship preservation efforts _ We work with museums, hi storians a nd sa il trainin g groups a nd report o n these acti vities in our quarterly journal Sea History_ We are a lso the American arm of the World Sh ip Trust, an internati ona l group wo rking worldwid e to he lp save s hips of hi storic importance.

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Membership in the Society costs only $25 a year. You ' ll receive Sea History, a fascin ating magazine fi ll ed wi th articles of seafaring a nd historica l lore . You' ll a lso be e ligible for di scounts on books , prints and other ite ms. He lp save o u r seafaring heritage . Join the Nationa l Marit ime H istor ica l Society today '

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LETTERS CAMM Approves

1910, not in 1913.

Mr. Coughlin gives the length of the Preussen as 440 feet. He may have taken this figure, as well as her tonnage of 11 , 150 from Lubbock' s Nitrate Clippers. Actually Lubbock says she was 433 feet overall, a meaningless dimension since it includes the bowsprit which is part of the rigging, not the hull. Since A Direct Insult the register length of all vessels is given The letter from Sotheby 's printed in Sea in Lloyd's Register and similar li sts, that History 51, calling on NMHS to play a is the standard criterion which should be "constructive" role in marine archaeol- used: The Preussen's was 407.8 feet. ogy was a direct insult to all members of Nor is it appropriate to claim that the NMHS, as well as to the Society itself. Preussen was 11 , 150 tons without The preservation of our seafaring heri- tellings us thi s is displacement tonnage. tage by saving artifacts, indeed ships It far exceeds her gross tonnage of 5,081 themselves, obviously is not the main which is the normal way one compares interest of Sotheby's. I was indignant, the size of one vessel to another. and my wife considered the letter one of Sea History continues to provide us the most insulting she has ever read. with important news and good reading!

GEORGE M. JAMES ANDREW NESDALL Colonel, USMC (ret.)

Waban, Massachusetts Ponce Inlet, Florida NMHS Advisor Nesdall is clearly right to use gross tonnage and registered No More Commercial Desecration! length and we were sloppy not to. NorI must go on record along with everyone man Brouwer, Ship Historian at South I know as being in accord with the posi- Street Seaport Museum, where the Petion taken by the National Maritime king makes her home, offers the followHistorical Society. The commercial ing on the "largest" question: desecration of shipwrecks to line a few In gross tonnage, Peking was the largest pockets is rather too close to grave rob- sailing vessel in active service in 1929. bing for my taste. Land-based archaeo- Priwall, Passat and Herzogin Cecilie logical digs have been regulated for some were smaller in gross tonnage. Star of time now, and national treasures are Lapland, Star of Shetland, Star of regularly being returned to their lands of Zealand, M oshulu and Mary Dollar were origin. Lord Elgin at least preserved laid up through 1929. Mary Dollar's cawhat he salvaged-and his day is over! reer as a square-rigged vessel was over.

The bottom of the ocean belongs to She next sailed as a six-masted schooner everyone, and it is simply not in the during World War II. The three "Stars" public interest to have a few rich organi- went back to sea in the mid-30s, on onezations utilize modem technology for way voyages to scrap yards in Japan. their own profit by looting wreck sites. Only Moshulu resumed an active career If auction houses like Sotheby's intend when the Finns bought her in 1934. to aid this looting by offering market Magdalene Vinnen had an auxiliary facilities for the loot, they find them- engine when built, as did Kobenhavn, selves well outside of acceptable behav- R.C. Rickmers and France. France had ior and, hopefully, in some other busi- hers removed in 1919, making her the ness at the end. largest sailing vessel ever operated at 5633 gross tons . She was wrecked in TOWNSEND HORNOR Osterville, Massachusetts New Caledonia in 1922. R.C. Rickmers was seized by the British during the Say What You Mean, SH! War. Kobenhavn went missing in 1928.

William P. Coughlin's article in SH 49, The question certainly opens some fasand your editorial reply to Mr. Smith's cinating perspectives! When we said letter in SH 50 invite some comment and "largest" wemeant(butdidnotsay) "of correction. The Peking was not the larg- the largest class," the giantfive-masters est sailer in 1929, being exceeded in like Potosi, Preussen and France having gross tonnage by the Magdalene Vinnen, departed from the scene. That left the Star of Lapland, Star of Shetland, Mary big four-posters of 3,000-plus tons as Dollar,Moshulu, Priwall, andHerzogin the biggest surviving square-riggers. Of Cecilie. And the Preussen was lost in the ships in this class, Peking, Moshulu NMHS got a vote of appreciation from CAMM for their recent stand on the Whydahmaterial with the auction houses.

Again , our thanks for all that you do!

JoHN S. CARTER, Presi dent Council of American Maritime Museums

SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

(Philadelphia),Passat (WestGermany), Pommem (Sweden) and Kruzenshtem ex-Padua(USSR)survive today, Kruzenshtem as active sail training ship, the others as museum ships.-ED.

What About Hog Islanders?

There seems to be be a good deal of interest in the last of the Liberty ships.

But I have often wondered why no one has written about the "Hog Island" vessels of World War I. From my first vessel in 1931 (SS Exermont) to the sixth in 1939 (SS Scanpenn), all were Hog Islanders. In 1931 I became a cadet on the Empire State, the training ship of the New York State Merchant Marine Academy which had been the USS Procyon, a Naval supply ship and a Hog Islander.

When I became an officer in 1933 for the Moore McCormack Steamship Co. all service was in its fleet of Hog Island vessels. Cliffwood,Argosy, City ofFlint, Independence Hall , City of Fairbury, Sagaporack, Bird City, Minnequa, to name some. M&M converted four of these vessels to designs by George Sharp in 1932, to carry 85 passengers in the Baltic trade. Other companies whose main fleet consisted of Hog Islanders were American Export Line, Black Diamond Line and Cosmopolitan Line.

These vessels were built at Hog Island on the Delaware River- j ust abeam of the Philadelphia Airport-as emergency shipping for World War I. They went into service after the war ended in 1918 , some being completed in the 1920s. About 400 feet long, 5,000 gross tons , they were not shapely ships, having all straight plates except at the bow and stem. They were extremely strong, however, having been designed by a bridge builder. The only cases I know of their cracking was after grounding on rocks. As late as 1960 I took a picture of a Hog Islander in Santos, Brazil. So they lasted over 40 years. They kept the American merchant marine alive in the long hiatus until American shipbuilding picked up with the approach of World War II in the late 1930s. loHN LARSEN Englewood, Ohio

Setauket, Home of Heroes I wonder how many Setauketers would like to have you walk the plank for placing that "sleepy town" in its neighbor Port Jefferson in your Long Island Sound article in Sea History 50? They

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LETTERS are two distinctly separate-and different- municipalities, with East Setauket between them .

The mention of Benjamin Tallmadge of Setauket in Sea History 50 reminded me of another Setauket patriot, Caleb Brewster. Back in the '30s my father was commissioned to paint a mural fo r a new Setauket post office, which unfortunately was never built. The cartoon (watercolor sketch) meas ures 18 l/2 by 27 inches, and the two text ribbons read "Capt. Caleb Brewster was a Revolutionary War Hero," and "Capt. Brewster captured British boats on the Sound."

And since I don ' t see it li sted in your "For Further Exploration," I wonder if yo u know Mari lyn E. Weigold 's The American Mediterranean, from Kennikat Press, Port Washington, 1974. The book 's title is what Daniel Webstercalled the Sound.

ROBERT G. HERBERT , JR. East Northport Long Island , New York

Remember the Sails!

In the article on the Discovery Reenactment '92 in Sea History 51, it was noted: "Highest priority is being given to authenticity in design and construction on outfitting. In each case the boats are being built in a thoroughl y traditional manner. . . . " But the sails are only slightly traditional. If you look at the photograph , the sail is traditional in its shape, but the construction detailsthose that can be seen in photo--are not of the late 18th century. They did not put nicely ro unded comer "patches," as we call them now, on such a boat sail. If they were installed, as on larger sails, they would have been rectangular in shape and smaller in size. Also, was the cloth hand seamed and with the proper stitches of the period? Generally when investigating the authenticity of a period traditional sail made in recent times, one finds that the sai l was machine stitched with a zigzag machine. It would be closer to tradition to use a straight stitch.

There are a lot of craftsmen and maritime historians out there who can te ll yo u the exact number and style of every fasteni ng or the like and insist on replicating them in a vessel reproduction. However, when it comes to the sail s of the vessel they don 'tgive a hang.

As long as the sail is white, or perhaps with some tanbark coloring, it does the job. It doesn ' t seem to matter that the sai ls were the vessel's sole source of SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

power. It seems more important to have the best engine in the world installed than it is to have authentic sail s. How can we say we replicate to the highest authenticity and still overlook such details regarding period sail construction?

LOUIE BARTOS Ketchikan, Alaska Point well taken! And sailmaker Bartos is not alone in his concern. Jakob lsbrandtsen, leading the Wavertree restoration at New York's South Street Seaport Muse um, insisted on using flax even for the tarpaulin hatchcovers on the ship--and sewed them up at home! One day he may sew the main skysail (see pp36-37)-<Jf flax of course.-ED.

A Hudson Boatbuilding Center That was a wonderful " Small Craft" issue of Sea History (Autumn 1989)! I gave a benefit concert for the Rockport Apprenticeshop with Gordon Bok in Maine in September and am now trying to see how we could get dozens of boats, like the 24ft, I 0-oar Di scovery gig on the Hudson. Young (and old) could race, explore, cruise, camp along the river needing no motor, no expensive equipment to launch or maintain their craft.

And Clearwater wants (needs) to build more big sloops too. How can we get support for a boatbuilding center/museum on the Hudson?

PETE SEEGER Beacon, New York We think this is a wonderful-and important-idea. Any takers ?-Eo. QUERIES

I am researching the Coast Guard Picket Patrol ("Corsair Fleet," or "Hooligans Navy") and the US Navy Ship Lane Patrol of W arid War II, and would like to hear from anyone involved in eitherof these operations. Although I intend to give complete coverage, my primary interest is in the sailing vessels associated with both patrols.

JOHN WILBUR PO Box 9225 Noank CT 06340 The Hudson Ri ver Waterfront Museum is interested in proposals to set up a boatbuilding shop on the New Jersey shore in Hoboken. Seriously interested people should write: DAvm SHARPS, Director Hudson Waterfront Museum PO Box 1602 West New York, N J 07093 w

The people who made the first Op Sail happen turned out to be foundin g a brand-new, very vital tradition in our time. What they had to offer in these tall ships was something people needed .

Who would presume to say what that something was? In this issue of Sea History, which carries the announcement of Operation Sail 1992, we don ' t spend much time over the meanings of Operation Sail, for to a remarkable degree, in an age when everything seems to be pre-digested and explained to death , Operation Sail speaks for itself- the ships, the ships' peoples of different races and creeds, and the people of all sorts and conditions who come to the waterfront in our great seaport city of New York to be part of the visitation.

Rather we look at what was happening out there, at the reality beyond the spectacle. Of course, we are doing this all the time, in our sail training section of this magazi,ne, but beginning with this issue we're going to be doing this in a more focu sed way.

We ' re going to travel to the lands the ships come from, and get to meet the people. The most important point of the worldwide oceanic voyaging that began 500 years ago seems today to be mankind meeting itself and perhaps finally coming to terms with itself on this blue globe hung in the heavens.

* * * * *

In marine archaeology, in marine art, in other dimensions we seek out the noble chariots that carried the race around the world. Solomon wondered at the " way of the ship in the sea"; the native Americans on the Pacific Coast stood "as men ravished in their minds" when they came to the water's edge to see Drake 's ships; and people at Point Judith waded out into the Atlantic to get sight of the tall ships passing through the fog , on their way to New York' s ¡ Operation Sail 1976.

Let 's join them, and rejoice that humanity hasn 't gotten too old for its heart to leap up at the prospect of a tall PS ship in the offing! ~

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FORUM: MARINE ARCHAEOLOGY

Managing Shipwrecks as Cultural Resources With the signing by the Pres ident on April 28, 1988 of the Abandoned Shipwreck Act(43 U.S.C. 2 101 ),shipwrecks in State waters formally became a part of the cultural resource management (CRM) system of the United States. Prior to this event, the States and various Federal agencies dealt with shipwrecks on an essentially ad hoc basis-that is, only when a given shipwreck site was clearly threatened. No consistent national policy existed and the legal mandates for controlling negative impacts to shipwrecks were generally subordinated to the law of salvage, the law of finds or other statutes not concerned with historic preservation.

Just how are cultural resource managers going to handle their new responsibilities regarding shipwrecks?

CRMonLand The basis for CRM in the United States rests on several statutes, the most important of which is the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of 1966.

NHPA established the National Register of Historic Places, composed of historic districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects significant in American history. NHPA al so provided for the development of State historic preservation programs to be coordinated by a designated State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO) who follows the Secretary of the Interior 's Guidelines for Archaeology and Historic Preservation.

Also within NHPA, Section 106 directs that any Federal activity or Federally assisted, funded , licensed, or permitted endeavor must take into account the effect of that activity on any property that may be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. This "Section 106 Process" as it is termed, is the driving force behind CRM activity. As stated in the Department of Interior 's criteria for listing on the National Register (36 CFR 60.4): The quality of significance in American history, architecture, archaeology, engineering and culture is present in districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects that possess integrity of location, design , setting, materials, workmanship , feeling and association and that (a) are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history; or (b) that are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past; or (c) that embody the distinctive characteris-

8

by Christopher E. Hamilton, PhD tics of a type, period, or method of construction, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction ; or (d) that have yielded or may be likely to yield information important in history or prehistory.

The central concept in this simplified description of the NHPA is that both Federal and State agencies must comply with NHPA either by eliminating negative impacts on archaeological sites or mitigating those impacts through excavation or recording procedures using the Secretary of the Interior's guidelines.

In general, CRM surveys are conducted by private firms or special insti -

What the Abandoned Shipwreck Act did not do was prohibit activity which might have a negative impact on shipwrecks, up to and including salvage. tutes under a University's purview. If the initial survey in the fie ld (Phase I) reveals one or more archaeological sites or cultural resources, then site significance must be assessed. Demonstrating that the site does or does not meet the eligibility criteria for the Register of Historic Places entails a Phase II operation, consisting of both an archaeological testing program and library research.

Finally, if it is shown that the site is significant and eligible for inclusion on the National Register, and the project is still to proceed, Phase III or data recovery is initiated.

It should be noted that neither State nor Federal review agencies automatically take permanent ownership of cultural resources. Only those resources which are on land owned by the State or Federal government or to which they otherwise hold direct title, may receive the benefit of permanent protection from destruction . For projects where only a Federal or State license or permit is involved, the owners of the property are free to do with this cultural reso urce and the artifacts recovered as they see fit. It is the singul ar issue of the ownership of shipwrecks, particularly historic shipwrecks and their artifacts which was meant to be resolved by the passage of the Abandoned Shipwreck Act.

CRM and the Abandoned Shipwreck Act The Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1988 gave to each state the title to all abandoned shipwrecks in submerged lands belonging to the State. In doing this, the Federal government was responding to the growing reali zation by the public that shipwrecks are an important cultural resource which deserve full consideration within the CRM system. What the Abandoned Shipwreck Act did not do was prohibit activity which might have a negative impact on shipwrecks, up to and including salvage.

The manner in which a given State will comply with the Abandoned Shipwreck Act is, to an important degree, dictated by the National Historic Preservation Act. Project activities such as channel widening, beach replenishment, wharf, bridge or tunnel construction, and salvage should now follow the current rules and regulations of the CRM system. What this means for shipwreck archaeology and marine history is that Phase I through Phase III surveys, or their procedural equivalents under different titles, will be required in advance to clear project areas.

It is quite likely however, that many of the States will permit some private salvage of historic shipwrecks. This will undoubtedly be under tighter regulation than in the past. A private firm wishing to salvage an historic shipwreck may be required to allow a public agency, private firm or qualified individual to conduct some or all of the excavations, conservation, analysis, and reporting of the data before the artifacts are handed over for possible sale.

A serious difficulty arises when the few archaeologists dedicated to shipwreck investigations will not excavate shipwrecks with a potential for the sale

Mr. Hamilton, at right, works with Maritime Explorations, In c.

SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

Wreck Preservation in Canada of artifacts. Professional ethical codes make it difficult or impossible for many archaeologists to consider working for salvage firms. State Historic Preservation Officers and other review agencies then find it difficult to assure compliance with NHP A, Section 106.

Is it more important to acquire data whenever an archaeological site is subjected legally to negative impacts as permitted by the regulatory structure, or to avoid all contact with those going after treasure and other marketable artifacts? Should contact with the treasurehunters be avoided, even at the cost of losing irreplaceable information? And is the archaeological community going to be able to enforce CRM standards in salvage firm operators while the community is boycotting these firms? These questions have yet to be resolved.

Continued dissension within the archaeological and historic community caused by the issue of private ownership will lessen the effectiveness of CRM efforts. The abandonment of the field to non-professionals, censorship of information collected by qualified individuals, and the time and energy spent on the ethical questions have already reduced the amount of data which could have been collected and disseminated regarding these important historic archaeological sites.

Mr. Hamilton is the Principal Investigator of the Whydah Project, working with Maritime Explorations Inc., PO Box247, South Chatham, Massachusetts 02659.

At the Annual Meeting in May NMHS deplored the action of Sotheby's auction house in dealing in artifacts from the Whydah wreck of/Cape Cod, and ofChristies' in dealing in artifacts from HMS Feversham off Nova Scotia.

On these pages Mr. Hamilton defends involvement by the archaeological community in commercial salvage operations like the Whydah Project, on which he works. He suggests that by staying out ofsuch operations the community is losing its opportunity to apply some degree of control, and to recover valuable data.

Mr. Ogilvie describes measures to prevent looting such as that of the Feversham and Sea History's Mr. Netter recounts other developments. The forum will continue, with findings to be reached at the NMHS Annual Meeting in May 1990.

SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

by Robert Ogilvie, Curator, Special Places, Nova Scotia Mr. MacKinnon (salvor of HMS Feversham) claims to be "the closest thing to a real archaeologist in Canada." This is laughable, although he seems to believe this himself. His skills, which are considerable, are in the realm of diving and exploration. He has shown no real understanding of the science of archaeological excavation. He is a salvor.

The "ownership" of the wreck has been a bone of contention. To the Nova Scotia Museum, the issue is a red herring.

As the wreck is in the jurisdiction of the Providence of Nova Scotia, no oneincluding the owner-can excavate archaeological or historical remains without a Heritage Research Permit. In the case of excavations, these permits are granted only to qualified archaeologists. Mr. MacKinnon does not qualify.

Finally Mr. MacKinnon talks about salvors working with governments to recover booty from wrecks. Unlike Paul Johnston, and perhaps most others in the archaeological community, I believe cooperative ventures are possible in some circumstances. We have evolved what I believe to be a workable structure here in Nova Scotia, involving the complementary application of two pieces of legislation-the Treasure Trove Act and the Special Places Protection Act. The latter takes precedence over the former, so that no one can get a Treasure Trove license without first getting Heritage Research Permit.

The untried scenario is this: A person or group decides they want to recover booty from an historic wreck. The Permit forces them to excavate to standards, requires a conservation plan for artifacts as well as submission of photographs, log books, and reports on the work. When the excavation is finished, the conserved and cataloged artifacts go to the Province along with 10% of the treasure trove-precious gemstones and metals in other than their natural state.

The other 90% goes to the "salvors," from which they pay their expenses and make a profit or suffer a loss. In other words, the whole process is treated like a business, with appropriate permits, capital, operating expenses, and risk.

Needless to say, they'll not be going after "marginal" wrecks.

This approach is still untried and until we are approached by a salvage group, it remains conjecture. But it is an arrangement that intends to treat all parties fairly and it should be given a fair chance to succeed.

NMHS Commentary

by Michael J. Netter The debate over what to do with salvageable shipwrecks is slowly gaining momentum , each side gaining supporters as new wrecks come to light and new salvage technology is developed. On one hand, NMHS has argued in these pages that historic wrecks should be protected and artifacts from them should not be sold. Paul Johnston, Curator of Maritime History at the Smithsonian outlined in Sea History 51 resolutions passed (specifically by the Council of American Maritime Museums) to inhibit such sales. George Bass, marine archaeologist of distinction, argues that the nature of archaeology should bar the sale of artifacts, as their excavation is only the first of many stages of study they must go through.

On the other hand, it has been argued that the rules and guidelines now set up will, if adhered to, save the most important artifacts and information needed for history, while rewarding the finder/salvor by allowing him to sell the rest of what he finds on the wreck. Christopher Hamilton, chief investigator of the Wydah Project sees valuable information slipping through our grip as we argue over the sale of artifacts, and urges archaeological cooperation with responsible salvage efforts that comply with existing laws.

But is compliance with the law as it stands enough? The Confederate Naval Historical Society newsletter (CNHS, 710 Ocran Road, White Stone, Virginia 22578) reported on a recent threat to the remains of ironclads of the Jam es River squadron-Stephen Mallory 's famed "chained bulldogs" that protected Richmond from the Federal Navy's monitor fleet and were sunk as obstructions late in the Civil War-seven miles below Richmond, Virginia. By issuing a municipal contract to have the channel dredged (thus destroying most of the wrecks) the Corps of Engineers requirement for archaeological surveys prior to dredging was bypassed.

"There are now plenty of laws on the books designed to protect national treasures such as these ... but somehow an entire fleet of ships was slipping rapidly through the cracks to a second and final destruction," notes CNHS. Citizens rallied around to stop this, using among other arguments the value of the historic ships in planned development of the waterfront to attract tourists. The Department of Interior got involved, and now it appears the ships are to be prop9

FORUM: MARINE ARCHAEOLOGY erly excavated and conserved-underwater, unless means can be found to study and di splay them ashore.

"The lesson to be learned from thi s," concludes CNHS, " is that independent historical organizations like the CNHS can play an imp9rtant role in keeping an eye out for the interests of the people, even in the presence of many good laws and sincere agencies designed to help protect our national treasures."

An encouraging example of hi storic shipwreck preservation and management comes from the Great Lakes region, where protection laws are not only on the books, but enforced and well publicized. The many regional publications of the Great Lakes area have extensively covered efforts being carried out to protect these wrecks, and what happens to violators of these rules.

Great Lakes Sailor (October I 989) carries a report titled "Recreational Salvaging: No More 'Finders Keepers.'"

Author Tom Bex recounts hi s own experiences pulling wrought-iron spikes from a wooden hulk , but stresses, " no more."

The bottomlands of the Great Lakes, along with the shipwrecks they hold, are protected by the laws of Ontario and Great Lakes states, whereby recreational divers and salvors caught with salvaged goods are prosecuted. Michi gan, it is reported, has prosecuted a number of salvage-law violators. Groups like Save Ontario Shipwrecks (SOS) lecture and lobby for underwater preservation and establishing underwater preserves and parks, where divers can see but not touch.

The state of Michigan has established five such preserves already, ranging in size from 133 to 376 square miles.

But looting continues in the Great Lakes, despite legislative efforts, public awareness and voiced concern. And shipwreck looting is not a uniquely American phenomena.

Australia too has seen the need to protect her underwater heritage, as recounted in Australia Sea Heritage (Winter 1989). In 1963, public interest was sparked when several spear fishermen di scovered the 17th century Dutch merchantman Vergulde Draek on a limestone reef lOOkm north of Perth.

The vessel was believed to have been carrying eight chests of silver coins when she was lost. After much looting by divers, some with explosives, the wreck became the subject of the first full -scale underwater excavation by the Western Australian Museum, and the need for

10

site protection was realized. In 1964, innovati ve legislation was passed to protect shipwrecks in Australian waters.

Later, after some debate over which territory had jurisdi ction over which waters, the Commonwealth Government passed the Hi storic Shipwrecks Act in 1977. This act requires that anyone who finds the remains of a ship must inform the Minister of the region . The motivation for divers to comply with this legislation is that the Act provides a reward and recognition to all di scoverers of shipwrecks that are declared hi storic.

Over $60,000 has been paid out in such rewards in the past ten years. " It sure beats working" But what of deepwater wrecks that lie in international waters, unprotected by any regulation? Remote technology like that which discovered the Titanic and Bismark is now be ing developed for salvage purposes.

On September 16, I 989 the ben ignlynamed Columbus America Di scovery Group began bringing up gold from the 1852 William H. Webb-des ign paddle wheeler Central America using such technology. The Central America was en route to New York, carrying about three tons of gold, including new lyminted coins from San Francisco, when she sank, September 13, 1857. This story has gained national media attention, but not much has been reported on the tragedy that surrounds the sinking of the Central America. She was essentially a passenger ship that floundered for two and a half days before she went under with over two thirds of her passengers, four hundred and twenty peopl e. The popular news ang le is that a sa lvor and investors will become very rich when all the gold is brought to the surface. In the words of Barry Shatz, a project director for the expedition , as noted in the New York Times, September 17: "It sure beats working for a li ving. " Is thi s the image the salvage industry wants to project to the public? Now that salvors have developed the technology to rai se booty from wrecks in thousands offeet of water, do we tru st that they will do the right thin g and excavate with archaeology in mind? Quotes like the one above do not in spire confidence.

It is also di sheartening when we hear that the US Maritime Administration sold all title and salvage rights of the Liberty Ship John Barry. A $5 1,000 bid was accepted from inves tors Brian Shoemaker and Hugh O 'Ne ill who hope

to sa lvage the wreck which sank wi th three mi Ilion Saudi Arabian coins aboard in 6000feetofwaterin the Indian Ocean during World War II. The cl imate of ship salvage has become one of beating the odds to acquire much wealth. When the push for profit destroys tangible ev idences of important episodes in history however, it is apparent that protective action is needed.

Just as the invention of SCUBA led to the pill aging of the many hi storic wrecks found in the shallows of the Mediterranean (virtuall y none remain today), the march of progress in the field of deepwater sa lvage technology threatens the primary source evidence embodi ed in hi storic wrecks that have laid undi sturbed for centuries on the ocean fl oor.

The chall enge is to convince the public that these wrecks belong to all mankind , and that their hi storic va lue is both ric her and longer lasting than their monetary one- that their historic worth should enrich our understanding of our forebears, not line the pockets of a goldfeve red few. That is the NMHS pos ition.

How do we best act on it? ..ti (To be continued.)

Mr. Netter is Editor of the Sea Hi story Gazette.

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SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

The RNLI and Lifeboat Day

by Mary Reed One of thi s writer 's most e ndurin g memories of the time when she li ved in England is the measured tones of the BBC Radio announcer as he read the shipping forecast just before the 6PM news. The names were a roll -call of the sea: Hebrides, Rockall , Lundy, Fastnet, Shannon, Sole, Finisterre, Fair Isle, Cromarty, Dogger, Tyne, Dover, Portland ... and all of them of vital concern to men at sea.

Even with these advance warnings, however, ships founder, and lifeboats must be launched. Incredibly , as recently as the eighteenth century, there were practically no coordinated efforts to save shipwrecked people (although lifeboats built specifically for the purpose existed) , and certai nly no national organization to carry out this work.

Jn 1824, following the publication of "A n Appeal to the British Nation," by Sir William Hillary, who li ved on the Isle of Man and had himself helped rescue more than three hundred people, the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck was formed.

It was organized on a pure ly voluntary basis, si nce it appeared that the government was ignoring the problem. In 1854 the name was changed to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution , by which title it is still known. At the same time, voluntary contributions having declined, the Institution was granted a Board of Trade subsidy. Eventually, as contributions increased, this subsidy was withdrawn and since then , the RNLI has been completely independent, supported entirely by gifts, and various fundrai sing efforts. A professional salaried staff oversees administration and the maintenance of the boats, but everyone e lseincluding the lifeboatmen and womendonate the ir services.

A number of different fundraising events take place annually-a recent li st included parachute jumps, rowing relays and a fancy dress football marathon ; cheese and wine parties; and a race to get crates of Nouveau Broon ale from Newcastle-on-Tyne, where it is brewed, to Paris. One man even allowed people to use hi s shaved head as a notepad! But the best known of thelnstitution 's fund raising efforts are their Flag Days, whose roots are in the first street collection for charity ever organized. The story of how this came about hinges upon what is regarded as the worst disaster in the hi story of the Institution.

On December 9th, 1886 the German SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

Above , a steam lifeboat of 1897 which served New BrightO'f until 1924. At right , a present-day 47 ft Tyne class lifeboat.

Photos courtesy the RNLI.

bark Mexico was wrecked in the Ribble Estuary on the northwest coast of England. From Lytham, the I ifeboa t Charles Biggs was launched, along with the Laura Janet from St. Annes and the Eliza F ern ly from Southport-each unaware of the others' presence, as communications were very rudimentary at the time. It was the Charles Biggs that rescued the crew of Mexico, but the crews of the other lifeboats didn ' t fare so well. Eliza Fernley capsized and all but two of her crew were lost. What happened to the crew of the laura Janet has never been firmly establi shed.

The weather had been so bad all night that it was not until the following day that it was rea li zed that the laura Janet was still out, at which point the Lytham crew (many of whom had relatives on the missing boat) went out to look for her. During the search they visited Southport Pier, where they learned about the loss of most of the Eliza Fernley's crew , and it was from the pier that someone spotted a white shape out in the estuary.

It proved to be the mi ss ing Laura Jan et, with three bodies trapped beneath it.

The rest of the crew were found washed up on shore. Of the forty-four men who had gone out to rescue the Mexico, twenty-seven died, leav ing sixteen widows with fifty children between them.

A disaster fund was set up for the widows and orphans, eventually totalling some ÂŁ50,000. Charles Macara, a member of the town 's lifeboat committee, realized that the Institution ' s fundraising had depended largely upon a wealthy few. He decided to bring lifeboats to the attention of the ordinary person, and in October 1891 , he organized the first

"Lifeboat Saturday" held in Manchester.

On that day, lifeboats from St. Annes and Southport were pulled through the streets and collectors wen¡t around, some carrying purses on poles in order to reach people looking out of windows.

This is sa id to have been the first such street-co llection , an idea which has since been adapted by many charities.

Today collectors carry lifeboatshaped boxes. Originally they distributed small lifeboat-shaped lapel badges in return for contributions. Nowadays, stickers of the same shape are distributed t-o donors. Lifeboat days and weeks vary from ci ty to city--coastal resorts tend to hold theirs in the summer when there are a lot of visitors , and inland cities have theirs in the winter. The most important one by far is the London collection , which takes place in the middle of March each year.

Today there are 263 lifeboats on station with RNLI, and another IOI boats in the Institution 's reserve fleet. In 1988 RNLI lifeboats were launched 4224 times, on average about eleven a day.

And in that year 1,343 lives were saved, bringing to over 118 ,000 those rescued since the Insti tution was founded in 1824.

Thanks to ga llant men and women of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, those who venture on the sea and encounter di saster close to shore can be helped whenever the melancholy need for it should arise. w

Ms . Reed was born in Newcastle-onTyne and is currently living in the USA .

Those wishing to help the RNLI should contact the Director, RNLI, West Quay Rd., Poole, Dorset BH15 1 HZ, UK. 11

The Sailing Canalboat General Butler

by Herbert K. Saxe They were born around 1823 on Lake Champlain, out of Yankee ingenuity.

They had names like O.J. Walker, P.E. Havens and General Butler, each very alike, but different. They were sailing hybrids-half canal barge, half sailing vessel-and they filled a unique niche in early American maritime history. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, these doughty vessels profitably plied the length of the Champlain waterway. They travelled from Canada to New York under sail on the lake and the Hudson River, and under tow in the canal.

Life aboard the canalboat was not always placid, however. On December 9, 1876, in a violent storm on Lake Champlain, the General Butler, a gaff-rigged canal schooner, badly battered by the howling wind, lost steerage and slammed into the breakwater just off Burlington, Vermont, sinking in forty feet of water.

The Butter slept undisturbed for more than a century until located by divers in 1980. Today, the Butler is remarkably preserved in the cold water of Lake Champlain-a fascinating textbook for inquiring nautical archaeologists. Since 1982, diving teams under the aegis of the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation and the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum have been conducting intensive underwater archaeological studies of the wreck, finding answers and discovering details about the design and construction of thi s little-known type of vessel. Thi s ongoing archaeological effort is yielding details on 19th century shipbuilding techniques and how people lived and worked during this period of Lake Champlain history.

Measurements taken under water establish that the Butler, like others of her genre, was 88 feet long and 14 feet wide.

Such a long and narrow shape was typical of canal boat design-hulls could be quite long, but no wider or deeper than the locks they had to pass through.

Thi s severely elongated hull was transformed into a schooner with the addition of a centerboard and two gaffrigged masts . The masts were set in tabernacles which allowed them to be easily removed or lowered to the deck for canal navigation.

This design made it possible to load cargo at distant and remote northern ports all around Lake Champlain, then

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The canal schooner General Butler, above,featured a centerboard and folding masts. At right, the remains of the Butler as they lie in forty feet of water on the bottom of Lake Champlain.

Drawings by Kevin Crisman.

PHOTO COURTESY TOWN OF WH ITEHALL.

At right, the busy harbor of Whitehall, New York , in 1868, with stacked lumber and vessels awaiting passage through the canal.

12

SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

â&#x20AC;˘ â&#x20AC;˘

. And Her Survivors sail the goods to the entrance of the canal at the bustling 19th century port of Whitehall, New York, where the lake was frequently choked with boats waiting to enter the first lock. Here, the centerboard was raised, the masts lowered, and the boat moved into the canal , avoiding the damage and delay of transferring cargo from lake to canal carriers.

If the cargo was destined fora Hudson River port, the boat humbly followed a team of mules down the length of the Champlain Canal. On reaching the Hudson River, the sailing can a lier would restep his masts and lower the centerboard and, free again, sail downriver to his destination or join a steamboat tow .

* * * * *

Truly, the opening of the Champlain Canal in 1823 revolutionized life in and around Lake Champlain. Products from northern New York and Vermont-iron ore, marble, lumber, foodstuffs-could be transported sw iftly, easily and profitably to New York City, and from there to the far comers of the world. On the return trip the canallers brought back coal and manufactured goods.

Although clumsy and boxy, the graceless canal boats dominated commercial maritime activity on Lake Champlain for about half a century. Certainly the most attractive of these "ugly ducklings" were the canal schooners. Their hulls more rounded to allow navigation on the open waters of the lake, their great sails puffed out, they gracefully glided up and down the lake looking for all the world like enormous swans.

Ultimately, in the second half of the 19th century the ubiquitous canal boats began to slowly disappear as the railroads made their appearance. Today the clumsy wooden canal boats have passed into hi story, replaced by colorful fleets of 20th century recreational craft.

Fortunately for us though, the untimely demi se of the General Butler left us a tangible record of this ebullient period in American history. Truly an underwater "museum," the Butler is an historical resource which should last indefinitely in its underwater environment and continue to give us fresh insights into our maritime past.

Mr. Saxe, a WWII navy veteran and retired IBM executive, is a writer and multimediaproducerandhas extensively cruised the inland waters of the eastern United States.

SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

by Arthur B. Cohn

DRAWI NG BY KEVIN C RISMAN

Outside the Burlington breakwater, a small man with a dark beard was struggling feverishly at the stem of the ship while frequently looking ahead to see where the injured vessel was heading. It was midday in the month of December, and the lake was engulfed in a severe early winter gale, the kind that sailors talk about for years. The 14-year-old vessel had been declared uninsurable the previous year, yet it carried a heavy load of marble blocks for the Burlington marble company.

Through the bitter cold and winddriven snow , James Wakefield, a Burlington ship chandler and former British seaman, watched from the shore and could see the vessel with its people huddled on deck. It was clear that something would have to be done, and though the harbor was lined with people watching the unfolding drama, none moved to lend assistance.

Wakefield and his young son, Jack, commandeered the fourteen-foot Burlington Lighthouse rowboat and began to pull in the direction of the breakwater where it looked like the vessel might strike.

The vessel's steering gear was broken , and the captain had dropped anchor to hold his vessel as he attempted to jury-rig a tiller bar. But now he had cut the anchor, and the vessel drifted toward the southern end of the breakwater. For a moment, it looked like the captain might succeed in rounding the barrier to safety.But the force of the storm was too great and the vessel too badly damaged, and it was soon clear that the boat would collide with the breakwater. The waves were so high that they lifted the vessel above the breakwater and dropped it on top of the rough-cut marble stones. The boat then slipped back into the wave's trough until the next crest lifted it once again to crash onto the breakwater.

There were five people aboard; the

captain and a sailor to handle the boat, an injured man being transported to the hospital, and two teenage girls, one of whom was the captain's daughter. Each time the vessel was lifted on top of the breakwater, one of the people would make the precarious jump to the icecovered stones. The injured man, the owner of a marble quarry on Isle LaMotte, struck his head upon landing and was knocked unconscious. After seeing the other people safely onto the breakwater, it was now the captain's tum to abandon the doomed schooner.

Its bow had struck the breakwater many times already , but once again it crashed down and the captain jumped off. Witnesses say the vessel remained visible not even three seconds longer, then slipped back into the waves and sank.

The five survivors were now in danger of freezing to death. Each new wave crashed over them, drenching them again and again . To have come this far and be stranded on the man-made breakwater within a thousand feet of safe land must have tested their beliefs. Then , as iftheir prayers were answered, James Wakefield and his son appeared in the rowboat. They quickly moved the freezing people into the boat and rowed them to the harbor. They were taken to the warm offices of a doctor who shortly pronounced them all out of danger. "It was Miss Montgomery 's first trip on her father 's boat," he reported, "but she showed a goodly degree of Yankee grit, forthe first question she asked on returning to consciousness was that she might be allowed to make the return trip when the schooner should be raised." .t

Mr. Cohn is Vice-Chairman of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, Box 746, Burlington, Vermont. The above was adapted from A Report on the Nautical Archaeology of Lake Champlain, 1983, published by the museum.

13

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>per SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

Honolulu Sees First Action in World War I

by Robert B. Hope, MD On October26, 1914 my two sisters and I arrived in Honolulu, rejoining our parents, who had recently migrated from British Columbia to start a business and make a home for us. On our arrival day, we were taken to Waikiki Beach for the first time.

Nature was putting on a show of beauty and tranquility, for Waikiki was uncrowded then. After the cold autumn rains of British Columbia, it looked like heaven to me-warm balmy air, palm trees, and the blue-green sea breaking in giant curls over the reef. I saw people standing on boards, sliding before the curling waves like seals on a slick water chute; outrigger canoes, sterns tilted to the sky, sped down the wave slopes, like racehorses neck and neck to the finish line.

The languid air that bathed Waikiki that day was suddenly changed as if charged with static electricity. From the Outrigger Canoe Club people were streaming out, pointing to Diamond Head. Leading a group of beach boys Above, the long-lived Hermes in 1930, midwas Kahanamoku, fast becoming the way between her close shave at the outset of territory 's champion swimmer. Every- World War I, recounted here by Dr. Hope, and her subsequent adventures at the outone knew him as Duke. break of World War II , noted on the followAs he came near our family sprawled ing page by the late Captain Klebingat. Dr. on beach towels, my father called to Hope, age ten when the Hermes' s escape him , " What' s happening? Where is ev- took place, was newly arrived in Ha waii by steamer, but in subsequent years he travelled eryone going, Duke?"

"Out to the end of the Moana Pier to in the schooner Alice Cooke, shown at right, behind the tug , in the anchorage where the see better," he called back. "Makapuu Hermes sought shelter.

Light has just reported that a Japanese cruiser is chasing a small German trading schooner trying to make neutral waters. The schooner is off Diamond Head Light now, and with the stiff breeze out there, it should be in view soon." we all thought she had reached safety counts that the little schooner was called We all stood, eyes focused out to sea, inside the three mile limit and that the the Hermes, the Japanese warship the where there were white caps stirred up Japanese would break off the chase.

Hizen and that the sistership of the Herby the breeze. There had been a few But the commander of the warship mes, the Aeolus, had been captured the small rain squalls offshore, and a perfect kept pressing on. Then another actor previous night and burned, after the crew rainbow, in vivid color, arched from appeared. The tiny Coast Guard cutter had been taken aboard the warship to be Diamond Head out to sea. It must have Thetis had been coming full speed from interned ultimately in Japan. been an emblem of hope, the end of a the harbor, unnoticed by those of us on So Honolulu witnessed first action in nightmare for those on the small two- the beach. A loud cheer went up as the World War I. None of us on the beach masted schooner, which we now could little cutter rounded the schooner and, that day would have believed that the see rounding the point. She was heeled like David, confronted the grey Goliath. Japanese, whom we would soon join as over on a starboard tack, but not alone, The warship 's commander, realizing he allies in World War I, would return for farther out and astern, came a sleek was under the guns of the Diamond twenty- seven years later with the devasgrey cruiser, black oily smoke billowing Head fortress, could do nothing but make tating results of December?, 1941 , when out from her funnels. It resembled a an acute turn to port and head back out to most of America's battleship fleet was huge hungry grey wolf, hot on the heels sea, hopefully to snare any other Ger- knocked out by a Japanese,surprise atof a little rabbit, scurrying to the haven man ships trying to reach a safe haven. tack from the air. w of its burrow.

As the The tis escorted the Little schooThe little schooner kept heading in- ner to the harbor, Waikiki Beach re- Dr. Hope , born in 1903 , travelled extenshore, the Japanese ship relentlessly turned to its quiet pace and we all re- sively in Europe, Australia and the Patrying to close the gap. Everyone on the laxed to go on enjoying the balmy air. cific Islands with his family before folbeach was cheering on the little ship and We later learned from newspaper ac- lowing his father into medicine.

SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

15

Hermes's Destiny

by Frederick Klebingat

It is a surprising thing that a German trading company with its headquarters in Jaluit in the Marshall Islands had its schooners built by a San Francisco firm.

But the ships were excellent and I am certain that they were better suited to the trade than anything German shipbuilders could have produced. San Francisco was for many years the gateway to the South Seas and I have always felt that the schooners built here for that trade were the most beautiful- just imagine what a great fleet it would have been if all of them could have assembled at one time in the bay! Old Matthew Turner turned them out by the score, as did Frank Stone. Anderson & Christofani and other builders also built some.

There was a Stone schooner at Manila in 1919 when I arrived there in command of the bark Chin Pu. This must have been the Triton , owned by the Pacific Commercial Company. Earlier I had encountered the Hermes in Honolulu when trading there in the Falls of Clyde. The Hermes was a Jaluit company schooner; she left in mid-July, 1914, on a trip to the Marshall s. When she returned to Honolulu in October, her skipper, Captain Schmidt, sighted the Japanese warship HUMS Hizen crui s-

She was declared surplus after the ingjust outside Oahu 's three mile limit.

She was on blockade duty to intercept war and fitted with a 40 ton freezing any German craft trying to reach sanctu- room for tuna and the other types of fi sh ary in a neutral port and had already cap- which the ex panding Japanese population in the Hawaiian Island liked to eat tured the German schooner Aeolus.

Captain Schmidt stayed inside the raw. But there was a whispering camthree mile limit, but nevertheless the paign started that frozen fish was not Japanese man-of-war sent launches to wholesome and the lanikai, as she was board him and haul down the German now named, was sold to an Alaskan flag . Schmidt took note of the US Reve- fi sherman. She turned up in the Samuel nue Cutter Thetis arriving on the scene . Goldwyn movie "Hurricane," made from with her three pounders unlimbered . He the Nordhoff & Hall book, well cast in hauled the German flag back up again the role of an island trading schooner.

Two days before Pearl Harbor she was and the Japanese withdrew.

The Hermes lay for three years at the in Manila, flyin g the commi ss ion penRai lroad Wharf in Honolulu along with nant of the US Navy again. She was the German steamers Holsatia, Prinz engaged on a suicide mission- presumaWaldemar, Staats-Sekretar Kraetke, bly to provoke the Japanese into warloongmoon, l ocksun and several oth- as a result of an order from President ers. We arrived and departed from the Roosevelt to the Commander in Chief of other side of the wharf in the Falls of the Asiatic Fleet. It is a remarkable story.

Clyde during these years. When the Adm iral Kemp Tolley tells about it in United States entered the war these his book Cruise of the lanikai , Incitevessels were seized. The schooner was ment to War. He eventually escaped in sabotaged by her German captain, who her to Australia, a 4000 mile voyage had orders to saw through her keelson under hardship conditions. .V and to saw off the masts below decks.

But of course, these things were easily Captain Klebingat left Germany in his set to rights and she was soon USS teens to go to sea, eventually settling on Hermes, patrolling for the Navy with a the West Coast of the US, where he died in 1985. SeeSH 6, 26, 36, 38 & 39. lieutenant in charge.

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Go ship-visiting Thanking all our hosts in N ew Y ork City, Elizabeth, Stamford, Kingston , A lbany , New Rochelle, Fairfield, Milford, and Fall River for a great summer of '89.

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19

OPERATION

SAIL

1992

A quarter century ago Operation Sail was incorporated to promote such worthy maritime activities as sail training, museums preserving artifacts of the past, research into our maritime heritage origins, revitalization and popular usage of our nation's waterfront areas. We have gathered the "tall ships" of the world in New York Harbor on three historic occasions to focus attention on those maritime acitivities. We are most pleased that NMHS is devoting this issue of Sea History to help us announce Operation Sail 1992, "A Salute to the Age of Discovery."

When the tall ships of the world's sail training fleets gathered in New York Harbor for the first Operation Sail in 1964, many among us believed we were saluting a vanishing breed of ship and paying tribute to a traditional mode of seafaring about to go out of existence. It was to be, most people felt, the last hurrah of the ocean-going square-rigged sailing ship.

But today, a quarter century later, there are twice as many of these great ships in the world as when the first Operation Sail was held! What had been thought of as an outworn way of life turned out to be a vigorous and fundamentally useful phenomenon. And Operation Sail turned out to be a new world-class tradition in the making.

The reasons for this grand revival of mankind's age-old fascination with the way of a ship in the sea, and of youth's response to the sea's stem challenge, are not far to seek. Youth of all nations hungers for adventure, the real adventure to be found in the broad highways of the open sea, where character and teamwork are everything. And there is the pride that people feel in their own ships, sailing to honor and perpetuate the seafaring traditions of their own countries of origin.

On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the historic voyage of Christopher Columbus, Operation Sail 1992 is celebrating the Age of Discovery, honoring the achievements of all those great men of the sea, Scandinavians, Portuguese, Spanish, Italians, Bretons, English, venturing into the unknown- as well as native Americans who awaited them on these shores.

In the scheduling of Operation Sail, first in 1964 marking the World's Fair in New York, in 1976 marking the Bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence, and in 1986 observing the lOOth birthday of that great lady of our harbor, the Statue of Liberty, we have seen the public's growing appreciation of the values involved in young people learning to master seafaring in these beautiful and challenging ships.

In 1986 an estimated sixteen million people watched the ships parade up New York harbor-and literally hundreds of millions watched with equal fascination on television screens around the world. The US Coast Guard counted some 32,000 spectator craft in the harbor. Some had come great distances- all were there to see their elder brethren, the great ships of Operation Sail.

But the numbers would be of small import without the meanings-and we believe those meanings are getting through. As we prepare for Operation Sail 1992 we are seeing more people around the world involved in this greatly rewarding activity: * Young people from abroad are discovering for themselves what people from their countries have accomplished in coming to the United States. In 1976, for example, the Christian Radich sailed up the St. Lawrence into the Great Lakes to seek out Norwegian communities in the heartland of America. * City waterfronts are entering on a new very productive revival, here in New York and New Jersey, and in the outport cities where the ~all ships go on to visit. Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Norfolk have their own stories to tell about this, as we do in New York, particularly in such centers of culture and productive commerce as South Street Seaport Museum in Lower Manhattan. * And we are seeing a national and international upwelling of interest in the message of courage, skill, endurance and comradeship which the tall ships bring us. This in tum, has meant more concrete support for sail training, maritime museums and other centers of sea lore and learning. Through such organizations as the National 20

SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

PHOTO BY PETER A. BURCKMYER.

Maritime Historical Society, new support and encouragement has been brought to worthy undertakings in all varieties of maritime education, through public interest and actual funds developed by Operation Sail.

We are proud of the accomplishments of Operation Sail in focusing attention on vital maritime activities, not only in assuring the preservation of our maritime history, but in fostering the strength of tomorrow ' s leadership through the lessons of yesterday and the training of today. We invite the support ofreaders of Sea History, for by our charter, in addition to a successful event on the weekend of July 4th, 1992 any funds remaining will be directed to furthering those maritime activities.

Our job cannot be done without the cooperation of public agencies and private or~ ganizations, and of many, many individual citizens. These citizens, our volunteers and supporters, understand truly the lessons of seafaring, and act on them. To all who have responded in the past, our heartfelt thanks. And to all who wish to help and play a part in Operation Sail 1992, we say: Come sail with us!

Through future issues of Sea History, we shall keep you updated on our preparations to bring you a memorable 4th of July weekend in 1992 and tell you how you can pmUcipate and lend a hand, if you wish

tf1; Jj, ~ ~

EMIL

MoseAcHE,,

JR.

Chairman, Operation Sail, Inc. SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

21

THE LAST TIME THE TALL SHIPS WERE IN NEWYORK was in 1986, to salute the Statue of Liberty on her JOOth birthday. Above you see her from the foredeck of the Elissa-an iron bark bui It in Scotland in 1877. This is a novel perspective, for Lady Liberty was not here when the Elissa last called at New York, in the early 1880s! Ahead, the Gaze la ofPhiladelphia, built in Spain in 1883, and ahead of her Venezuela's Simon Bolivar, built in Spain in 1980. People are building square riggers in the 1980s with serious purpose, as they did in the 1880s.

Below, the Christian Radich of Norway sails up to the aircraft carrier Forrestal, where President Ford reviews the fleet in what turns out to be the central event of the national celebration on the 200th anniversary of the United States.

President John F. Kennedy had lent his enthusiastic support for the preceeding Operation Sail twelve years earlier, in 1964. His assassination a little over seven months before the event led to the elegiac note in John Masefield 's poem, written to salute the gathering of ships-a real sailor' s tribute, for Masefield had made the tough passage round Cape Hom in a square rigger. By 1986 there was an aircraft carrier John_F. Kennedy in commission-she took the salute of the passing ships that year.

N. STANFORD - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --...,

Operation Sail Here by the towers of your splendid town, Ship after ship, the Racers will come in, Their colours going up and their sails down, As welcomes to America begin.

The sirens will all bellow and make din And all bells beat, in thunder of ovation, As, one by one, each Racer, each a Queen, Arrives, salutes the Eagle and takes station, One beauty more in all the lovely scene.

The grand scene, of the ships that have made good Their path across the sea by hardihood.

Ah, that he who helped to plan this test Of Manhood on the sea, were with us still.

Watching with us, the ending of the quest, As men and ships their destinies fulfill.

He whom America in desolation Now mourns, from sea to sea; but he has gone A Nation's memory and veneration, Among the radiant, ever venturing on, Somewhere, with morning, as such spirits will.

-JOHN M ASEFIELD

Poet Laureate of England 22

SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

PHOTO COURTESY OPERATION SAIL. INC.

to greet the ships and meet their venturesome crews. Above Columbia's Gloria receives visitors, with Argentina ' s Libertad behind and Romania' s Mircea across the way.

And the beat goes on-below, in the ancient Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Germany, the Rickmer Rickmers, newly restored as a museum ship, receives the tall ships to celebrate the city's 800th birthday this past summer. Across the way from her lies the Kruzenshtern (USSR) built as the German cargo-carrier Padua in 1926, and over the festive tents lies West Germany's Gorch Fock. The mighty Kruzenshtern came to Operation Sail 1976 in New York, but missed 1986. It is to be hoped she will be back in New York in 1992.

P EOPLE POURED OUT ONTO THE CITY PfERS

SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

23

BEYOND THE SPECTACLE which reaches out to entrance a nation lies the challenging reality of training young people to sail these big ships. And here, in a workaday scene aboard the US Coast Guard bark Eagle, we look aft from the foes 'l head; past close-hauled headsail sheets, to trainees taking sights with sextants and doing "sailorizing" work on deck and in the rigging. Behind the camera is Bill Burgess, volunteer aboard the historic ships of San Francisco, getting a straight dose of ¡ sea life (see his account of this voyage in Sea History 20, pp 8-9). On this 2500-mile training cruise, Burgess found "something special about the style, character and daring of a sailing ship which her people come to share .... "

PHOTO BY WILLIAM E. BURGESS, JR.

24

KEEPING THE SEA, in a direct line of succession from the intrepid voyagers whose heritage we salute in Operation Sail 1992, Sagres II stands into the advancing night. The seaman-author Joseph Conrad spoke of the obligation a sailor owes to his ship, an investment of thought, of skill, oflove. "If you remember that obligation," he said," ... she will sail, stay, run for you as long as she is able, or like a seabird going to rest upon angry waves, she will lie out the heaviest gale that ever made you doubt living long enough to see another sunrise."

SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

MARINE ART NEWS News In Brief ...

'Running Hard'

by Alex A. Hurst

The almost subversive notion that art exists to convey meanings, and to celebrate the wonder of the visible universe, receives powerful reinforcement in Alex Hurst's new book on the marine artist Thomas Somerscales (18421927). Here he gives a seaman's appreciation of Somerscales's classic "Running Hard."

This full-rigged ship is running hard before a gale with almost as little sail as was ever carried-just two lower topsails and foresail, together with the fore topmast staysail. Sometimes the foresail might be furled, but it was always kept set as long as possible to give the ship lift forward . There would be thick chafing gear frapped to this stay (behind the staysail) to avoid wear on the sail in such conditions as this.

Some dealers fought shy of the picture, thinking it might have been cropped.

They failed to reach the artist's mind. I wish to abjure personal reminiscence, but sometimes it may illuminate a picture. Thus I recall an occasion in a fourmaster running before just such a gale under similar sail and spending my forenoon watch below perched on the end of the bowsprit watching her racing towards me through the great surge of white water all around her and, with the bow wave roaring beneath me, the few SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

sails set straining as if carved in curves of silent power before the crashing chords of the westerlies as the ship reeled off the knots. Although it was cold, I have seldom spent a more exhilarating morning or witnessed anything more magnificent. Sometimes, as the ship pitched and dipped her foc 'sle head, I seemed to be wholly separated from her.

Yet the mate, an Alanning who had been years in sail, saw me there and shouted to ask what I was doing. I yelled back: "Watching her coming at me!" He shook his head disbelievingly, and shuffled off muttering, I am told , "Mad Englishman! " Somerscales knew all about it. Here is the crash and thunder of the bows and the foaming seas immediately about the hull. But the poor dealers could not possibly conjure the exultation of this aspect of a sailing ship when the very elements seem to be stirred by some drunken god, and regretted that only a part of her was depicted!

www This superb book, with masterly judgments and insightful reviews of the artist' s life, is available from Te redo Books, PO Box430,Brighton,SussexBNJ 6GT, England for ÂŁ45.50; or in the USA from NMHS , 132 Maple St ., Croton-onHudsonNYJ0520for$92.45(postpaid).

We were so swept up in Oliphant & Company's current catalog that we neglected to note that Bryan Oliphant has opened a gallery where these works may be viewed Monday to Friday, l 1AM5PM. The Oliphant Gallery is at 790 Madison A venue, New York NY 10021; 212 439-0007.

The Forbes Gallery, 60 5th Ave., New York plays host to the Ocean Liner Museum Collection, the first out-ofhouse exhibit by Forbes. The Ocean Liner Museum was founded in 1981 as the only museum to honor passenger vessels exclusively. This international exhibit, which celebrates the 150th anniversary of Cunard Line, runs until January 31, 1990. (Forbes Gallery tel: 212 206-5548. Ocean Liner Museum, Suite739, 7305thAve.,NY,NY 10019) Also, the Smith Gallery Annual Show begins the first week in January, 1990. Renowned artists such as Antonio Jacobsen and James Bard will be represented, along with contemporaries such as William Muller and Keith Miller. The exhibit will run until the last week in February. (Smith Galleries, 1045 Madison Ave., NY, NY10021; 212 744-6171) .ti

.ti

.ti

Gaze la U oder Sail

by ROBERT C. SEMLER

Member: Soc iety o f Illustrato rs Am eri ca n Society of Marin e Arti sts

A limited edition print of the Gazela, former 1883 Portuguese square-rigged Barkentine, berthed at historic Penns Landing, Philadelphia, PA.

Edition: 500 S/ N Image Size: 17 1h X23 1/z Reproduced in full colo r on neutral PH paper Price: $45.00 plus $5.00 S hipping (Shipped flat)

NJ res idents include 6% sales tax

Send Check or M.O. payable to: Robert C. Semler 308 Highland Terrace, Pitman NJ 08071 Or for Full Color AdCard and order form send SASE to above address NAME ....................................................... ............ .... .

STREET ADDRESS ......... ... .

CITY .... ............... .......... STATE ........... ZIP. Thank you for your order.

25

MARINE ART: In Quest of the Enduring Image

S. Francis Smitheman I first saw Francis Smitheman from my window. He had set up a portable easel in a field at the end of the garden and was painting the nearby landscape, but with considerable difficulty, since a stiff breeze was playing havoc with the large canvas. Having art experience myself, I felt obliged to go out and offer some string to help secure canvas and easel.

That evening he asked if he cou ld leave his wet oil painting at my house until the next session. We were immediately attracted to each other and within three days he had proposed marriage. Such is the artistic temperament!

He had already had a checkered career as aircraft engineer, coal miner and then, as his true vocation asserted itself, designer for the theater. When we met he had worked in 33 countries around the world as designer, and was then on a five year full-time course leading to a specialist art teacher's degree. I was already teaching and we married whilst he was still a student.

In the first years of our life together we spent our holidays in France. Early in the morning he would leave me bathing our small daughter and go and paint the harbor at Cannes. There he was noticed by the distinguished collector M. Henri

by Gladys Marie Smitheman Tournay who commissioned him to paint a large marine of a nineteenth century vessel for his magnificent home. This coincided with our own early sailing experiences. We progressed as a family from building our own dinghy, through chartering, to owning a yacht based on the Mediterranean, both of us earning competency certificates with the French merchant marine. Meanwhile Francis developed as a marine artist. By the late 1970s, he was painting only carefully researched large scale marines. He began to exhibit at the Royal Society of Marine Artists shows and in other London and provincial galleries, and the demand for his work grew as hi s works matured and the subjects became more challenging.

A turning point in hi s development, I remember, was his painting "A Barque Being Turned by the Tug Tipper in the Newhaven Harbour." We live close to Newhaven, a South Coast port handling small freighters and the ferries running between England and France. In the nineteenth century , shipbuilding took place there in Gray's Yard and many a Newhaven craft has sai led to the Americas or the Orient. Francis is familiar with the port, sometimes going out to work

with the crabbers and often he is invited by the Tug Master to go out when there is a special towing job to be done. For this painting he carefully researched the river frontage, and .the foundations of early buildings, studied museum archives and talked with men who remembered the port as it was in the early years of this ¡ century. He then created the Newhaven painting. He told me that it was almost like a construction job, building the images of boats, wharves, the old hotel and the warehouses in their proper places and making them respond to the prevail ing light. He also experienced for the first time that sense of "being there" on the spot at that time-a feeling which has now become almost habitual. When he comes out of a long painting session it is as if he had left an earlier moment in history to rejoin our present.

I have sometimes wondered about the time he spends on research si nce the result must be judged finally on artistic rather than documentary merit. He, however, rarely feels he has done enough.

In 1987 he was invited to be Honoured Artist at the eighteenth Salon des Artistes In dependants at Dunkerq ue in F ranee.

This an interesting concept wherein a group of artists invite a distinguished

The Flying Cloud's brush with the N. B. Palmer in the South Atlantic, July 1, 1852. Oil on canvas, 40 x 28 inches.

A bark unloading near London Bridge circa 1880. Oil on canvas, 36 x 24 inches. A print of this painting is being sold by St. Paul's Cathedral, whose facade and dome can be seen just to the right of the bark. Proceeds will go to the Cathedral for maintenance of this beautiful structure. For prints contact: Commercial Director, St. Paul's Cathedral, London,UK.

artist to show a collection of work with them. This was the first time an Englishman had been invited.

Dunkerque was the port from which the Allies retreated from the Continent in World War II in the face of the German onslaught of 1940. Since then it has gone through numerous phases of reconstruction. We made several trips to France to get material for the work and I well remember when I had to hold him over the edge of what is now a freeway, in bitter weather conditions, in order for him to see exactly where the lock's foundations were so that he could accurately site the main vessel of the painting (this ship, incidentally sailed from France around the Hom to pick up nitrates from Chile to fertilize the fields of Flanders).

The reward for all this industry was a major champagne reception at the Town Hall of Dunkerque/Rosendael, opened by the Senator Mayor who promptly decided to buy the two works for the town, the Dunkerque painting to hang in the Museum of Fine Art.

* * * * *

The London Docks were once some of SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

the busiest in the world, but the last fifty years has seen a continuing decline of the Thames frontages; that is until now.

The decision to extend the financial center around St. Paul's eastward has generated the biggest building site in Europe, and the great warehouses which once stored anything from cattle feed to ivory are being restored as offices and residences.

Francis' s preoccupation with this area long predates these developments and he has painted a good number of history paintings showing vessels up against the old London Bridge (now reconstructed in the USA) or downstream of Tower Bridge. These are much admired by the new residents, who long to visualize the river at the time of the original construction of their present homes.

This year St. Paul's itself has chosen to reproduce one of these paintings in aid of the Cathedral entitled "Working Craft on the Thames near London Bridge with St. Paul's in the background." The companion painting, "The Bury St. Edmunds being towed up towards Tower Bridge" shows precisely the view the

new Thames residents enjoy, and the painting is owned by one of them.

It would be unreasonable in writing about these things not to hear from the man himself, so I asked him : "What are you trying to do?" His answer: I am trying to create works which will endure, which will give pleasure and insights into the maritime aesthetic and experience. I have always responded to the sea and love it for its pacific beauty and its awesome power. The way man has worked with the sea is fascinating and this has produced objects of great utility and beauty. Every aspect is absorbing: the weight of a canvas sail; the entrance of a bow in the water; the way waves behave; how freight gets stacked on a wharf.

In terms of my own art it lies, I believe, in the British marine tradition but underlying this are two important elements- form and light.

The first is that volumetric sense of form-of three dimensions in space-so marvelously realized during the Renaissance by artists such as

27

D unkerque circa 1909, oil on canvas , 3 6 x 24 inches . This painting was purchased by the town' s mayor and now hangs in the Muse um of Fine Art.

The Pourquoi Pas? frozen into her winter anchorage on Peterman Island, Antarctica in 1909. Oil on canvas, 36 x 22 inches . ..--.,.-...,.....~----.~~~~~

28

SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

The SS Great Britain in South Street after her maiden voyage to New York in 1845 . Oil on canvas, 36 x 24 inches. Designed by the revolutionmy British engineer lsambard Kingdom Brunel, she was the first iron-hulled, screw-driven vessel designed for the transoceanic passenger trade and was the largest ship of her time. The painting is owned by the SS Great Britain Project and was exhaus-

Michaelangelo and Veronese.

The second, light, is the chief means by which my pictures exist.

As a student I won a scholarship to Paris. I studied the masters in the Louvre, delighted in the Impressionists and sought to understand the modern movements. I painted the streets and the people. The most valuable thing to emerge from all this, in my most impressionable years, was a feeling for light- the way it modifies form, its coloristic influence, the way it can create a mood, its appearance through atmosphere, the color of shadows, reflected light. All this, I discovered, had to be translated into paint. Paint that could be opaque, transparent, or something in between.

So there is nothing I can do in painting which does not include a sense of form and the effects of light.

These, for me, are the essential means whereby a marine idea becomes what I hope will be an enduring image.

This spring we travelled down the East Coast of the USA, and at Mystic I watched Francis as he helped raise an upper topsail on the Charles W. Morgan. He was very excited to be aboard her, since he has known of the ship for many years and has an interest in whalSEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

tively researched with their cooperation. It is considered to be the most accurate representation of the ship at this period of her career.

Prints are on sale to benefit the restoration of this remarkable ship.

Contact: SS Great Britain Project, Bristol, England, or South Street Seaport Museum , Attn: Museum Shop, 207 Front Street , New York, New York 10038.

ing and ships at work in Arctic waters.

Before we met he had worked in Kiruna, in the north of Sweden above the Arctic Circle. This experience was so visually astounding that many years later he achieved one of his most impressive paintings, "Dr. Charcot's PourquoiPas? frozen into her winter anchorage at Peterman Island in Antarctica." This was published as a print and was seen by an explorer who had surveyed Antarctica's Graham Land during three winters in the 1930s. He told us that he had known the great Charcot and he vouched for the painting's realism "except for the height of the table ice!" - a precise observation, since Francis had knowingly exaggerated its height in order to mask the sun and keep attention on the glistening Pourquoi Pas? The American story of sail is rich with incident for the history painter, and Francis has long wanted to chronicle the speed and scale of the great clippers. In his most recent painting he has started with the meeting of the Flying Cloud with the NB. Palmer in 1852, both vessels bound from New York to San Francisco. The Cloud, under Captain Cressy, had departed ahead of the Palmer by some eight days. Captain Low in the Palmer, having excellent weather, closed the gap to three days on crossing the

equator. South of the line the Cloud hit heavy gales. At noon on July 1st in about 32° South the Palmer caught up with the Cloud and came alongside. Captain Cressy, challenged by the Palmer's performance, crammed on all sail to the stuns'ls and left the Palmer behind sailing a higher course. This is the moment my husband has illustrated. An afternoon light is seen falling on the scene projecting shadows from the windborne clouds upon the sea. The stuns'ls are filling and the Cloud is plunging forward. The deep ocean is reflective in the middle distance but transparently dark in the foreground.

This simple classic picture will be the forerunner of other paintings of American clippers and, in spite of being almost widowed by Francis's absorption in the painting process, I am glad he will go on, and I am glad that others now believe, in growing numbers, that his sense of form and the magical effects of light will live on in the "enduring images" of his art.

Mrs . Smitheman was born in France and completed her college studies in England. As Senior Lecturer, she has taught art and design at degree level.

She delights in travel and shares her husband's passion for things maritime.

29

SAIL TRAINING:

SQUARE RIGGERY

by H. F. Morin Scott

Royalist was intended to be a highly efficient, modem training ship for young people of the Sea Cadet Corps, an offshoot of the Royal Naval Reserve, and was designed and built with this sole purpose in mind. There was no intention of building a replica of a vessel of earlier times. Ordered on August 4, 1970, she was completed on August 3, 1971, and went into service the following day.

The material, design and construction of every item on board was examined and considered in detail, and every effort was made to ensure that everything was efficient, long-lasting and eminently practical. The success of this plan was first shown when the brig was awarded the Lloyds Register of Shipping Trophy as being the finest built to Lloyds Class + lOOAl during 1971, against some 200 other contestants from all over the world. Subsequently, her success has been demonstrated during the nineteen years of service, in which she has introduced nearly nineteen thousand boys and girls to the pleasures and hardships of sai ling offshore under square rig on one-week long cruises from March 1 to December 1 each year.

She carries a crew of six professional seamen (Captain, Sailing Master, Boatswain, Engineer, Coxswain, and Cook), four watch officers (aged over 18) and twenty-two cadets (aged 13 1/2 to 18).

The Boatswain is responsible for everything above decks, and the Coxswain for everything below (both under the Sailing Master) . The Engineer maintains all mechanical equipment, including two 110 BHP auxiliary engines and the generators. The Cook, as always, is the most important person on board.

The four Watch Officers are usually Officers or Adult Instructors from the Sea Cadet Corps, sometimes made up with yachtsmen members of the Club which supports the brig, suitably called the Square Rigger Club. Watch Officers stand watch in harbor and at sea, and also take charge of a watch of cadets.

The twenty-two cadets, who may be all boys or all girls (or occasionally a mixture) are divided into four watchesthe Forward and After Port Watches and Forward and After Starboard Watches, and for all major maneuvers, they work appropriately on ropes on the port or starboard side of the foremast or the mainmast, as befits their watch name.

When at sea, one part of a watch is always "on watch," and the five or six cadets plus the Watch Officer are enough 30

~

to provide helmsmen and lookouts and to make minor sail adjustments. Tacking or wearing (or gybing as "fore-andafters" say) generally requires all hands on deck, while setting or furling sail is either done by the watch on deck or with the assistance of one or more other watches, according to the amount of work involved and the wind strength.

Cruises usually last six days commencing midday Saturday. The rest of Saturday is spent in harbor under concentrated instruction from the professional crew. During this time, each watch in tum will set and furl a topsai l, learn the correct way to climb the ratlines and receive instructions on how to work the heads, what to do in case of "man overboard" and even when, where, and how to be seasick as well as other matters.

For the remainder of the week, the ship will sail as much as possible by day and night, usually managing to visit a French or¡ other port abroad, when the young crew usually get their first chance to "go foreign."

The crews, aged 13 to 15, include a few older trainees who have usually sailed in the ship before and who can act most usefully as "Leading Seamen."

In addition to learning to sai l the brig, all cadets receive instruction in firefighting , basic engineering, radio operation and ship maintenance and, of course, they have to keep the ship clean and do all the washing up as well.

Before leavi ng the ship they are examined verbally on what they have learned and awarded proficiency badges in various grades which they can then wear on their uniform with pride.

For the most part, Royalist cruises in the English Channel, but every two years she takes part in the Tall Ships Race, and in the intervening year she usual Iy makes a cruise around the British Isles in one week stages.

Tacking Ship In this and other maneuvers, Royalist, with her modem lines, hardly needs to be sailed around, and when junior officers or cadets are entrusted with the maneuver and giving all the orders, the helm is usually limited to 10 degrees.

However, in strong winds with certain combinations of sail set, even Royalist can be difficult to tack. So we tend to always "sail the ship round" so that everyone gets to understand the whys and wherefores.

Let's assume the brig is sailing on a course of due north, close hau led on the port tack (fig. 1) with the Captain in charge on deck. Wind about WNW. These orders are given:

#1-"Hands to bracing stations." All hands on deck and go to their all otted station in their own part of the ship. #2-"Stand by to tack ship (Ready about)." Hands remove coils of sheets and braces from belaying pins and reduce the number of turns on the pins. #3-"Port ten" (to helmsman). Helmsman replies "Port ten sir," and applies ten degrees of port rudder and reports, "Ten of port wheel on, sir." #4-"Helms a-lee" (to crew). This warns all the crew that the maneuver has started. Then, without pausing: -"Spanker to windward." After part of port watch haul on port spanker sheet and bring spanker boom to windward.

-"Ease the jib sheet." For'd part of starboard watch eases jib sheet (fig. 2).

*****

All square riggers have a lot in common, but each rig is handled differently. And following the old saw "differentshipsdifferent long splices," every captain may well perform these same maneuvers slightly differently, and for this I make no excuses. Every captain is right, and the Lord help anyone who dares to dispute that fact on board.

Royalist normally only sets one jib when under square rig. Vessels with more than one jib would ease all jib sheets, and in some large vessels (over 1000 tons) it is even customary to lower SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

all headsails at this point to help the bow come up into the wind quicker and reduce the flogging of the jibs. While lowered, the sails are carried over to the port side ready to be re-hoisted just before the wind could fill them.

By the same token, hauling the spanker sheet to windward (in this case to port) helps push tire stem to starboard and assists the turning of the ship. Not really necessary under normal conditions in Royalist, but essential in most square riggers and even in Royalist in difficult conditions such as a very high wind and a lumpy sea.

The brig then starts to turn head to wind and the Captain watches the wind sock carefully. Just before the ship comes head to wind, he will order: #5-"Mainmast, bracing port, let go and haul." The cadets manning all the mainmast braces will haul or let go depending on which side they are manning, and likewise those manning the main course tacks and sheets. (See result, fig. 3.)

( ':k~s brtrd

a-box

JJ: ~ it~)

Looking at figure 3, you can now see the wind is acting on the foremast and squaresails (which are all aback) pushing the bow around to port. At the same time, the wind is now acting on the mainmast squaresails (also all aback) pushing the stem to starboard. So both sets of squaresails. are turning the ship onto her new tack. Whatever fore and aft sails are set are having no real effect.

The ship continues to tum to port, and when the wind begins to appear on the starboard bow, the Captain orders: #6-"Letdraw main staysail." The starboard sheet is let go and the port sheet is sheeted home. #7-"Let draw the jib." Again the starboard sheet is let go and the port sheet is sheeted home. #8-"Midships" (to helmsman). Helmsman replies "Midships sir," and then reports "Wheel's amidships," when this is done.

The ship meanwhile has continued SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

turning to port and the wind comes broader on the starboard bow. The jib, main staysail and spanker fill on the new tack and eventually the squaresails on the mainmast (which were aback) will begin to flutter and finally fill. #9-"Foremast, bracing port, let go and haul." Hands allotted to _foremast braces, tacks and sheets haul or let go to swing yard round for new tack (fig. 4). "Steer full and bye," or "Steer 210 degrees" (both to helmsman.)

#10- "Haul taut lee braces and belay," followed by "Haul taut weather braces and belay." Lee braces are hauled taut first to make sure the yards are braced as far around as possible and then the slack is taken up on the weather braces.

After that, if a further tack is not expected shortly (as it always is on the first day's practice!), all braces, tacks and sheets are coiled up and hung on their belaying pins, and eventually all except the watch on deck are dismissed.

It is all an easy operation in a small brig with a large crew, but in the last of the cargo carrying deep-sea square-riggers with a very small crew, the same operation could take the best part of eight hours. The actual tack was done at the change of watch with all hands on deck for an hour or so, while the previous three and a half hours on one watch had been preparing to tack, and the three and a half hours after was spent in coiling up ropes and making minor adjustments by the other watch.

In fact, I once met an elderly square rigger captain who claimed that in all his years in command, he never tacked ship.

He preferred to wear round from one close hauled tack to the other, and claimed it was easier on ship and crew.

Wearing Ship In modem fore and aft yachts and dinghies, this term has been entirely replaced by the term "gybing" with all the associated horrors of having one or more booms banging across the craft with violent force. In square rig it is still called wearing ship, and is a gentle, easy maneuver free from all panic and hassle.

In fact, it only becomes a maneuver at all ifthe alteration of course is sufficient to necessitate bracing the yards. If one is merely altering course to bring the wind across the stern from say 15 degrees on the port quarter to 15 degrees on the starboard quarter, nothing is required at all except to give the necessary orders to the helmsman (see fig. 5) and then adjust

the angle of the yards in slow time with the watch on deck. With the wind as far aft as that, usually all the fore-and-aft canvas is furled, but if any jibs or staysails are set, they would be sheeted hard in amidships to prevent them flogging and, possibly, if a sea was nmning, to act as an anti-rolling damper. The spanker would certainly be brailed up or possibly completely stowed.

Sometimes, however, one might wish to make a very large alteration of course like reversing course on a reach or even wearing ship to alter course from one close hauled tack to the other. Let us look at the method of altering course 180 degrees from a dead beam reach.

We start the scenario with the wind at west and the ship sailing north on the port tack, the Captain in charge (fig. 6).

#1-"Hands to bracing stations." All hands come on deck and go to their stations. #2-"Stand by to wear ship." Hands remove coils of sheets, braces, etc. from belaying pins and reduce the number of turns on the pins. #3-"Starboard ten." Helmsman replies "Starboard ten sir," applies ten degrees of starboard helm and reports, "Ten of starboard wheel on, sir." #4-"Helm'sa-weather "(to crew). This warns all crew that the maneuver has started.

31

SQUARE RIGGERY #5-"Brail up the spanker." After parts of port and starboard watch brail up spanker and secure gaff and boom amidships with vangs and sheets. #6-"Mainmast, bracing port handsomely, let go and haul," and "Foremast, bracing port handsomely, let go and haul." Hands tend braces and course tacks and sheets as necessary to turn the yards slowly (handsomely) as the ship turns. This may well be done in several stages, with each stage being concluded by the order "Well." (See fig. 7.)

;;7------47 Possibly, but not certainly, at a midpoint stage in the maneuver we may have the order to one or both masts: #7-"Brace square to your marks."

Hands on the braces adjust the braces so that the marks are on the belaying pins port and starboard and at this point, all the yards will be at right angles to the ship's centerline. #8-"Steerduesouth.""Steerduesouth, sir." When steady on the course, the helmsman reports , "Steady sir, course due south." #9-"Sheetmain staysail and jib to port."

Appropriate crew members let go starboard sheets and haul in port sheets. #10-"Set the spanker." The after parts of port and starboard watch let go the brails and haul on the spanker clew outhaul. The sail is kept sheeted hard in to help drive the stem around, and then adjusted for the new course (fig. 8).

maneuver follows the wearing ship above, and that thus the ship is on the starboard tack steering south. These orders are given: #!-"Hands to bracing stations." #2- "Foremast, bracing starboard, let go and haul." The hands tending the foremast braces and the fore course tacks and sheets let go or haul as appropriate until the yards are braced fully to starboard (fig. 9). All squaresails on the

foremast will now be aback and driving the ship astern, while the remainder of the sails continue to drive forward . Speed will be reduced to about 25% of what it was before bracing.

If still further reduction in speed is required, the order may be given: #3-"Mainmast, bracing starboard, let go and haul." As above, but with respect to mainmast and main course (fig. 10).

This will normally stop the vessel entirely, and if this is desired, it can be accelerated by letting fly all the fore and aft sail, but this is only done in an emergency.

Heaving-to in this fashion is usually carried out to launch or recover a boat or receive a boat alongside, and it may be used just to waste time, such as while waiting for a pilot off a harbor entrance.

It is not the method used for heaving-to in very bad weather when a small amount of canvas is set and the vessel lies to the wind, usually slightly forward of the beam, making a little headway and a lot of leeway.

Recovery of Man Overboard

As noted previously, this maneuver can be used to go from close-hauled on one tack to close-hauled on the other tack, and in this more helm can be used.

Heaving-To This is normally done with the wind on the beam orslightlyforwardofthe beam.

Let us assume on this occasion that the 32

Working a full nine-month season in North European waters with a green crew of twenty-two 13- to 15-year olds joining every Saturday, and sometimes becoming helplessly seasick, the risk of man overboard is high and the drill for recovery is practiced weekly.

The ship carries liferaft capacity for thirty-six (110% of the ship's company) on each side of the vessel as a requirement of our maritime authority. This, in fact, consists of three ten-man liferafts and one six-man liferaft port and star-

board. The two six-man liferafts are held in gravity drop racks to port and starboard of the helmsman's position where the officer of the Watch is normally to be found.

The drill for man overboard is as follows: As soon as the alarm is raised, the ship is brought beam on to the wind, regardless of the point of sailing she had b en on before, and this can be done without touching a rope on deck, although if the yards are braced square, a certain amount of flogging of the courses may take place. As soon as hands are available the yards are braced for the beam wind (fig. 11).

At the same time, the leeward sixman liferaft is launched, and as soon as it has inflated, the painter is cut off.

(These two rafts are fitted with sea anchors and sinkers to prevent them drifting fast in a strong wind or "catherine wheeling" downwind at high speed.)

This is done for four reasons: 1) The raft provides an immediate objective for-the. man in the water and promotes his will to survive; 2) Provided the man overboard reaches the raft and enters it, his chance of survival is almost 100%,

for even if the parent ship fai ls to find him, he will, in this day and age, almost certainly be picked up by helicopter or shore-based lifeboat; 3) The life expectancy ofa thirteen-year-old in the sea off the English coast in March or November is probably less than five minutes-a short deadline to meet. Once in the liferaft he should survive at least twentyfour hours without further assistance.

And,4) in any sort of seaway, theliferaft is infinitely easier to see and recover than a swimmer.

Meanwhile, all hands are called and the Captain assumes command. If weather conditions are good-and people seldom fall overboard in good conditions-the ship can be hove-to (as above) and the rubber boat with outboard can be launched to retrieve the man overooard.

All practices, however, assume that this is not possible and that the raft has to be recovered. The brig therefore continues on her course away from the man SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

The Royalist with a crew of trainees aboard.

Photo by Lt. Peter Henery, RNR . Drawings by the author.

overboard raft until the Captain deems all ready for a reversal of course. He then wears ship (as above) and returns on a reciprocal course.

The brig approaches the raft with the wind abeam aiming to bring the raft close to on her lee side. At a suitable moment according to the Captain's judgment, the brig is hove-to as previously described, backing first the foremast and then the mainmast (fig. 12a and 12b).

If all has been done correctly, the ship will be stopped with the raft close-to on her lee side and possibly a strong swimmer (with a line attached) may be sent away to secure the raft should it be beyond boat-hook range .

The maneuver for practice is carried out without engines, but in reality the auxiliary engines would be started and used both to speed up recovery and to assist in stopping the ship ifthe heavingto was not perfectly executed. On the SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

other hand, it must be understood that, except in calm conditions, the brig cannot be maneuvered as a motor vessel without regard to the sails, and the maneuver is thus always to be conducted under sail.

Box Hauling This fascinating alternative to tacking or wearing ship was much used by the collier brigs, which used to bring coal from Newcastle and other northeast coast ports to London until the advent of steam power. Their seamanship was a matter of renown and it is of interest that the crews were not paid by the day but by the round trip. This obviously encouraged them to make fast passages!

Sailing up the Thames to London was generally against the prevailing wind, which meant tacking up a narrow river with a fair tide and generally anchoring during the foul tide. Box hauling brought the brigs from one tack to another using the minimum river space and enabled the vessel to make way to windward with the aid of the tide throughout the maneuver.

Scenario: vessel on port tack. The following orders are given: #1-"Hands to bracing stations. " All hands go to stations. #2-"Stand by to box haul ship." Braces, tacks and sheets made ready. #3-"Both masts bracing port, let go and haul." Both masts are braced aback. #4-"B rail up spanker." After parts brai I up spanker.

The Captain then watches the speed of the ship closely, and just before the vessel stops, he will order: #5-"Hard a-starboard." The helmsman replies: "Hard¡a-starboard," and reports: "Wheel's hard a-starboard," when it is. #6-"Let fly the jib." The jib sheet is Jet go to release the wind from it.

The Captain watches the water alongside, and as soon as the ship begins to gather stemway, he orders: #7-"Reverse the helm. Hard a-port."

The helmsman repeats the order, complies and reports.

The brig will then drive her stem up into ¡the wind with remarkable speed, and eventually stop again all stern movement. At this point the Captain again orders: #8-"Reverse the helm. Hard a-starboard." The helmsman repeats the order, complies and reports.

The yards may now be braced square to speed the maneuver or adjusted to the Captain's orders. As soon as the vessel

has turned sufficiently to put the wind on the starboard quarter, the order is given: #9-"Set the spanker." The after parts of port and starboard watch let go the brails and haul on the clew outhaul, setting the spanker with the spanker sheet kept hard in to push the stem around quickly. #10-"Let draw the jib and main staysail." Jib and main staysail are sheeted to port.

As the brig turns to come close hauled on the starboard tack, the yards are braced accordingly and the helmsman given a course to steer or ordered to sail "full and bye."

It sounds like a complicated and difficult maneuver, but it really is quite simple and certainly very stingy of sea room, and one can well understand how effective it must have been when used by the collier brigs for all those years.

Nowadays the thought of sailing a square rigger up a narrow tidal river with today's traffic would not only be terrifying, but would also doubtless be against some modem bye-law, but it was common until the advent of steam tugs and not unknown for many years after that.

* * * * *

As recently as 1973, Kapitan zur see Baron von Stackleburg of the Federal German Navy brought the 1800 ton bark Gorch Fock up the Thames as far as Gravesend under full sail doing some sixteen knots, although admittedly the wind was from the northeast, so no box hauling was needed.

When the pilot protested, the Baron said to him: "Pilot, I do not think you know what you are doing," to which the terrified pilot replied, "No, I don't. But I hope you do."

"That is right," said the Baron. "Steward, bring the pilot a cup of coffee, a glass of cognac and a newspaper." '1> Commander Scott is head of Square Rigged Services, ltd. of Bognor Regis, England, and served many years as captain of the Royalist.Now retired, he goes as guest or relief captain aboard Royalist and other square-riggers.

The Square Rigger Club , a registered charity, exists to assist the operation of the Royalist. For further information contact: Membership Secretary, Square Rigger Club, Commercial House , Station Road, Bognor Regis, W. Sussex, Great Britain. Tel: 0243-825831 .

33

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Stalement filed 10-20-89 req uired by !he Acl of A ug.

12, 1970, Sec. 3685, T ille 39, US Code: Sea History is published quarterl y at 132 Maple St., Croton NY I 0520; minimum subscri pl ion price is $ 15. Publisher and edilor is Peler Stanford; managing edilor is Norma S1anford;owner is National Maritime Historical Sociely, a non-profil corporati on; all are localed at 132 Maple St., Croion NY !0520.

During the 12 months preced ing Oc1ober 1989 !he average numbers of: A)copies printed each issue was 20,603 ; B)paid circulation was I) soldthrough dealers, carriers and counter sales 4,54 8; 2) mail subscriptions I 0, 185; C) 101al paid circul arion was 14,733 ; 0 ) free d istri bution, san1ples, complimentary copies were 5,380; E) iota! distribution was 20, I I 3; F) copies no! d istrib u1ed were I) office use 493; 2) return fro m news agents O; G) total=20,603 .

The actual numbers fo r the single iss ue preceding Oc1ober 1989 are: A) total num berprinled 20,300; B) paid circul ation was I) sales through dealers, carriers and counter sales 1,765; 2) mai lsubscripti ons 12,01 5; C) 101al paid circul ati on 13,780; D) free dis1ribu1ion, samples, complimentary copies were 6,040; E) Iota! distribu1ion was 19,820; F) copies no! distribu!ed were I) office use 480 ; 2) return from ne ws agents O; G) lotal=20,300.

I certi fy th al the above slatements are correct and complele. (signed) Norm a Stanford, VP, Nal' I Maritime Hi slori cal Sociely.

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SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

A spirit of hard work, enterprise & cooperation sailed the tall ships of yesterday & the Liberty Ships of World War II... and that's what makes things move today!

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35

Will There Be a Main Skysail-Yarder

by Peter Stanford Operation Sail has helped set tall ships moving on the face of the sea again. And the coming of a tall ship is something to see.

It starts as a cloud on the horizon . By degrees it grows to clouds of canvas, royals atop topgallants, topgallants above topsails, topsails over courses, as the ship comes up over the horizon-and back into living hi story as something more than a mere remnant, or an apparition from the past.

"We' re not just going back to the past," said Jakob Isbrandtsen twenty years ago when the full-rigged shiplibertad first came into South Street, while he was chairman of the fledgling Seaport Museum. "We're getting back to fundamentals." The officers in the ship 's mahogany panelled wardroom nod. They understand . Wet oilskins drip onto the scrubbed deck in the passageway outside. They have a tall ship under their command, and some 120 young lives in their keeping.

Coming up to New York, they had met a violent squall.

First a freshening gust or two from the north , against the prevailing southerly air, then lancing cold rain with the wind rising in mounting gusts through it, driving it into people 's faces in a manner to make their cheeks smart. But no time to think of that! Wind rising after the rain began meant that all hell was about to break loose. Rain before wind, halyards and topsails mind.

Canvas in high wind does not make a sound like shaking out a blanket, it cracks and booms, like close and distant thunder. You can't hear things clearly over its uproar, which is why sea language is so conservative-you need familiar words. To the helmsman: "Bear off hard, there! " "Bear off hard, aye, aye sir! " Most important not to be caught aback as the wind jumps about from a new quarter. If it catches the sails on the wrong side it will press them against the masts and rigging and likely begin carrying things away, meantime making it almost impossible to reduce the spread of the canvas. As the vessel turns away, she straightens up from the steeply leaning angle of heel she had taken in the initial onslaught of the wind, and begins running with the wind"picking up her skirts and flying, " sailormen say.

Aloft, everything is a clashing cacaphony of bulging canvas and jumping yards, as royals are clewed up and stowed, followed by top gallants and courses, reducing the vessel to the traditional and eminently serviceable heavy-weather rig of double topsails. On deck, knots of people struggle with rainstiffened lines, pulling the clattering sails up to their yards, while others are already racing aloft on the ratlines to subdue and stow the wild canvas one hundred eighty feet above the sea-the height of an eighteen-story building. So, a well found and well sailed ship bursting through a summer sq uall to make her passage, the Argentine square rigger Libertad came into South Street, first of the world's tall ships to come there after the US Coast Guard 's own Eagle, harbinger of the flock of sixteen big square riggers that were to follow seven years later, in Operation Sail 1976, honoring the nation's 200th birthday.

Ships to Carry the Message What set these great sailing ships, survivors of a vanished way oflife and half-forgotten era, crossing wide oceans to come to New York? The trail runs back to Europe, where a movement to get young people of different nations to sea in sail began to gather head in the decade following World War II. Something was needed to challenge youth, it was felt, and to realize the commonalities of the human experience in a divided world.

Some sail training ships survived from the prewar era, 36

when navies and shipping companies still felt ex perience under sail mattered. In 1956 a fleet of these ships gathered to run an international race from Torbay, on England's southwest coast, to Lisbon, Portugal. Bernard Morgan, a London lawyer with a dream, pressed the idea. Lord Louis Mountbatten, who had organized the commandos that raided enemyoccupied coasts during the war, seized on it with with enthusiasm; the ocean-racing skipper John Illingworth and others were enlisted in the cause. The Torbay-Lisbon race was agreat success, and led directly to the forming of the Sail Training Association, headquartered in London, to generate more such activities.

The international races found an important sponsor in John Rudd, distiller of Cutty Sark Scots Whiskey, and they are internationally known today as Cutty Sark Tall Ships Racesmost suitably , for the Cutty Sark, for which the whiskey was named, is the last of the world's clipper ships. Enshrined in drydock alongside the National Martime Mu se um in Greenwich, England, that fast-travelling ship of 1869 helps make hi story by inspiring active perpetuation of the skill s and seamanly attitudes that made her name world famous. And some of her income from visitors each year is allotted to support young people going to sea.

In America, the sailing of these ships on the other si de of the Atlantic was keenly followed by Nils Hansell, a graphic artist working at IBM. Nils felt the tall ships should come to America! This was quite out of their normal pattern-but the very challenge of the idea worked its magic. Commodore John S. Baylis of the Coast Guard, veteran of ocean sailing in square rig, seized upon the idea with a sure and responsible grasp; it could be done!

Baylis and Hansell lined up Frank 0. Braynard (see pages 46-47), then executive director of the American Merchant Marine Institute, to run the operation. They then secured a meeting with President John F. Kennedy! Hansell 's employer Thomas J. Watson, Chairman ofIBM, got wind of the scheme and called Emil Mosbacher, Jr. to warn him he was sending over a couple of unexpected visi tors-"but I is ten to their story before you throw them out." Mosbacher listened and ended up leading the visit to our sailor-president a few days later. He went on to take the helm as Chairman of Operation Sail.

Operation Sail 1964 was presented as an adjunct to the World 's Fair in New York that year. There was little warning of the visit of the ships amid the hooplah of the Fair, but the arrival of the tall ships, fully eleven of them-more than had ever been assembled before-passed like a fresh wind across America, turning heads and making people stop each other in the street to talk about. .. "tall ships."

And when it was decided to hold another Op Sail for the national bicentennial in 1976, people ended up talking of practically nothing but the visit of the tall ships.

Where Do They Come From?

Some were new-built. When the Polish bark Pomorza (built 1909) was retired, the Dar Mlodziezy was built to take her place, and the new barkentine Pogoria joined Poland's fleet as well. The Soviet Union has four new square riggers coming along. Old, and in some cases quite historic ships have been hunted up to put into this needed, intensely productive service.

Following the immensely successful Operation Sail 1976, the sponsors, a dedicated non-profit committee Jed by Mosbacher decided to hold another assembly of tall ships for SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

â&#x20AC;˘

Ill

I,.¡

Operation Sail 1992?

Sail plan of Mil verton, sister of Wavertree. the I OOth anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. Most appropriately, the French bark Belem was in this parade, restored with the specific goal of coming across the ocean to celebrate the statue given to Ameri ca by France, and to celebrate the tides of immigrants summoned by her promise.

In 1973, when Norma Stanfo rd and I had last seen Belem, she was laid up in Venice, hav ing been retired from a limited sail training mi ssion fo r the Giorgio Cini fo undation. We asked her aged shipkeeper, would she sai l again? " No," he said, "no more the sea. Too o ld , too worn out. Like me." I hope he saw, at least th rough th e telev ision 's eye, hi s ship come thro ugh the Upper Bay after her trans-Atlantic passage !

One of the loveliest partic ipants in 1986 was the bark Elissa of 1877. Afte r decades of effort by ship hi storians to find her a home, the Galveston Historical Foundation took her on-a shorn and mastless motorship--and restored her to her sailing glory. Thi s was a story of a lo ng vigi l and success beyond the dreams of the watchers and he lpers, a triumph made possible by the growing interest in sail training in an experience-poor age, an interest spurred by Operation Sail.

The Eagle herself, host ship for Operation Sail in 1964, 1976, and 1986, was saved by the new interest in sail training, and by the message the tall ships carried to shores ide people.

The cost-effecti ve pl otters in the 1960s had about dec ided to scrap the Eagle. Cost effectiveness is all very well , but its besetting sin is the inability to track fo rces that soar off its graphs. The Eagle had come into New York's South Street in 1968, the year before the Libertad came in as the first visitor fro m overseas. Howard Slotnick, a South Street volunteer later to become Operations Director of Operaton Sail , had urged her to come to the rough, unrestored East Ri ver waterfro nt. He knew what he was doing and the Coast G uard knew what it was doing bringing the ship in where square riggers had been before, a part of the city made familiar to all sailing people from the paintings of Gordon Grant and Charles Robert Patterson. They went where the memories were and where new dreams were taking shape.

The Commandant of the Coast G uard to ld us thi s one port visit had given the ship new lease on life- a lease later renewed in the full -bl own ship visitation of Operati on Sail 1976. That lease has carried he r fa r in the subsequent yearsacross the Pacific to Australia in 1988 and across the Atlantic and up the Baltic to Leningrad in 1989. She is an effective ambassador because the ship, he r people, and the work they do are real.

Each with Her Story....

The ri sing tide floated little boats as well as great ships. The Little Jennie, a Chesapeake bugeye of 1883, was literall y fl oated off a mudflat and re built in Centerport, Long Island, fo r Op Sail 1986, a project in which NMHS was also pro ud to pl ay a small part. In a similar venture, the oyster sloop SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

Christeen, also built in 1883, aims to compete her restoration in Connectic ut to take part in Operation Sail 1992. And these are j ust examples.

But in thi s time one great ship, freighted with many hopes and dreams, lay half-restored in South Street- the Wavertree.

A full rigger of the last century , she was still a hulk in Buenos Aires when ARA Libertad came to the deserted South Street pier in 1969. The Argentine ship actually brought up the stump of the mi zzen topmast, broken off in a Cape Horn gale in 1910, so people working to bring the ship to New York would have something of the ship herself to look at. "Thi s makes her real to me," said Charlie Dunn, who helped greatly in reconstructing the Wavertree's hi story while al so running a volunteer sai l training program for kids from Chinatown aboard a museum member' s schooner. This was all he was to see of the Wavertree- he died untimely before the ship came to South Street at the end of a long tow from Argentina the followin g year.

The Wavertree, like Elissa or Belem, is a sturdy carthorse.

Launched in 1885, she came a full generation after the finelined clippers that fo ught and lost the battle with the oceangoing steamer. Sailing ships of that day were carriers of lowvalue cargoes. Wavertree was built to carry jute from India for British mill s to make into burl ap bags. In a fe w years, steamers crowded her out of even his lowly trade. She turned to tramping ro und the world 's oceans, picking up cargo where she could . She carried wheat from San Francisco to Antwerp, nitrate from Chile to Brooklyn, New York, kerosene from Bayonne, New Jersey to light the lamps of Bombay.

But she was launched with the learning of the clippers in her hefty hull and sturd y rig, and by happy chance she was designed to carry that crowning glory of the clipper ships, a skysail on the main! A sail above the royals- a thing rare to the point of extinction in working sailing ships in this century.

There is reason to believe Hercules Linton, des igner of the clipper CuttySarkwas alsodesignerof the Wavertree, launched from Oswald Mordaunt 's yard in Southhampton. Where el se did the big ship get her sweeping sheer, her sweet cutwater, her anachroni stic three-masted rig and deep-bodied single topgallants and above that. .. her main skysai l? * * * * *

Wouldn ' t it be something to see the Wavertree restored as a participant, perhaps New York 's host ship, for Operation Sail 1992? Under Jakob Isbrandtsen 's continuing direction a gallant band of volunteers has done everything short of what now must be done in a shipyard. l sbrandtsen is sti ll "getting back to fundamentals," twenty years on into the job. In 1969, after he bought herfor the South Street Seaport Museum, the Museum said: What does the Wavertree have to say to us now, at the end of her long, useful, intensely honorable career? Only what the breezes whispered to her, what the gales yelled at her, what the seas taught herfrom the day she f irst broke out her topsails and leaned to the burden of wind in stiffening canvas . .. that things are not easy on this planet of ours, that security is fo ught for, not given, and that we had all better learn to haul together, brother.for the ship's sake if not fo r our own. That is how she was sailed .* Do we need thi s message in a city like New York today? The Wave rtree is there. She can deliver the message.

J.. * The Wavertree: An Ocean Wanderer (South Street Seaport Museum, New York , 1969)

37

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Above, the Little Morrissey in Men emsha harbor fast summer. At right, Fred Littleton in Arctic waters with the Morrissey .

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When the Gloucester fishing schooner, cum Arctic explorer, cum Brava packet Ernestina, ex-Effie M . Morrissey sailed across to Martha's Vineyard from her home port of New Bedford this past summer, she was greeted by a 16-foot model of herself- the Little Morrissey,

as her builder Fred Littleton, harbormaster at Menemsha, named her. She is definitely a two-seater, as thi s photo from last summer shows. Fred has a special relationship to the orig inal Morrissey. He sailed in her to the Arctic with Captain Bob Bartlett in the 1930s.

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SEA HIST<ORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

Saving the Nob ska

by Meredith A. Scott

As the last of her kind the former Nantucket steamer N obska, presently moored in Fal l River, Massachusetts, has an important role to play. When the 1925 Maine-built steamer is restored and in full commission again she will help to keep alive the beauty, the elegance and the grace of steamship days. TheNobska, a distinctive and well-loved ship, maintained a regul ar schedule between the Massachusetts mainland and the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket for 48 years.

I travelled aboard a number of the old steamships, among them the Nobska . I can still hear the jingle of her engine room telegraph and the melodious, full throated tone of her steam whistle. I remember too, the contented cadence of her steam engine, a gentle double beat that accompanied the susurration of the bow wash and the clanging notes of a bell buoy surgi ng in the wake.

Quiet, leisurely steamboat travel was something special to have experienced.

People who have never known that pleasure will be able to experience it when the Nobska, after sixty-odd years , becomes a living steamship museum , taking passengers on hi storic cruises along the New England coast.

To put Nobska in full commi ssion again has been the long-time dream of Rhode Islander Robert Cleasby, presi dent of the Friends of Nobska, or FON, a ship preservation society founded in 1975 fo r the purpose of savi ng the N obska. After years of effort there came the rewarding day when the vessel was donated outright to FON. In May 1988 she arrived undertow in Fall River where, by courtesy of the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of New England, a mooring place awaited her.

Early in the summer I went to see the ship. Her tired , dispirited look dismayed me. She seemed devoid of li fe , but no wonder after her long years of di suse.

Later in the summer I visited the Nobska again . The change in her outward appearance was incredible. From wheelhouse to waterline she had received a fresh coat of white paint. She looked trim and alive again . Here was a ship that was going to live up to all the dreams and hopes invested in her.

It was obvious that Bob, FON members and volunteers had worked long and hard during the summer. T he volunteers even included a few willing and enthusiastic children. I know of two nine-year-old girls who together rolled SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER I 989-90

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The Nobska, photo by William H. Ewen , Jr.

up a respectable total of 48.5 volunteer hours scraping and painting stanchions.

Bob's eleven-year-old son painted the tall stack.

The original steam engine is still on board and in excellent condition , having been carefully maintained throughout the years. It is a valued antique , vitally important for the ship's role as a steamship in full commission .

A vast amount of work remains to be done. The ship's interior is barren and empty, but ambitious plans call for restoring all accommodations to their former state of quiet elegance, befitting a fine old steamship. The Nobska is the last of her kind, but happily she is a ship with a worthwhile future as aliving representative of the vani shed age of steam.

Ms . Sco tt, who has been a professional marine artist and writer, now lives in Rhode Island.

More FON members and volunteers are needed! To help , contact Friends of Nobska , PO Box J-4097, New Bedford, Massachusetts 02741 .

Antique U.S. Coast Survey maps from the 1800s Scarce, century-old original lith og raphs for most Am e rican coas ta l waters. Fine

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Subscription: $18.00 per year U .S. Foreign $20.00. Sample Copy $4.00

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Sm P ETER ScoTT, CH, FRS, DSC 1909-1989 All World Ship Trust members are united in sorrow that our distinguished Vice President, Sir Peter Scott, died on the 29th of August, only two days before the party his friends were organizing to celebrate his eightieth birthday.

A world renowned artist of wildlife, the first vice president of the World Wildlife Foundation (now World Wide Fund for .Wildlife) , and Patron of the Falkland Islands Foundation, he distinguished us by becoming a Vice President of the World Sh ip Trust.

His lifetime friend, Sir David Attenborough, has aptly commented, "The world at large owes him a huge debt," adding his belief that in the years to come Sir Peter wi ll be seen as one of the great figures who warned the world of what was happening in the environment, and not only warned about it, but did something about it personally.

We of the World Ship Trust would strongly endorse thi s view, and add a warm expression of gratitude and appreciation for all the splendid support that he so generous ly gave us.

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MOHAWK RIVER BOATS AND NAVIGATION BEFORE 1820

by Robert E. Hager First of a series, tells of New York's bateaux· of the colonial wars, of the Schenectady and Durham boats, and of the first canals along the Mohawk. Model find useful the makers will description of the most likely design and construction of these earliest of New York river boats.

(98 pages, 21 illustrats., $7.95 plus $1.00 for P&S)

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40

J EAN SCHOEN SMITH 1897-1989 Mrs. Smith died in June thi s year, aged 91. As a young stenographer in San Francisco, she took passage on the last voyage of the bark Bougainville, exH imalaya, from Vancouver to New Caledonia, in 1926. Other adventures took her to the West African coast on a steamer on which she helped quell a mutiny .

Years later, she married the steamer 's first mate, who had never forgotten her.

Her poetry and an occasional letter brightened the pages of Sea History, and her memoirs, Sins of Commission, privately printed, is available from NMHS, where we too, find it imposs ible to forget Jean-her enthusiasm for wolves and for sailing ships, her wit, her tough and resolute approach to adversity, and her wonderful feeling for all living things.

Texaco Sponsors Quincentennial The Christopher Columbus Quincentenary Jubilee Commission announced September 28 that Texaco Inc. is the foundi ng sponsor of the three-year celebration of Columbus's discovery of the New World. Texaco will be represented at major Quind!n'R\·nary events through 1993, principally through sponsorship

of the repli cas of Columbus 's ships presently being built in Spain. Texaco was on hand October 20 for the launching of the first completed replica, the Santa Maria. The caravel replicas will visit more tha n 50 ports in North America and the Caribbean between 1991 and 1993 , and will stop in Europe before the trans-Atlantic crossing. The ships will join the tall ships in Operation Sail on Ju ly4, 1992, and then travel to San Francisco on October 12, 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus' s landing in the Caribbean. (K. Peter Maneri, Texaco, 2000 Westchester Ave., White Plains NY 10650) Schooner Clyde A. Phillips John Gandy has a vision-a Delaware Bay oyster schooner once again sailing up the Bay. The Clyde A. Phillips is the embodiment of that dream. Built in Dorchester in 1928, she carries the message of the Clyde A. Phillips Project in the Delaware Bay and beyond.

In the early 1900s, as many as seventy railroad cars, each loaded with oysters, would leave the Maurice River area daily. Each spring up to 500 licensed oyster schooners sailed up the Bay to collect seed oysters and bring them down to the lower Bay to plant on lots leased from the state. After spending two to three years feeding in these saltier waters, the oysters were ready to be harvested for market. The oyster industry was the mainstay of the area until MSX destroyed the oyster crop in the 1950s.

John Gandy, Greg Honachefsky, and Meghan Wren of the Clyde Phillips Project bring a message of environmental concern and historical awareness to the Delaware Bay and beyond, but the Clyde needs restoration as we head into the winter months. The Clyde A. Phillips doesn 't aim to stop all the changes that come with time, but she can preserve the past and teach for the betterment of the future. (Clyde A. Phillips Project, Box 57, Dorchester NJ 08316; 609 785-2060) In Brief...

In 1705 The Gentleman' s Dictionary noted: "Some ships have a wheel. .. ."

Models tentatively dated around 1703 show wheels (two different kinds) on British warsh ips. Now DavidH. Roberts, in the English journal The Mariner's Mirror (Vol. 75, No. 3, pp272-3), gives interesting reasons to conclude that the wheel made its first appearance earlier SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

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RIEGEL PUBLISHERS Illustration from The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea.

than first thought, before 1700. Incidentally, the two principal systems, the wheel and whipstaff, continued in parallel use past the mid- l 700s, but by 1737 the whipstaff had been entirely replaced by the wheel in the Royal Navy.

Another interesting note in The Mariner's Mirror (pp273-5), by Richard Barker, sets about the long-overdue task of demolishing the legendary size of Chinese junks of the 1400s, showing that the supposed 449 x 183-foot Ming treasure ship drawing 30 feet would, assuming the traditional flat-bottomed hull, be a ship of some 31,000 tons!

Barker suggests lines of investigation to winkle out this massive error-and all seamen may breathe easier knowing that the wooden vessels of nearly 200-foot beam bowling along the China seas never happened. (TheMariner's Mirror, National Maritime Museum, London SE15 9NF, England)

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G.A. Boeckling, the 1909 steam side wheel passenger ferry suffered severely from a suspicious fire at2: 15AM on June 21, 1989. The vessel is damaged beyond repair, after the valiant efforts of the Friends of Boekling had restored her to a condition where her outward appearance reflected how she looked in her heyday. In a special emergency meeting of the Friends, it was decided unanimously to relinquish the hull to their insurahce company for $70,000. Members and trustees are consideri ng their options of how to use this money to remember G.A . Boekling. (Friends, PO Box 736, Sandusky, Ohio 44870) BULLETIN: The fate of the bark Galatea, fonner Spanish Navy training ship now laid up in Ferro] is uncertain. Built in 1896 in Glasgow, the 2800-ton vessel is jubilee rigged (no royals), and has been adapted for sail training use and berthing for a complement of225. (WST, 129A North Street, Burwell, Cambr.t idge, CB5 OBB , England) SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

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OF NAVAL

LITERATURE

Asuperbly crafted collection of classic literature preserves the celebrated works of America's foremost writers of naval history, biography, and fiction.

The fine titles currently available:

The Sand Pebbles My Fifty Years in the Navy The Victory at Sea The Commodores Recollections of a Naval Officer, 1841-1865 Man-of-War Life Sailing Alone Around the World Delilah Run Silent, Run Deep Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean Bluejacket: An Autobiography With the Battlecruisers Autobiography of George Dewey The Naval War of 1812 The Quiet Warrior The Sinking of the Merrimac White-Jacket The Big E The Cruel Sea Two Years on the Alabama

NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS 2062 General's Hwy., Annapolis, MD 21401 For more information: 8091

t;tToll-Free: 1-800-233-8764 In MD: 1-301-224-3378/ 9 Monday- Friday, 8 am - 4 pm, EST 42

Sailing Craft of East Anglia, Roger Finch & Hervey Benham (Terence Dalton, Lavenham, Suffolk UK, 1987, 144pp, illus., ÂŁ11.95hb or $23.50 postpaid from NMHS) Two of the best-known authorities on small craft on the coasts of Britain (particularly the East Coast, their great interest) combined the their unique talents and resources to produce this engaging and authoritative work. Roger Finch, a talented illustrator, and ship historian Hervey Benham, the great authority on the sailing craft of East Anglia, have both passed on since the book was published. In many ways it stands as a unique contribution to the records of sail on the East Coast, until its demise early in the 20th century. After a general introduction, the authors narrate in some detail the story of trade on the East Coast, where sail lasted longer than anywhere else in northwestern Europeindeed until the last Thames sailing barge ceased trading under sail in 1970.

Upwards of50 of these renowned workhorses of the Thames Estuary survive as barge yachts and preserved by enthusiasts for pleasure parties.

The narrative takes up the tale of fishermen and the ways of the East Coast fisheries, which produced different types and methods from estuary to estuary, from the Thames to the Wash. They sum up with a chapter on the Indian Summer of the workboats, a good few of which have now been restored. Modem replicas are also being built, so that several historic types, once thought to be gone forever, can again be seen sailing on their home waters.

To complete this compendium, the authors then describe each type of watercraft individually, well illustrated with a few pages devoted to each.

JAMES FORSYTHE

Mr.Forsythe is the vice Chairman ofthe World Ship Trust, and President of the Norfolk Wherry Trust.He was a founder of both organizations.

Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman, Williafu Doerflinger (Meyer Books, Glenwood IL, 1951, repr. 1989, illus., 362pp, $19.95pb) The old foc ' sle crowd has passed on but... what music they left ringing in our ears! Basil Lubbock, who shipped out in the Royalshire on her passage home from San Francisco to England's Liverpool in 1899, was impressed by the singing of her men in the hard conditions

of the big bark's stormy passage home by way of Cape Hom. And with his interest awakened in sailormen and their ways, he began haunting the docklands.

He tells how one quiet Sunday morning three ships' crews got together, two British and one American-from the famous Down Easter Henry B. Hydeto warp the British Dawpool into the Liverpool docks after a rough Cape Hom passage home. The crews hauled and sang together until the heavens rang, attracting a crowd down to the waterfront, and reaching out to make honest burghers pause in quiet streets and squares far inland, entranced perhaps by the wild music breaking in on the Sabbath quiet.

But the music is not only wild, it is as Lubbock says, "impressive," and it is beautiful. The late Captain A.G . Spiers tells how the crew of his British fullrigged ship Wavertree stopped the traffic on the bridge at Portland, Oregon, when they chantied up the anchor.

Tramping round the captsain on the foc ' sle head to set sail for Old England, they sang "Hurrah my boys, we' re homeward bound." You can find that fine, stirring song in Mr. Doerflinger's bookand be assured, his three versions are each as different sailors sang it.

Stan Hugill of Outward Bound School at Aberdovey, Wales, and before that the big four-masted Garthpool, whom Alan Villiers called "the last chantyman anywhere, I'd think," sang chanties with Villier's brother in a German prison camp in World War II. In fact I find a powerful image of the sense of freedom in these songs-echoing with the crash of salt water and the carolling ofuntrammelled winds. Hugill, who sang on the face of wide oceans as well as behind German barbed wire, regularly refers to Doerflinger' s work as the real thing, "taken down from sailor songs by tape recorder."

Well, actually , Doerflinger used acetate discs and wax records at first, with the clumsy recording equipment available half a century and more ago, when he set out to capture the wild, fugitive testimony of the sailors and lumbermen of North America singing their own songs in their own ways. This was early enough to catch men still part of the living tradition of the old sailing packets and clippers. The old salts in their seventies and eighties who sang their songs to him were kids who learned them from men who'd sailed in ships SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

like the California clipper David Crockett or the Western Ocean packet Dreadnought, both ships remembered in songs in this book.

And what an inheritance to have from these great ships! We catch the lively, proud, occasionally rueful feelings of the men themselves towards these ships whose names, among all who cherish the sea and seafaring, having passed into legend. We will never be closer to these ships than when we sing their songs-as their people sang them.

PS This review is adapted from the foreward to the book.

Liverpool Shipping, Trade & Industry: Essays on the Maritime History of Merseyside, 1780-1860, ed. Valerie Burton (National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, 1989, l 12pp, illus., £3.95pb) This lively, fact-filled volume reviews the emergence of Liverpool as a major port in a period when bulk cargoes of cotton, timber, and wheat were pouring into the UK and ultimately other industrializing European cities through what started out as slumbrous, sandy little harbor on the Mersey River. By the mid-

The Wreck

and Rescue of the Schooner

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It was dark as pitch at 3:00am Oct. 18th, 1880.

The ' night was calm and the winds were light.

Captain William Jones guided his Schooner toward the harbor. With unbelievable quickness, the winds shifted and a raging storm descended on Lake Michigan. The ship ran aground. To escape the violent .s urf, the crew took refuge in the rigging.

The rescue that followed went down in history as one of the most heroic and challenging of the United States Life Saving Service.

This film faithfully re-creates a true adventure on the Great Lakes.

Endorsed by the Association for Great Lakes Maritime History .

58 Minutes · Color - NTSC - VHS Available for only S39 .95 (plus tax and S2 . 50 shipping). Licensed for private home use only .

Licensing is available for public and educational use.

~ Brauer Productions 402 Cass Street Traverse City , Ml 49684 • (616) 9 4 1-0850

SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

Astrolabe on the reefs of Tongatapu

Two Voyages to the South Seas [. S. C. Dumont D'Urville Translated and edited by Helen Rosenman As commander of the Astrolabe and the Zelee, Dumont D'Urville led two important French expeditions to the Pacific between 1826 and 1840.

A splendid seaman, D'Urville also had a keen eye, a quick wit, and a sharp pen. Rosenman has edited his voluminous notes, journals, and scientific papers into this fascinating narrative. Illustrated. $85.00, two volumes, boxed

Return to Tahiti Bligh's Second Breadfruit Voyage Douglas L. Oliver William Bligh captained two voyages to Tahiti. The first, on the HMS Bounty, ended disastrously in the famous mutiny; the second, on the HMS Providence, was entirely successful. Return to Tahiti includes Bligh's journal of the stay in Tahiti and color reproductions of the water colors painted by Lt . George Tobin, the third mate of the Providence.

"A colourful, fascinating and very readable picture of island life in the 1790s.''-Dunedin Star $40.00, cloth

Brides of the Sea Port Cities of Asia from the 16th-20th Centuries Edited by Frank Broeze Lavishly illustrated with dozens of 16th to 19th century maps and rare etchings collected from galleries the world over, Brides of the Sea investigates the nature and development of the port cities of Asia. $32.00, cloth To order: Send check or money order, plus $2 .00 per book for shipping. VISA and MasterCard also accepted (include acct. no., exp. date, and signature) .

Write to Marketing Dept. for a Hawaii and the Pacific catalog.

University of Hawaii Press 2840 Kolowalu Street, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822

43

From SEA HISTORY PRESS International Register of Historic Ships, by Norman J.Brouwer. More than 700 vessels are included in this authoritative historical and photographic guide with essential data. Indispensible for reference, it also makes excellent reading. 368pp. 233 x 270mm. 400 illustrations.$28.95 Shipping: $3.00 in USA, $4.25 outside USA .

The Maritime History of the World (2 vols.), by Duncan Haws & Alex A. Hurst. Nearly 7000 years of all aspects of maritime history in chronological order, with commentaries setting the various periods in the ~~~i!!~ perspective of world history, richly illustrated . Comprehensive index. A superb book. 960pp, 304 x 222mm, I. ~~~;::::=;;~'1:~ 31 maps, over 200 illus. (62 in color). $159.41 Shipping: $3.00 in USA, $4.25 outside USA. -= T homas Somerscales - Marine Artist, by Alex A. Hurst. A sq uare-rig veteran and marine art critic of note tells the life story of the much-admired marine artist who died in 1927 in Chile. Printed on acid-free art paper in large size with 108 color plates. 303pp, I 72 illus., 285 x 224mm, $89.45 Shipping: $3.00 in USA, $4.25 outside USA. Anton Otto Fischer, Marine Artist, by Katrina Sigsbee Fischer and Alex A. Hurst. A comprehensive and loving look at the artist 's life and work as seen by his daughter. Beautifully produced on art paper with many personal photos, the art ist's preliminary sketches, and 200 of his fini shed work, 103 in full color. 259pp. 230 x 290mm. 235 illus. $50.00 Shipping: $3.00 in USA, $4.00 outside USA. Stobar t, 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. Presented in full color, fine art reproductions with extensive notes. 208pp. 232 x 388mm. 60 full-page illus., 50 sketches and drawings. $95.00 Shipping: $3.00 in USA, $4.00 outside USA. Peking Battles Cape Horn , by Capt. Irving Johnson. A spirited account of a young man's voyage round Cape Hom in the Peking with a thoughtful after-word written 48 years later. Foreword by Peter Stanford and a brief history of the Peking by Norman Brouwer. l 82pp. 130 x l 90mm. Photos by the author. Hardcover $15.95.

Shipping: $2.00 in USA, $3.25 outside USA. T he Medley of Mast and Sail, 2, ed. Alex A. Hurst. Fascinating ondeck accounts and photography of the closing decades of commercial sail from Cape Hom windjammers to Indonesian prahus, topsail schooners in the Bristol Channel and the big American coasters.

460pp. 244 x l 90mm, 52 photos, $32.30 Shipping: $3.00 in USA, $4.25 ouside USA. The Passage Makers, by Michael Stammers. The legendary Liverpool Black Ball Line of clippers. 530pp. 244 x l 90mm., 120 plates. $42.94 Shipping: $3.00 in USA, $4.25 outside USA. Sh ips and Memories, by Bill Adams. Memorable account of four years in the 4-m bark Silberhorn . She was simi lar to many of the vessels painted by Somerscales. (Stocks limited) . 490pp. 193 illus.

244 x I 90mm, $28.12 Shipping: $3 .00 in USA, $4.25 outside USA. Damned by Destiny , by David L. Williams and Richard P. de Kerbrech. Complete account of projects for great ocean liners that never made it to sea- a must for liner buffs. 350pp.244 x l 90mm. 197

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photos, $35.75 Shipping: $2.00 in USA,$3.25 outside USA. Shipwrecks and Archaeology : The Unharvested Sea, early underwater archaeology by a pioneer of the field, Peter Throckmorton.

Hardcover, illus ., index, 260 pp. $24.75 Shipping: $3.00 in USA, $4.25 outside USA. The Captain from Connecticut: The Life a nd Naval Times of Isaac Hull, by Linda M. Maloney. Lively study of Isaac Hull and the early American Navy in which he so ably served, written by a cons ummate scholar. Illus. 549pp. 160 x 254mm. $45.00 Shipping: $3.00 in USA, $4.25 outside USA. Directory of Sail Training Ships and Programs, by Nancy Hughes Richardson, American Sail Training Association, includes 125 sail training organ!zations, 135 US and Canadian ships, and a 1987-92 international tall ships race schedule. Many illustrations. 100 pp. 215 x 280mm. $10.00 (shipping included).

Operation Sail 1986/Salute to Liberty. The official commemorative book published by OpSail '86, includes descriptions of more than 100 of the official participants and a list of more than 125 maritime museums and collections around the country. 64 pp. full color. $10.00 (shipping included).

Heralds of Their Age, the clippers and the American spirit, by Melvin Conant, soft cover, illus., index, 24 pp. $7.50 (shipping included).

The Ship's Bell: Its History and Romance, by Karl Wede. Illus. index, 62 pp. $6.50 (shi pping included).

NMHS Cloth Patch . True gold braid on black background, ship and sea embroidered in white and blue, 3". $4.50 (shipping included).

NMHS Member's Decal. Bright metallic gold and white on royal blue, 3". $1.00 (shipping included).

NMHS Lapel pin. Attractive enamel gold braid and white on royal blue, 3/4" . $5.00 (shipping included).

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REVIEWS 1800s, when this study ends, Liverpool had shot ahead of all its rivals except the great world port of London. The authors contributing to the tale of how this happened are obviously familiar with each others ' disciplines and work. From the macro perspective of oceanic trade patterns ably developed by David M. Williams, to Michael Stammers micro investigation of the Jhelum , a 428-ton wooden ship (later bark) built in a crowded comer of the thriving harbor in 1849, and abandoned after hard usage in the Falklands in 1871 , the picture that emerges makes up a surprisingly coherent and revealing whole. And, as the ed itor notes, "whilst these papers substantially advance our understanding of the maritime past of Merseyside they also make a tangible contribution to maritime studies on a broader front." PS Different Waterfronts; Stories from the Wooden Boat Revival, by Peter H. Spectre (Harpswell Press, Gardiner ME, 1989, 256pp, illus., $22.95hb) Peter Spectre has not only reported , but done much to inspire the revival of wooden small craft, and in this attractive memoirofthe movement he takes you to the people and the scenes that are at its heart. This he does with his customary verve and scrupulous eye for the telling detail , and with true feeling for the people involved, from silent John Gardner to eloquent Melbourne Smith, who really come to life on the page. Along with the meanings of their work, he catches the lyricism of their style and the accent of their voices.

PS Schooner Master; A Portrait of David Stevens, by Peter Carnahan (Chelsea Green Publishing, Chelsea VT, 1989, 180pp, illus., $17.95) "I was born on an island- the only means of escape was a boat," said David Stevens, legendary boatbuilder of Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. This eminently practical (but also poetic) statement well sums up the approach of a person who carried boatbuilding traditions and skills in his psyche. When Stevens died in January this year, a whole universe of schooner lore and learning went with him-but fortunately for us, Carnahan devoted six years to exploring the reach and vision of that life before it ended.

This book, the fruit of those years, is an authentic tribute to the life that shaped and informed Stevens 's beautiful schooners which still race each summer on Mahone Bay. PS SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

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A9NISH

45

"It was my first and

Search for

Three Eastern Bloc ships awaited the author in Portsmouth, EnglandKruzenshtem (USSR) , Dar Pomorza(Poland)andTovarisch (USSR).

He embarked aboard Kruzenshtem with Op Sail Treasurer Howard Slotnick.for the passage to St. Malo. Despite the Cold War atmosphere in the 1970s, all three ships came across the Atlantic to participate in Operation Sail 1976. Below, the ornate stern of the Polish Dar Pomorza, a ship builtforGerman owners in 1909, caught the artist's eye-and no doubt attracts visitors' eyes in Gdynia today, where she serves as a stationary school ship.

First ship to accept the author's invitation to Op Sail 1964, Portugal's Sagres II was namedfor the school established by Henry the Navigator to develop ships and people capable of opening the ocean world, a heritage reflected in the crosses on her sails.

This sketch was made standing . on the Liverpool deckhouse of the Kruzenshtem and looking toward the majestic Gorch Fock,surrounded by small craft off Portsmouth .

chief duty to get these ships."

the Tall Ships

by Frank 0. Braynard The search for the tall ships that came to America for Operation Sail in 1976 was a five-year effort. As General Manager of the project it was my first and chief duty to get these ships.

The trips that! made took me to many parts of the world. These sketches were made on these trips in my leisure moments, interspaced with meetings with government officials, private maritime leaders and sail training people.

My wife Doris and I went together to most of the homeports of the world's sai l training ships. We went in 1972 to Germany and in 1974 to England and the next year to Japan. In the early days of Operation Sail our private sponsoring committee had no money to pay for such trips. I combined them with vacations. Since time was of the essence on most of these visits, I sketched what I could, when I could.

Quick impression sketches were made from the decks of the magnificent four-master Kruzenshtern, owned by the Soviets and used to train officers for their worldwide fisheries.

In 1974 while visiting Gdynia during their Operation Sail I was given permission to sail out on this vessel to see the sail training ships make their grand entrance into that famous Baltic port of Poland. Some weeks later I again sailed upon Kruzenshtern out of Portsmouth, and several dozen sketches resulted. They show the sail training ship review sponsored by the Sail Training Association, in Cowes. The Russian ship went on to St. Malo, France, and I sailed with her, pen in hand.

These two trips were most important in the overall scheme of things aside from being fascinating experiences.

Because of the lack of money, I found it necessary to "thumb my way" by cruise liner on several occasions. The newly established Royal Viking Line, a combine of three ancient and honorable Norse shipping companies, offered to take me as a guest ifl would give what they called "enrichment lectures." Nothing could have been more pleasant, because I was encouraged to talk on my favorite subject on these trips: ships. I talked about famous ocean liners like the Leviathan, and about the South Street Seaport Museum in Manhattan, and about the elegant steamship Savannah, first to cross any ocean with steam, and also about her namesake, the nuclear passenger-cargo liner. Needless to say, I also gave lectures about Operation Sail 1976, reviewing my first such project, the one held in New York in 1964 in connection with the World 's Fair. I brought along movies to show with my talks. On the six cruises that Doris and I have made with this company we made u, many warm friends among the passengers.

Ship models, old leather furniture and slow waiters all add to the atmosphere of the 16th Century Shippers Guild House restaurant in Lubreck. In 1972 the author had two three-hour meals here while planning how to convince the tall ships docked just down the street to come to New York in 1976.

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The beautiful full-rigger Christian Radich, one of the tall ships of Norway, went through the St. Lawrence Seaway far into the heart of America after the Operation Sail festivities. Below, the author's home away from home, Royal Viking Sea carried him to Europe and the Far East in his quest for tall ships.

Mr. Braynard, moving spirit of Operation Sail 1964 and General Manager of Operation Sail 1976, was a founder of the National Maritime Historical Society and is today Chairman of the NMHS Advisory Council.

NoTE: This account is adaptedfrom the author's book, Search for the Tall Ships; A Sketchbook of the Ships that Came to Operation Sail 1976 (New York, 1977). Copies are available for $25 postpaid from the author, 98 Dubois Avenue, Sea Cliff NY 11579.

SEA HISTORY 52, WINTER 1989-90

47

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY S PO S OR S AMERICAN TRADING AND PRODUCTION CORP. HE RY H . ANDERSON , JR . J. ARON CHARITABLE FOUNDATION R. BARNETT HARRY BARON ALLEN G. BERRIEN BROOKLY UNIO GAS COMPANY ALAN G. CHOATE MELVIN CONANT JOH N COUCH REBEKAH T . DALLAS LOIS DARLING PO NCET DAVIS , JR. DOW CORNING J AMES EAN MORRIS L. FEDER ROBERT E . GAMBEE J AMES W. GLANVILLE EVAGEBHARD-GOURGAUD FOUNDATION THOMAS J. GOCHBERG MR . & MRS . THOMAS H ALE MRS.D.H.HOARD ELIZABETH S. HOOPER FOU DATION CECIL HOW ARD CHAR ITABLE TRUST MR. & MRS. A. D . HULINGS AL A H UTCHISO I TERNATIO AL BUSINESS MACHINES INTER ATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN LCDR ROBERT IRVI GUS , ( R ET.) JACKSON HOLE PRESERVE R .C. J EFFERSO IRVI NG JOHNSON J. M. KAPLAN FUD A. ATWATER KE T, JR . DAVID H . KOLLOCK CHRISTOSN.KRITIKOS H. THOMAS & EVELYN LANGERT JAMES A . MACDONALD FOUNDATION J AMES MARENAKOS MARITIME OVERSEAS CORP. SCHUYLER M . MEYER, JR . M ILFORD BOAT WORKS , INC. MOBIL OIL CORP . RICHARD I. MORRIS MR. & MRS. SPENCER L . M URFEY, JR. BRYAN OLIPHANT PACKER MARI E MRS. A. T. PO UCH, JR. MR. & MRS. ALBERT PRATT QUESTER MARITIME GALLERY LAURANCE S. ROCKEFELLER JOH N G. ROGERS ARTHUR J. SANTRY , JR . BARBARA SCHLECH SEA B ARGE GROUP A. MACY SMITH BAILEY AND POSY SMITH FRANK V. SNYDER SETH SPRAGUE FOUNDATIO NORMA & PETER STANFORD EDMUND A. STANLEY, JR. TEXACO BR IA D . WAKE THOM AS J. WATSO , JR . HE NRY PENN WENGER MR . & MRS. WILLIAM T. WHITE JOHN W ILEY AND SONS , INC. WOODE BOAT YACHTING YANKEE CLIPPER EDWARD G. ZELINSKY DO N OR S ATLANTIC CORDAGE CHARLES A. BENO RE CAPT. ROBER T G. BRAUN K. L. BRIEL GEORGE B UZBY P . S. DEBEA UME T MICHAEL DICK MRS. JOH N W . DIXO A. V. DJERF HAROLDB .FESSENDEN ALEXANDER GASTON RUSSELL W . HARRIS CAPT. ALFRED HORKA CHARLES E. IN IS MR. & MRS. T .E. LEO ARD LOBSTER INN , IN C. CLAY MAITLA D HOWARD C. MCGREGOR , JR . DAVID M. MILTO TRUST DAVID A. OESTREICH MARY PEABODY DONALD W. PETIT STEPHEN PFOUTS E. A. POSUNIAK LESLIE QUICK , JR .

H AVEN C. ROOS EVELT JOH F . SALISBURY SA DY H OOK PILOTS , NY/NJ JOSEPH & JEAN SAWTELLE ROBERT V. SHEEN, JR. HOW ARD SLOTNICK MELBOURNE SMITH SWISS AMERICAN SECURITIES RICHARDS . TAYLOR B ARRY D. THOMAS JOH N C. VOLK SUS T A I N I NG P AT R ONS J AMES D . ABELES CHARLES F. ADAMS THOMAS AKIN WALTER J. ANDERSON G. R. ATTERBURY DAV I D M. BAKER HARRY K. BA ILEY JOHN E. BAKKEN RO NALD BANCROFT BENJAMIND.BAXTER GEOFFREY BEAUMONT JAMES R. BENNENT DR. HERB ERT BODMAN , JR. J AMES H . BRO USSARD W. J. BURSAW , J R. CRA I G B U RT , JR . JOHN CADDELL, Ill BOYD CAFFEY JAM ES E. C H APMAN MR. & MRS . DELOS B. CHURCH ILL RICHARD C. CHASTAIN CIRCLE LI NE PLAZA C HAR LES D. CLARK CHARLES E. COLLOPY CHARLES W . CONSOLVO DANIEL A. COWAN JEAN NETT R. CREIGHTON JOH C. CURRY ALICE DADOUR IA STA DASHEW JOH N H. DEA E L. P. DEFRANK DIGITAL EQU IPM ENT CORP. JOHN H . DOEDE JOH N D USENBERY CARL EKLOF PAUL EKLOF JOH ELDOR CDR. LELAND F. ESTES HE RY FAIRLEY, Ill JAMES P. FARLEY J EA FINDLAY BRENT FOLLWEILER J. E. FRICKER JR .

RICHARD GALLA T HARRY W. GARSCHAGEN WILLIAM GILKERSON LCDR. B . A. GILMORE ROLAND D. GRIMM CAPT. WILLI AM H . HAMILTO COL GEORGE M . JAMES RUSSELL W . H ARR IS FREDERICK H ARWOOD THOMAS C. HE NRY W . J . HE TSCHEL HOWARD HIGHT CHARLES HI LL PAUL HINES TOW SEND HORNOR W I LLIAM J. H URLEY GEORGE M. !V EY , JR .

ROBERT JACKSON C. LINCOLN JEW ETT W . BAILEY KAHL SAM KLAGSBR UM CAPT R USS K NEELAND ELIOT S. KNOWLES PETER LAHTI GEORGE R . LAMB PAUL LAYTON AARO LEVINE W . P. LIND RICHARDO LOPES PETER MANIGAULT WILLIAM R. MATHEWS , JR . PETER MAX GEORGE L . MAXWELL RI C HARD D. MCNISH CLYTIE MEAD CARLTON MITCHELL KENNETH MORAN EDWARD M UHLFELD MICHAEL MURRO HARRY NELSON , JR. SCOTT NEWHALL MERRILL E. NEWMAN H ARRY J. OTTAWAY JAM ES A . PATTEN MRS . GODWIN J . PELISSERO PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOLSHIP ASSOC. CAPT . D. E . PERK! S W ILLIAM R . PETERS R. ANDERSON PEW RICHARD RATH RAY REMlCK PETER ROB INSON RI C HARD D . RYDER A. H ERBERT SANDWEN CHARLES W . SHAMBAUGH LELEN F. SILLllN GEORGE S IMPSON JA CK B. SPRINGER CDR. VICTOR B. STEVEN, JR. STOLT-NIELSEN , INC. BRUCE SWEDIEN CARL W. TIMPSON , JR . MR. & MRS. GEORGE TOLLEFSEN J AMES D . TURNER J . D . VAN !TALLIE RAYMONDE. WALLACE ELDREDGE WELTO SIR GORDON WHITE, KBE R. E. WILCOX RICHARD WILLSTATTER THOMAS J . WI G GLENN E . WY ATT WILLIAM C. WYGA T JAMES H . YOCUM

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JOHN F. BRADY EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

This is MM&P Country.

Pictured above is the M/V BRIDGETON, the largest vessel sailing under the American flag and one of five tankers owned by the Chesapeake Shipping Company. The BRIDGETON is the second of Chesapeake Shipping's five tankers to come under the watchful eyes of MM&P officers and supervisory crews.

Originally reflagged U.S. as a protective measure during the Iran-Iraq war, the expertise of MM&P Masters on the vessels has created a demand for MM&P officers and supervisory personnel to sail aboard the BRIDGETON as well as the other vessels remaining Americanflagged-the SEA ISLE CITY, OCEAN CITY, CHESAPEAKE CITY and SURF CITY. The BRIDGETON, an Ultra Large Crude Carrier, was constructed in 1977 and measures 1,159 feet in length . At more than 400 ,000 deadweight tons, she is powered by a 45 ,000 horsepower steam turbine engine and has a carrying capacity in excess of 550 million gallons. Fully loaded, the BRIDGETON draws nearly 100 feet below the waterline.

The successful operation of this ship has been entrusted to MM&P deck officers and supervisory personnel, who regularly attend the Maritime Institute of Technology & Graduate Studies (MITAGS) at Linthicum Heights, MD. The premier maritime training facility worldwide, MITAGS offers the most modern and comprehensive simulator equipment available, allowing ship officers to sharpen their skills and learn new ones-all on dry landwhile they navigate their way through any number of simulated waters and conditions with complete safety.

MITAGS is the result of a close collaboration between MM&P and the American-flag shipping companies in their joint Maritime Advancement, Training, Education and Safety (MATES) Program.

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