No. 53
NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY
SPRING 1990
THE ART, LITERATURE, ADVENTURES , LORE & LEARNING OF THE SEA
REDISCOVERING COLUMBUS: The Man and the World He Sailed InA World He Changed Forever!
USNS MAURY (T-AGS 39)
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ISSN 0146-9312
No. 53
SEA HISTORY
OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE WORLD SHIP TRUST
SEA HISTORY is published quarterly by the National Maritime Historical Society, 132 Maple Street, Croton-on-Hudson NY l 0520. Second class postage paid at Croton-on-Hudson NY I 0520.
CONTENTS
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Sea Hi story, PO Box 646, 132 Mapl e Street, Croton NY I 0520-0646.
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COPYRIGHT © 1990 by the National Maritime Hi storical Society. Tel. 914 27 1-2 177.
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MEMBERSHIP is invited. Plankowner $ 10,000; Benefactor $5,000; Sponsor $ 1,000; Donor $500; Patron $250; Friend $ I00; Contributor $50; Family $35; Regular $25; Student or Retired $ 15 . All members outside the USA please add $ I0 for postage. SEA HISTORY is sent to a ll members. Individua l cop ies cost $3.75.
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OFFICERS & TRUSTEES are Vice Chairmen, Henry H. Anderson , Jr., Alan G. Choate, James Ean , Schuyler M. Meyer, Jr. ; Preside111, Peter Stanford; \lice Preside111, Norma Stanford ; Secretary, Spencer Smith; Trustees, Henry H. Anderson, Jr. , Alan G. Choate, Wilbur Dow, Robert W. Elli ott, fll , Karl Kortum, George Lamb, Richardo Lopes, Robert J. Lowen, Schuyler M. Meyer, Jr., Nancy Pouch, Ludwig K. Rubinsky, Spencer Smith , Frank V. Snyder, Peter Stanford, Edward G. Zelinsky. Chairman Emeritus, Karl Kortum OVERSEERS: Chairman , Henry H. Anderson , Jr. ; Charles F. Adams, Townsend Hornor, George Lamb, C lifford D. Mallory, Schuyler M. Meyer, Jr. , J. Willi am Middendorf, n, John G. Rogers, John Stobart ADVISORS: Co-Chairmen, Frank 0. Braynard, Melbourne Smith; Raymond Aker, Robert Amon, George F. Bass, Franc is E. Bowker, Frank 0 . Braynard, Oswald L. Brett, Dav id Brink, Frank G. G. Carr, William M. Doerflinger, John S. Ewald, Joseph L. Farr, Timothy G. Foote, Richard GooldAdams, Walter J. Hande lman, Robert G. Herbert , Jr. , R. C. Jefferson, Irvi ng M. Johnson, John Kemble, Conrad Milster, Edward D. Muhlfeld , William G. Muller, David E. Perkins, Ri chard Rath , Nancy Hughes Richardson, Timothy J. Runyan, George Salley, Me lbourne Smith, Ralph L. Snow, John Stobart, Albert Swanson , Peter Throckmorton, Shannon J. Wa ll , Robert A. Wei nstein, Thomas Wells, Charles Wirtholz. America11 Ship Trust, Hon. Secretary , Eric J. Berryman WORLD SHIP TRUST: Chairman , Wensley Haydon-Bai ll ie; Vice Presidents, Henry H. Anderson, Jr., Viscount Caldecote, Sir Rex Hunt, Hammond Innes, Rt. Hon. Lord Lewin , Rt. Hon. Lord Shackleton; Dep. Director, J. A. Forsythe; Ho11. Treasurer, Michael C. MacSwiney; Trustees; Eric J. Berryman, Mensun Bound , Dr. Neil Cossons, David Goddard, D.R. MacGregor, Alan McGowan, Michael Parker, Arthur Prothero, Michael Stammers, Jayne Tracy. Membership: £12 payable WST, I 29a North Street , Burwe ll , Cambs. CBS OBB, England. Reg. Charity No. 27775 1 SEA HI STORY STAFF: Editor, Peter Stanford; Managing Editor, Norma Stanford; Associate Editor, Michael Netter; Assistam Editor, Kev in Haydon ; Advertisi11g , Michelle Shuster; Production Asst., Joseph Stanford ; Accou11ti11g , Martha Rosvally; Membership Sec'y, Patricia Anstett ; Membership Assistants, Linda Phelps, Grace ZereJla; Assistant to the President, Sa ll y Kuns
SPRING 1990
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DECKLOG LETTERS AND QUERIES IN CLIO'S CAUSE: IF COLUMBUS WERE STILL AROUND, James W. Kinnear FORUM: MARINE ARCHAEOLOGY TO MEET A GROWING THREAT, J. Jackson Walter THE YORKTOWN PROJECT, John Broadwater NMHS REPORTS : 1989-THE YEAR IN REVIEW, Kev in Haydon JAMES PATRICK McALLISTER ' S HARBOR REFLECTIONS JAMES P. McALLISTER REMEMBERED THE COLUMBUS QUINCENTENARY REDISCOVERING COLUMBUS, Peter Stanford COLUMBUS QUINCENTENARY COMMISSION, John N. Goudie MARINE ART: ITALIAN SEAPORT CITIES MARINE ART NEWS VALCOUR: AN UNLIKELY NAVAL ENCOUNTER, Herbert K. Saxe THE PHILADELPHIA PROJECT THE MANCHESTER SHIP CANAL, Ralph Freeman THE DELTA QUEEN COMES TO THE MISSISSIPI, Frederick Way , Jr. lOOTH ANNIVERS ARY OBSERVED ON THE DELTA QUEEN COMMUNITY REBUILDS SHIPYARD CHRISTEEN FINDS FRIENDLY BERTH SHIP NOTES , SEAPORT AND MUSEUM NEWS REVIEWS
COVER: Behind the pomp and pageantry of the Italian seaport c1t1es in the morning of the Renai ssance, was the coming and going of great ships servi ng a revived Mediterranean trade. This is the world of Chri stopher Columbus, these are the voyages th at made hi s voyage possible. Detai l ofV ittore Carpaccio's "Meeting of St. Ursul a and St. Etherius," painted in 1495. Photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY.
The National Maritime Historical Society is saving America's seafaring heritage. Join us. We bring to life Ame ri ca's seafaring past throu g h resea rch , a rchaeologica l expeditions a nd s hip prese rvatio n effort s. We work wi th museums . hi sto rians and sai l trai ning groups and report o n these activities in our qu a rterl y journal Sea History. We a rc also the American a rm of the Wo rld Ship Tru st. an internati o na l group wo rk ing worldwide to help save shi ps of hi sto ri c importance .
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In this Sea History we set off on a course of rediscovery, in the wake of Christopher Columbus. History only lives as it lives through us today, and its truth is always new to each generation. Each generation also brings its own perspective to the telling, as does each personwe hope you find both challenge and refreshment in ours! A much wider audience than usual is being invited to join us in this Sea History, thanks to Texaco, Inc. , sponsors of the replica Columbus ships now fitting out in Spain to sai l in European waters this year. Texaco has generously underwritten the distribution of 50,000 extra copies of this issue to people involved in boating, to encourage wider awareness and discussion of the Columbus voyages and help build up public interest and support for the maritime heritage to which Co lumbus contributed so significantly. The Columbus replica ships will tour over 50 US ports to delight and enlighten millions of Americans. The tour will culminate in a grand 500th anniversary parade of ships in San Francisco on Columbus Day, October 12, 1992. In coming issues this year we'll be looking at the ships, the voyages, and the impact of the voyages on hi story, as we see these things today .
* * * * * American Indian interest in the quincentenary is recognized in several projects of the Columbus Quincentenary Commission , which plans a Museum of the Americas in Washington that will feature Native American life. Archaeology,journal of the Archaeological Institute of America, features "When Two Worlds Become One" in its January/ February issue, presenting the " violent clash of cutures that doomed millions of Native Americans." We have our work cut out for us in this field , and are delighted to see some good initial results achieved in Greg Foster's letter in these pages, reporting a new cooperative approach to "Discovery Reenactment '92." It is good to find Sea History playing a role in this kind of progress in our field , we aspire to reach out to all interests in seafaring, in all their rich variety. And it is good to know that our members find hidden treasures in our pages-as the marina operator Harry Nelson says in "Marine Art News" in this issue, "all you have to do is read closely to find them. " PS 4
LETTERS Ave Atque Vale Dick Morris All of us at Grace were shocked by the sudden passing of Dick Morris. He was a great asset to Grace during his many years of service, and he'll be missed by all. I'm pleased that the campaign for the restoration of the Allen S. Rupley deckhouse aboard the Wavertree under Dick Morris's leadership has generated such strong support. I'll recommend a grant for the Rupley deckhouse in memory of Dick Morris. In the meantime, you have my very best wishes for the success of the Wavertree Restoration Project. J. PETER GRACE Chairman and CEO W.R. Grace & Co. New York, New York For an appreciation of the life of Richard I. Morris see page 40. -ED.
130 chanting paddlers in two dozen canoes for its ceremonial arrival on the beach in Seattle, July 21. The media accounts (for once!) indicated the significant cultural content of this amazing undertaking, in which grassroots reconstruction of maritime heritage has launched new community awareness and even set agendas for major regional goals. And so it would appear that the stage is set for the kind of cross-cultural maritime commemoration you have envisioned for 1992. We will keep you posted on the progress of our plans to make sure that the oldest as well as the newest citizens of this inshore history have meaningful and appropriate roles. GREGORY FOSTER, Director Discovery Reenactment Society Galiano Island, British Columbia
Who's Discovering Who in '92?
Op Sail-The Tradition Lives On
We've got to do better than just fife and drums in our 1992 reenactment of the opening of the Pacific gateway. Our age has its own surprises, and your enthusiastic insistence on native peoples ' partnership in the upcoming Age of Discovery celebrations is proving to be one of them . We shook off the dire predictions of some cultural advisors and set a course toward the spicier islands of Joint Effort. Our first di scovery on this new heading: Eighteen coastal tribes in western Washington and British Columbia have literally been there ahead of us. More than a dozen newly carved cedar dugout canoes participated in a "Paddle to Seattle" last summer-an event acknowledged as the least expensive and most powerful State centennial project. Spearheaded by Emmet Oliver, master canoe carverof the Quileute tribe, the Native Canoe Project has initiated a dramatic revival both in traditional canoe making and the seamanship/lore of canoe voyaging. The vessels-some of them nearly 60 feet long-were shaped by hand from huge old-growth red cedar trees, an exacting process involving teachers and apprentices on Indian reserves throughout the Puget Sound and the Olympic Peninsula. Tribes expect to use the canoes in a variety of programs, the first one being the reenactment of a historic journey from the Pacific coast and points on Puget Sound to Seattle. The 170-mile voyage was completed in six days, with canoes joining the expedition all along the route and swelling the flotilla to over
The story in the Winter 1989-90 issue of Sea History regarding the projected Operation Sail 1992 brought me back to the days of the organization of Operation Sail 1964. Sometime in the fall of 1962, Frank Braynard, then with the Moran Towing Company, told me about Nils Hansell and Commodore Baylis and the project to bring the sail training vessels to New York harbor during the 300th anniversary of New York City and the World's Fair of that year. I was then Director of Port Commerce to promote and develop commerce-<;argo and passengers-for the bi-state port. Frank suggested I join the committee being forrned for Op Sail '64 and asked what I thought of the possibility of the Port Authority giving financial support to the project. I told him I thought the chances for any money were poor-and when I discussed it with a Port Authority executive (who shall remain nameless) I was asked "How many tons of cargo will those ships bring into the port?" I was allowed to join the committee, but no funds would be forthcoming. But there were things I knew I could do. I sponsored some lunches for the committee at the Whitehall Club. And since Paul Van Wicklen, editor of our promotional magazine Via Port of New York, heartily agreed with me that an event so dramatic taking place in New York Harbor would certainly reinforce the long-standing view that ours was indeed the World's Greatest Port, we ran a three-page feature article about Operation Sail '64 in the April 1963 issue of the magazine, which had an SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
international circulation of over 20,000 copies. We ran off a batch of reprints of the article and gave them to the committee, which were used by Frank and Nils in their successfu l efforts to secure patrons and ship participation. As the big day of Op Sail '64 drew closer and the excitement increased, suddenly our Port Authority commissioners and top staff executives began pressing me for invitations to the reviewing fleet! Suddenly it was a great thing to be in on. It was in many ways the most dramatic event of the anniversary year. So, some years later, when Op Sail '76 was suggested, the Port Authority reversed their hands-off policy and provided Frank Braynard with office space and staff services to coordinate that great Bicentennial event. Nothing succeeds like success. May 1992 be the greatest ever! CLIFFORD B. O'HARA Riverside, Connecticut A memoir of Nils Hansell, who died Janumy 6, appears on page 40 . -ED.
Make Way for a Sailor-Man or Woman I read your Sea History Gazette each time a copy makes its way through my office and find most of your articles very interesting. I am concerned, however, about the headline of one of your articles in the August 9, 1989 edition. I do not feel it appropriate to refer to a crew of young women as "girls" in your headline "All-Girl Crew Set Sail on New Way." Unless all of these young ladies were under the age of 12, the title "girl" is demeaning and inappropriate. I feel this title undermines the accomplishments of the young ladies who made this journey and doubt that ifthe journey were made by young men they would have been called "boys" instead of young men . As your article mentions, work at sea is still a traditionally male env ironment. The only way that women will be fully integrated into the seagoing professions is to accept them for their full value. MARIA SIMMONS
Lieutenant (jg), USCG Juneau, Alaska As we passed this letter around the office, the feeling among staff was that "girls" is the appropriate word up through the age of 17. We do call male trainees "boys" (seeSH#52,p30,#50, p32) . There was an objection on other grounds, however; that is simply that SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
all-female crews are by no means such a rarity or innovation as the headline would suggest. The all-female crew of the Sir Winston Churchill in Operation Sail 1976 is a fine example.-ED.
Mind Your Helm, There! H.F. Morin Scott's article "Square Riggery" (Sea History 52) reads more like our Coast Guard's directions for tacking Eagle than the much simpler tacking and wearing orders of the last days of commercial sail. Of course I realize that today the sail training craft have at least three times the crew required to handle the vessel, and they must have something forevery hand to do, but he 's made an (unintentional?) error. In wearing the brig, order#3 " ... applies ten degrees of starboard helm" and reports, "Ten of starboard wheel on, Sir." Starboard wheel is a port helm, since the helm refers to the fore-and-aft (whether actual or theoretical), tiller. Note advisory #4--"Helm's aweather." ROBERT G. HERBERT, JR. East Northport, New York Captain Scott is at sea as we go to press, so we' re going to take a deep breath and answer for him. His article recognized the fact of large crews on training ships (he was in commercial sail himself just before World War llHrom which we get the need for orders given in almost militaryform, especially since said large crews are largely inexperienced. On the helm versus wheel business, of course it' s "Helm up" to head downwind. But it's "Starboard wheel" to head to starboard. We think Captain Scott would say "Starboard helm" to achieve the same end and avoid confusion. At one time wheels were rigged to be turned opposite to the direction you wanted to go in, so "Port your helm" to go to starboard would be literally what you would do. This gave rise to confusion, however, as wheels began to be rigged as they are today, to be turned in the direction you want to go in. The US Navy has put an end to all this charming confusion. They say just : "Right rudder"-to head to the right.-ED.
Hurdy-Gurdy a String Instrument A hurdy-gurdy is not a sort of accordian which requires a hand crank for its wind as suggested in Mr. Doerflinger' s article (SH 52); it is rather a stringed instrument once commonplace in Europe with a number of pegs along one side that when depressed stop the strings. A handle on
one end turns a wheel that is in permanent contact with a drone string. It is this scraping sound that makes the hurdygurdy unique as a musical instrument. I also see that there were a number of workshops at the Mystic festival-which I applaud, and it is good to sing-but the passing on of knowledge in some depth is of greater consequence. For my own part, in 1980 I published my own discography based upon my own extensive collection of recordings of chantys and sailor songs. The collection is comprised of some 250 records (mostly all sea song), and another 150 cassettes, plus at this time around half a dozen CDs. I also have one of the most extensive collections of books and articles and am still adding to both collections. Nothing is computerized as yet, but I hope eventually to supplement my collections with material I know of, but have not seen. CHRIS ROCHE
Croydon, Surrey, England
Whisper Reseamed Once stories about the Wianno Whisper start, they keep on rolling. Many years ago, her owner, Peter Stanford, decided she would have a refastening in deference to her age. So he and his younger brother laid out a work schedule, and many laborious hours later she was refastened, recaulked with new cotton laid in and sealed with seam compound, repainted, glistening, and truly a thing of beauty as she sat on her cradle on the ways awaiting a full tide for the launch. Her owner had to be elsewhere, but hjs older and younger brothers were in town the next noon when the very mildmannered yard owner called in anger and consternation, demanding she be moved off his ways. When the blameless brothers arrived, there she was, sitting at the head of the ways, water pouring from every seam, and caulking hanging in festoons from all seams below the waterline. Slip, pantaloons, stockings and all, showing in fine style. The yardowner explained that she had filled up so quickly on hitting the water, he hauled her right out again, " lest she sink." Unfortunately he didn't haul her until she had filled with water, creating a head of pressure which proceeded to blow out all her caulking. Once we had stopped crying about the mess and started laughing, we put the caulking back home with new com-
5
Whisper at Art Finkeldey' s yard on the Connecticut River, June 1949. Aboard are.from the left, owner's cousin Russell Heston , Jr. , and brothers Nicholas and John Stanford. Owner was in mid-Atlantic in the cutter Iolaire when this photo was taken.
Old Gaffers
pound, let her down the ways, and let her sink. By the next day her wood was swollen, her seams tight and we pumped her out. When her owner returned we regaled him with the tale of horror; he took a look at her, soggy but floating and tied to the wharf, and told us that she "didn't look too bad." The younger brother and the shipyard owner both have died since, so the only witness to the above is the older brother. Also note that 45 years after this eventful launch, Whisper sails on. JoHN STANFORD, MD Essex, Connecticut
Discovery in Nautical Quarterly Articles in the Operation Sail 1992 issue of Sea History, concentrate, of necessity, on foreign-built tall ships. There have been no American-built tall ships for nearly a century. (Eagle, of course, was built in Germany in 1936.) The news, therefore, of a project to have a modem , purpose-designed built new American tall ship launched, worked up, and ready to participate in the Christopher Columbus Quincentenary tall ship gathering in 1992, must be welcomed with open arms. The Bath (Maine )-based Sail Adventure In Learning, Inc. (SAIL) comprising many of those dedicated souls responsible for restoring the bark Elissa to her former sailing glory, are at the helm of the project to build Discovery, al 70ft square-rigger in Maine. The Henry B. Hyde, considered by many to be the most beautiful Downeaster ever launched, is a primary source of inspiration forthe new ship's design . Her story is told in detail in the pages of the most recent Nautical Quarterly. Also, to those interested in Mary Reed's important article about the Royal National Lifeboat Institute in Sea History 52, I recommend a look at Nautical Quarterly 20 (Winter, 1982). MICHAEL BADHAM
North Bath, Maine Other new American ships are in the offing-see "Ship Notes," page 41 .-Eo.
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It was with great surprise and delight that I recently opened my Sea History 51 and saw your piece about the building of a replica Ossie, and that the boat had made a 175-mile voyage. About ten years ago, my son and I set out to look for a genuine Suffolk sailing punt (known as punts because they are almost flat-bottomed). There were not many left and none in seagoing order; also the old fishing families would not part with "father 's boat." We did eventually buy the 15-foot Pet, originally built in 1905, and had her restored using Ossie plans and knowledge gained from old fishermen. The fishermen told us how to sail these boats and row, which is usually done standing up, facing forward. We bought nets and started fishing to re-learn every feature. Much of what we discovered is in one of my books, Beach Boats of Britain. You may not have known when you chose a Suffolk beach boat that it was part of a tradition of wooden boatbuilding that is still very much alive. No one has ever taken much notice of the Suffolk boats, but most years one or even two new ones are built by the three active builders. The modem boats are different to the punts because of the powerful engines and winches. We would be interested to know a little more about your Ossie, and her long voyage. If anyone connected with her is ever in England, come and look at Pet and the 1895, 18-foot Three Sisters which is a battered hulk in a shed which we one day plan to restore.
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Queries "At last, at last, at last!" writes Master Sail Maker Oscar Heath from Minnesota. He is responding to Louie Bartos calling for recognition of the historic design and structure of sails in "Letters," SH 52. After three years of library research he's found only 18 books with information on this subject, and he implores readers to send him anything they have on the history of sailmakingfindings gleaned from pictures, written accounts, or word of mouth, for a projected history of sailmaking. Write Oscar Heath, MSM, 7546 Washington Ave., So., Eden Prairie MN 55344. D
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SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
IN CLIO'S CAUSE:
If Columbus Were Still Around
• • •
by James W. Kinnear
In this corner, we look from time to time at the uses of history. There is a school of thought which says one shouldn't seek "uses" for history. But we hold that history does indeed have uses-we' ve just got to steer clear of doctrinaire "lessons" and look to the thing itself, the actual experience. NMHS is seeking fresh approaches to our mission of bringing people to history. Here, Mr. Kinnear, President and CEO of Texaco Inc., sees intense usefulness in the legacy ofColumbus. In a James W. Kinnear brief essay that appeared in various newspapers on Columbus Day, OctoThis fundamental curiosity breeds ber 12, last year he gives his perspective independent thinking, the ability to come on Columbus's voyage of 1492-and at a worn problem with a fresh perspecTexaco's reasons for sponsoring the tive. A curious mind sees and grasps all Columbus ships now being outfitted in sorts of adventures and it delights in exSpain. ploration and discovery. In a world that If Christopher Columbus were alive today, I'd hire him . True, he hadn't even started on an MBA when he set sai l from Spain, and hi s sense of geography left something to be desired, but I'd hire him. Here 's why. While a lot of young people have yet to understand the connection between education and good employment prospects, others have understood it all too well. The phrase that played in the 1960s,
A curious mind ... delights in exploration and discovery. "To get a good job, get a good education ," has, in the 1980s become, "The goal of a good education is to get a good job." With a respectable business diploma clutched in one hand , and volumes about market share, accounting procedures and managerial motivation in the other, these would-be tycoons alight on interview chairs, sure that the next step will be a seat on the board of directors. My question: All right, so you understand how business works, what else do you have to offer the world? The silence hangs in the air like 100 percent humidity. But it is preci sely the question that business needs to ask these days. You see, the prime benefit and goal of education is, or ought to be, the development of a deeply held curiosity about the world. Education gets us to asking questions like: Is that true, and if so why? What took place then which is influencing what is going on now? What happens if I try this approach? What happens if I sail west? SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
demands innovation and the opening of new frontiers , American business needs people who have developed this intellectual vigor, and who can think about the challenges of business in ways the textbooks have not even suggested. That 's just what Columbus did-and why for me his discovery of the Americas captures that infectious curiosity most completely. It is also one of the reasons Texaco will sponsor the quincentenary tour of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria replicas in 1992. Utterly convinced that by going west he could find his way to the riches of Asia, Columbus pestered heads of state all across Europe until he found one willing to invest in his highrisk ideas. The result of his perilous gamble was failure-he didn't even come close to Asia. But as so often happens, the willingness to launch into uncharted waters resulted in unexpected discovery and rewards. People who are all business are like those 15th century merchants who knew well the overland trade routes to Asia. They go looking for Asia, and sure enough, they find it every time. But I have become interested in people for our business who have a high regard for the value of what we do, and who are competent in their field, but who bring us a lively intellectual curiosity that is willing to pole and prod and press, and occasionally, to sail west. Often these people have explored continents seemingly unrelated to business-art or journalism, law or philosophy. But because they are multidimensional , they bring to their work a sense of adventure, an inquisitive vigor. William Allen White, the journalist,
once wrote in the Kansas City Times: "In education we are striving not to teach youth to make a living, but to make a life." Executives and educational policy setters could profit from that advice. Yes, I'd hire Columbus any day. He understood leadership, risk-taking, politics, finance and marketing. But beyond that, he also had conviction and curiosity enough to sai l west when all the world was trudging east. If American business is to succeed in the New World of the 1990s, this is a lesson in people we must learn all over again. O
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To Meet a Growing Threat by J. Jackson Walter, President, National Trust for Historic Preservation We at the National Trust for Historic chaeological practice, incl uding docuPreservati on appl aud the continuin g mentation, conservation, preservation, efforts of Sea History and the National and study of recovered materials. Thi s is Maritime Historical Soc iety to bring the position that the Trust maintained before the public the vital issues sur- thro ughout the long fi ght fo r passage of rounding the growing threat to archaeo- the Abandoned Shipwreck Act, and it was the basis for a resolution, unanilogical values in historic shipwrecks. The integrity of hi storic shipwreck mo usly adopted by our Board of Trussites is more at risk today than ever tees at their October, 1989 meeting, before . Technological advances have deplori ng the depredation of historic made possi ble the location of even the shipwrecks. Two major challenges face prese rvamost remote shipwreck. At the same time, the collectors' market for materi- tioni sts, histori ans, archaeologists, and als recovered from shipwrecks has ex- others who are concerned about this panded dramatically. The res ult has been growing problem. The first is to aid and a marked increase in commercial ex- assist in development of laws and reguploitatio n of hi storically signifi cant lations that pro tect historic shipwreck wreck sites, accompanied in nearl y every sites. Under the Abandoned Shipwreck case by the permanent loss of historical Act, the States now hold title to most information that might have been pre- hi storic shipwreck sites within their served, had the recovery been conducted boundaries. Though some States already as a proper archaeological project. have in place excellent laws protecting The position of the National Trust on hi storic wreck sites and regulating their this issue is straightfo rward and unwav- use, most States do not. Development of ering. We hold that hi storic shipwrecks appropriate and effective legislation in are irrepl aceable, invalu able cultural those States must have a high priority. resources; th at ex pl orati on of suc h The second challenge fac ing us is wrecks should be non-destructive; and one of education- increasi ng public that the ir excavation should be in accor- understanding and appreciation that the dance with the highest standards of ar- real treas ure to be recovered fro m hi s-
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J . Jackson Wa lter. Photo, National Trust for Historic Preservation.
toric sh ipwrecks is the info rmation that such sites can impart when carefull y recorded, excavated, and studied-about our heritage. In the overall scheme of th ings, this potential fo r in fo rmation has far greater value than the golden coins or jewels or porcelains that a hi storic wreck might contain. To ¡o btain the latter at the ex pense of the fo rmer is to incur a tragic and irreparable loss. The National Trust is committed to meeting these challenges. We look forward to working alongside the Society and its members in the effo rt to preserve a vital part of our price less maritime heritage. 0
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SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
The Yorktown Project by John Broadwater, Director
In these pages we have looked theoretically at what should be done with archaeological sites and artifacts. H ere, in a report from project director John Broadwater, we see a properly set up marine archaeology project-in action. A unique look at 18th century merchant vessels has been provided by Bri tish shipwrecks at Yorktown, Virginia. Those vessels, sunk during the Battle of Yorktown , 1781 , were for ten years the objects of intensive research by the Departmant of Conservati on and Hi storic Resources. The Yorktown Shipwreck Archaeological Project located a total of nine shipwrecks, one of which, known only by its archaeological site designation, 44Y088, has been completely excavated. Because of the ex tremely poor visibilty, strong currents and stinging jellyfi sh in the York Ri ver, the project utilized a unique steel enclosure, or cofferdam, which surrounds the site, permitting the enclosed water to be filtered to produce a "swimming pool" environment in the murky ri ver. The excavation, conducted between 1982and1988, revealed a hull preserved to the level of the lower deck, with bulkheads, both mast stumps and porti ons of the lower deck still intact. Measurements show the hull to be very fu ll-bodied and bluffbowed, with heavy oak frames and planking. The ship measures approximately 75 feet in length with an estimated tonnage of 180. Several dozen intact barrels were located in the bow, along with hundreds of loose staves and head pieces, providing one of the few collections of welldated I 8th-century cooperage avail able fo r study. That these barrels were located well fo rward suggests that at least some of them represent ship 's stores rather than cargo. Markings on some barrels have been traced to government contractors and agents in Great Britain. An article by myself as the project director in the June 1988 issue of National Geographic Magazine reports that the ship excavated at Yorktown was likely a British-built merchant ship which had been leased by the Royal Navy as a military transport. T imbers excavated from the hull suggest that it may have been used at Yorktown as a floating workshop for the fabri cation of a variety of items including timbers to be used for the earthworks on shore. Her general shape and construction, along with the SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
coal fo und in her bilges, suggests that she may have been built in England as a coal-carrier, or collier. In addition to extensive media coverage, incl uding the National Geographic article and inclu sion in a public television documentary produced by BBCTV , a new exhibiti on, "Yorktown 's Sunken Fleet," opened 1 June 1988 in the main gallery of Yorktown Victory Center, a state museum in Yorktown Virginia. Planning is now underway for incorporating the Yorktown shipwreck material into the new, permanent exhibit at the Victory Center. Research at Yorktown was conducted with the annual parti cipation of the Program in Maritime History and Underwater Research at East Carolina University. This successful cooperative program concluded with a fo ur-week fi eld school in July 1988, whe n students working at the cofferdam received training in excavation , recording, safety, onsite cataloging and conservati on. Current efforts on the Yorktown Project include conservation of the remaining artifacts, analysis of artifac ts and hull remains, and the preparati on of final reports on the project. The site has yielded a wide variety of artifac ts assoc iated with military supplies, shipboard stores and personal items, all of which are being studied for analys is and reporting. In addition to research being conducted by the two-person project staff, dozens of outside experts have offered assistance with analysis of hull remains, botanical samples, ball ast, coal, shoes, ceramics, bottles , cl ay pipes, cooperage, fi sh and animal bones, and other materials. Hull measurements are being entered into the computer, with the assistance of Advanced Marine Enterpri ses, Virginia Beach, where a computer-aided design and drafting system (CADD) is producing detailed draw ings and hull lines. Yorktow n Shipwreck 44Y088 is providing valuable info rmation on l 8th century merchant ships, and additional discoveries are expected to emerge as research continues. However, the project is currentl y threatened by a shortage of funds. Funding to complete the research, conservation and publication was not appropri ated from Federal or State agencies.For further info rmation, contact John D. Broadwater, Senior Underwater Archaeologist, Va. Dept. of Historic Resources, PO Drawer A, Bldg. 22, Willi amsburg VA 23 187. D
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SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
NMHS
REPORT:
1989-The Year In Review by Kevin Haydon Join us for a brief tour through leading events of 1989 which seem worth remembering as we voyage into 1990. Sea History is gratified by the new national attention being given to marine archaeology and the organized effort to save wrecks from salvors. This cause was strengthened by the appointment of Paul F. Johnston as Curator of Maritime History at the Smithsonian, a post that had gone unfilled for ten years. Also propitious were the appointments of the seasoned museum professional Michael Naab as Maritime Director of the National Trust and the very able and knowledgeable William G. Thomas as Superintendent of the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, successor body to the National Maritime Museum. Mr. Naab formerly worked in a senior administrative capacity at the then National Maritime Museum in San Francisco and before that as director of the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria, Oregon. Thomas also has a strong background in our field. A longtime member of NMHS , he served as a volunteer aboard the museum ship Balclutha and, in the 1950s, wrote a book about the last voyage of the Kaiulani. Seeds have been sown for a decade of progress. Indeed 1989 unveiled the promise of 1992 when Operation Sail , Inc., announced in Sea History their plans to hold a parade of the world ' s tall sailing ships in New York Harbor on July 4, 1992. Texaco Inc. , emerged as the virtual Medici of historic ship reproduction when it announced its $5 million sponsorship of the Christopher Columbus Quincentenary Commission replicas of Columbus 's discovery ships, Nina , Pinta, and Santa Maria. Another ship of discovery reborn in the public imagination in the past year that will fare forth in the early part of this decade is the Endeavour, the ship of the famous 18th century explorer James Cook. NASA held a nationwide high school contest to name the next space shuttle and choices had to be made from the names of discovery ships. The final selection of Endeavour demonstrated a pleasingly fresh and ecumenical perspective from student voters who may have noted that in another ship on a later voyage, Cook was assured of safe passage during the War of Independence in the 1770s, by none other than Benjamin Franklin. One feels that Old Ben would have cheered. SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
Poised Among the Elements Congratulations also to lighthouse aficionados, who had a heady year. The Bicentennial of the US Lighhouse Service, now part of the US Coast Guard, was celebrated across America, and thanks to a diligent lobby effort, inspired in part by the Lighthouse Preservation Society in Rockport, Maine, preservation groups enjoyed the second year of a three year, $1 million per year appropriation. In the wake of the US Coast Guard 's decision to transfer lighthouses to responsible preservation groups, the public interest in lighthouse restoration has been overwhe lming. Tanja Rabbitt, of the US Lighthouse Society, offers this explanation in The Keeper's Log: We live in comp lex, rapidly changing times. In such times it is necessary to be grounded upon something that is larger than ourselves .. . something that aids us to direct our movements through turbulence and confusion. It is not surprising that lighthouses, as beacons poised among the elements, offer us a symbol of direction and guidance. Flying Cloud's record passage round Cape Horn to San Francisco was broken by Thursday's Child, a 60ft monohull with shiftable water ballast and other modern wrinkles. But Flying Cloud's remarkable 89-day, 8-hourrecord, which stood for 134 years, is hardly diminished. "Let's keep an historical perspective," said Peter Stanford, President of NHMS. "The immortal Cloud carried not water ballast but some 2000 tons of useful cargo! " Further progress was made in opening up the ocean deeps, hitherto immune to human invasion. In June, undisturbed since its sinking during WW II and "upright in good condition," the German battleship Bismarck came under the lights of a robot submarine operated by a research team led by Robert Ballard, who had located the Titanic just two years before. Warned by the looting of Titanic artifacts (at some damage to the ship's structure) that took place following his discovery of the Titanic, Ballard wisely kept the Bismarck's precise location secret. Only the West German Government was informed. But not all marine explorers are Ballards, and using the new technology, a vast underwater heritage is newly at risk (see NMHS Report, SH 52, p.9).
The Lady Washington set sail in 1989.
Progress Far and Wide No record of 1989 would be complete without acknowledgi ng the real force behind the preservation of our maritime heritage-the force of public interest. From coast to coast, harbor to harbor, even bay to bay, maritime enthusiasts had their moments of triumph. In Aberdeen, Washington, the Gray's Harbor Historical Seaport' s newly launched Lady Washington set sai l for a 1,000 mile maiden voyage. The vessel is a replica of Robert Gray 's ship, the first to explore the Pacific Coast, and its well received trip to the Northwest also marked a very visible beginning to a new era in the promotion of maritime history in the Seattle region. In New York a campaign was launched to save the Gloucester fishing schooner Lettie G. Howard, in urgent need of repair at South Street Seaport, and a grant of$250,000 (requiring matching funds) was secured from New York State for that purpose. At the same time, the well known Gloucester historian Joe Garland led a campaign to set up the schooner Adventure as a youth training/ museum ship in Gloucester. NHMS was involved in both these efforts and featured the story of five surviving Gloucester schooners in Sea History 49. Like a bustling waterfront itself, the world of our maritime heritage also had its newcomers and returnees. Sea History notes the growing appearance of Vietnam era boats as the destroyer USS Edison joined the Intrepid fleet, in New York City, and the reappearance of a vanished era of yachts, the huge and elegant J boats, as sailed by Elizabeth Meyer. The veteran J boats Endeavour and Shamrock V met in match races off Newport, Rhode Island, over half a century after this graceful breed of giant sloops had vanished from US watersas everyone thought, forever. May our doubts be confounded and new hopes fulfilled as we sail into the 1990s! D 11
James Patrick McAllister's Harbor Reflections as taken down by Karl Kortum on June 18, 1986 My grandfather started the company. He began at the bottom and worked his way up. He did it on the harbor. I did the same thing. He was born in 1844 in the north of Ireland. They have farms there and they own boats; it is something like Norway . They do a lot of fishing and some go into seafaring. Grandfather got a British license and he was in the North Atlantic trade until he was shipwrecked on our coast here. He arrived in New York with the clothes on his back and got a job with the Ward Line. American steamship companies used to hire British licensed officers. Grandfather saved enough money so that he was able to begin buying sailing lighters. He had his eye on that. In those days they were usually converted North River sloops and Long Island Sound schooners. He got into the general lighterage business. From there it just grew. He acquired tugs and dumb barges, that is ordinary barges or scows. ("Dumb lighters" are the same as "deck scows" in the terminology of the harbor.) Out of them developed lighters with masts and booms. A further refinement was the steam lighter. They were like a tug with a big forward deck, a low deck capable of carrying anywhere from eighty to a hundred and fifty tons of cargo, but ten percent was down the hatch for stability. A vessel was, say, a hundred and fifty feet long with fifty feet of deck forward. The steam lighters were the "express" cargo carriers in the port. They wou ld pick up small amounts and run it to this steamship or that, unloading at the piers. Not surprisingly, at a certain point my father, James Patrick McAllister, found himself skipper of a steam lighter on New York harbor. What is more, my father-in-law was the engineer. These craft carried a captain, an engineer, a fireman, a deckhand and a cook. Sometimes additional deckhands if they wanted to do all the cargo handling themselves. Tough days-there were gangs in different comers of the harbor opposed to this-you had to fight for the privilege of loading or unloading your own cargo. This particular steam lighter brings up one of the famous stories in the McAllister family-and in the McNeill family . My father-in-law's name was Alexander McNeil!. It doesn ' t have to do with gangs, but with the ship's boiler. In the days of steam, the boiler was at 12
the center of things, hot, fired up, under pressure, slowly deteriorating- nursed along. The problem was the tubes: as time went on they started to leak under the heat and the pressure of the steam. They could be replaced , but as a practical matterthe vessel owner kept going as long as possible without the expensive process of re-tubing. There was a sufficient number of tubes that, up to a point, you could take a leaky one out of service by plugging it. I have made a drawing of a boiler, what we called a Scotch boiler, in which
the flames and the hot gases from the furnace area rise in the "back connection" and flow through the tubes toward the uptake and the stack. This heats the water surrounding the tubes and gives you steam. A Scotch boiler is a "fire tube" boiler. A "water tube" boiler is different; it has water in the tubes, and the heat surrounds the tube. Just a different way of doing it. N:rpl e
a~f I/ 1-,,5 Above, I have drawn the device with which you plug the tube; you drive one of these plugs in at each end. It consists of an ordinary 4" pipe nipple with a pipe cap screwed on one end. You just hammer it home; it usually sticks as the threads grab. They have a little taper. The pipe isofadiameterslightly smaller than the boiler tube. Well , my father's steam lighter was tied up alongside one of the New York piers, loading cargo, and down below Alex McNeill was preparing to plug a boiler tube. It is simple at the end where the furnaces are fired; you just open the
big iron doors that enclose the uptake and there are the ends of all the tubes staring at you. Drive in a plug. The other end of that tube is a different matter; it is in the boiler. A drawing of the far end of the boiler, inside .This one has three furna ces, with rows ofboiler tubes above .
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But somebody has to crawl the length of the furnace, which they have stopped firing-feeding the coal to--so that a man can get in there. He has to wriggle along until he reaches the back connection and in that narrow space he stands up and drives the plug in with a hammer. He has about two minutes at best to do all this because he is holding his breath so that the gases won't asphyxiate him. My father-in-law went in , with his hammer and a plug. The coal in the furnace was still hot, but with acoupleof planks laid on top it was navigable. He had wet sacks wrapped around his legs. Now the cook wouldn ' t always show up on board, and it may be that the fireman, down in the boiler room with Aiex McNeill, got hungry. My father saw him step ashore and go down the dock, maybe for a sandwich. Or a drink. My father, running the winch, was hoisting a heavy crate on board and the lighter listed ... Clank! A faint clank from the engine room ... but my father heard it. He knew what had happened. The sudden 1ist had caused the furnace door to slam shut; there was nobody in the engine room and Alex McNeil! was in the furnace. He rushed down the ladder, grabbed the latch and swung it open. The engineer was collapsed on the planks just inside the door. He grabbed him and pulled him out of the boiler. His life was saved, probably by seconds. Many years later I was astonished to see this favorite old story of ours dramatized for the movies. The film was "Tugboat Annie" with Marie Dressler and it was her drunken spouse, Wallace Beery, who made the heroic trip, wrapped in wet sacks, along the planks to the back connection. It had a slightly different twist, but the concept was the same. I wonder where they got the idea. D
Mr. KortumisChiefCurator ofthe Maritime National Historical Park in San Francisco and Chairman Emeritus of NMHS. SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
Jam es P. McAllister Remembered OnSunday,January 14,JamesEan, Vice chairman of NMHS and longtime partnerofthe late James P. McAllister, led a party that installed a plaque aboard the Liberty ship John W. Brown in Baltimore, to commemorate McAllister's leadership in saving the vessel , a veteran of the liberation of Italy and France in World War II, laterused in New York as part of the City school system. The plaque was received by Captain Brian Hope, Chairman of Project Liberty Ship, Baltimore, for permanent installation aboard the vessel. It was donated by Mobil Oil Corporation through the courtesy of Gerhard E. Kurz, head of Mobil's Marine Transportation Division, working with Camille Freas of NMHS who organized the memorial effort for the Society. The plaque notes McAllister's service as New York City Board of Education Commissioner for the John W. Brown, l 974-82, and as Chairman of Project Liberty Ship, Inc., from 1985 until his death in 1989. His role as Chairman of the National Maritime Historical Society ( 1985-89) is also noted, together with his role as " lifelong champion of the US merchant service."
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James P. McAllister's grandfather started tanker service in New York Harbor for John D. Rockefeller, founder of the Standard Oil Company, of which Mobil is an offspring. McAllister used to say that his living memory reached back to those days, for he heard this and other stories from his grandfather and fatherboth great story-tellers, in a family that literal! y 1ived the life of the harbor.Jam es P. McAllister himself was a memorable story-teller, and NMHS has further stories from him of New York Harbor, and is collecting more. D
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Aboard the John W. Brown in Baltimore. From the left areStephenR. Cooney ofMobil Oil Corp ., J. P. McAllister's secretary Dorothy Schneider, NMHS Op Ed Coordinator Camille Freas(holding plaque), andl. P. McAllister IV.
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A LEAF UPON THE SEA A Small Ship in the Mediterranean, 1941-1943 Gordon W. Stead On loan to the Royal Navy, the author commanded a flotilla of Motor Launches during the siege of Malta. "Stead's memoir is low-key with flashes of humour.... His operations, fought from a tiny platform that was indeed a leaf upon the sea, were no less important than the grand fleet designs that eventually secured victory." VANCOUVER SUN illus., $27.95 THE RCN IN TRANSITION, 1910-1985 W. A. B. Douglas, ed. A book about the life of the Royal Canadian Navy, written by leading naval historians and defence policy specialists. "The RCN in Transition does a great service to the public in describing the foundation, successes, challenges and the future of a service with a proud tradition .." MAR1TIME COMMAND TRIDENT illus., $30.00 NAVIES, DETERRENCE,
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RUSSIA AND THE SOUTH PACIFIC, 1696-1840 a quartet of books by Glynn Barratt on Russian naval, social, and scientific enterprise in the South Pacific VOLUME I
THE RUSSIANS AND AUSTRALIA This book focuses on the visits that Russian ships made to Australian ports on voyages from the Baltic to Kamchatka and Alaska. " This excellent study brings out the detailed and valuable account of not only the flora and fauna of Australia, but also of the British penal system and other aspects of life in Australia." CHOICE illus., $35.95 VOLUME2
SOUTHERN AND EASTERN POLYNESIA This volume describes Russian activities in New Zealand, the Austral Islands, and Easter Island. Barratt's annotated translations of eye-witness accounts provide fascinating reading about the landfalls of the ships and a vivid picture of life and culture in these parts of the South Pacific in the early post-contact period . illus., $35.95 VOLUME3
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ON THE NORTHWEST Commercial Whaling in the Pacific Northwest, 1790-1967 Robert Lloyd Webb "Solid scholarship and showy style. On the Northwest is a substantial and readable addition to the published history of whaling." INTERNATIONAL
MELANESIA AND THE WESTERN POLYNESIAN FRINGE The third volume focuses on the voyages that touched Vanuatu (New Hebrides), Fiji, Turalu, and Anuta. Barratt shows what effects the Russian visitors had on the native populations in many areas of the Pacific. Of particular interest is his analysis of the drawings executed by the staff artists of the various expeditions. illus., $35.95 VOLUME4
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REDISCOVERING COLUMBUS: by Peter Stanford Columbus was born into a world in fennent. To that world, as tir with the potent mix of old learning rediscovered and the pull of new horizons, he brought an astonishingly clear and constant sense of mi ss ion . A devoted student of hi s life and voyages, Robert Fuson, says: "Columbus had one foot in the medieval world and one in the modern ." It was that step forward into the modern world that we remember-but he was not what we would call an innovator. He excelled in the traditional arts of navigation , but had only a fumbling grasp of the dawning science of celestial navigation . Hi s great biographer, the late Samuel Eliot Morison (1887-1976) , who sailed in hi s wake literally , and in other ways too, considered him the greatest of dead-reckoning nav igators, with a gift for finding hi s way over vast distances with uncanny accuracy-a product, perhaps, of hi s total immersion in hi s subject and overpowering ly strong will to get where he was headed. Hi s world picture, distorted by hi s drive to find a short, direct westward route to China and the Indies, as Mori son emphasizes, was less advanced than that of the savants who repeatedly recommended against sponsoring his voyage. The savants' measurements were right. Columbus was wrong. But they weren't the ones to change the world; he was. A City by the Sea If Columbus changed his world, he was very much of that world . Born Cristofaro Colombo in "Genova la Superba," (Genoa, the " noble and powerful city by the sea," as he was to remember it in his will), he was at the epicenter of the burgeoning maritime trades that were quickening European life aro und the Med iterranean. And the Med iterranean powers were reaching out into the Ocean Sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules to the westward . When he was born , in 1451, Genoa, at the head of the Italian peninsula on the western side, had been overtaken (but not eliminated) by Venice, " la Serenissima," in the struggle for dominance in the rich trade with the eastern Mediterranean shores which brought Oriental si lks, porcelains and spices to the Western world through Arab inte rmediaries. Venice, at the head of the Adriatic, looked east and south to Egypt and the Levant, and aro und the corner into Constantinople and the fading g lories of 16
the Byzantine Empire, which finally fell to the invading Ottoman Turks in 1453 , when Columbus was a sma ll child . Constantinople-the last s urvival of the old Roman Empire, hav ing outlived its parent by a thou sand years- had been weakened by the aggressive sea power of Venice, which for the last few centu -
ChristopherColumbus, 145 1-506. Described by his son Ferdinand as tall, well built , with a Jong face , aquiline nose and a fair complexion , the Discoverer seems fa irly presented in this portrait painted to the order of a bishop collecting a portrait ga llery of men of achievement, a generation after his death (Museo Giorio, Como, Italy). This is the face of a dreamer, surely, backed by a stubborn certitude of his mission in the world.
ries had been biting chunks out of the seaborne co mmerce th at bound the Byzantine Empire together. Ultimately that rich commerce ended up in the hands of Venice and to a lesser ex tent Genoa- the Genoese having been called in by the Byzantines to offset the domi nance of Venice, after Venice had used the pretex t of a crusade to actually sack Constantinople in 1204. Following the fall of Constantinople, Venice and Genoa continued to dominate Mediterranean trade, dealing with all comers and mastering the seaways while the Arab kingdoms ruled the southern and eastern shores, and the Turks stormed on into the Balkans. This sea mastery by the Italian city states proved to be a critical fac tor in comi ng developments . Of great importance, also, was the outward-looking attitude of these seaport c ities. In the late 1200s, 200 years before Columbus set sa il on hi s voyage of discovery , Marco Polo of Venice had trave lled overland to C hina. There he entered the service of the Great Khan,
trave lling widely in hi s realms. The tales of wonder he brought back from thi s adv anced civili zation stirred new interest in establishing directcontact with the Far East, whose prec iou s wares had been handled by various midd lemen in the Eastern Med iterranean for nea rly two thousand years. He brought reports also of Cipangu , the semi -mythical kingdom of Japan , which Genghis Khan never managed to conquer-so Marco never visited it. Its wealth lost nothing in the telling by thi s fact, and somehow he placed it 1500 mil es offshore. After the land route to China that Marco had followed was shut down following the collapse of the Mongo l Empire and the ri se of the more intransi gent Turkish caliphates, it was natura l for a few people to wonder about an alternate route to the Far East. Meanwhile, the Mediterranean sea trades pushed to the westward. Italian bankers and adventurers crowded into the great Atlantic port of Li sbon , an international seaport that had served as a way stati on for the crusaders , who also helped the Portuguese liberate their country from the Moors from Africa. Itali an navi gators helped the young kingdom settle the Atlantic islands, from the Azores to the Cape Verdes. Here Genoa led, and in the 1290s (the same era that Venice's Marco Polo was in China) the Genoese opened regular packet serv ice to Southampton and Antwerp, in a ne w breed of seago ing galleys that could keep the sea in the open-water passage across the stormy Bay of Biscay and on into the English Chan1~el. In the sa me decade, the Vi valdi s, fa ther and son, set sail from Genoa to push down the coast of Africa, seeking a sea-route to the Indies. The haunting lore of the Polo journey (a story dictated by the Venetian Marco in a Genoese prison , incidentally , following one of the battles between the two cities) had worked its way into the European consc iousness for a good century and a half, by the time Columbus came into awareness ofit. The wool trade with England and Flanders had become an establi shed fact of commerc ial life. Columbus's father, Domenico, was apprenticed to a Flemish clothier who had settled in Genoa. Domenico took up this trade and added sidelines, being a wine merchant and innkeeperin a somewhat feckless manner, Samuel Eliot Morison suggests. But he had, ev idently, a persuas ive way about him and SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
THE MAN AND THE WORLD HE SAILED IN gained appointments that insured his family ' s station in the developing middle class of the seaport city.
To Sea: East, North, South-and West?
I
It was natural for young Columbus to go to sea. The sea was Genoa's connection with the world- she faces outward on it, watching the sun sink into blue water at day's end , with the whole city overlooking the little harbor as it rises, tier on tier, up the steep incline of the coastal hills. If you wanted to get to Ancona, the next town, you took a boat. If you had business in the great foreign cities of Naples, down the peninsula, or Marseilles, on the French coast, you sent and received your cargoes by ship. As Columbus comes into early manhood we learn about his voyaging, for he tells us about it himself, in incidental (or maybe not so incidental) remarks thrown out in the daily record that he kept on his voyage to the Americas, to make up his ultimate report to his sponsors, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, and in letters he sent them . He mentions, in a 1495 letter from Hispanolia, that he was at sea in a Genoese ship which took part in a war with Aragon (of which Ferdinand, incidentally, later became king). This was between late 1470 and early 1472. Columbus, around twenty years old , suggests that he was in a position of importance in the ship which he almost certainly didn ' t hold-but who among us hasn't put into a job application, under the heading " responsible for," matters which we didn ' t really control? He next went to the Greek island of Chios in the Genoese ship Roxana, in 1474, to help the city ' s Genoese trading post there defend itself against the Turks. He mentions this because he says he recognized (incorrectly) the plant from which the Genoese on Chios extracted mastic gum , the base for varnish. He may have made a second voyage to Chios in 1475. And then , in 1476, he signs on aboard the Genoese ship Bechalla, part of a convoy bound out into the Atlantic world to carry mastic from Chios to Flanders. Attacked by a French and Portuguese fleet off Lagos, in southern Portugal , the convoy broke up, and the Bechalla was sunk. Columbus , wounded in the fray, grabbed a floating oar and swam six miles to shore. From there he made his way to Lisbon , where he joined his brother Bartholemew, who was installed there as a chartmaker in the Genoese community. SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
This was a critical step for the young mariner. As Morison puts it: At the age of twenty-five, chance had brought him to the European center for blue-water voyaging and overseas discovery. He was among people who could teach him all he wanted to learn: Portuguese, Castilian , and Latin ; mathematics and astronomy for celestial navigation. He already knew all the basic seamanship that a common sailor could pick up. In February 1477, according to a note found among Columbus ' s papers by his son Ferdinand after his death , he went on a voyage to Iceland "and a hundred leagues beyond." Possibly, Columbus picked up word in Iceland oflands across the Western Ocean discovered and settled by Norsemen 500 years before. The traffic from Iceland to Greenland had died out just over the horizon of living memory , 100 years before. But as Morison points out, the accurate reports of these voyages carried in the Sagas then current in Iceland would have been oflittle interest to him. Who cared about hardscrabble farming and fights with Skraelings (Eskimos)? What did interestColumbus was two dead people found in a boat that drifted into Galway, a stopping point on this northern trip. These had Oriental-looking faces -that was interesting indeed! In 1478, the year after his trip to the north, Columbus sailed to the offshore island of Madeira, to pick up sugar for a Genoese owner- and by now he was captain of his ship. The next year he married Dona Filipa de Perestrelo e Moniz at Porto Santo in the Madeira group. There is a charming story of his mother-in-Jaw, widow of the governor of Porto Santo, getting out her husband ' s charts and journals to help Columbus learn about the Atlantic world in which he had now established himself. Some students feel Columbus may have got only as far as Bristol on his northern swing, picking the rest of the itinerary from sailors in that busy seaport, a center of oceanic trades like Lisbon . The important point is that he was adding to his picture of that ocean world. The next years brought further trips to the frontiers of that expanding world . He had been to Bristol, at least, in the north , and possibly to Iceland and beyond. He sailed south to Sao Jorge de la Mina, the fortified camp the Portuguese had built in Guinea , in West Africa, to protect the gold mining operation they
had developed there. And sometime in this period he began to work seriously on his dream of being the first to sail westward , to come to Japan and China that way, rather than southward along the African coast as the Portuguese had been doing in organized fashion since 1420, when Prince Henry set up his center for navigation in Sagres.
A Sea Captain Makes His Bid In 1484 Columbus, in his early 30s, now well connected in Lisbon, and fresh from his service to the King in his Guinea voyaging , secured an audience with the young King Joao II, who had just ascended the throne of Portugal the year before. Columbus ' s wife had died, leaving him a young son, Diego, to whom he was much attached. But the wide, awakening world around him drew him toward what he clearly felt was his destiny. He presented his plan for a short route to the Indies to the King. We get a glimpse of this interview with King Joao from the court historian, who notes he is " Of the Genoese nation, a man expert, eloquent and good Latinist," and that he asked Joao for ships " to go and discover the Isle Cypango through this Western Ocean." But despite a good presentation (the King never lost his interest in Columbus) the whole idea of sailing west to the Orient seemed fantastic, and the chronicler mentions Japan as "that Isle Cypango of Marco Polo"-in other words a mythic island known only through centuriesold traveller's tales. And indeed, there were mythical islands abounding in sailor' s yams. Cypango of course was real-but fantastically more distant than Columbus imagined. Columbus bent every piece of evidence his way to show it cou Id be donebut it is surely wrong to see him as an obsessed fanatic. He had learned Castilian, then the court language of Portugal , and knew enough Latin to cite the ancient authorities. He was in touch with the intellectual currents of the time, and, a few years before his interview, had corresponded with the learned physician Paolo dal Pazzo Toscanelli in Florence, who had written that the distance from Portugal to China, heading due west, was only 5000 miles-and to Japan , only 3000. Toscanelli appears to have been happy to repeat his ideas to Columbus , and furnished him with a map designed to these concepts. One way and another, Columbus came out with even shorter distances-3550 miles 17
REDISCOVERING COLUMBUS to China, 2400 to Japan. How big was the world? On that depended the length of a degree of longitude. The length ofadegree was mostly underestimated- and Columbus chose the most favorable estimates he could find . How big was Asia? No European had been there except by land, with no way of knowing with any accuracy how far he'd come to get there. The journey took over a year. Naturally the extent of Asia was universally over-estimated in the West. And to cap it all, the usually reliable Marco Polo had put Japan 1500 miles off the coast of China, bringing it by Columbus's reckoning, as noted, to 2400 miles off the Canary Islands. He chose the Canaries because he knew he could catch the magic carpet of the Trade Winds to waft him westward. But the actual distance from the Canaries to Japan is 10,600miles, not 2,400or3,000. Co lumbus's brother Ferdinand, the chart maker, was convinced. He left Portugal to go seek support in France and England for the Enterprise of the Indies, as the brothers had come to call it. There was no point in Columbus hanging around further, so he took ship for Spain, to try his luck there. And sometime in mid- 1485, he and his fiveyear-old son Diego came ashore in the frontier seaport of Los Palos. He did not go to sea again, except for a short coastal passage back to Lisbon, for the next eight years. When he did , it was to sail for the Indies. How Well Do We Know Him? The Columbus scholar Robert Fuson borrows Winston Churchill's phrase: "Columbus is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." And he feels that Columbus himself contributed to the mystery of hi s origins and early life. Samuel Eliot Morison felt quite otherwise. Any mystery, Morison suggests, comes from the conspiratorial theories oflater critics, each with an axe to grind; the conte mporaries from whom we learn most of what we know about Columbus show no confusion but a clear picture of the man , his origins and his voyages. One of these is his second son Ferdinand, who sailed with him and subsequently became a distingui shed international scholar. It is mainly in the last hundred years that ideas that Col um bus was nobly born and had to hide it, or was of Jewi sh origin and had to hide it, or was Catalan, or from a Genoese settlement on the Greek island ofChios, or. .. Each of these, 18
and other theories that have been raised, demands discrediting some portion of the written record. Which brings us to forgeries . The most important document to be discredited in this way is Columbus's famous mayorazgo, or will, ofl498. He wrote it evidently to secure his rights and assure his inheritance. It is in this document that he claims Genoa, the "noble and powerful city by the sea," as his home town, and directs his heirs to maintain forever a bank account there. Not exactly, one would have thought, the best way to ingratiate himself with hi s Spanish sovereign! But very much in character with the man we come to know through the records, which are plentiful , of what he thought (or wrote), and what he said, and what he did. A proud and powerful voice speaks in this document. Well,ofcourse, weknowofthedocument only through Martin Fernandez de Navarrete, the Spanish naval officer and scholar who discovered the Las Casas abstract of Columbus 's journal in 1790, and published it with other papers, including the will , in 1825. Later, Morison tells us in his European Discovery of America , neither the will nor its governmental confirnrntion could be found . This was not (as was claimed) because it did not exist, but because the archives of which it was part were used as bedding for Napoleon's cavalry invading Spain, and following the liberation of Spain, the salvaged papers were thrown into a pit. Archivists flinched from the unpleasant task of sorting out these papers fromamong "driedNapoleonicmanure" (Morison' s phrase) until an enterprising Bostonian, Alice Gould, had a crack at it, and ... found the royal confirmation of the will! The correspondence between Columbus and Toscanelli in Florence-perhaps the leading center ofltalian arts and learning in this period- has also been dismissed as a forgery, engineered after Columbus's death to establish that he got his idea of the distance to Asia from a reputable source rather than from sail ors' yarns of land to the westward, so preserving hi s "good name." Thi s seems a staggering presumption. Is there any positive evidence of forgery in this correspondence? The correspondence was confirmed by Columbus's son Ferdinand, who adds that after receiving Toscanelli 's map, Columbus wrote again to the aging savant, who repeated his
former counsels and encouragement, a little more brusquely this time. Samuel Eliot Morison, one feels, is of all students the closest to Columbus. He shared with him a hierarchical sense of society. In both men this imposed a strong sense of the obligations as well as the privileges of the high rank they both achieved. They shared a passionate appreciation of the beauties of this world which they could (and did) convey in marvellous prose; and both were strongly affected by feminine beauty. Columbus showed this in writing of the native peoples and perhaps in dealing with Isabella herself- and you can sense Morison enjoying every minute of these attractions, practically waving a minatory finger at Columbus to warn him not to get entangled with a comely young widow in the Canaries on the eve of hi s departure for the New World. Columbus was unquestionably a devout Christian, and Catholic, linked by the laying-on of hands to the Apostles who walked the dusty roads of Israel with Jesus. (So was Morison, through the Episcopalian church.) This did not involve, in that era, belief in the infallibility of the Pope. And it is perhaps most important to understand, in our era, which has swung so violently toward logical positivism, dialectical materialism and mere pragmatism, that Columbus's faith was not polluted by superstition. He drank further upstream than that, and clearly derived enormous refreshment from his access to what the church calls "the waters oflife"- the archetypical meanings of the human experience. In immediate terms, Columbus's faith meant that he believed what he read in the Bible (the Jewi sh Old Testament as well as the Christian New Testament). This gave him his frame of reference, indeed his very picture of the world. He also stood in a kind of holy awe of the writings of the Ancient World, whose world picture had been preserved and extensively revised by Arab geographers, whom we now know as the principal keepers of the flame of classical learning during the Dark Ages. This reverence of a devout person for the teachings of the Church, and of a self-educated person for the writings of classical authorities, did not seem to hamper him in his key discoveries. The most dramatic example of this is surely his discovery of the wind systems of the North Atlantic, which enabled him to make his voyage SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
I
and return with perfect confidence. It may be added, as food for thought today, that Christian doctrine did not regard history as ended- more things were to ~ome in the world. As for the Ancients, try thi s pa::.sage, in Monson ' s translation from Seneca's Medea : An age will come after many years when the Ocean will loose the chains of things , a huge land lie revealed; when Tiphys (Jason · s pilot) will disclose new worlds and Thule no more be the ultimate. As Columbus 's son Ferdinand noted, "This prophecy was fulfilled by my father the Admiral, in the year 1492." It fell to Columbus to loose thechaim,ofthings; after 1492 the wo1 ld was simply not the same. O To Voyage Further. .. A rewarding beginning to your own discovery of Christopher Columbus is Samuel Eliot Mori;, on' s Admiral of the Ocean Sea .first published in 1942 and widely available today. Morison may push a few conclusions too hard, but zhen, so did Columbus--and in these pages you get to know the man and his world. Robert Fuson ' s new book. The Log ofCluistopher Columbus (Jmernational Marine Publishing, Camden , Maine , 1987) makes glorious reading and includes u lucidly clear critical introduction . Material from Ferdinand' s book about his father , and from the Las Casas Hi story of the Indies, i woven into the Las Casas abstract of the log , where Fuson feels tins brings us closer 10 !he original (long lost) log . For a pure translation of che Las Casas abstract, see The Diario of Christopher Columbus's first Voyage to America, 14921493, translated with a concordance and with illuminating notes by Oliver Dunn and JLw1 es £ . Kelley , Jr. (University of Oklahoma Press. Norman and London , J989 ). And for a sense of the wider world in which Columbu;, sailed , Samuel Eliot Morison· s European Discovery of America. particularly Vo lume fl. The Southern Voyages , 1492-1616 (Oxford University Press. London, New York , etc. , J974) offers a wonde1fully lively picw re of the leaders, the men and the ships, and the native peoples they encountered. Duniel J. Boon tin's The Disco erers (RandomHouse .New York, 1983 ), relates these developments to the wider intellectual prugress ofmankind in ways one feels Morison ·would approvethough their approach is qui1e different. SEA HISTORY 53. SPRlNG 1990
Published in the year Columbus set sail for 1he Americas, 1492, Martin Behaim' s glube shows Eutope and Africa in usable form- so also the outlaying Atlantic islands , the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries and Cape Verdes . Fantasy takes over as he goes westward, in the myzhical Amillia, where bishops are supposed to have fled after Moors invaded Spain (rhe name survives in the Caribbean Amilles) and St. Brendan's Isle , which has somehow migrnted outhfrom its accustomed home in the northern seas. And 1hen. most seriously. Cipangu (Japan) about as far again from the uurer Azores as 1hey are from Europe. This map corresponds closely to the map Columbus believed in. In 1508, two years after Columbus' s earthly voyaging was over, Johann Ruysch gives a picrure of the world showing Sou.th America's nonheast shoulder well filled in (partly from Columbus';, third voyage), with Hondurus, parl of Nicaragua , Haiti (Spagno la) and other islands dearly recogni::able. The resl of the map shows a remarkably accurate Africa and well-formed borderlands lO the Indian Ocean, as a result of rapid Portuguese exploiwtion of the eastward route to rhe Indies. But look northeast! Greenland, well k1wv. n by now, is shown as an extension of the Gobi Desert in Asia, and China (Catha ya) fies just beyond the islands Columbus discovered-just as he claimed it did. This map clearly ~hows the state of the known world , with remarkable accuracy. Columbus, clearly, was not so out-of-step with advanced geographical thinking as he is often represented. Both maps , accurate enough to use today for the Mediterranean world. grow surprisingly fu zzy depicting the British Isle~ . Denmark, and Norway. These northern realms were in a separate trading syMem; the view offered in both maps is the world as seen from Lisbon , which served as the Mediterranean nations' window on the world.
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CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
ยง eB@ QUINCENTENARY JUBILEE
Columbus Quincentennial Celebration
โ ข
The United States Christopher Columbus Quincentenary Jubilee Commission, created by the US Congress, is planning a three-year celebration of the 500th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of the New World. The Commission's Maritime Committee is planning and encouraging programs to commemorate the seafaring legacy of Columbus. The central symbols of the Quincentenary will be the official replicas of the ships of Columbus, sponsored by Texaco Inc. In this joint venture between the US Commission and the government of Spain, official replicas of the original caravels Nina and Pinta and the nao Santa Maria will tour the Americas. Designed and built in Spain using plans secured from Jose Martinez-Hidalgo, a Spanish historian considered the foremost authority on Columbus's ships, the caravels will travel to over fifty cities in the Americas , providing the American people with a first-hand opportunity to experience the thrill of exploration. A tour of the Caribbean Sea and the contiguous waters of North America, including the East and West Coasts, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Great Lakes, will begin in the summer of 1991 and continue through 1993. Just as the centennial celebration in 1986 of the Statue of Liberty commemorated France's legacy to the United States, the Quincentenary in 1992 of the first voyage of Christopher Columbus to the New World will commemorate the legacies of Spain and Italy to the United States. The Christopher Columbus Quincentenary Jubilee Commission, in cooperation with Spain, will send the caravels to New York, Boston and San Francisco to join in a parade with tall ships from all over the world. As part of the celebration, other ports will have the oppo1tunity to host both the tall ships and the Columbus caravels. Launch of the new Santa Maria in Barcelona on October 20, 1989---a project of the Spanish Government in cooperation with the Quincentenary Commission.
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SEA HISTORY 53 , SPRING 1990
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In addition, the Commission will establish close and ongoing communication with the magnificent sa iling ships of the world to facilitate their voyages to a<; many US port cities as they elect to visit in 1992. The Commission has designated San Francisco as the site for a regatta and parade of sail on October 12, 1992, Columbus Day. As in other designated port citie , the parade of sail will be accompanied by a number of cultural exhibits, waterfront festivals, and televised entertainment special . Fireworks di play , treet parades, maritime conferences, and receptions to honor the vi iting captains and cadets will be part of the alute to Columbus. America's rich seafaring history is an important part of the Co lumbu s Quincentenary . The Commission's goal is to make this history come alive a America celebrates the thrill of the fronti er.
Chairman Chri<;topherColumbus Quincentenary Jubilee Commission
The great topsail schooner Juan Sebastian de Elcano, built 1927 and named for the commander who brought Magellan's Victoria back to Seville, will represent Spain in Operation nil 1992. Keeping alive the proud eafaring traditions of her native land, she is one of the few sa1l traming ships to have wiled around the world.
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SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
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Above, the Flemish artist Pieter Brueghel viewed Naples quite properly from the sea-the medium that gave it sustenance and connection to the world. In this painting of the 1560s, depicting the seaport city' s def ense against attack by a Turkish fleet, the fa cing-outward of the city toward the sea is marvellously evident. Brueghel changed the
angular breakwater sheltering the harbor into a curving arm that literally embraces the sea and draws ships to the heart ofthe city. No cities on earth matched Lhese Italian seaport cities, which continued 10 grow in prosperity and power f or a century after Columbus set out on his voyaging.
Below, ships in their varying sizes and profu se varieties properly dominate the calm waters of Venice , the Most Serene , in this view drawn by Jacopo de' Barbari in 1500, while Columbus still had his last voyage to make . The sea god in mid-harbor can well afford to smile ,for the ships he conveys to andfrom the port have made it a city (here substantially complete as it is today) that continues to awe and astound the most casual visitor. The ships are exaggerated in size, from the fishin g smack in the foreground (of a type common in these waters until our day ) to the full -bellied deepwatermen riding light in
the roadstead. Well, why not? Wi1hout them nolhing else in this picture would exist. Not jusl the luxuries of life or the refin ements of communicalion come to this city by sea, but the very grain to make bread. Founded on inaccessible sandbars during the troubled times that fo llowed the fall of Rome and the ra vaging of the Italian peninsula by primitive intruders, Venice had become by 1500 not only the most serene, but Lhe most accessible city. The sea, which had earlier sheltered it from Lhe world, had by this time become its avenue to Lhe world.
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ITALIAN SEAPORT CITIES The Italian seaport cities, of which Columbus's Genoa was a most important example, nourished and were nourished by a rich Mediterranean trade- the indispensable foundation for the Portuguese and Spanish breakout into the ocean world, which changed the world forever in the 1400s and 1500s. Here a few Renaissance painters look at these seaport towns with remarkable accuracy and sense of what they are about. PS
Vittore Carpaccio placed his "Meeting of St. Ursula and St. Etherius" (painted in 1495 , three years after Columbus set sail for the New World) in the heart of an idealized Italian seaport city--the harbor. Amid the piled-up stonework, glittering wealth and pomp of a solemn occasion, the great carracks that bear the city's trade and connect it to the outer world stand out in the background like mute giants supporting the whole dazzling pageant. To the left, in the protected inner port, the elaborate framework of a ship under construction is half-hidden behind two finish ed ships. At center, a great carrack is careenedfor bottom cleaning and re-caulking, while at right, a ship stands out to sea. Take away the ships , one feels , and little else would remain--and that is the truth that the artist, perhaps unconsciously, painted into this wonde1ful scene.
The Dark Ocean , as the Arabs called the North Atlantic, remained a realm where navigation took on the nature of combat, but by the midi 500s tall burdensome ships were winning their way across it on a regular basis, leading to the rapid development of the Americas. Here big ships scud through crashing seas under tenebrous skies in Brueghel's unfinished work "Storm at Sea." The painting, which may have been interrupted by Brueghe/' s death in 1569, expresses the animalistic fury offoul weather at sea , an elemental force suggested by the sportive whale that pursues the ship. The cask bobbing in the ship' s wake my be symbolic appeasement to the whaleforce the ship contends with. Or ii may be a Chrislian message of renuncialion of !he world' s goods 10 make life's voyage successfully. No one painted deepwater voyaging much in Brueghel's time, but clearly this artist knew the awe thal any mariner feels when deep calls unto deep.
SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
25
MARINE ART NEWS by Peter Stanford
London, Moonlight over Lower Pool 1897
FREE SWEEPSTAKES A $1500 John Stobart print will be given away to publicize the fifth annual Sea Heritage Ma.rine Art Contest. Stobart prints hang in museums, corporate offices and fine homes. 86 prints have been Issued since 1974. Many sell for more than 20 times their original price in the current art market. Everyone has a chance to win: Send business card. Write on the back, "/ wll/ talk up the Art contest". Bernie Klay will put your card in the raffle. Artists enter the Sea Art Contest: Send a self addressed stamped envelope for an entry blank and rules. SEA HERITAGE Box 241HI, Glen Oaks, NY11004 (800)247-3262/(718)343-9575
26
Outward Bound on the can expect more sensation-oriented, Morning Tide cleverly promoted masters of what "A 21 -gun salute for your remarks about some derisively term avant garbage. so-called modem art on page 41 of Sea By virtue of entrenched monopoly the History 51," writesFrederickP. Witte of public, perpetually confused as to what Lakeland, Florida--one of the twentyto believe in, is effectively denied the odd people who wrote in with comments privilege of choice, the art student on this subject. He continues: denied the opportunity of learning. There is somethi ng therapeutic about Only if public opinion, weakened if walking along the seashore or better not non-existent, should somehow beyet, being outward bound on the come a force, can there be any hope of morning tide. However, when that is our seeing rising stars of true excelnot available to us, marine art has a lence in American painting today . way of stirring up the same feelings . Copies of this essay, " Art CommenOne can imagine the dovecotes of tary," may be had by dropping us a line modem art a-flutter with that one. Art as at NMHS , 132 Maple Street, Croton-ontherapy! Art as subordinate (ugh) to the Hudson NY 10520. experience itself! But we here regard The new Stobart oil painting that that simple statement as a forceful and heads the next column represents a demoving affirmation the role of art in our parture from the finely detailed, evocalives. Robert Frost, we feel , would have tive seaport paintings that have been this approved. So perhaps would Rembrandt, master's stock-in-trade. Some years ago and other artists in different media who he spoke of his desire to paint everyday celebrate the experience of our lives, things exactly as they struck him, workand seek the sacred in the ordinary. ing in the open air. This particular spot "There goes the budget! " writes David on the island of Martha's Vineyard, off Bunnell of New Windsor NY, hav ing the coast of southern Massachusetts, just commissioned anew painting by his where the tidal current rushes chortling favorite artist. Not just the cost of the past the little fishing village of Menpainting, but "I'll have to move to get emsha, is a favorite comer of the world more wall space." He concludes, "I love to us, and evidently to the artist- and marine art." This ebullient spirit charac- through him , perhaps to you, reader. terized much of the response we receiv* * * * * ed. And why not? It was Michel de Mon- Friends of marine artist and naval architaigne who said Philosophy wears a tect George F. Campbell, led by his laughing face- which is why, onemight particular friend John Shedd, have issued a memoir on the man and his work. add, she so often passes unrecognized. And we liked the simple statement of George, an NHMS Advisor, was archiGene Olsen in Crescent City, Califor- tect of the Cutty Sark restoration in nia: "The subject has opened the door England, and of the Wavertree restorafor history and made it exciting." And to tion in New York up until his death in round out this cheerful miscellany, our 1988 (see Sea History 49, p34). He refriend Harry L. Nelson , Jr. , writes us ceived theNMHSJames MonroeAward from Rolling Hills Estates, California: in 1978 on his merits as historian, par"Sea History gets better and better all the ticularly for his great wor)s: The China time. It's full of little pearl s and all you Tea Clippers, published in 1974. In that need to do is read closely to find them." work he gave us his appreciation of the * * * * * art embodied in these graceful vessels, The painter John Stobart, in May last and the loyalties they commanded: year, offered an "Art Commentary" in Today much of what was wrought in which, more in sadness than in anger these ships would be considered un(but with a kind of restrained anger, as necessary and uneconomical, with our complete change in attitude towell) he takes to task the scholiasts who have, in his view, both ruined budding ward life and the means of sustaining it. The ever increasing pace impels us painters and contributed to the alienation of the public from art-art which towards goals which, some would should be reaching, challenging and consider, are not yet proved to be the refreshing people. Here is an example of right ones, and many values which were satisfying ends in themselves what I mean by "restrained anger," from this admirable piece: have been lost on the way . The inIn the more educationally based TV tense pride with which a seaman would sign on with the ship of his programs and magazine articles ... we SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
Gaze la Under Sail
ORIGINAL
Member: Society of Illustra tors
ANTIQUE MAPS & SEA CHARTS
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Ame rica n Soc1r ty o f Mann e A rt ists
choice, despite the discomforts he knew were inevitable, is seldom met today. though its basis is still felt . Yes. George. that basi s of seaman ly pride is still felt- with you the re. as you are in thi s book. to remind us of it in your art. For a picture of George 's range of interests and friendships, write John Sheddforacopyofhismemoir: 39West Fort Lee Road, Bogota NJ 07603 .
* * * * *
John Noble (1913-1983), harbor arti st of New York, could be considered a lucky guy . Lucky that he lived so fu ll a life- though all us wi h it could have been longer- fortun ate in hi s "hold fasf' friends and in the people who appreciated his inimitable art. Lucky in these last, particularly, in that they inc lude the very people whose lives he cele brated, the ordinary people of the harbor. It would not be too surprising to find that he had come back as a seagull , like the wondcrfu l creature shown in the etching below, whi h he did for his mother Glo-
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riaaround 1937. ltisaseamen 's uperstition that old hand who ' ve slipped their cable come back that way, and John was a veteran of the coasting trade in bi wooden schooners that c losed out the story of cargo-carrying sailing ship in America. While he lived much of hi life in dire fin ancial need (one does not associate the word "poverty" with John Noble!), and he poke of himself as a "scavenger," he had the eagull 's wild beaut and love of freedom in his soul. Erm Urban, Curator of the John A. Noble Collection , met Noble just once, a fe w day before he died. But on that day began what bids fa ir to be a lifelong att chment. he recently publi shed the above etchi g in H old Fa t!, ne wsletter of the Collection- nd pro mi ses to pub Ii h more. To get in on a good thing, write, call or visit the Noble Collection : 70 Ri hmond Terrace, Staten lsland NY 10301 ; 71 8 447-6490. o El\ HI TORY 5 , SPRING 1990
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"Naval Engagement on Lake Champlain , J J Oct. 1776," watercolor by Henry Gilder.from the Royal Library Collection, Windsor Castle, reproduced by permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth If. The painting is captioned: "a. Cumberland Head. b.Cumberland Bay. c. Isle de Va/cow" d. Petite Isle. e. Grande Isle. f. Rebe/fleet. g. Carleton schooner. h. Royal Savage aground. i. Line of gun boats. k. Inflexible. l. Maria. m. Royal Convert. n. Thunderer Radeau."
Valcour: An Unlikely Naval Encounter by Herbert K. Saxe As you approach Whitehall , New York, travelling north along NY Route 22, the summer breeze rushing in the open car window is redolent of farm country-livestock, barnyards and fresh -cut hay-so it is easy to be startled by the welcome sign along the road: "Whitehall , New York. Birthplace of the US Navy." The " navy" and the story of its " birth" can be found in the Navy Room of the Skenesborough Museum , a low , green, one-story building, fronted with decorative iron doors, located next to the Champlain Canal in Whitehall. Here, in pictures and di splays, is told the story of America 's first naval fleet, the Cham plain Squadron: how it was built and commanded by the enigmati c, charismatic Benedict Arnold , and its essential contribution to the cause of the nascent American Revolution.
* * * * *
The spring thaws of 1776 found the St. Lawrence River clogged with English ships carrying both red-coated British regulars and blue-coated Hessians. Like a dagger aimed at the heart of the Colonies, this large force under the command of General Guy Carleton was to sweep down from Canada to Albany where it would link up with Lord Howe's fo rces advancing up the Hudson Valley from New York City, and split the rebellious Colonies asunder. To carry out this strategy, the British had to control Lake Champlain . Green Mountains to the east, Adirondacks to the west, picturesque Lake Champlain was to be of enormous strategic importance to the outcome of the American Revo lution. Stretching 125 miles from north to south , it was the vital link between the St. Lawrence and Hudson river valleys. And surrounding Champlain was a trackless wilderness. Building roads would have taken years , and cost countless li ves. The lake offered the only route. But to use it for the safe transportation of men and supplies the British first had to control the lake. There were, however, fo ur Colonial ships already on the lake: the schooner Liberty (seized from the Tory , Philip Skene for whom the hamlet of Skenesborough had been named) ; the SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
schooner Revenge (built in Ticonderoga), the sloop Enterprise, and the schooner Royal Savage (both captured earlier from the British). If the British had tried to send unprotected troops to the southern end of the lake in canoes and bateaux , they would have been sitting ducks for the light cannon of the little American squadron. Another natural barrier worked against the British. Lake Champlain flows north into the Richelieu River and is navigable to St. Johns. Between St. Johns and the St. Lawrence, the Chambli rapids blocked the Richelieu and Lake Champlain to the British fleet. Consequently, if the British wanted a fleet of bigger and better ships, they had two equally arduous choices: build them from scratch south of the rapids, or transport them around the rapids piece-by-piece and reassemble them in St. Johns. Whichever they did-and they did both-they had to do it with all haste ! Summers were short along the St. Lawrence. At the southern end of the lake in Skenesborough (Whitehall today), under orders from George Washington and Horatio Gates, Brigadier General Benedict Arnold was to assemble an American fleet and delay the British incursion. Thus was the stage set for a desperate effort to be undertaken during the summer of 1776, the campaign for Lake Champlain-and the outcome of the Revolution hung in the bal ance! The four-ship nucleus of Arnold's squadron was totally inadequate to face the invasion fleet being assembled by the British at St. Johns. Arnold needed more ships, more firepower, more men, more everything. The new fl eet was to be built from standing timber; so from Skenesborough to Ticonderoga, the forest rang with the crash of falling trees, and the whine of reactivated sawmills. Other essential shipbuilding supplies were forthcoming-spikes, hawsers, anchors, canvas, blocks, caulking and even paint (inadvertently, the British blockade of New York and Philadelphi a helped divert the critically needed material to Lake Champlain). There were few skilled carpe nters though, no sailmakers, no riggers and no blacksmiths. Congress authorized special bonuses ($5 a day and a cow), and craftsmen 29
"The Auack and Defeat of rhe American Fleet under Benedic [sic] Arnold, by the King' s Fleet Commanded by Cap!. f hos. Pn11gle , f rom a Sketch taken by an Officer on rhe Spot..,
began to trickle in, first from nearby Albany , followed by others from Connecticut, Massachusetts , Maine and Rhode Island-even from as far away as Philadelphia. They sweated under the broiling summer sun, slept in steamy barracks, were bloodied by mosquitoes, suffered from small pox . Some died. But, the fleet was built. And what a strange armada it was! With no time to build a fleet of conventional ships, what was launched at Skenesborough were large galleys: 72 ' x 20 ', round-bottomed, with extra heavy scantlings, rigged with two triangular lanteen sails on short masts for ease of handling ; and gundelos (or gunboats): 54' x 15 ', flat-bottomed, carrying two square sails on a single mast. The galleys, looking most like Mediterranean pirate vessels, carried crews of 80-90. T he gundelos carried crews of 45 . Arnold's fleet, according to British records, was made up of the galleys Congress (flagship),Washington and Trumbull; the cutter Lee; topsail schooners Royal Savage and Revenge; the sloop Enterprise; and eight gundelos, Boston, New
Ha ven, Providence, New York, Connecticut, Spitfire, Philadelphia, and Jersey. The Washington and the Congress each carried two 18pounders and two 12-pounders. The Trumbull had one 18- and one 12-pounder. A ll three carried a mix of smaller cannon and sw ive l guns. Each gundelo carried a 12-pounder in the bow, two 9-pounders (one on each side) and swive l guns. Just about half the size of the British flotilla , lightly armed and sorely lacking experienced sailors (right up to the end, Arnold had fruitlessly begged Gates for " one hundred good seamen as soon as possible"), the Colonial force fou ght valiantly against virtually hopeless odds and were able to desperately hang on long enough to sow the seeds of ultimate victory for the Revolutionary cause. "That the Americans were strong enough to impose the capitulation of Saratoga," noted wellknown naval historian Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, "was due to the invaluable year of delay secured to them by their little navy on Lake Champlain."
* * * * *
B y early fall, the two fleets stood ready. British fleet captain Thomas Pringle commanded a formidable force. The Inflexible, a quarterdeck ship-sloop, mounted eighteen 12-pounders and was quite equal to handling Arnold 's squadron sing le30
handedly. The M aria and the Carleton , topsail schooners, mounted respectively fourteen and twelve 6-pounders, m aking either one more powerful than anything in Arnold ' fleet. The Thunderer, a large, flat-bottomed , ketch-rigged radeau, carried six 24-pounders, six 12-pounders and two howitze1s in addition there was the Loyal Convert, a gundelo armed with seven 9-pounders and, fi nally, twenty-fo ur gunboats each armed with one gun rang ing fro m 9- to 24-pounders. In it time, manned by crews of expe1ienced Royal Navy sailm s and marines, this was the most powerful fleet ever assembled m America ' s inland waters. As each American vessel slid down the ways at Skene borough, it was worked north , down the lake to Cro wn Point, where it was anned , fitted and rigged. OnAug ust 20, 1776, the vang uard of the Colonial fl eet bravely sailed north for its date with destiny. Arnold had wi sely decided not to challenge the British in open water, where their superior firepowe r and seamanship would give them the advantage. Instead, he planned to " come up as high as the Isle of Valcour , where is a good harbor, and where we shall have the ad vantageofattacking the enemy." After reconno itering and taking soundings , Arnold fi nally chose an anchorage in the channel between thickl y wooded Valcour and the western shore of the lake . Here his squadron would be screened from disco very by any boats coming fro m the north. " We are . . . moored as near together as possi ble," he wrote General Gates, " and in such a fo1m that few vessels can attack us at the same time , and those will be exposed to the fire of the full fleet. " Arnold 's strategy was clearly vindicated when, on October 11 , 1776 he watched from his flagship Congress as the B ritish fleet, a strong north wind bellying its sails, boldly sailed pas t Valcour Island . P ri ngle overshot his quarry by two mile& before realizing hi s error. Finally sightin g the American squadron , the British immediately put about. But now they had to beat up agai nst the strong northerly wind . In P rin gle ' s own words, "T he wind was so unfavorable that for a long lime nothing could be brought into action with them, but the gunboats and the Carleton." The British g unboats, able to use their oars, turned at once and began to pull lo the attack. T he radeau Thunderer, the gundeloLoyal Converr, and thesquarerigged Inflexible were too far downwind to help, leaving Pringle without his most powerful ships. lL was to be late afte rnoon before the Inflexible was able to work her way up into effecti ve range. Arnold had won his ad vantage! While hi s strategies worked tactically, the seamanship of his crews fa iled him . Had Arnold ' s sailors been more experienced , the outcome of the engagement might have been delayed , or at least made more costly to the E ng lish. Arnold, still limping from the leg wound he had sustained at Quebec. certainly perforn1ed " above and beyond'' as he awkwardly moved around the bloodied , slippery deck of the Congress, personally aiming and firing the cannon, his face and c lothes smudged with bl ack powder, his hair singed. Battle action was intense and sanguinary. The boom of the cannon created a fie rce cacophony punctuated by the sharp thud of " on target" cannonballs and the guttu ral screams of wounded and dyi ng sailors. Acrid black powder smoke hung between the island and shore, obscuring the brill iant foltage, sting ing English and American eyes alike. T here were heroes on both sides, but the outcome was inevi table. By some bad management, the Royal Sa vage was caught S.E A HIS OR Y 53, SPRING 1990
between the battle lines of the opposing fleets and, with her rigging shot through, uncontrollably ran aground where, that night, the British burned her. The gundelo Philadelphia , in the thick of the fight, her hull holed through by British cannonballs, sank in the Valcour straight after the cannonade had ceased. To their credit, the concentrated fire of the Americans had badly damaged the Carleton and silenced her guns, leaving her helpless with two feet of water in her bilge, eight men killed and eight men wounded. The British gunboats too, had paid a high price. Badly battered by American grapeshot, the gunboats were ordered to withdraw as the Inflexible finally moved into range just as night fell and delivered five heavy broadsides, silencing American guns and ending the day's hostilities in twilight. On top of everything else, throughout the battle, the Americans had been harassed by the arrows and musket fire of England's Indian allies from both shores. Fortunately Arnold had anticipated this tactic, and, using young evergreens, effectively barricaded the sides of his ships. That night, Arnold surveyed his precarious position: ships had been lost, others badly damaged, many officers and men had been killed and wounded, ammunition was running dangerously low, and the Colonials were seemingly trapped. Indeed, Pringle fully anticipated destroying the American squadron the next morning. But Arnold had other plans. Hugging the western shore, under cover of darkness and dense fog, and helped along by a northeast breeze, the American fleet slipped by the British. In dead silence, in single file , showing only a carefully shaded stem light, the badly battered squadron got underway.
By dawn, October 12, 1776, after sailing all night they had reached Schuylers Island, some ten miles south of Valcour. All day, frantic but fruitless efforts were made to save the foundering gundelos. Ultimately, two of the already sinking boats were scuttled. Spotted by the British on the morning of October 13, Arnold aboard the Congress, with Washington covering the rear, headed south toward Crown Point with the remaining gundelos ahead./ nflexible, Carleton and Maria in pursuit, the battered Washington had to strike her flag . As the British inexorably closed on the Congress and the last of the gundelos, Arnold and his crews kept up a ragged fire until there was no chance of escape left. Then a surpri se maneuver- he brought his fleet up on a reach and headed for what is now known as Arnold ' s Bay, on the Vermont shore. Once again, the British oversailed him and had to beat back. In the delay, Arnold ordered the gundelos run up on the beach. The Congress kept up a covering fire until all the crews were ashore. Then she too, was beached. Finally, with flags flying defiantly, the remnants of the American Valcour encounter fleet were fired, and Arnold, with his men , successfully beat a hasty retreat to Crown Point and safety. Survivors of the American fleet, including the schooner Revenge, the sloop Enterprise, and the row galley Trumbull, safely put in at Ticonderoga, where they joined the schooner Liberty, which had been dispatched for provisions, and the unfinished galley Gates, neither of which took part in the Valcour engagement. This nondescript, undermanned squadron, with many of the crew walking wounded, was all that stood between the British fleet and complete control of Lake Champlain.
On the 13th of October, 1776, Arnold ran the remnants of his fleet aground on the Vermont shore. Under fire from the British fleet, the Americans removed their swivel guns, torched the fl eet and escaped to Crown Point. Painting by Col. Charles H. Waterhouse , USMCR , courtesy Marine Corps Museums Art Collection.
For both sides, the Battle ofValcour began on the shipways. For the Colonists the building took place at Skenesborough, now called Whitehall. Shown in the diorama above are galleys in the center and gunboats, left and right, under construction during the summer of 1776. Photo by Steve Napolitano, courtesy the Skenesborough Museum.
Three galleys were built at Skenesborough. Congress and Washington carried two 18-pounders and two 12-pounders. The Trumbull carried one 18- and one 12-pounder. In addition, all three carried a mix of smaller cannon and swivel guns. Photo by Steve Napolitano, courtesy the Skenesborough Museum.
The British, however, feared the nearness of winter, which would make it impossible to establish suppl y lines back to Canada, even if they were able to capture now-vulnerable Ticonderoga. They abruptly retreated back to Canada to await the follow ing spring.
* * * * *
During the Revolution, most naval action by the Colonies against the British was aimed at cutting Britain 's long supply lines. Such engagements rarely in volved more than a few ships, and though action was frequently fierce, it generally lacked any overall strategic importance. The one exception was Yalcour. No naval engagement during the war involved the number of vessels, nor had the long-range importance of Valcour. True, the Americans and their motley fl otilla were overwhelmed. But Arnold and his valiant crews had won the allimportant campaign to buy time. Their bleached bones lie on the bottom of Valcour strait, mu te testimony to their sense of honor and the strength of their convictions. Captain Peter Merrill, protagonist of the Kenneth Roberts novel Rabble in Arms, eloquently speaks fo r all these heroic, nameless Americans: "I know the battle we fo ught at Yalcour Island was momentous indeed, and that no force, great or small , ever lived to better purposes or died more gloriously than that force which manned Arnold 's fl eet on Lake Champlain. It had saved the lake fo r that year, but it had done more; it had won the delay that brought us the chance to fi ght at Saratoga, a chance that might have been fo rever lost." D
Mr. Saxe, anavyveteranandretired /BM executive, isa writer and multimedia producer. 32
SEA HISTORY 53 , SPRING 1990
The Marine Gallery, Cowes I
The Philadelphia Project The gunboat Philadelphia remained at the bottom of Lake Champlain until 1935, when Colonel Lorenzo Hagglund raised her, placed the hull on a barge and created a floating exhibit that toured Lake Champlain and the Hudson River for the next twenty-five years. In 1961 the Philadelphia went to the Smithsonian Institution, where she is a central exhibit at the National Museum of American History. In 1989, 213 years after the Battle of Valcour, the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum will begin construction of a full -size working replica of the Philadelphia. Created from plans and blueprints provided by the Smithsonian, the replica will duplicate exactly the details and features of the 54-foot, 29-ton original. The public launching of the new Philadelphia in the summer of 1991 will simultaneously celebrate the birth of the American Navy at Whitehall, New York, in 1776 and the bicentennial of Vermont's admission into the Union as the fourteenth American state. The three-year project to build the new Philadelphia will engage the public in a variety of exciting and innovative ways. An apprenticeship program for children and adults will provide the opportunity to learn traditional boat-building skills and participate in the on-going construction work. The Museum will also develop an educational program around the project, as well as temporary and permanent exhibits to interpret the Battle of Valcour and the eighteenth-century heritage of the Champlain Valley. D For more information contact the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, Box 746, Burlington, Vermont 05402, or telephone 802-475-2317.
/'
'Britannia Racing off Cowes,' by J. Steven Dews The King's fabulous Racing Cutter 'Britannia' is seen here off Cowes in 1926 leading from 'Sh a mrock,' 'Lulworth,' 'Westward' and 'White Heather 2.' 'Britannia competed for over 40 years sailing 635 races, gaining 231 first places and 129 second and thirds. To secure your copy of this stunning Limited Edition send ÂŁ92 ($149) (includes postage) or send for free information of other editions from the works of top British Marine Artists J. Steven Dews and David Brackman to:
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by Ralph Freeman
In the fortunes of most major cities there another area; between 1830 and 1930 is a turning point in their growth and over nine million emigrants passed development. In the case of Manchester, through Liverpool on their way to new England, it was the opening of the lives in America, Canada, and Australia. Manchester Ship Canal on January l , Until the early 1860s most emigrants 1894. This 36-mile link to the Mersey left Liverpool by sailing ship. It took up River estuary at Liverpool converted a to 35 days to reach America, and up to four months to Australia. Steamships, dwindling town into a thriving city. Some 250 years ago, when spinning however, reduced voyages across the and weaving began to flouri sh in the Atlantic to between seven and ten days. Ships from around the world could Lancashire area, communications to the outside world hardly existed. Roads were deposit their cargoes in Liverpool , but it no better than rutted, muddy cart-tracks. soon became apparent that instead of The trip westward from Manchester to acting in a statesmanlike manner, and the coast for transit to the markets of the using the increased trade passing through world was both hazardous and expen- the port for the general benefit of both sive. It was only possible to go between towns, the Dock Board determined to Manchester and Liverpool with pack- take every poss ible advantage of their animals, lumbering wagons or barges monopoly. The Liverpudlian city-fathers along devious river routes. As industry well knew that they exercised monopodeveloped in the wake of the Industrial listic control, so they increased dock Revolution, it became apparent that rates and other charges steeply in both progress was being stifled by the lack of number and cost. For example, out of a transportation facilities both to bring charge of 19s and 3d (nineteen shillings food and raw material to sati sfy the mills and thruppence) for goods sent from and workers, and to take away the fin- Manchester to Calcutta, it cost 12s 6d (twelve shillings 6 pence) per ton before ished product. Manchester and Liverpool records the goods even left Liverpool. It cost 10 show that the idea of a canal between the shillings per ton to bring butter and cities had been mooted as far back as cheese by rai I from Liverpool to Manch1697. In 1714 a number of merchants ester, under 40 miles distance. For the formed a company and applied for a same charge the goods could have travRoyal Act "for making the Rivers Mersey elled 1000 miles by rail in the US. It cost and Irwell navigable from Liverpool to less to bring cargo from New York to Manchester." With usual Parliamentary Liverpool 3,000 miles by sea than to delays, it was not until 1720 that the Act bring it the forty mi Jes from Liverpool to was passed, the same year that the Liv- Manchester by rail. The manufacturers erpool Dock Act was obtained, the sig- of rubber goods were willing to pay 9 nificance of which was to be brought pence per hundredweight for delivering home forcibly to the Manchester citi- rubber from Malaysia to Liverpool, but zenry in the years to come, with increas- it was ruinous to have to pay 10 pence per hundredwe ight from Liverpool ing inter-city rivalry. The Liverpool Dock Act enabled Docks to Manchester factories. ManchLiverpool to develop into a premier world ester and the surrounding towns lived port. For the next 100 years and more, by its industry, but could not hope to constant additions were made, culmi- ex ist for long with thi s mill stone around nating in July 1846, when the Prince its neck. Something had to be done! A local landowner, the Duke of Consort officially opened Albert Dock with great ceremony. During the 1850s Bridgewater, was instrumental in formAlbert Dock was the base for the East ing a consortium to build the ManchIndia and China trades. The warehouses, ester Ship Canal. The idea was not a which were more secure and fireproof visionary inspiration, but rather a line of than any others previously built, were action dictated by circumstance and need. Whenever a major crisis threatens, ideal for stori ng valuable commodities such as tea, tobacco, cotton, rubber, wines often a man will rise up as a natural and spirits. Innovations such as cold leader. Such a man was Daniel Adamstorage were designed for meat, fish and son, a North Country-born engineer who other perishables; ice was supplied to owned a boiler- making works near the fishing fleet 's base, so that catches Manchester. Born into an age when from the Irish Sea and Atlantic Ocean mechanization and the industrial revocould be distributed. And the Port of lution were at their height, the thought of Liverpool achieved preeminence in following in the steps of his agricultural SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
ancestors did not appeal. He became an apprentice on the Stockton and Darlington Railway which served Manchester and the smaller towns of Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cheshire. He worked his way up as a brilliant engineer to form hi s own business. The real start of the canal dates from a memorable meeti ng held June 27, 1882 in Didsbury, a local suburb, with the Duke ofBridgewater, Lord Egerton, Adamson, local mayors and merchants in attendance. The estimated cost of the canal, ÂŁ8 million , that wou ld have to be raised was an enormous sum in those days. London financiers handled the issue of Ship Canal shares, but it would be five years before enough money was raised to begin work. In October, 1887 the location for the canal entrance was chosen and by the end of the year work was ir. full swing. As the number of workers increased into the thousands, huts were built and houses rented to accommodate them. These "navvies" (construction workers) , were unsung heroes who, in the six years that followed, were to struggle with every obstacle of nature and come through triumphant. Every county in England was represented amongst the workers, with others from Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Schools had to be found for the children, and the sick and injured were cared for in canalside hospitals. At the height of construction , over 16,000 navv ies were employed at a wage of 4 l/2d (fourpence ha ' penny) per hour. In the dry excavations milli ons of cubic yards of soil and hard sandstone rock were removed. Dredgers, steam extractors, locomotives and thousands of trucks and wagons were used. A railway was laid along the whole course of the canal, in many cases on both sides, amounting to over 200 miles of circuitous tracks. On the eve of the new year of 1894, the cities of Manchester and Liverpool were alive with the sound of celebration-which on thj s occasion was not reserved solely for the dawning of a new year. January 1, 1894 was to see the opening of the Manchester Ship Canal over its full 36-mile length. That day crowds lined the banks at every vantage point to watch and cheer the first of the ships pass ing through as the canal was finally opened for business. In May of that year, Queen Victoria performed the official opening ceremony on board the Royal Yacht Enchantress. So ended an enterprise which laid the foundations of a great city and a great port. D SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
Above, men at work on the canal. At right, in its heyday this unique waterway handled about 17 million tons o.f goods per year and accommodated up to 15,000-ton steamers. Manchester Docks and its warehouses were built along with the canal in the 1890s and expanded as industry increased. Below, in the bucolic countryside reminiscent of Constable, with its lush meadows and !hatched collages, the funnel of an ocean-going ship could often. be seen. gliding, mirage-like, amongst the ancien.I oaks and grazing cattle. Today the can.al sees Ii ale commercial activity and is used largely by recrealional craft.
In his youth Mr. Freeman lived for several years near the canal. He now resides in New York, where he maintains a lively interest in things maritime.
lOOth Anniversary to Be Observed Aboard Delta Queen by Michael J. Netter
The owners of the famous sternwheel steamer Delta Queen celebrate 100 years of operation this year. Founded in 1890 by Gordon and Mary Greene, the Greene Line ran steamboats on the Mississippi and Ohio river systems until 1973, when Letha Greene, wife of Tom Greene, sold the line to the present operators, Delta Queen Steamboat Company. The 285-foot Delta Queen was built in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1926 and shipped in pieces to San Francisco, where she was reassembled and launched to work in the muddy shallows of the Sacramento River. Here her shoal draft and stem paddle wheel made it possible for her to go where deeper draft propellor vessels could not. Delta Queen was pressed into government service during World War II, ferrying military personnel and wounded between San Francisco and the inland rail lines. After the war, Tom Greene became aware of her existence. Deciding to reestablish paddlewheel travel on the Mississippi , he reached out to buy the big riverboat. Frederick Way, Jr. , the planned skipper for the passage from West to East, tells the story of how Delta Queen embarked into her new servicein which she has continued ever since. She has become famous in her new trade. President Jimmy Carter and other luminaries have travelled aboard her, and her popularity led the company to build a second , larger stem wheeler, the 382-foot Mississippi Queen, in 1976. The two boats hold a race down the Mississippi each summer, honoring the famous match of 1872 between the Natchez and the Robert E. Lee. NMHS Advisory Chairman Frank Braynard, a noted steamship hi storian , reported on the race of 1981 in Sea History 43 . Preservationists , led by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, have battled to keep Delta Queen steaming in the face of Coast Guard regulations that bar wooden construction and other. anachronistic features of the vessel. This year, over the 4th of July weekend (July 2-9), NMHS President Peter Stanford will lead a party of NMHS members on a trip from Cincinnati to St. Louis to honor the I OOth anniversary of the company. The trip will include laying a wreath on the grave of Mary Greene, who died aboard her in 1949. For details , write or call NMHS . 36
The Delta Queen adapted from The Saga of the The day the Delta Queen was sold, November 20, 1946, I was in Cincinnati for a meeting of the American Waterways Operators. Tom [Greene] attended the meeting too, and at the close of the sess ion we drifted down Main Street to theGreene Line wharfboat. Up in Tom 's private office there was a telegram waiting: " Your bid Delta Queen $46,250. Only bid received Maritime Commission today- Chester C. Thomson." Tom read it aloud and we sat there for a momenr or so. Then he said to me: " It isn't too late for you to back out of this." "Please enlarge," I answered with a funny noise in my tonsils . "If this bid is confirmed by the Maritime Commission, the Greene Line has a million dollar babe on a halter in California," said Tom , and then he added, "and I thought you might like to be the one to bring her home." There was on ly one word suitable to the occasion and I uttered it wi th all the conviction I cou ld muster, and said, "Tom, this is ridiculous." "You go exploring around these inland rivers in a skiff trying to drown yourself,"pursued Tom , "and now here's a chance for a real thrill. " " You are the one to do this job," I answered him . " You are the person who thought this up, and furthermore when I drown let it. be in river water without swordfish poking around." " I can't go," answered Tom, "I'll have to stay here and make the money you'll be spending." Tom reached for the telephone saying he'd better tell his wife Letha about this development. There were some lively chuckles back and forth. "Know what she said?" Tom smi led as he hung up. "Said I ought to wire the Maritime Commission and say 'Can't you take a joke? Send my money back.'"
* * * * * Sure enough, the Maritime Commission confirmed the sale on December 17. Greene Line Steamers Inc., of Cincinnati, Capt. Tom R. Greene, president, now owned the Delta Queen moored in Suisun Bay, California. Regulations required the boat be removed within a month, and non-compliance meant substantial demurrage troubles . Tom wired to San Francisco for reservations at the St. Francis for the two of us, and almost before you could say scat we had crossed the country by train and were standing, two innocents, on The
Embarcadero looking up Market Street trying to figure which loop-the-loop trolley would take us hotelward . Up until now I had not seen the Delta Queen, so next morning we took off for Suisun Bay, the repository for Maritime Commission vessels. Any laid-up steamer is a sorry spectacle at best, and the Delta Queen was one of the most woe-be-gone victims in my boating experience. The dark Navy gray did it in large measure. Railings once polished teak now were drab gray. Heavy brass fittings which once surely gleamed and required a " rise and shine" crew were likewise. The smokestack was gray-imagi ne a gray smokestack! The Navy had cared for their waif after Navy fashion . She was cluttered up inside with temporary bulkheads and partitions. A slew of staterooms had been taken out and in their places were bunkrooms, toilets and showers. E lectric conduit and cable led around the interior with a system which reminded me for all of the world of my good wife's li ving room circu its. But these were minor matters. The hardwood interior retained its patina. Kilroy had not carved his message in the teak rails. The boat was not defaced in any way. Tom showed me all the things from the hold to the pilothouse, and when we arrived at this latter vantage point we were both somewhat breathless. "Well, Fred," he said, "tell me what you really think." I looked out of the pilothouse windows toward the vast forest of ships ahead, then over toward the gray-green marshes to port and toward the wide bay to the outboard. The California sun dazzled, but the north-west trades of January whipped a cold chill. " She's goi ng to be some pumpkin in Cincinnati , Tom," I remarked. We just walked around and gloated for the next hour or two, and always ended up again in the pilothou se. I couldn ' t help gingerly laying a hand on those spokes of the pilotwheel (and it was a beauty) wondering how much rudder you'd have to give her coming around Sliding Hill Bend above Pomeroy, Ohio, or Grave Creek Bend below Moundsville, West Virginia . ...
* * * * * During the course of the shipyard work, done at Les Fulton 's yard in Antioch, Charlie (F. Dietz), Bill (H. Hom) and I somewhere acquired a collective resignation to shipwreck. I don't think we felt SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
Comes to the Mississippi Delta Queen by Frederick Way, Jr. this way at first, but the idea grew little by little and settled down on us with finality. We could mentally see the Delta Queen away out on the Pacific Ocean in the middle of a stormy night and then the fatal crash. Man the lifeboats! A small steamboat has one pat advantage at sea, for even though she may toss like a cork, she has water under her hull at all times. The Delta boats, although built of steel, introduced a new risk. Two waves might get under a hull 250 feet long, one wave holding up the bow and the other holding up the stem, thus removing all support from under the middle and presenting a situation the original builder gave no heed to . In these last moments of preparation the Delta Queen looked like a huge piano box , cased two decks high with unpainted lumber, some 50,000 board feet of it. Across the paddlebox, were huge white letters , DELTA QUEEN of CINCINNATI, OHIO. Les Fulton poked his head in my room one morning. "There's a couple of big packages for you from Cincinnatistand about six feet two," he smiled. I went out to see and found Bill Fenton and Charlie Brasher standing there with suitcases. Tom Greene had shipped them over and I was delighted. The Marine Inspection Service required our "sea going barge" have a crew of five men . All were now accounted for. A contract for tow age was made with the Portland (Oregon) Tug & Barge Co. to the tune of $33,000, for which sum a tug and crew was to be furnished to deliver the Delta Queen to New Orleans. There ensued many huddles and consultations as to the most practical scheme of towage. The final selection was a compromise. We secured two shots (30 fathoms) of 2-inch chain to a special yoke built on the Delta Queen' s stem, and the tug's wire towing cable would fasten to thi s. Tugboat skippers prefer to tow from a bridle, a towline connection prolonged into a Y and the prongs secured to either side of the tow, a plan which minimizes yawing. The tugboat skipper felt very sour about our compromise plan. April 17th was set for departure, but several days before thatdate I was caught up neatly . The tugboat we had engaged could not tow us away. She became " hot," a modern term for a labor dispute. The "heat" rapidly spread to include the Delta Queen and for a day or so prom(Continued next page) SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
At right, Mary Greene, born Mary Becker in Marietta , Ohio, passed the exam for her pilot's license in 1895 and soon after obtained her master's license, taking command of the company's second steamboat , the Argand. After the death of her husband Gordon in1927,sheandher sonsChrisandTomran the company . She died in 1949 aboard the Delta Queen after a half century of commanding riverboats.
Below, the Delta Queen was built in England to splash through the shallows. of faraway California's Sacramento River. Here, she makes her first trip up the Mississippi and Ohio to Cincinnati in the spring of1947. Her protective boarding, put on for the sea passage, was removed in New Orleans, but here she is still painted Navy gray. At bottom, a recent photo of the Delta Queen on the lower Mississippi.
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ised to include the Fulton Shipyard. Together with a lawyer I went to the Union office. Getting down to cases, the Delta Queen was to be furnished with a union master who would draw $1 ,260 for 35 days ' pay, a mate at $997.50, a second mate at 997.50, a chief engineer at $1 ,260, an assistant engineer at $997.50, a second assistant engineer at $997 .50, three seamen at $450 each and a cook-steward at $450. All were to be returned from New Orleans and furnished first-class transportation. My choice was narrow. Refusal to comply meant the tugboat could not tow the Delta Queen, and the tugboat was already waiting with crew aboard, signed on the dotted line. Delay meant heavy demurrage. As luck would have it, there was a national strike of telephone operators going on, and anyhow, as I found out later, Tom was marooned near Paducah aboard the Gordon C. Greene in a howling gale with no telephone within miles of him . In the morning I sent home my crew of Cincinnati men and signed up with the unions.
* * * * *
Tom Greene did not meet the sea-going skipperoftheDelta Queen until the boat was safe in port at New Orleans. I was curious to observe his reaction, knowing the hurt of the shellacking the West coast unions had delivered to his bank account. They shook hands, looked into one another's eyes, and both smiled. Tom said, "Captain Geller, I want to thank you for the good care you gave my boat." Captain Geller, a modest, non-assuming man, looked abashed and answered: "Captain Greene, those are kind words and I am proud to shake your hand." The Delta Queen was not harmed in any way and , save for the salt crusting on windows and bulkheads, a person would not have suspected she was a month on the deep blue ocean. D
Mr. Way was a licensed steamboat pilot for twenty-five years and owned and captained the steamboat Betsy Ann, made famous by him in the novel The Log of Betsy Ann. 0 n October 1, 1989, Mr. Way received the National Maritime Scholar of the Year Awardfrom the American Merchant Marine Museum aboard the Delta Queen. SEA HISTORY 53 , SPRING 1990
Community Rebuilds Shipyard The blackened, charred ruins of the Gannon and Benjamin Marine Railway, on the Vineyard Haven waterfront in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, made a heartbreaking sight after an early morning fire engulfed it on October! 7 (above). Even if you didn ' t know the hard work and dedication that partners NatBenjamin and Ross Gannon had poured into the shipyard, you might have wept. The fire caused an estimated $350,000 worth of damage to the one-of-a-kind shipyard which specialized in the construction, reconstruction, and repair of wooden boats. Since founding the operation in 1980, Benj am in and Gannon had established a successful center for wooden boatbuilding and, what 's more, had made it work economically. The pair had developed a steady business building large vessels. Although two of these were lost in the blaze, saved from mortal damage were the sloop Java and an English cutter which was perched on the yard 's marine railway. The cutter escaped the flames when its hauling cradle was cut loose and slipped into the water. When NMHS member Nat Benjamin made hi s aftermath pledge, "We ' ll rebuild and it will be better," he could not have imagined how soon. On Saturday and Sunday November 11 and 12, some 100 volunteers, including every capable contractor on the Island, were hard at work rebuilding the yard, not stopping for anything. NMHS Chairman Emeritus Karl Kortum and President Peter Stanford were invited that Sunday to the site by Society member Ralph Packer of Packer Marine. Said Peter of the scene: "The building was virtually completed with very fine workmanship. And they'd only started at 8:00AM the day before ! The volunteers were working at a red-hot pace, no tools down, not stopping to talk to visitors, pause for photos, anything." For Karl Kortum , Chief C urator of the Maritime National Hi storical Park in San Francisco, it was a striking demonstration of the old New England tradition of barnraising and , for everyone, a proof that the traditional values of hard work and cooperation can still accomplish miracles. KH
Above, the Christeen, oyster sloop of 1883, lies quietly at the steamboat dock at the Connecticut River Museum, the village of Essex in the background. Photo courtesy Connecticut River Museum .
Christeen Finds Friendly Berth On November 15, 1989, Sea History Gazette published a plea for help from Ben Clarkson and Bob Eldredge, owners of the Christeen, an 1883 oyster sloop out of New London, Connecticut. The letter warned that Christeen "may not survive the long winter ahead unless immediate action is taken to stabilize her." Plans were to "reintroduce her into the marine commerce trade between Orient Poi nt, New York, and New London, Connecticut," operating as a nonprofit educational institution, working to preserve the tradition of oystering in the Long Island Sound-a trade that died due to the mysterious di sease MSX during the 1950s. Enter the National Maritime Historical Society, who took Clarkson and Eldredge to the Connecticut River Museum. CRM Director Brenda Milkofsky had been looking for a floating ex hibit to make full use of the Museum 's impressive dock space, and so Christeen ¡came to the Museum . "The boat gives an add itional important dimension to the Museum and, frankly," says Milkofsky, "Christeen is the answer to our prayers-an hi storic vessel at our dock that the Museum does not own." Ben Clarkson, a former Coast Guardsman and restoration carpenter, was happily surpri sed at the community's reception to the hi storic vessel. The day they arrived, the attention caused a traffic jam in town , and for Christmas the vessel and her ri gging were done up in holiday lights. "It was really a beautiful thing," said Clarkson. Clarkson and Eldredge (who owns a boatbuilding company) plan to restore the vessel and sail her in Operation Sail 1992 as part of her educational mission . (Connecticut River MN Museum , Essex CT 06426)
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S. Rupley . Rup had an enviable reputation fo r probity and what mi ght be called " truth in the work." He sympathi zed RI CHARD IRVING MORRIS with peopl e struggling with diffic ult 1920-1989 problems, and was into lerant onl y of shoddy work . Dick shared these values. When Rupdied in 1983 , Di ck took up ~ the interest Rup had maintained in the ~ im poss ible dream of restoring the sail~ ing ship Wa vertree in South Street Seaport. He soon became personall y interested in other projects in which NMHS was involved. " How do you manage to stay ali ve? do yo u keep thi s effort going?" How Dick Morris (second f rom right) with fr iends were questions he as ked. And he probed at the dedication of the Allen S. Rupley and looked into thin gs until he got andeckhouse aboard the Wavertree. From the left, are trumpeter Dick Rath, Friends of swers. He and our lo ngtime fri end WavertreeChairman Jakob lsbrandtsen ,and George Lamb of the Jackson Hole Pre(fa r right) Rev. James Whittemore, Director serve (who had also gotten caught up in of Seamen' s Church Institute. the concern s of NMHS ) wo uld meet at Dick Morri s died in hi s sleep on Decem- the Yacht Club or the Harvard Club to ber 2 1 in hi s Roosevelt lsland home in he lp out on the problems of establishing New York City. Earli er that week, he a strong, sec ure NMH S. The ir interests had led a successful meeting with Tex - went far beyond the Wavertree to the aco Inc. on the Society's behalf. During fun cti oning of the Society itself, which a ce lebratory luncheon afterward , I re- Di c k o n occas io n compared to the marked how well he looked. He said bumbl e bee: " In theory it shouldn ' t he'd never felt better in hi s life. So, work- but it does." Then, in 1986 , Dick's world fe ll apart. debonaire and cheerful , he left us. He slipped his cable thus, at the height In the summe r of that year hi s beloved of hi s powers, serving a good cause- a Toni died, after a tax ing illness that took . thing he delighted in doin g. During its to ll on Dick des pite hi s unflaggi ng World War II he qui t Harvard to join the opti m ism, hi s building a new house for US Navy as a seaman, not an officer, the her, hi s plans for furth er travel (whi ch summer before the US entered the war. we learned a ll about). He retired fro m Thi s dec ision was inspired by James Grace. Hi s own health slid downhill Bryant Conant, President of Harvard . fast. Hi s famil y worried that they were Dick served as Conant' s chauffeur to los ing him. But then, over the winter of 1986-87 , earn hi s keep, and du ring their drives Conant di scussed with him the world- Dic k staged a remarkable recovery, due wide threat to freedom posed by Nazi largely to deeply he ld reli gious convicGermany. Dick' s reaction was to jo in ti ons, and hi s sense of service to others. the Navy. He went on to see acti on in He to ld us he wanted to do more to he lp -and hi s doing was something to see. both the Atl anti c and Pacific. He met with NMHS supporters and The war over, he returned to Harvard , and upon graduating marri ed Marie convinced them of the ri ghtness of the Antoinette Penny, whom everyone called Society ' s mi ssion, the integrity of its Toni . They had six children and fo und purposes. He made us give searching time to travel and enj oy th e world while consideration to how we were doing the Dick built up an impressive business things we do--and sometimes, whycareer, first in building a sales organi za- while advocating our cause to others. tion fo r a Boston manu fac turer, then in Chairman Jim McAlli ster (whom we building mate ri als, publi c transportation lost to our sorrow on Jul y 16 las t year) looked to Dick fo r answers in many and othe r acti vities of W.R. Grace & Co., the di versified mega-corporati on areas and enjoyed hi s company imthat had evolved from a 19th century mensely. lt was something to be with the two of them, great men fo r serv ice to shipping operati on. Hi s deep social concerns fo und ex- others, great family men-and great story press ion in working from the mid-1970s tellers. on as Pres ident of the Grace Foundation During thi s time the Society was under the chairm anship of the late Allen struggling with Sea History. When oth-
AVE ATQUE VALE
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ers wo ndered whether our staff with their limited ex perience could tackl e the chall e nge of modern magazine publi shing (and in our fi eld we saw two major, well fund ed publi shing efforts fail in thi s past year), he did not doubt. " You know we can do it, I know we can do it," he said . " Let' s do it. " He had similar words, and the work to back them up, fo r other organi zati ons he supported that needed the kind of he lp he could bring. But in all thi s committed acti vity, as in hi s earlier business career, hi s fa mil y came first, unequi vocally. Hi s son Ri chard no ted thi s too, in hi s eulogy at the funeral. It was another example of hi s in sistence on pri orities in life-and he had, surely, the ri ght ones. Hi s children and I had never met, but l fe lt I knew each one of them, so much was hi s life in vo lved with theirs. They to ld me th at they a lso fe lt they knew me and our work in the Society, so much had he made the Society and its peopl e part of hi s world . PS NILS H ANSELL
1909-1989
Nil s Hansell , a most engaging person , and most determined when charged with a mi ss ion, was the person with the idea fo r Operati on Sail. As recounted in our last and in a lette r from hi s fri end C liff O ' Hara, whi ch appears in thi s issue, he fo und ready converts to his dream in Frank Bray nard and others who joined in to make it happen. Nils di ed January 6 in Princeton, New Jersey. He is survived by bro thers who li ve on oceani c island s, Ulf in Made ira, and Jack in Kailua, Hawaii. PS J AMES FR A KLI
KIRK,
SR.
1918-1990 Jim Kirk d ied January 15 after a wasting illness which he bore with notable grace and fo rti tude. A leader in community affairs in the Lower East Side ne ighborhood where he made hi s home with hi s wife Mercedes , following service in the Air Force during World War II , he became member No. l of South Street Seaport Museum in 1966. He later served as a tru stee of the Museum and did much to e nco urage its earl y peo ple-orie nted outlook. A person of all-embrac ing human ity, he devoted himself in his later years to wo rk with young people in tro ulble with the law . In thi s, as in other things , he trul y made a difference. Survivimg are hi s wife and children, James , JerrOJd , Jacque line and Janice. PS
S EA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
HAROLD E. EDGERTON 1903-1990 Famous for hi s pioneering work in strobe li ghting, renowned in marine archaeology and underwater exploration for hi s side-scan sonar, and beloved of the many in our fi eld who worked with him in hi s tireless investigative underwater pursuits, Harold "Doc" Edgerton died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on January 4, aged 86. Paul Gray, pres ident of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology call ed him "a teacher of uncommon effecti veness and generos ity" and hailed him as "a friend and mentor of the thousands of students, myself among them, who had the good fortune to be associated with him during the past 60 years. Hi s invention s brought him emi nence in physics and co ns iderabl e wealth, enabling him to devote hi s life in recent decades to doing volunteer work with hi s equ ipment under the guise of "field testing." Hi s side-scan sonar led to the discovery of the Monitor on the seabed off Cape Hatteras in 1973, and to the discovery of the German battleship Bismarck in the Atlantic deeps off Brest last year. He did ex tensive work with Jacq ues-Yves Cousteau in hi s ex ploration of the ocean world, and was involved in many projects with the Insti tute of Nautical Archaeology, contributing hi s time and revolutionary instrumentation-along with hi s cha ll eng ing outlook and unfailing encouragement. PS
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P ETER CHARLES WHITLOCK, MBE . LIE UTENANT-COMMAND ER,
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1925-1989 A veteran of World War II at sea, Lieutenant-Commander Whitlock died on Trafalgar Day, October 2 1, 1989. Hi s last appointment before retiring from the Royal Navy was as commanding officer of HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar, preserved in drydock in Portsmouth on England's South Coast. Later he served on the Victory Advisory Technical Committee with distinction, and as publi c information officer on the Mary Rose Project, on which he wrote fo r Sea History in 1982. " Peter was the archetype of the English seaman ... a veritab le Heart of Oak," said hi s colleague Captain W .R.H. Lapper. Dr. Alan McGowan, trustee of the World Ship Trust and C hairman of the Victory Advisory Technical Committee, writes in The Mariner's Mirror(Vol 75,#4) of his wide-ranging and varied career, his expertise and helpfulness . PS
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* * * * * SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
41
SHIPNOTES New Tall Ships in the Offing Operation Sail has inspired the restoration of historic ships, from France's stately bark Belem to the bugeye Little Jennie of Centreport, NY. Now, there are at least three undertakings dedicated to doing something more for Operation Sail 1992-a new tall ship for America! The team that restored the bark Elissa in Galveston has now set up shop in Bath, Maine, to build a new steel Down Easter of just under 500 tons. Designed as a full-rigged ship, she is to be called Discovery. SAIL, Inc., 229 Washington St., Bath ME 04530. Captain Jay Bolton, who has sailed as master of Elissa and Gazela of Philadelphia , plans a big four-masted bark to be called Liberty. This vessel, at 3,000 tons, would be in a class with the Soviet Union's Kruzenshtern. US Tall Ships Foundation , c/o Burke & Parsons, 1114 A venue of the Americas, NYC 10036. Captain Melbourne Smith has been working for a dozen years on plans to build a replica of Griffith 's immortal Sea Witch. This fast-travelling 900-tonner of 1846 holds the record home from China and may fairly be said to have launched the clipper era a century and a
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half ago. The new Sea Witch would be of wood, like the original, and is costed at $18 million. Captain Smith has a reputation for bringing in his ship projects on time, within budget. The big schooner Californian sailing the Pacific today is an example of his work, as is the brig Niagara, outfitting now to sail the Great Lakes this summer. American Clipper Trust, PO Box 54,AnnapolisMD21404. The Second Annual Awards Dinner of the National Maritime Hi storical Soci ety was held November 10 at the New York Yacht Club. The Founders' Sheet Anchor Award , established in 1988, the 25th anniversary year of the Society, was presented to Schuyler M. Meyer, Jr. , Vice Chai rm an of the Society, for his contribution to its recovery and reinvigoration fo llowing the financial crisis of 1987-88. This award, to be given only on occasion, is intended to recognize that every insitution needs to be refounded as the years pass, to rise to the challenges of its time, and this is usually the work of one person of extraordinary leadership, commitment and vision. The Society 's American Ship Trust A ward was presented to James P. McAllister posthumously, for his leadership in saving historic ships, and particularly his personal recovery of the little steam tug Mathilda of 1899, now on exhibition at the Hudson River Maritime Museum in Kingston , New York. The award was accepted by hi s nephew, Brian McAllister, President of McAlli ster Bros. Towing & Tra\i sportation Co. The James Monroe Award for outstanding contibution to the cause of maritime hi story was designated for later presentation to Philip Teuscher (known as "Captain Torture" to readers of these pages), for hi s extradordinary work in developing lively testimony of the traditions of local boatmen from Carib Indians to Long Island Sound oystermen. NMHS Historic Ships Program announces a " new arrival"-the 1926 steamboat Delta Queen (See pp36-38). This paddlewheel steamer brings us into the heartland of America, departing Cincinnati, on the Ohio River, on July 2, to cruise on downstream to St. Louis, where she will arrive July 9. NMHS President Peter Stanford will be along to speak about the river navigation that tied the American Midwest to the rest of the world via New Orleans. Meantime, the March 8 Caribbean
cruise of the main-skysail-yarder Sea Cloud with Paul F. Johnston , Maritime Curator of the Smithsonian Institution , and the August 11 cruise of Sea Cloud in the Mediterranean, with Peter Stanford as speaker, are shaping up in good sty le, with NMHS members signing on to pull and haul (amid scenesofnotable luxury) with the ship 's international crew. For information on these voyages of redi scovery, talk to Michelle Shuster, NMHS , PO Box 646, 132 Maple St., Croton-onHudson NY 10520; 914 271-2177. The January-February issue of Historic Preservation (National Trust for Historic Preservation, 1785 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington DC 20036, $15) records a fascinati ng bit of sea transferred technology. Problems encountered in maintaining the 200-yearold Spanish mission of San Xavier del Bae in Tucson, Arizona, turned out to stem from the incompatibility of modem materials with the clay brick of the 1700s. The solution: a mortar containing prickly pear mucilage. This "folk technology"as it is called by the National Trust, apparently originated in Moorish Africa and was then brought to America by the Spanish-precisely reflecting the pattern oflberian deepwater trades, first to Africa, then to the New World of the Americas. Grays Harbor Historical Seaport reports that the Lady Washington , a replica of Captain Robert Gray's Lady Washington , the firs t American vessel to explore the West Coast in 1788, was boarded by more than 10,000 visitors during her visit to the Columbia River in September. Captain Jack Finney and crew took the vessel to Astoria and Portland , Oregon , and Vancouver, Washington ; 2,500 of the visitors were children in school groups. Lady Washington, when not sailing in the Northwest, is docked at the Grays Harbor Historical Seaport. (Grays Harbor, PO Box 2019, Aberdeen WA 98520)
Wavertree Forever! Next summer will mark the 20th anniversary of the fullrigged ship Wavertree's arrival at the South Street Seaport Museum-an occasion marked by city-wide acclamation led by Mary Lindsay, wife of the then mayor. After initial progress , restoration of the 1885 iron-hulled ocean wanderer lagged, and the late Allen S. Rupley joined with Jakob Isbrandtsen, SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
Chairman Emeritus of the Museum to launch a long-term effort sponsored by NMHS to keep things moving forward. NMHS has established a fund in Rupley's memory, to which friends are contributing to support completion of the ship's deckhouse. On December 16 a check for $9,000 was presented to the ship at the annual volunteers' party aboard. (NMHS , Rupley Wavertree Fund, PO Box646, 132 Maple Street, Croton-on-Hudson NY 10520) Coast Guard City, USA Grand Haven, Michigan will be the site of the Coast G.u ard's 200th anniversary celebration from July 21 to August 6, 1990. The city is rich in Coast Guard history-the tradition of this festival beginning in 1924 with a picnic and a Life Saving Station. With the stationing of Coast Guard cutter Escanaba in 193 2, the picnic became a festival. Escanaba was torpedoed in the winter of 1942 while escorting a convoy in the North Atlantic, and 101 local crewmen were lost. The resilient community raised over $1 million to build a second Escanaba, and the third was commissioned in Grand Haven harbor in 1987. Events will include food, fireworks, and fun for all. For more information about the celebration: PO Box 694, Grand Haven MI 49417; 616 842-4910. The Confederate Naval Historical Society was formed to preserve the memory and promote the role of the Confederate Navy during the Civil War. One of the major objectives on their agenda was fulfilled on October 3, 1989 as France and the United States came to a tentative agreement over the future of the CSS Alabama. Since the discovery of Alabama a few years ago off Cherbourg, France, much controversy has surrounded the Confederate raider. The interested parties have ranged from the French (who have a submarine base near the wreck), to the US State Department. The signed agreement allows France a zone of protection around the site and their submarine base, and the French must authorize all work on the wreck. Each country, including Britain, will have the right to one observer on the site, and an international scientific committee will be made up of various government officials. Many issues remain unresolved , however, and the agreement can be nullified by any party involved within SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
three months. (CNHS , 710 Ocran Rd., White Stone VA 22578) Domino Pizza owner Thomas Monaghan is selling the 1900 schooner Domino Effect, ex-Victory Chimes. The 126.5ft vessel is offered for $1.2 million through Chas. P. Irwin Yacht Brokerage in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A spokesperson for Domino said that the vessel didn ' tfit the company's excursion plans, noting that the historic ship needs a big crew and constant upkeep. She is said to be in A 1 condition following a recent rebuild and survey by Giffy Full. The City of Beaumont/Buccaneer in her career as a nightclub on the Hudson. Member Richard Timm dug through his files upon seeing our note in SH 51 and provided this photo, taken by his father
The October issue of The Weather Gauge, journal of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum (PO Box 636, St. Michaels MD 21663; 301 745-2916) which recently graduated to magazine format, reports on the development in 1858 of a 180ft, all metal, compartmentalized "cigar ship," designed to literally plow through waves ratherthan ride over them. The brainchild of the eccentric but persistent inventor Ross Winans and his son Thomas, it was described as "the American railwayman's approach to naval architecture." His radical design was repeated in several other trial models, culminating in a 256-foot version built in England in 1866. The basic concept was picked up in the "turret ships" of the turn of the century. Correspondence on these unusual vessels is invited. Morin Scott, author of the inimitable piece "Square Riggery" m our last (and of much else besides), is at sea off the Canaries as we go to press. He's aboard the German bark Alexander von Humboldt (see SH 48, "A New Bark Built in 1906). He sends this haunting photo-
in 1927. He would be interested to know the occasion for this massing of ships. Send responses to NMHS please. The new ship-modeller's bimonthly magazine Seaways has been launched, with Vol. I, No. I (Jan/Feb 1990) offering marvellous photos of the construction of the replica sloop Lady Washington extensively discussed by her co-designer Richard L. Miles (who also contributes a separate discussion on the research behind the design), and a remarkably complete history of the San Diego provision sloop Butcher Boy, built in 1902 and subsequently sailed by the likes of historian Jerry MacMullen and ship restorer Ken Reynard. She now makes her home at the San Diego Maritime Museum, which these two stalwarts had more than a little to do with establishing as the fine institution it is today. And don't miss Richard Miles's profile of Captain Adrian Raynaud, who began his seafaring in 1914 aboard the bark Edward Sewall under Captain Quick (see SH 28, p46-47)-a "must" read! Send $18 ($26 in Canada, $38 offshore) to Editor Jim Raines, Seaways , PO 27593, Salt Lake City UT 84127-and don ' t forget to say who sent you.
graph, a perfect illustration of the concept of a "tall ship in the offing," taken on the journey there. For the summer schedule, when the bark will be making two-week cruises in the North Sea and Baltic (for 200DM, or about$60 a day!), get in touch with Captain Scott at 3 Sudley Lodge, Sudley Gardens, Bognor Regis P021 lHY, West Sussex, England; tel 44 0243-82677.
To stay in touch with what's coming up, subscribe to the Sea History Gazette, PO Box 646, 132 Maple Street, Croton-on-Hudson NY 10520-0646$25 to NMHS members, $35 to others. 43
REVIEWS
When Yachting Was Truly Yachting by Thomas Hale Traditions and Memories of American Yachting, William P. Stephens (WoodenB oat Publications, Brooklin ME, 1989, 447p, illus, $49.95) A su perbl y executed mahogany butterfl y hatch, a beautifully inlaid ship 's wheel , and the latest edition of Traditions and Memories ofAmerican Yachting all have one common seductiveness--each is, in a word, perfection. The writer was given the now totally revised vo lume of th e la te W . P . Stephens' s classic while recovering from major surgery, and two vignettes are worth noting. First, the nurses suggested an I.V . pole to support the book 's fivepound weight and, second , the doctor, a sail or himself, spent more time examining the book than examining his patient! William P. Stephens (1854-1946) was one of the grand fi gures of American yac hting. The designer of more than l 00 boats himself, he was a prolific writerfor 23 years the yachting editor of the then popular Forest & Stream magazine. In 1939 Charles F. Chapman, then editor of Motor Boating, asked him to produce a series of articles on the hi story and development of American yachting. Thi s " brief' series ex tended through 83 installments from June 1939 until the author's death in 1946, and has been reprinted and publi shed in book form fo ur times since--each one, however, be ing but an exact copy of the magazine articles as they first appeared. Stephens grew up and rubbed sho ulders with the giants of late 19th century yacht designers and builders, men such as Cary Smith, Edward Burgess, William Fife, Nathaniel Herreshoff, Dixon Kemp, and " Big Topmas t" Kunhardt, each one of whom had definite and often conflicting opinions and yet they individually and as a group helped to form the molds in which this often divergent but still complementary panorama of yachting evolved in the years from roughly the founding of the New York Yacht Club in 1844 until the time of the First World War. Stephens wrote well and knowledgeably on all aspects of the American yachting scene in an era when yachting was truly yachting and when, except for the lovely little sailing canoes, a yacht without a paid crew was, well , hardly a yacht at all. In the 75 years or so which encompass the period of particul ar interest to the author, the sport was advancing and chang ing almost as rapid ly for its time as it has in the 75 years since, and Stephens touches on all 44
aspects of this development from design assumptions such as Scott Russell 's wave line theory to the influence of the old Thames and the Builders Old Measurement rules in England , and from the aforementioned canoes to catboats, and the era of the extreme sandbaggers. But perhaps he is at hi s best when he lucidly sets forth the backgro und of the two great controversies that raged both here and in England as the Victorian Age was ending. These were, first, the sloop vs. cutter controversy which in turn washed over into the second , the controversy over the America's Cup. Americans for good and sufficient reasons had for decades been wedded to shallow draft sloops with tall rigs, broad beam , often with centerboards, while our British cousins, for equall y good reasons, had built up a tradition of narrow beam, deep draft, "plank on edge" cutters, often with fi dded topmasts and bowsprits that could be housed. To complicate matters, there were ongoing debates regarding the viability of shifting ba ll ast and whether or not fixed ball as t should be carried inside the vessel or outside attached to the keel. Stephens 's ex pos ition of these contentious di sputes is complete and fascinating, and it is interesting for us today to reali ze that by the 1950s, for whatever reason , most of the successful cruising/rac ing boats had become modified " lead mines" with relatively high ballast di splacement ratios, when , all of a sudden, Carleton Mitchell appeared on the scene with hi s able centerboarder Finisterre and went on to eat up the competition. All in all, Stephens 's marvelous writing should not be mi ssed by anyone who reall y cares abo ut the background of his favo rite sport.
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The foregoing , however, is but half the story of this remarkable book, for Jon Wilson, editor of WoodenBoat , has produced a tour-de-force in thi s beautiful vo lume which far ec lipses its predecessors. Wil son and hi s associates, all of whom deserve great credit, have with real care and sensitivity re-gro uped Stephens's many articles in such a way as to give them a better relationship to each other and to bring out in 22 major chapters the important themes of the early hi story of American yachting. Furthermore, rather than merely reproduc ing already printed photographs, the WoodenBoat staff have with infinite
patience searched for and found many of the original plates and negatives used in the m agazine series and have supplemented them with additional pictures and drawings which will help to am pli fy the tex t. It is always a pleasure to contemplate any job well done, and thi s reviewer considers this 50th Anniversary ed ition of thi s classic volume to be a tru ly beautiful presentation . Even at its not-inconsiderable list price of $49.95, it is a bargain and should not be considered a coffee table decoration , but a book to be devoured , appreciated and remembered.
Mr. Hale.former owner and operator of the Martha's Vineyard Shipyard, is an Honorary Trustee of NMHS.
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NORTHEAST LIGHTS: Lighthouses and Lightships, Rhode Island to Cape May, NJ by Robert G. Bachand. A look into the colorful history of the 133 light ~ stations that operated between Rhode Island and Cape ¡ May, NJ. 422 pages, 153 1¡ b&w photo-graphs, 30 charts and illustrations. Hard cover. $19.95 ~ '.b:; ISBN 0-9616399-3 -8
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SEA HISTORY 53 , SPRING 1990
REVIEWS Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750, Marcus B. Rediker (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1987, 322p, illus, $12.95pb) Marcus Rediker of Georgetown University has undertaken to rewrite eighteenth century maritime history "from the bottom up" by focusing on the common seamen of the Anglo-American world. In so doing he hopes to correct the romanticized image of sai lors created by Herman Melville and later historians like Samuel Eliot Morison. As Rediker explai ns in hi s introduction, the sailor faced danger from two quarters. "On one side stood hi s captain, who was backed by the merchant and royal official, and who held near-dictatorial powers that served a capitalist system rapidly covering the globe; on the other side stood the relentlessly dangerous natural world" (p. 5). But it is the devil on the quarterdeck rather than the deep blue sea that attracts most of Rediker's attention . He asks, "What did these working people do for themselves ," in the face of violence from above, and seeks to di scover the conseq uences of the mariners' resistance to persistant illtreatment. Rediker's view of what life was like for the eighteenth-century mariner draws heav ily on contemporary observations and the records of more than 2,000 cases heard in the British Courts of Admiralty. Extensive footnotes (alas, there is no bibliography) also reveal the a uthor's wide acquaintance with the secondary literature. The picture he offers of the seafarer's lot is far from pleasant. Sadistic captains, poor food , worse living cond itions, and the most dangerous of all workplaces all combine to form a litany of horror. Rediker's seamen respond to these outrageous conditions in a variety of ways: they close ranks around the victims; they initiate slowdowns; they desert at the next port; and in the most extreme circumstances, they mutiny and/or tum to piracy. In the course of hi s work, the author provides us with a wealth of interesting information abo ut the ordinary seamen of the first half of the eighteenth century: average monthly wages ranged from a peacetime £1.46 to £2.20 during the period 's many wars; the median age of foremast hands was twenty-five; the literacy rate was 67 .67 percent; nineteen of sixty recorded mutinies during the SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
period resulted in piracy. The author made an invaluable contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the common seaman as an essential contributor to the enormous expansion of maritime commerce throughout the Anglo-American world of the eighteenth century. His extensive documentation of corporal punishment on board British merchant vessels is indeed sobering. But it is Rediker's interpretation that will interest most readers. Out of the struggle between foe' sle and quarterdeck, the author asserts, emerged an important basis for the nineteenth-century sailors themselves to have constituted a true proletariat. Like the factory workers who followed them, sailors brought only their bare hands to the job of operating, under the most severe of conditions , a machine (the ship) owned by capitalist employers. Perhaps the Anglo-American seamen did form a self-conscious proletariat in the eighteenth century, as Rediker contends, but hi s evidence is far from persuasive. Hi s own figures show that very few seamen could have spent as much as ten years at sea (Appendix A), and he
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cites Ira Dye to show that American sailors averaged only seven (p. 296). In short, sailors could and did leave the sea in droves by their late twenties, hardly the stuff from which a self-conscious proletariat is made. One could more easily argue that by leaving what was undoubtedly a most unpleasant and dangerous occupation, most sailors were taking the opportunity to reject the possibility of becoming proletarians rather than accepting that status. I draw a different conclusion from Rediker's evidence than the one he draws. At any given time in the early eighteenth century sailors as a group often worked under almost inhuman conditions. Unlike the plantation slaves and (later) factory workers with whom they are compared, however, relatively few indi vidual sailors endured such conditions for long. They simply quit. In his effort to offset the romantic image depicted by other maritime historians, Rediker has created hi s own romantic sailor-a stout-hearted, strongarmed man of democratic spirit who did his duty the best he could and rarely, if ever, deserved to be puni shed by those CAST IRON LIGHTHOUSES DOORSTOPS • BOOKENDS • COLLECTIBLES 45 DESIGNS ONLY $49.95 EA . H a nd · painted museum quality repli cas.
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CAPTAIN JAMES COOK ~k&V~ ef0~~thb~ 176& -t;zg. 8 Illustrated volumes and a portfolio of maps and charts hand-drawn by Cook and his officers. Clothbound $600.00 Call or write for a free brochure describing this set and other works on nautical exploration available from Kraus. KRAUS REPRINT A DIVISION OF THE KRAUS ORGANIZATION LIMITED Route 100, Millwood, New York 10546 USA a 914-762-2200/ 800-223-8323 FAX 914-762-1195
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Newfoundland seal hunt. Great Lakes commercial fishing. Soo Canal construction. North Atlantic whaling ... For free catalogue: Research Publications, Parks Service, Environment Canada, 1600 Liverpool Court, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada KIA OH3
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sadistic minions of merchant capitalism who walked the quarterdeck. In striking down Morison's romantic hero, the authoritarian sea captain, Rediker offers us a hero of his own, the anarchical pirate, and readers forced to choose may find themselves in that most unenviable of all positions-"between the devil and the deep blue sea." BENJAMIN LABAREE Dr. Labaree is active in the WilliamsMystic Program in American Maritime Studies. His review is reprintedfrom the newsletter of the North American Society for Oceanic History, Winter 1989.
William H. Webb, Shipbuilder, Edwin L. Dunbaugh and William du Barry Thomas (Webb Institute of Naval Architecture, Glen Cove NY, 1989, 23lp, illus, $35.00hb) "The very first naval architect in this country," the New York Herald called him, in a tribute reflecting the general opinion of mid-nineteenth century shipping people. This man of dedicated modesty, this William H. Webb, whose story is so well told here-this "affable and interesting talker," this "genial companion," as another newspaper reporter described him-earned that title of "first" by sheer performance. And what a time to be first in! Willirun Webb was born into pre-industrial America, and served out his youth in a New York familial apprenticeship that a medieval shipbuilder would have been at home in. He went on to build his own flash packets, working for his father's friend Marshall, of the famous Black Ball Line, and some of the most renowned of the American clippers, and the big steamers that bested the clippers in the California trade, which went on to carry the American flag across the Pacific to China. These were the glory days of the American flag at sea, and to be first meant to be at the cutting edge of the young American republic's growing prosperity and power. To be a leader in shipping was to be a leader in America-and certainly in New York, America's leading seaport, where Webb grew up, launched his history-making ships, and died. Before his life ended, both political parties had asked him to stand for Mayor of New York. Unlike his colleague, the shipping magnate W.R. Grace, he declined the honor. He had other things to do, things he knew how to do, really, better than anyone else. SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
Thanking all our hosts in New York City, Elizabeth, Stamford, Kingston, Albany , New Rochelle, Fairfield, Milford, and Fall River for a great summer of '89.
He was a reticent man, personally, as Ed Dunbaugh notes in this distinguished biography. But if you follow Dunbaugh into the crowded streets of Lower Manhattan, echoing with the ring of caulker's mallet and sledge upon tree nail, you will soon pick up the shape ofWebb' s beliefs and affections, and the strength and positive ardor with which he pursued them. And in Barry Thomas ' s life histories of the ships, which follow, you will soon pick up another beat, the integrity that went into anything that Webb set his hand to. PS This review is excerpted from the introduction to the book.
Now planning an exciting 1990 schedule. The new Coast Guard Certified"HMS" Rose , largest operational wooden sailing ship in the world, embarks on educational voyages. Diverse programs range from grade school age through executive development workshops for business and industry.
For information write or call:
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'Know then my own Dear Betsy I have lost the Bounty /
1
Mutiny and Romance in the South Seas, Sven Wahlroos (Salem House, Topsfield MA, 1989, 466p, $22.50hb) Captain Bligh: the Man and his Mutinies, Gavin Kennedy (Sheridan House, Dobbs Ferry NY, 1989, 31 Op, illus, $34.95hb) Bligh, Sam McKinney (International Marine Publishing Company, Camden ME, 1989, 205p, illus, $22.95) The 200th anniversary of the mutiny on HMS Bounty was marked in 1989 by the publication of these three books. The true story, which has captured the imagination of historians, marine enthusiasts and film makers remains a mystery. The most rudimentary account of the mutiny will dispel the fictional perception of Bligh as a ruthless disciplinarian. All accounts from the men on the Bounty confirm that lashings were dealt out infrequently in comparison with the standards of the time. In fact, the most recent studies of corporal punishment of this time indicate that historians until now have taken too grim a view of how order was maintained in the Royal Navy (see "Reviews," SH 50, p43). Kennedy in his biography asserts that Bligh was, in fact, too lenient with his men . Bligh, who had sailed with Cook to the Pacific islands and witnessed his death in Hawaii , came well qualified to lead an expedition to take breadfruit trees from Tahiti to Australia as a new food source for the penal colony. Despite his ardent efforts, however, his patron Sir Joseph Banks could not secure his promotion to post captain. Sailing instead as a lieutenant, he was the only commissioned officer on board. After desperate attempts to round Cape Horn through March and April, Bounty turned back to run east to the Cape of Good Hope. In August she made SEA HISTORY 53, SPRING 1990
Awal<e, Bold Bligh! Edited by Pau! Brunton
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).
Three personal letters written by William Bligh shortly after the celebrated mutiny on board the HMS Bounty bring the event to life in a way unmatched by accounts written years later. Published here in facsimile for the first time with explanatory text and transcriptions, the letters recount the drama as experienced by the man who was at the heart of the action. Illustrated. $22.00, cloth
University of Hawaii Press 2840 Kolowalu Street, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822
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Wahlroos takes a scientific approach, breaking the events prior to and after the mutiny down into chronological order, with psychoanalytical interpretations and insightful historical references to help the reader understand Bligh and the customs of the 18th century. It is Kennedy 's book, however, which sheds the most light on the man and the events surrounding the mutiny on HMS Bounty. Kennedy approaches history as a man studying the actions and motivations of other men. Hi s humanizing of history breaks down the barriers oftime and makes good reading. MN
Adventure Bay, Tasmania, where the first evidences of discontent arose in the direct disobedience to an order by the carpenter Purcell. This was almost immediately followed by other very public challenges to Bligh's authority by his officers (but not Christian!), as documented not only by Bligh, but by the mutineers at their trial. Bligh did not effectively di scipline his crew. He took to publicly humiliating his officers in front of the men. First mate Fletcher Christian, who had been a friend of Bligh's at the onset of the voyage, was caught in the middle. "I am in hell ," was Christian 's well documented exclamation at the time he took the ship, but what put him in thi s state of mind can never truly be known . Whatever it was that drove Christian to mutiny died with him in hi s violent death on Pitcairn Island-an ending that overtook all but one of the mutineers that stayed with him and the Bounty. McKinney 's account of the Bounty mutiny is reconstructed from primary sources (principally the logbooks of Bligh and boatswain' s mate James Morrison) and spun into an entertaining tale that lures the reader into the saga, and whets the appetite for more .
Underwater Archaeology Proceedings from the Society for Historical Archaeology Conference Baltimore, Maryland 1989
Now A vailable/ PRICE: $15.00 Society for Historical Archaeology P.O. Box 231033 , Pleasant Hill , California 94523-1033
CAPTIVES OF SHANGHAI THE STORY OF THE PRESIDENT HARRISON
CAPTIVES OF SHANGHAI
by David H. Grover, CDR, USNR-Ret., and Gretchen G. Grover, CDR, USNR
The first book dealing with an important but largely unknown episode of World War II - the capture on the high seas of the American passenger ship/transport SS President Harrison by the Japanese, the imprisonment of her crew along with American Marines, naval personnel, merchant seamen, and civilians in Shanghai, and the use of the ship by the Japanese as a transport and as a "hell ship" for POWs until ·sunk by the American submarine Pampanito. In paperback, 232 pages, 60 pictures, bibliography, and index. $11.95 postpaid. California residents add 61.4% sales tax (75¢).
Dan.t•. Onnt O...tcMa
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MODEL
SUCCESS STORY' "The Maritime Preposition ing Ship program is a model success story, and I couldn 't be more pleased. MPS is on schedule and proving to be an extremely valuable strategic asset." - General P. X. Ke lley Commandant U.S. Marine Corps
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DISTRICT 2 MARINE ENGINEERS BENEFICIAL ASSOCIATION -ASSOCIATED MARITIME OFFICERS AFFILIATED WITH THE AFL-CIO MARITIME TRADES DEPARTMENT 650 FOURTH AVENUE BROOKLYN , N.Y 11232 (718) 965-6700
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This is MM&P Country. Pictured above is the MN 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
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Masters, Mates & Pilots 700 Maritime Boulevard, Linthicum Heights, MD 21090 •Tel : (301) 850-8700 ·Cable: BRIDGEDECK, Washington, DC· Telex: 750831