Sea History 057 - Spring 1991

No. 57

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY

SPRING 1991

SEA HISTORY

375

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

SAIL TRAINING: Youth Tries Its Wings,

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SEA HISTORY OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE WORLD SHIP TRUST

SEA HISTORY is published quarterly by the National Maritime Historical Society, 132 Maple Street, Croton-on-Hudson NY 10520. Second class postage paid at Croton-on-Hudson, NY 10520, and Cincinnati, OH 45242. USPS # 000676.

COPYRIGHT © 1991 by the National Maritime Historical Society. Tel. 914 271-2177.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Sea History, PO Box 646, 132 Maple Street, Croton NY 10520-0646.

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OFFICERS & TRUSTEES are Chairman Schuyler M. Meyer, Jr. ; Vice Chairmen, Henry H. Anderson, Jr., Alan G. Choate, James Ean; President, Peter Stanford; Treasurer, Thomas Gochberg; Secretary , Richardo Lopes; Trustees, Norbert S. Hill , Jr., Truda C. Jewett, Karl Kortum , George Lamb, Robert J. Lowen, James P. M2.renakos, Daniel Moreland, Nancy Pouch, Ludwig K. Rubinsky, Edmund S. Rumowicz, Der Scutt, Frank V. Snyder, Samuel Thompson, William G. Winterer, Edward G. Zelinsky. Chairman Emeritus, Karl Kortum OVERSEERS: Chairman, Henry H. Anderson, Jr.; Charles F. Adams, Townsend Hornor, George Lamb, Clifford D. Mallory, Schuyler M. Meyer, Jr., J. William Middendorf, II, John G. Rogers, John Stobart ADVISORS : Co-Chairmen, Frank 0. Braynard, Melbourne Smith; D.K. Abbass , Raymond Aker, Robert Amon, GeorgeF. Bass, Francis E. Bowker, Oswald L. Brett, David Brink, Frank G. G. Carr, William M. Doerflinger, John S. Ewald, Joseph L. Farr, Timothy G. Foote, Thomas Gillmer, Richard Goold-Adams , Walter J. Handelman, Robert G. Herbert , Jr., Conrad Mil ster, Edward D. Muhlfeld, William G. Muller, David E. Perkins, Richard Rath, Nancy Hughes Richardson, Timothy J. Runyan , George Salley, Ralph L. Snow, Edouard A. Stackpole, John Stobart, Albert Swanson, Shannon J. Wall , Raymond E. Wallace, Robert A. Weinstein, Thomas Wells , Charles Wittholz. American Ship Trust, Hon. Secretary, Eric J. Berryman WORLD SHIP TRUST: Vice Presidems, Henry H. Anderson, Jr., Viscount Caldecote, Maldwin Drummond, Sir Rex Hunt, Hammond Innes, Rt. Hon. Lord Lewin, Rt. Hon. Lord Shackleton, Peter Stanford, Edward G. Zelinsky; Chairman, J. A. Forsythe; Hon . Treasurer , Michael C. MacSwiney; Trustees: Eric J. Berryman, Mensun Bound, Neil Cossons, David Goddard, David MacGregor, Alan McGowan , Anthony Nelson, Michael Parker, Arthur Prothero, Michael Stammers, Jayne Tracey. Membership: £15 payable WST, 129a North Street, Burwell, Cambs. CBS OBB, England. Reg. Charity No. 277751 SEA HISTORY STAFF: Editor, Peter Stanford; Managing Editor, Norma Stanford; Associate Editors, Kevin Haydon , Richard Rath ; Advertising, Michelle Shuster; Production Asst., Joseph Stanford; Accounting, Martha Rosvally; Membership Secretary , Patricia Anstett; Membership Asstistam, Grace Zerella; Assistant to the President, Sally Kurts

SPRING 1990

CONTENTS 4

DECKLOG

9

LEITERS NMHS MISSION

11

SAIL TRAINING: THE SAIL TRAINING ASSOCIATION AND THE SCHOONERS FOUNDATION, George L Maxwell STEPHEN B. LUCE AND THE FEDERAL ACT OF 1874,

12

Norman J_ Brouwer 15 18 19 20

A MOVEMENT COMES OF AGE, Dick Rath A SOVIET-AMERICAN SAIL, Pamela Wuerth REVIVING A TRADITION-IN EAST HARLEM, Paul Pennoyer OXFORD'S NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY TEAM: THE FIRST TEN YEARS, Timothy G. Dingemans

26

MARINE ART: MICHAEL BLASER' S WORLD OF STEAMBOATS

28 29 30

AN OHIO RIVER.WINDOW, Roger Williams, III UNDER MAIN SKYSAIL IN THE MEDITERRANEAN MARINE ART NEWS

33

SHIP NOTES, SEAPORT & MUSEUM NEWS

40

REVIEWS

47

DESSERT: DOWN CHANNEL IN THE VIVEITE, E. Keble Chatterton

COVER: The Malcolm Miller, a 300-ton topsail schooner conceived for the purpose of training young people in seafaring, stands off on a close reach on a breezy day, carrying out the mission of the Sail Training Association. This noble sea creature is in her element here, snorting her way through a dusty sea as she was born to do! Photo courtesy Schooners Foundation, USA.

Join the National Maritime Historical Society today ... and help save America's seafaring heritage for tomorrow.

We bring to life America's seafaring past through research, archaeological expeditions and ship preservation efforts. We work with museums, historians and sail training groups on these efforts and report on these activities in our quarterly journal Sea History. We are also the American arm of the

World Ship Trust, which is an international group working worldwide to save ships of historic importance. Membership into the society is only $25 a year.

As a member of NMHS you'll receive Sea Hi s tor y, a fascinating magazine filled with articles of seafaring and historical lore. Come aboard with us today !

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I want to help. I understand that my contribution goes to forward the work of the Society and that I'll be kept informed by receiving SEA HISTORY quarterly. Enclosed is:

D $50 Contributor D $100 Friend D $35 Family 0 $500Donor D $250 Patron To: National Maritime Historical Society, PO Box 646, 132 Maple St, Croton NY 10520 NAME ___________________________

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3

LETTERS

DECK LOG Sail training, the featured subject of this Sea History, covers a multitude of sins.

To be clear about what the phrase means when we at NMHS say it, let me tum to something John Millar said in a recent issue of the new magazine Seaways. He was speaking, be it noted, of sail training in the modern world, where the temporal purposes have worn away through time and only the supernal purposes, which were always in the mix, remain: "Above all, it teaches the relative values of self-reliance and interdependence. In addition, one-week cruises in coastal waters teach seamanship, navigation, sail handling, rowing, history, geography, coastal ecology, conservation and the music of the sea."

In other words, how to cope, how to explore and encounter the natural world on its terms, not ours-a profoundly enlightening process surely more important to mankind than the "street smarts" of a ghetto drug dealer or, for that matter, a savings and loan crook.

And, in a wonderful touch , Millar adds the hard-won appreciation of beauty in a sailor's life, in "the music of the sea."

"An Excitement for Life" But that's not all. Millar continues with a single sentence that names benefits critically needed in all walks of our American life today: "Such programs have time and again proven effective in combating substance abuse (or cutting it off before it begins), boredom and other spiritual maladies of the young (such as ' the misery of unimportance ' noted by the founder of Outward Bound), and in infusing the young with an excitement for life-through action, self-discipline and service."

My old skipper John Illingworth, a founding member of the Sail Training Association, and one of the persons most responsible for the topsail schooner

thrashing her way to windward on the cover of this issue, used to say: "We are full of sin." He used this expression to cover social ills, individual failings, and most of all anything that resulted in a boat not going as fast and close to the wind as it lay in her to do.

He did not confess to sin in a mawkish, sanctimonious, or, God knows, puritanical way (in fact, he would quite often typically follow up his confession with a call for "just a little gin!"), but with open and cheerful acceptance of human frailties and follies. So when I say the words "sail training" are extended to cover a multitude of sins, I am not proposing that we yank the blighters who fall short of John Millar's goals out of bed at three in the morning to be lined up against the wall and shot at dawn , but instead rouse them out at that hour to change jibs and do what is needful to greet the new day sailing fast.

In this Sea History we look at the best the field has to offer, and seek to learn from that.

* * * * *

No word on Columbus in this issue. But he's not lost, just jogging back and forth under short canvas awaiting the daylight of October 12, 1492, when he'll go ashore, in the next installment of our series. Somewhat to our surprise this series tests out on our reader's pulses as the most interesting thing we've published lately.

Your editor is taking a lay day and reviewing the voyage thus far, while Columbus and his crew stand by to set foot in the New World. Indian eyes were on them as they did this , eyes first lit with hope and joyous expectation for the most part. Let us hold that moment of anticipation before the encounter in our mind' s eyes, before plunging on into the actualities. The world, on both shores of the ocean, was never again to be the same after that encounter. And we are, or should be, learning from it still. -PS

The Tall Ships Are Coming!® The tall ships are coming to you - in the American Sail Training Association's directory Sail Training - Ships and Programs. Here's the one place you can find -

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This 124-page guide from ASTA tells how to "take yourself to sea• and more. For your copy, mail $18.00 (includes postage) ASTA Dircc1ory P.O. Box 1459 Ncwporl, RI 02840 (401) 846-1775

4

A Jewel in the Ocean I congratulate NMHS for your new guide to American and Canadian maritime museums. It is a fine volume that will be of great use to many.

Since the publication requests comments, I urge inclusion of the Bermuda Maritime Museum in the next edition.

This veritable jewel of a museum is, I am sure, known to you at NMHS. I am hopeful that this outstanding example of Bermudian maritime lore can be added to the US and Canadian maritime museums so well chronicled by your volume.

DAVID L. WooDs Alexandria, Virginia

No Thought of Defeat in 1940 A short letter of thanks for your "Deck Log" in the Winter 1990 Sea History, and also for your article "The Summer of 1940" in the same issue.

At that time I was not perhaps in the war so much as under it, working on the fireboats on London river. I don't remember that it occurred to any of us to surrender, or indeed, that Britain would be successfully invaded, still less defeated , though we had then no idea how the war might be won.

Maybe you are a little hard on your correspondent Alex A. Hurst in correcting hi s "four stackers" to describe the US destroyers given to the Royal Navy in 1940. They were called four-pipers in America, four-stackers when they were transferred to British crews. I spoke this morning with an ex-Royal Navy man who served in corvettes for much of the war. He confirmed that four-stackers was the British naval term and had never heard of four-pipers. He remembered one of them coming into Plymouth.

CHARLES HADFIELD

Cirencester, England

Great Encouragement for Seamen: IMHY-92 I am pleased to express the interest, indeed, enthusiasm, of the council of American Maritime Museums for the proposed declaration of 1992 as International Maritime Heritage Year. The need to recognize the endangered status of our international maritime heritage is compelling; the activities now scheduled worldwide for 1992 are an excellent vehicle for building public awareness of this legacy at risk.

The Council-an association of more than forty maritime museums throughout the United States-represents the SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

primary custodians of the ships, boats, fine arts, and related artifacts that are the tangible expression of that legacy. Your efforts can only enhance our determination to extend understanding of the impact of maritime enterprise on our history to the broadest possible public audience.

The Council looks forward to working with the American Ship Trust of the National Maritime Historical Society and with our colleagues around the world in the advancement of that understanding.

PETER NEILL

President, Council of American Maritime Museums Plans for IMHY-92 center on innovative programs to raise the maritime awareness of the American people, and will be set forth in a future Sea History.-Eo Knowing No Other to Reach Out To As a member of NMHS and a retired graduate of the US Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point, one of my volunteer activities is as information representative for the Academy via an alumni chapter.

Our local Northern Ohio alumni chapter of the Academy participates in observing National Maritime Day by planning displays in public places. the displays are to support Academy recruiting and to encourage public awareness of the Merchant Marine generally. They generally stay up a week or two. My purpose in contacting you, since I know no other to reach out to, is to ask if the Society could let us have some photos or printed information suited for making up display panels; also, to use around the display area allotted to us. Society decals and publications featuring cargo ships, and issues of SeaH istory that have a cargo vessel on the cover would be appreciated.

WALTER B OTTO

Cleveland, Ohio We're glad Mr. Botto turned to us, and urge others to get into this act of putting up maritime displays on National Maritime Day, May 22!-Eo

Is Bambi a Suitable Unicorn?

I read the article "The Art of the Figurehead" (SH 50) by Mr. Powlesland with interest and some irritation. He has completed a fine piece of (the new Balclutha figurehead) and should be congratulated upon it.

SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

However his remarks regarding the figurehead and trailboard decorations of The Great Britain (please note correct name) are quite another matter. He states the "visitors leave with the mistaken impression of both the ship's appearance and of ship carving in general." He maintains "they could not have been carved out of wood" and (if they had been) "could not have withstood the first sea that dashed against them." These statements are nonsense and, as I was responsible for much of the original research on the vessel, it is appropriate that I put the record straight.

(1) The appearance of the ship is well documented and the present figurehead and trailboard decorations are based closely upon contemporary illustrations and descriptions. I enclose a copy of a drawing from the Illustrated London News for July 29, 1843, page 43, as just one example. There are others and they all add up to showing Mr. Powlesland's criticism of the appearance to be rubbish. The ship looks just as she did on completion.

(2) Now as to the "carvings" themselves, I am afraid once again he has fallen into the trap of not verifying the basis for quite unpleasant and unjustified criticism. Mr. Powlesland says that "although remnants of the original high relief carvings existforthe Great Britain she has been adorned with freestanding figures that are inappropriate in every way."Now we do not have any remnants of the 1843 figurehead and trailboard decorations. What we do have come from the 1857 ship whose bow embodied extensive alterations including a smaller wood figurehead carved by Allan Clotworthy. There were no trailboards. The unicorn in his center illustration has nothing to do with the 1843 figurehead.

(3) The 1843 decorations were not high relief carvings but were in low relief and indeed were not carvings at all. the contemporary accounts state quite clearly that they "were executed in bronze." They were thus easily made as shown, were strong enough (as indeed they proved to be) and were easily attached. Once again Mr. Powlesland is completely wrong. Perhaps the carver should stick to his chisel.

E. c. B. CORLETT SS Great Britain Project Bristol, England

Great Britain' s bow decorations, and from no less a source than Mr. Corlett, the distinguished architect of the restoration.None ofthis information is available aboard the s.hip. (We feel it is an affectation to call her The Great Britain, by the way-she was not generally so called in her active career, so why start now?) But it should be observed that Mr. Powlesland' s critique of the unicorn figure on the trailboard forward is artistic, and we believe the three unicorns shown below bear him out, in the sad come down from the proud original figure and its 1857 replacement, to the mincing "Bambi in chains" we see today . Mr. Corlett, we feel, would be well advised to stick to his slide rule and stability tables. -Eo

It is good to know these things about the

New unicorn now on the ship

The original unicorn

Replacement unicorn of 1857

5

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SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

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Celebrating the Culture that Was Here When Columbus Stepped Ashore

". . . to encourage the students to maintain and enhance their relationship with their tribal background through the arts." aÂŁ

Announcing the Al Qoyawayma Award for Excellence in Science, Engineering and the Arts The award has been established by the George Bird Grinnell American Indian Children's Education Foundation to honor an outstanding engineer who is also one of America's leading pottery makers, Al Qoyawayma, a member of the Hopi Tribe.

He has made a particularly important contribution to our country and our society through his leadership in establishing the American Indian Science and Engineering Society.

Al Qoyawayma is a model for all young people. The award will be given to a Native American undergraduate college student majoring in the science or engineering field who has not only shown excellence in the chosen major but has also shown outstanding interest and skill in any of the arts, as well as a demonstrated knowledge of American Indian culture and religion and an appreciation of the beauties of the natural world.

George Bird Grinell American Indian Children•s Education Foundation Patricia Trudell Gordon (Sioux), President Dr. Henrietta Morton (Cheyenne), Vice President Schuyler M. Meyer Jr., Secretary/Treasurer

Box 47H, RD#1, Dover Plains, New York 12522

NMHS MISSION: Introducing a New Guide to Maritime Museums "I don't want to see any clean copies of this book lying around! " The speaker was 20-year-old Joseph Stanford , and he was speaking about the new Guide to American and Canadian Maritime Museums published by the Society. "I want to see it covered with notes, stuffed wi th fl yers, used, re-used and dog-eared."

The occasion was the introductory reception of the Guide at the South Street Seaport Museum Bookshop. The fo rmjdable, white-bearded Jack Putn am, bookshop manager, was our host. He has served as directorofthe Uni versity Press Assocati on, bartender at Carmine's on Front Street and actor impersonating Herman Melville fo r the Hudson River Waterfront Museum aboard their travelling barge last summer. He says you've got to see life to sell books.

Norman Bro uwer, Curator of Ships at the South Street Seaport Museum , was on hand for the occasion. He was one of the committee of five, chaired by Michael Naab of the National Trust, which oversaw the compilation of the Guide.

Bob Herbert, whose letters have brightened the pages of Sea History (sometimes with fl yi ng sparks!), was with us, shaking hi s head-alas, he hadn ' t fo und any errors in the work .. . as yet. And Dick Rath , fo rmer editor of Yachting and chairman of the innovative Pioneer Marine School in the 1970s, who writes of sai l training and other matters in Sea History- he left before we could announce that he was being drafted as Associate Editor of Sea History. (Never fear, we caught up with him later.)

Oh, and there was Ralph Freeman, author of that marvellously evocati ve memoir of the UK 's Manchester Ship Canal, with its images of great ships fro m fore ign parts slid ing by, their smokestacks gliding over the tiled roofs of farms-what an outpouring of letters that memoir produced when it appeared in SH 53 ! And Tom Gochberg, new ly returned from sailing his fast yaw l Mistral to Greece with hi s wife Lettie as crew, and . . . but you get the picture.

What a grand ro ut of peopl e you find in a museum bookshop! As good as you fi nd in a fi sh market bar, or a museum , or a neighborhood pub like, for instance, the Plume of Feathers just outside the gate of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England.

The mission of NMHS is a practical one, but we are aware, and ever reminded anew, that it is done in , of, and fo r a community of real people, not SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 199 1

poses-as well as assure its future.

"For this is a community ***** that thrives not by exclusion, There are 343 maritime museums in the but by inclusion, and its newest United States and Canada-343 centers members freshen its purposes- of our hard-won learning at sea. Of these, five are truly national museums, seaas well as assure its future." symbolic numbers stored in the memory circuits of someone's computer. When I came up the steps into the bookshop to hear my son Joseph 's talk on "dirty books," I was greeted by Jack Putnam with the hail-soon picked up by others: "Welcome to the Square Rigger Bar!" The Square Rigger Bar? This is a long-gone seamen's bar housed in the old counting house of clipper ship owner SEA HISTORY's GUIDE TO American mul Canad ian

MARITIM E MUSEUMS

0

J<""'!"'

(~~rlpâ&#x20AC;˘~-'d .1nJ fal~<'<.l II) II S ..mk:n! '\A"ll()'\'1.I. \IAl!l1h1F I HSH)H!G\l. S(X:IITY

de Mille on Front Street, looking out on Burl ing Slip. When the big square rigger Wavertree came in , we told the fi sh market patrons that we 'd brought her in at the foot of the street to improve the view out the bar 's front door. The people of the South Street Museum used to go there to grouse and to exchange notes and to dream tall dreams. The actual land leases for the South Street Seaport urban renewal development (weighing several pounds) were signed on one of its formi ca-topped tables-but that's another story, fo r another occasion.

That entire block of buildings is gone now, but the Square Rigger Bar has not gone out of the communal memory in the South Street Bookshop! It lives on, and those who joined too late to know it were soon instructed in its mythos. It makes me very happy to publish a guidebook to such a community's sacred groves and water holes, both to reinforce its own sense of identity and to invite new people to come share in its experience. For thi s is a community that thrives not by exclusion , but by inclu sion, and its newest members freshen its pur-

villages in themselves , with thousands of members, big libraries, their own publications, and collections dating back to the days of British (and Spanish and French) rule in North America. These are The Peabody Museum in Massachusetts, Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut, South Street Seaport Museum in New York, The Mariners ' Museum in Virginia, and the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park in California. These are followed by 15 museums of regional importance, ranging from the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath to the Hawaii Maritime Center-complete museums worth a long trip to visit, usually on the water, often with their own hi storic ships, boats and sea programs.

Then there are 78 museums that are local gems, exemplified by such beautiful creations as the Connecticut River Museum in Essex, just off Long Island Sound, and Galveston Seaport Museum , which sails the tall ship Elissa in the Gulf of Mexico (and further afield). Finally there are, at last count, 246 maritime collections which keep authentic artifacts and invite the public to share in their story. These exist in indescribable variety. You have to sniff them out in odd corners of seaport towns, or in the hallways of larger institutions.

Or, of course, you can beg, borrow or buy a copy of the Guide, as shown above.

As spring rains streak your windows, let your eyes feast on the contents of the fact-crammed pages of the Guide-and may your footsteps follow, in rain or shine, to seek out the treasures of America 's maritime museums. Everyone except the family dog will enjoy this , and the dog will be happy to see everyone talking to each other in animated fashion as they return .

Have you ever seen people come out silent from one of these museums? I PS haven ' t.

Norn: NMHS members have received a special mailing about the Sea History Gazette, a monthly newsletter that keeps its subscribers abreast of museum news and other maritime heritage developments. Readers who have not seen this mailing are invited to write or phone for information about the Gazette.

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SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

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The Malcolm Miller, second of the two great topsail schooners built by the Sail Training Association in the J960s, punches her way through a rising sea with young trainees aboard.

The Sail Training Association and the Schooners Foundation

by George L. Maxwell

The Sail Training Association was formed after World War II to conduct the International Tall Ship Races in Europe, known today as the Cutty Sark Tall Ship Races. These gatherings became an establishedfeature in European, and with Operation Sail 1964 the magic spread to American waters. The magic, of course, was in disciplined sailing that offered young people challenge and opportunity to find themselves in the world-in other words, sail training as we understand it today.

In 1956 a London solicitor, Bernard Morgan, realized a long held ambition of organizing a race among the last tall ships still actively involved in youth and sail training. With the aid of Lord Louis Mountbatten, the first race was set from Torbay to Lisbon. The success of this race convinced Mountbatten that Great Britain should create her own program of training young people in seafaring under sail. The Sail Training Association was formed for this purpose, and 1966 saw the launching of the Sir Winston Churchill and, two years later, the Malcolm Miller. These big schooners, sailed by ST A, have now carried almost 30,000 young people between 16 and 24 years of age on two- and three-week voyages from Norway to the South of France. The Sir Winston Churchill made SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

her most dramatic appearance to date in 1976 when she arrived in New York harbor with an all-female crew to celebrate the US Bicentennial. She is planning a further visit in 1992 if funding can be obtained.

On each voyage, the ships carry 42 young people supervised by 13 adults, of whom 5 are ¡ permanent crew, the rest being volunteers. Each voyage commences with the assignment of the group into three watches. One member of each, the watch leader, has sailed on a previous voyage. Each watch is led by an officer who is an experienced yachtsman or, a licensed merchant officer.

After a day of orientation in port, which includes climbing the rigging, the ship sails. From the time of "last line away" the ship is handled by the young crew. The helmsman is sometimes overawed that he is actually in control of a 300-ton, 150-foot ship making her way out of a port. The young crew are put to work, and, while advice is given, they do all sail handling. I have been on a number of voyages as a watch officer and when asked by my young crew about sail trim I always reply, "Do what you think is best, and see what makes the ship go better." I once asked a senior captain why we always seemed to finish at the back of the pack. He replied: "George, if this ship were ever run properly we

wouldn't be doing our job properly."

At the end of a two-week voyage it always amazes me and the crew to find out how well they have learned to work together. They have made many errorseven to putting the sails on upside downbut they have become a spirited team, full of self-confidence and pride. While no effort has been made to make them professional sailors, they have learned a great deal about themselves. They have also had the adventure of a lifetime.

In the early 1980s, a group of American and British sailors decided to bring the concept to the United States. Among those were Winston Churchill II, Nathan Hale, Nancy Hughes Richardson, John Pigott, David Pacy, and myself.

As of this date we've been able to contribute to other organizations in the United States involved in sail training as well as sending a number of young Americans on an unforgettable adventure in which they sai l with people from all the EEC countries and visit a number of foreign ports. All in all, in my estimation, this makes for a fantastic experience for the youth of America. D

Mr. Maxwell is President of Schooners Foundation, which supports sail training on both sides of the Atlantic, and arranges for American youngsters to sail in the STA schooners and other ships.

11

"Sailors Can Only Be Made Aboard Sailing Ships"

Stephen B. Luce and the Federal Act of 1874

by Norman

In his first installment of the history of sail training in the United States (see SH3I, p49), Mr. Brouwer traced the early efforts ofIsaac Coffin, beginning in I 820, and other philanthropists to set up nautical schools for boys, both to train the boys for a livelihood and, often, to remove them from unhealthy influences of their lives ashore. Later efforts by Thomas Goin and Henry Eckford of New York (1837) persuaded the US Navy to institute apprentice training programs for youth. It was in one of these programs, aboard the USS North Carolina at the Brooklyn Navy Yardin1841, that Stephen B. Luce began his career.

In the firm belief that nautical schools and a supply of competent graduates would help rebuild the American merchant marine, Captain Luce succeeded in involving the Federal government in the establishment of such schools and a program ofofficer certification. As result, thousands of boys and young men received educations and went on to productive lives. Yet, this did not result in the rebirth of America's merchant service, as Captain Luce had believed it would.

By the early 1870s, deep concern was being expressed over the future of the American merchant marine. The clipper ship era, already in decline by 1855 , had died in the depression of 1857.

Then the Civil War had come in 1860. The threat of Confederate commerce raiders drove up insurance rates and large numbers of American ships were transferred to neutral flags as a result. Protective laws prevented their return to the American flag when peace was restored.

Prior to the Civil War, two-thirds of our foreign trade was handled by American ships. Afterthe War, the figure was onethird, and the situation steadily worsened until the outbreak of the First World War. The initiative and the capital , which in the first half of the 1800s had flowed into shipping, was now going into railroads and settlement of the vast territory west of the Mississippi.

The manning situation had been a cause for concern since the 1830s. Now it was seen as an important symptom and , to some extent, cause of the overall sickness afflicting the shipping industry. In 1867, the Price Current of Portland, Maine, had this to say: "There is an utter destitution of system in the officering of our vessels, and the want of accountability in both officers and men ... is rapidly deteriorating the whole mercantile marine of the country. Things have come to such a pass that not many young men of intelligence and character will continue in our merchant service. Numbers of them will make a voyage or two and then abandon the service in disgust. Why? Because it has become the receptacle for the refuse of almost every nation upon the earth." 1 During April 1872, Commander Stephen B. Luce was at Marseilles preparing to return to the United States in command of the USS Juniata. On the 29th , Captain Schufeldt of the USS Wabash presented him with a letter of introduction to Isaac Bell, Commissioner of Charities of the City of New York.

Schufeldt cited Luce ' s "laudable intention of interesting the government and the people of the country in the establishment of a training school for seamen," adding, "our citizens are lamenting the loss of American commerce, but in their efforts __ to restore it they seem to have lost sight of the fact that good sailors are getting as scarce as good ships and that for future prosperity one is quite as much needed as the other." 2 12

J. Brouwer Luce was detached from the Juniata on July 1, 1872, assigned to the Boston Navy Yard, and promoted to captain on December 28. On February 15 of the following year, he published an article in the Nautical Gazette on the subject of schoolships. In it he reviewed the efforts of Goin and Forbes, and declared that the reason earlier efforts had failed was the lack of laws requiring trained officers and seamen: "If Congress enacts that al I officers of the merchant marine shall come up to a certain standard of proficiency, and attaches proper penalties to the employment of those who do not come up to that standard, it is very evident that there will be at once created a demand for a certain amount of nautical instruction, and until there is such a demand, nautical schools may be established in vain." 3 On April 24, 1873, at the encouragement of " prominent merchants, underwriters and shipowners ," 4 the New York State legislature adopted "An Act to authorize the Board of Education for the City and County of New York to establish a Nautical School." The executive committee of the school was to consist of three members chosen by and from the Board of Education, and a "Council of the Nautical School" was to be created by the Chamber of Commerce, " to advise and cooperate with the Board of Education in the establishment and management of such school , and from time to time to visit and examine the same, and to communicate in respect thereof with the Board."5 The law also empowered the Board of Supervisors of the County of New York to raise, through taxes, $50,000 to be turned over to the Board of Education for the purpose of creating the school , and authorized the Board of Education to apply to the United States government for the loan of " vessels and supplies."

Without appropriate Federal legislation, the Navy was unwilling to loan any of its ships to state or local governments.

The executive committee of the proposed schools, appointed by the Board of Education less than a week after passage of the State law, now turned to Admiral J. L. Worden , Superintendent of the United States Naval Academy for advice. Worden recommended that they consult with Stephen B. Luce.6 Captain Luce had, on April I , been appointed to the Board of Visitors of the Naval Academy . Traveling back and forth between his duties at Boston and Annapolis gave him the opportunity to meet with people in New York and with appropriate officials in Washingrton . On July 11 he received from C. R. P. Rodgers, Chief of the Bureau of Navigation , formal written orders to "Proceed to New York without further delay for the purpose of consultation with the Board of Education in reference to the establishment of a Nautical School for the training of seamen. " 7 On August 20, the Nautical School executive committee wrote requesting Luce to prepare "a bill forthe encouragement of Marine schools" to be presented to the next session of Congress, and a plan of organization for a school of the type I

'11 ' .,

authorized by the New York bill. 8 Two weeks later Luce wrote to John Crosby Brown, a member of the committee, to report on a conference he had had with Secretary of the Navy George M. Robeson the evening of September 2. Robeson was in favor of marine schools "engrafted" upon existing public school systems. But he was not willing to commit the Navy Department to active cooperation until he had been able to fully examine Luce 's proposal. 9

By September 6, Luce had a packet of materials on its way to Robeson, which included: his arguments in favor of nautical school s; proposals for appropriate legi slation; a copy of the New York State bill ; a history of previous attempts to found nautical school s; papers on the subject by R. B. Forbes and Henry Barnard (member of the Naval Academy Board of Visitors in 1864); and information on the British schools Conway and Worcester. Luce asked the Secretary of the Navy to place the matter before Congress. Once again he cited the 1866 legislation allowing assignment of Army officers to land-grant colleges, adding: "The Navy would have just cause for feeling jealous at this discrimination." 10 The seven points he believed any legislation should include were these: 1) The Land-Grant College Act of 1862 should be amended to include the science of navigation , 2) The Navy Department should be authorized to loan ships the nautical schools, 3) The President should be authorized to detail Naval officers to act as superintendents and professors of nautical school s, 4) Masters and officers of merchant ships should be required to pass examination for certificates of competency, 5) Ships should be required to take a number of nautical school graduates determined by their tonnage, 6) A registry should be kept of graduates of the schools to form " what must be in time of war our great Naval Reserve," 7) Graduates should be provided with continuous service certificates printed on parchment. Captain Luce also recommended that the age of admission to schools should range from 14 to 17, but that further training be provided for graduates who had completed one long voyage, "(especially [in] ships in the China trade) , ... and desire to go out next time as mate." 11 On October 1, Luce sent another copy of his proposed bill to Richard Henry Dana. He hoped that the author of Two Years Before the Mast , with his unique background of sailor and lawyer, might put his proposals into "something like shape" for printing and circulation. 12 It is quite possible that Dana complied. On November 13 , Captain Luce gave a lengthy address at the Naval Academy on the subject of naval and maritime training and submitted the text of a Nautical School bill , expanded and more polished in tone than the one he had sent to Secretary Robeson. 13 The introduction to the expanded bill described it as an amendment to the February 1871 law requiring certification of officers of steam vessels. The first ten sections provided for certificates of competency for masters and mates of all vessels and laid down in great detail how these were to be granted, suspended or cancelled. Succeeding sections provided for certificates of service, loans of Naval vessels to schools, ass ignment of Naval officers to schools, registration of seamen , a requirement that ships carry certain proportions of nautical school graduates for three years or until age 21 and , finally, appointment of a government officer to regularly inspect and report on the nautical school s. Fishing vessels were to be exempt from the law . 14 Captain Luce had, in the meantime, begun a campaign of letters seeking support for hi s bill from legislators, including SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

Senators Charles Sumner and Zachariah Chandler and Representatives William Wheelerand Ben Butler; and from the leaders of commercial organizations in the Port of New York . By February 1874, Congress was considering two bills providing for nautical schools.

HR 1347 more or less embodied the provision s Luce had proposed. SR 176, however, merely provided for the loan of ships, personnel and equipment for the use of schools. 15 On February 12, Luce circulated a letter to the nation 's boards of trade , pointing out the inadequacy of the SenS KYL ARKIS G l ~ THE ).J Al:\TOP. ate bill , reiterating his contention that "maintaining nautical schools on their bare merits has been tried over and over again in this country and has invariably failed." He argued again for more thorough certification of ships officers than provided by the 1871 bill and advocated the creation of an executive department of the government "to watch over the interests of our ocean commerce," citing as a precedent the creation of the Department of Agriculture in 1862. 16 In spite of his efforts, the House bill failed to become law.

Instead , on June 20, 1874, Congress passed the abbreviated Senate statute: " . . . The Secretary of the Navy, to promote nautical education, is hereby authorized and empowered to furnish , upon the application in writing of the Governorofthe State, a suitable vessel of the Navy, with all her apparel, charts, books and instruments of navigation , provided the same can be spared without detriment to the naval service, to be used for the benefit of any nautical school , or school or college having a nautical branch; established at each of any of the ports of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk and San Francisco, upon the condition that there shall be maintained, at such port, a school or branch of a school for the instruction of groups in navigation , seamanship, marine engineering and all matters pertaining to the proper construction, equipment and sailing of vessels or any particular branch thereof; And the President of the 13

DRAWINGS REPRINTED FROM HARPER 'S NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE, AUG. 1879

United States is hereby authorized, when in his opinion the same can be done without detriment to the public service, to detail proper officers of the Navy as superintendents of, or instructors in such schools: Provided, that if any such school shall be discontinued, or the good of the naval service shall require, such vessel shall immediately be restored to the Secretary of the Navy, and the officers so detailed recalled: and provided further, That no person shall be sentenced to, or be received at, such schools as a punishment or commutation of punishment for crime." 17 Federal assistance for maritime education had become a reality. More thorough certification of merchant marine personnel and a governmental agency watching over the interests of ocean commerce would both have to wait In spite of his disappointment in the 1874 law and his doubts about the future of schools founded under such a statute, Luce saw the fight through to its conclusion. On July 11 , he was suggesting ships which might be loaned to a New York school. His first choice was either USS Worcester or USS Guard, lightly armed vessels which had been used by the Navy for supply and survey work. If a ship with engines was chosen, he recommended that the engines be removed and replaced with ballast to provide more living space and "more healthy" conditions. 18 On several earlier occasions, Luce had also stated his belief that, "Sailors can only be made aboard sailing ships." 19

By September 30, the sloop of war St. Mary's had been selected by the Navy for loan to the school and Captain Luce was writing the Boston Navy Yard to ask that half of her main battery of sixteen guns be removed. 20 The St. Mary's, a wooden vessel of958 tons, had been launched at Washington in 1844, and was named for the first settlement in the present state of Maryland. After serving in the Gulf of Mexico during the Mexican War, she had spent the remainder of her active career with the Pacific squadron. On November 23, 1872, she left San Francisco for Norfolk, Virginia, where she arrived June 3, 1873, by way of Cape Horn. 21 In December 1874, Captain Luce himself commanded the St. Mary's on her trip from Boston to New York. The City of New York provided the ship with a berth at the foot of East 23rd Street, at which location on December LO Captain Luce formally transferred responsibility for her to the Executive Committee on Nautical Schools, represented by its chairman David Wetmore. 22 Following passage of the schoolship bill, Luce had also sent out inquiries to the other ports on the possibility of their starting nautical schools. In addition, he sent to shipowners a prospectus on the proposed New York school and inquiry as to their willingness to hire its graduates. 23 In September 1874, the Philadelphia Board of Trade wrote, "Efforts have been commenced to make the provisions of your act effective for the interest of our port."24 However, no school materialized at that 14

port until 1889. The Baltimore Board of Trade was rather pessimistic and cautious, wanting to see how the other schools progressed. 25 Boston's reaction is not known, but the recent failure of its reformatory schoolships may have been a dampening influence. Only one other port took advantage of the Act during 1874. This was San Francisco, which was loaned a sistership of the St. Mary's, the USS Jamestown. That school was not a success, however, and the ship was returned to the Navy in 1876. 26 On December 4, 1874, even before delivery of the St. Mary's, Luce was writing to Wetmore asking to terminate his role as agent of the New York school. 27 Other campaigns which he had been pursuing since the 1860s now became the focus of his energies. Within half a decade, he was able to see the formation of a US Naval Apprentice Training Squadron, serving as its commander from 1881 to 1884. Next, he campaigned for and saw created the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island, which he also headed as Superintendent from 1884. He was promoted to Rear Admiral in 1889 and did not retire from the service until 1910, after a remarkable career of 69 years. The State University of New York Maritime College and the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island, exist today as monuments to his efforts. The Apprentice Training Squadron has evolved into our present naval "boot camps." And the certification of officers and seamen and a Federal agency for the merchant marine, which he advocated so strongly , are now a reality. 28 D 1 Portland Price Current, January 1867, quoted in Robert G. Albion, William A. Baker and Benjamin W. Labaree, New England and the Sea (M iddletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1972). 'Letter, R. W. Schufeld1 to Isaac Bell, April 29, 1872, Library of Congress, Stephen B. Luce papers. 'Stephen B. Luce, " Nautical Schools in the US , A Historical Sketch," The Nautical Gazette, February 15 , 1873 ... 'The Nautical School St. Mary's," Harpers New Monthly Ma gazine, August 1879, p 342. 5New York Legislature, "A n Act to Authorize the Board of Education for the City and County of New York to Establi sh a Nautical School," (typed manuscript, New York State Maritime College, Archives), Apri l 24, 1873. 'J. D. H. , "S tephen B. Luce," p5. 'Letter, C. R. P. Rodgers to Stephen B. Luce, July 11 , 1873, Library of Congress, Stephen B. Luce papers. "Letter, Executive Committee on Nautical School of New York Board of Education to Stephen B. Luce, August 20, 1873, Library of Congress, Stephen B. Luce papers. 9 Letter, Stephen B. Luce to John Crosby Brown, September 3, 1873, Library of Congress, Stephen B. Luce papers. "Letter, Stephen B. Luce to George M. Robeson , September 6, 1873, Library of Congress, Stephen B. Luce Papers. "Stephen B. Luce, "(illeg.) for Organization of New York Nautical School ," handwritten manuscript, Library of Congress, Stephen B. Luce papers. "Letter, Stephen B. Luce to Richard Henry Dana, October I, 1873, Library of Congress, Stephen B. Luce papers. "Stephen B. Luce, " Manning the Navy," November 13, 1873, copy of address , New York Public Library, Rear Admiral Franklin Hanford papers. "Ibid., p 13 ff. 15 Stephen B. Luce, "Ci rcular letter to Boards of Trade, Subject-School Ships," February 12, 1874, manuscript, Library of Congress, Stephen B. Luce papers. "Ibid. , p 13 ff. "US Forty-third Congress," An Act to Encourage the Establishment of Public Marine Schools," June 20, 1874, typed transcript, New York State Maritime College, Archives. '"Letter, Stephen B. Luce to unknown addressee, July 11 , 1874, Library of Congress, Stephen B. Luce papers. 19Stephen B. Luce, "(illeg.) for Organization of New York Nautical School." '°Letter, Stephen B. Luce to Commandant, Boston Navy Yard, September 30, 1874, Library of Congress, Stephen B. Luce papers. "Letter, Nelson M. Blake, Chief, Navy Section, National Archives to Terence J. Hoverter, Librarian, New York Maritime College, July 19, 1951 , New York State Maritme College, Archives. "New York Board of Education, Annual Report, 1874. "Stephen B. Luce, 1874 letterbook, p I 07 , Library of Congress, Stephen B. Luce papers. 24 Letter, Philadelphia Board of Trade to Stephen B. Luce, September 23, 1874, Library of Congress, Stephen B. Luce papers. "Letter, Baltimore Board of Trade to Stephen B. Luce, November 6, 1874, Library of Congress, Stephen B. Luce papers. 26 Harold A. Underhill, Sail Training and Cadet Ships (G lasgow; Brown, Son & Fergusson, Ltd. 1956), p77. "Letter, Stephen B. Luce to David Wetmore, December 4, 1874, Library of Congress, Stephen B. Luce papers.

28 1. D. H., "Stephen B. Luce, Class of 1846, Educator of the Navy, Founder of the Maritime Colleges," Shipmate, November 1956, p 5 ff.

SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

PHOTO: NEW ENGLAND HIST. SEAPORT

SAIL TRAINING:

Up anchor aboard the Spirit of Massachusetts.

A Movement Comes of Age

by Dick Rath When prehistoric man learned to make and use tools and hunger or even conscription or kidnapping, but all who have weapons he gained advantage over the animal kingdom and survived have learned much in a deeply personal way. The sea his weaker fellow man. He also soon learned that advantage is a primal force and those who learn from it gain strength, over rivers, lakes and the sea could be gained by the making of skill, and pride.

Need for competent crews has spawned many training watercraft-rafts, hollowed logs and the like. From there it wasn't exactly a quantum leap to discover that another means programs , from ad hoc education of conscripted crews by of propulsion than his own muscles could permit larger water- bully mates to more structured training aboard school ships.

As the world ' s naval and merchant ships evolved from windcraft to go greater distances. driven propulsion to mechanical power many nations discovThat other means of propulsion was, of course, sail. Apparered that the best training platform was still the sailing ship, ently it took thousands of years to get from the dugout canoe and nations with powered merchant fleets built new sail trainto the sailing ship, but in retrospect it was worth the wait, for ing ships. it was the sailing vessel that opened up know ledge of the world This has not been the case in the United States, though the and trade between its various parts. Throughout history right Coast Guard does operate the bark Eagle, taken as a war prize up to our century the voyages of discovery were made under from Germany attheend of World War II, to train cadets of the sai l, as were the voyages of commerce and warfare. The Coast Guard Academy. Eagle has built an enviable record of Western Europeans plundered the New World, fought each success in her educational mission, training generations of other and extended their commercial and political empires future Coast Guard officers; she has also proudly represented under sail. From Scandinavia, the Vikings preceded the other the United States in Operation Sail exercises around the world.

Europeans on voyages of discovery and military adventure Sail training programs in the US are mostly non-Federal and the Phoenicians, some 2000 years earlier, had wellenterprises, however, and they are many and varied. Some are established trade routes throughout the Mediterranean and run by private organizations, some by schools and museums, perhaps as far as the East Indies. The early Polynesians in their others by state governments, cities, the Girl Scouts, the Boy huge catamarans extended their civilization throughout the Scouts, charter captains, and yachtsmen-people who have Pacific by first following migratory flights of land birds and had the experience of learning from the sea and want to make later reckoning latitude from Polaris, spreading their culture, this experience available to others. language and people thousands of miles to the widely sepaTwo such men, one American and one British, have had a rated islands of the South Pacific. And throughout the centuprofound effect on the development of modem sail training. In ries the Chinese developed an infinite variety of seagoing and November 1929, Irving Johnson, a young New England yacht coastwise junks which they, too, used for both commerce and captain, signed on the great German bark Peking for a voyage warfare. Their multi-masted seagoing junks may have reached from Hamburg around Cape Horn to Chile. He and his young lengths of over 300 feet! friend Charley made the voyage for the adventure, and they The success of any voyage under sail depends on the quality were not disappointed-before the ship was out of the North of the vessel and the skill of her officers and crew, as well as Sea she was nearly blown ashore in a Force 12 gale. Johnson a bit ofluck with the weather and careful planning. The design took both movie and still cameras along, and his footage of the and construction of ever better ships has been a function of ship rounding the Hom, shot from aloft, can be seen aboard constant development, and officers and crews have improved Peking herself at the South Street Seaport Museum's Pier 16 with the accumulation and application of knowledge. Going to in New York City. Johnson also tape-recorded his running sea is not the easiest or most comfortable life there is, and commentary to accompany the film before his death in in crews have often been forced into service by poverty and January this year. His book Round the Horn in a SquareSEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

15

In the 1970s, an innovative sail training program aboard the schooner Pioneer changed the li ves of inner city children.

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L----~~~~""""'~-=:s.L~~~..-~..._,~___ The brigantine Black Pearl with skipper Barclay Warburton

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aboard. Warburton fo rmed the ASTA aboard this ship.

Rigger, published in 1932 by Mi lton Bradley Co., has inspired generations of sailors. 1 Johnson and his wife Electa ("Exy) made seven circumnavigations, carryi ng carefull y selected paying crew members. The fi rst voyages were made with their wooden schooner Ya nkee, but most were aboard their steel tops 'I schooner Yankee II. (Johnson referred to her as the "brigantine" Yankee.) The voyages had a profound effect on crew members, many of whom subsequentl y became active in various sail training projects around the world. The Johnsons also wrote on the ir voyages for National Geographic and various yachting magazi nes thro ugh the years. Upon their retirement the Johnsons sold Yankee II , and comm issioned a new and small er Yankee, a 50' steel ketch designed to their requirements by Sparkman & Stephens, in which they crui sed (and wrote) extensively in the canals of E urope and inland waterways of E urope and Africa, from Norway to the Sudan for 17 years.

The Yankee II later attempted another circumnavigation underthe aegis of W indjammer Cruises of Miami , Florida, but she was wrecked on a reef in Raratonga in the South Pacific , becoming another of a series of fi ne vessels lost by that firm .

During their life at sea Irving and Exy Johnson trained ' A rev ised edit ion , Peking Battles Cape Horn , was published

by NMHS in 1978: it ' s available for $17.95 postpaid.

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many hundreds of sailors, and through their published works opened the eyes of millions to the wonders of world cruising.

A far different sort of bird was the British seaman and author Alan Villiers. A veteran of six voyages around Cape Horn as AB aboard German grain ships, and voyages in Tasman Sea barks and assorted other vessels, Villiers found himself looking for a ship in 1934, at a time when worldwide depression had made seaworthy sailing vessels a drug on the market. On the Copenhagen waterfront he watched the small ship-rigged Georg Stage get under way and was surprised to hear a bystander mention that the sail training vessel was to be broken up. A new Georg Stage was to replace her!

Villiers lost no time in purchasing the iron-hulled vessel , converting her to British registry as Joseph Conrad, and assembling a crew of mariners, schoolboys, sailors and landsmen for a voyage around the world . He had served for years under the Finnish Captain Ruben de Cloux, from whom he had learned much of what he was to pass on to his rather miscellaneous crew.

The ship had been built in 1881 by a Danish shipowner, Frederik Stage, in memory of his son Georg Stage, who had died at an early age of tuberculosis. Denmark had no sail training program at that time and no apprentice system. Young men seeking to become sailors could sign on merchant ships as deck boys, but that was a tough life, with the emphasis on hard work rather than learning. Frederik Stage left an endowment fund for maintenance and operation of the ship, but not quite enough to cover everything, thus ensuring that other shipowners would share some of the costs.

The ship carried 80 cadets and a professional crew of l 0. In 1905 she was rammed and sunk by a steamer outside Copenhagen with the loss of26 cadets, but she was raised, repaired, and back in service the following year. From 1882 until 1934, more than 4,000 boys were trained aboard the ship.

Villiers added two more years of service to her record during her circumnavigation. She was driven ashore in January 1935, during a gale in New York Harbor and suffered considerable damage but he managed to have her salvaged and repaired, and continued the voyage. In October 1936 she arrived back in New York and Villiers sold her. His Cruise of the Conrad, published in 1937 by Charles Scribner's Sons, is a classic of nautical literature, and the ship is now a permanent part of the Mystic Seaport Muse um in Connecticut. She serves as a training platform and barracks forthe Museum's summer youth program. That's 110 years in the business!

Villiers continued his career as maritime author and as shipmaster. He sailed in Arabian dhows, and in World War II he sailed small landing craft from the US to Europe and on to the Pacific. In 1957 he sailed the Mayflower replica across the Atlantic to her present home in Plymouth, Massachusets. He commanded a replica of Santa Maria on a voyage from Spain to the West Indies in 1963 and was feared lost in a tropical storm , but he brought the little ship in. It was apparently his first sea voyage in a typical ship of the late Middle Ages: his quarters high in the towering sterncastle were, he said, damned uncomfortable in a blow.

Alan Villiers died at age 78 in 1982, after a lifetime of sharing his knowledge and love of ships and the sea with anyone willing to learn .

The great New England and Canadian Grand Banks fi shing schooners, each with her fleet of dories , persisted on the Banks SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

The real thing-sail training in a rising sea aboard SEA schooner Westward , George Nichols at the helm in the mid-70s. Westward sails/or SEA , a college credit marine biology program founded in 1971 by Co1with Cramer.

long after they first were threatened by the diesel-powered draggers. The schooner skippers were experts at knowing where to find the fish , and they knew the bottom on the Banks as well as their own backyards. They also knew how to squeeze the last fraction of a knot out of their ships: the first boat to market with full fi sh ho lds got the best price. And the "high-liner" skippers found it easy to recruit the best crews.

These schooners constituted, therefore, an efficient if informal sai l training fleet. Every man , from the skipper to the greenest hand , had a direct financial incentive in the performance of the ship and of every other man on board. As the older men retired (or were lost at sea, as many were) new men joined the crew, and the education came with the job.

The "dory trawlers" began to fade, however, after World War II, as diesel draggers became ever more efficient fishing machines. Soon these fishing machines, many working as fleets feeding a floating processing plant, or "factory ship," had upset nature 's balance and depleted the fishery.

Unable any longer to compete, the schooner fleet died off.

Some of the ships were sold south for other kinds of fishing or for cargo serv ice. A few were acquired by yachtsmen with the resources to man and care for them. Others found their way into museums, L.A. Dunton at Mystic Seaport, Lettie G. Howard at South Street Seaport. Then a few Yankee sailors converted a few schooners toa new kind of cruise ship--plain, informal accommodations (where the fish holds used to be) , simple food , and easy day cruises from one quiet Maine harbor to another, anchoring in a different cove every night. ~ Passengers were encouraged to do as much of the work of o sai ling as they wished, and to learn as much about it as they ~ wished. ~ The idea caught on. Individual costs are moderate, and ~ office workers, merchants, accountants and professional people ~ from the great cities of the Northeast had found a new kind of ~ vacation. Some of the old fishing schooners have been rebuilt o for this service, as have boats from other parts and other iE services, like the Steven Taber, 80-foot cargo schooner built at Glenwood, Long Island , New York in 187 l.

Europe has long had its Sail Training Association , and a vigorous force it is , setting standards, organizing rallies and fleet sailingevents,andingeneralpromotingeducationthrough sea experience.

The United States did not have such an organization until 1973, and the existence, today, of the American Sail Training Association is the result, in large part, of one ship and one man .

The 51 -foot brigantine-rigged yacht Black Pearl was built in 1951 by C. Lincoln Vaughn in his boatyard at Wickford, Rhode Island. He was retiring from the busi ness, and intended to fulfill a lifelong dream of sailing around the world. He did set sail, but was forced to give up because of ill health. He sold the vessel to Barclay Warburton Ill of Newport, Rhode Island.

Warburton loved the vessel and sailed her for many years before his death in 1983. He trained family , friends and crew in the ways of the little ship. In 1972 with new bunks built in to berth 8 trainees and 4 officers, he sailed her transatlantic to participate in that year's Tall Ships Regatta in Europe. She was part of the fleet during the summer cruise to the ports of Malmo, Sweden, Kiel and Travemunde, Germany, and Rotterdam and Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The following summer his son, Barclay Warburton IV , sailed Black Pearl back from Europe. They departed from Vigo, Spain, following CoSEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

lumbus 's route to the Bahamas, comparing the Columbus log with their own.

Barclay came back from this adventure with stars in his eyes, inspired by his own experience and the serious sail training he saw with young crews of many nations sailing together. Subsequently, the American Sail Training Association was founded aboard Black Pearl at Newport, to perpetuate high standards of training and above all to get young people to sea under sai l.

After Warburton's death in 1983 , Black Pearl was bought by the National Maritime Historical Society. She was turned over to Jakob lsbrandtsen and the New York Ship Trust and is being fitted out for another transatlantic crossing in 1992, to accompany the fleet of ships coming to New York for the Columbus Quincentennial celebration.

One of the host vessles for the festivities will be the South Street Seaport Museum's own schooner Pioneer. After a working life that began in 1885 , this 64-foot iron cargo vessel was given to the Museum in 1970. She came fully restored by the late Russell Grinnell of Gloucester, Massachusets, who had the work done at Gladding-Hearn Shipyard in Somerset, Rhode Island. In the Spring of 1971 , the Museum and the City of New York set up a program to take di sadvantaged youngsters on two-week cruises of discovery. (Most of the kid s had never before been out of the city!) The program worked so well 17

We're All In The Same Boat:

A Soviet-American Sail

by Pamela Wuerth Sailing the crest of perestroika and deemed inappropriate for di scussion, glasnost, many American and Soviet such as decisions made by the Captain or citizens have been enthusiastically en- by the organizers of the expedition, there gaged in unprecedented travel opportu- would often be sarcastic comments about nities, as well as joint projects and ven- "democrazia."

But what was also clear before we left tures. The Soviet Peace Walk in 1988 was a first such groundbreaking achieve- New York was how passionately inment, and it was there that a young volved we all were in this project, the American sailor met a Soviet sc ience first jointly crewed Soviet-American fiction writer. transatlantic sail. And how much ownerNadine Bloch had served as a mate in the Hudson River sloop Clearwater and " ... we compacted a lifetime of in several schooners before that. She learning about each other into knew the powerof a traditionally-rigged the seven weeks we were at sea." vessel to inspire teamwork and leadership, vigilance and responsibility. Gre- ship we each felt in the Te Vega, and the gory Tyomkin was intrigued by the idea importance we all placed on the outof a joint Soviet-American crew, and come. We were an outspoken bunch. I plans were developed over the next year never felt that anyone held back-not in for a transatlantic sail: New York to Len- impromptu song fests, not at our midingrad and back! point costume party, nor in midnight The two voyages aboard the 156-ft talks in the gall ey. schooner Te Vega in the summerof 1989 Against the backdrop of the Atlantic, were astounding personal epics for all of the North and Baltic Seas, and finally the us . For me, even the adventure of my Gulf of Finland, we compacted a lifefirst transatlantic paled in comparison to time ofleaming about each other into the the intrigue of day-to-day life with our seven weeks we were at sea. Through the mixed crew. Even before we left the chilling blackness of bow watch at 3AM dock at South Street Seaport, issues had on the Grand Banks, we drank strong come to light that would recur for the rest sweet tea together as we talked sporadiof the 4 ,000-mile voyage. cally so that we could listen for danger Although seminars had been planned while waves washed over the deck . as part of the daily routine with topics Calm days would find two or three ranging from abortion to zeitgeist, the out on the bowsprit, the best place for most heated and passionate debates were private conversations. It was here that I not on nuclear weaponry, Stal in , capital- heard about my Soviet friends' livesism or the effects of the pollution we their families, their jobs, their hopes and were systematically collecting and re- fears. But my favorite moments were at cording as part of our mission. We ar- the helm as the sun rose. Conversation gued most about leadership, but not in would brighten as the ship sailed into the the context of history. new day.

The issue of control (first provoked The nights grew shorter as we neared by a storm off Nova Scotia, then by ten Leningrad, until finally the lure of the days lost to repair damage sustained "White Night" and a realization that this during the blow, and then around the ex- remarkable journey was about to end treme seasickness of the Soviet cook) made sleep impossible. We talked on was omnipresent. It was a humbling ex- and on, as we made our way up the perience when one stopped to consider narrow 32-mile channel into Leningrad. the task at hand for our governments, in The sadness we fe lt about ending the a far more abstract and less immediate journey was tempered by the excitement setting than aboard a schooner in the of being in the Soviet Union and the opmiddle of the North Atlantic. portunity to stay in the homes of our new Even the system for resolving con- friends. Plans to continue sailing exflict was debated. Many Americans felt changes were begun before the first that the only true resolution was one dockline hit the pier at Leningrad. D arrived at by consensus. Others felt that a majority vote was good enough. On Ms. Wuerth , a director of the American several occasions when we tried to re- Sail Training Association, is the execusolve an issue by voting, the Soviets tive director of Schooner Inc., based in were clearly uncomfortable, preferring New Haven, Connecticut, which eduinstead to appoint someone the decision- cates young people sailing the 65-ft maker. And when some things were schooner Quinnipiack.

18

A MOVEMENT COMES OF AGE that it was continued the following year, and thi s led to the establishment of the Pioneer Marine School on the Museum 's ferry boat Maj. Gen. Wm . H. Hart, to train di sadvantaged young people for jobs repairing marine engines, and doing marine woodworking and weldingplacing them , upon graduation , in jobs with boatbuilders, shipyards and mari nas throughout the country. Funding sources eventually dri ed up, and Pioneer now spends her summers carrying passengers on short training trips in New York Harbor and charter cruises. For the winter season of 1990-9 1 she continued thi s work from a base in Wilmington , North Carolina.

The idea has caught on across America, in a wide variety of sail training programs aboard an even wider variety of vessels. The 10 I -foot schooner Adventuress, for examp le, is a spectacularly beautiful schooner yacht designed by B. B. Crowninshield and built in E. Boothbay, Maine in 1913. Operated by Youth Adventure, Inc. , of Mercer I s land , Washington ,she offers one- to sevenday training sail s to young and old. More than 20,000 people have learned from their experience aboard, including many Girl Scout and Sea Explorer groups.

Another organization, YisionQuest National , Ltd., sail s two schooners, the 92-foot New Way (ex-Western Union) and the 95-foot Harvey Gamage.

Taking its name from the Plains Indi ans vision quest-a challenging wilderness experience for ado lescent youth pass ing into adulthood-the organization sends groups of troubled yo ung people into challenging situations such as wilderness camping, wagon trains , sailing camps and ocean voyages. Each challenge stresses honor, self di scipline, and the work ethic. Most candidates for Ocean Quest are graduates of the group's wilderness camps.

The sail training programs in the United States are presented in all their diversity in AST A's Sail Training Ships and Programs. Information may be obtained from the American Sail Training Association , PO Box 1459, Newport RI 02840; telephone 401 846-1775. D Mr. Rath , Associate Editor of Sea History , was founding chairman of the Pioneer Marine School in South Street Seaport Museum.

He has been skipper of an inter-island freighter, editor of Yachting, and played trumpet in Eddie Condon' s band. In a future issue of Sea History he will discuss individual programs in the United States.

SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

HeJore ;)all, came Uars ....

Reviving a Tradition- in East Harlem!

by Paul Pennoyer Most people look surprised when told there's a maritime junior rope or fish-oiling the bilges. high school in East Harlem at l 20th Street and First A venue.

Today , Project Sail is focusing its efforts on designing a Given the City's maritime tradition, they really shouldn 't be. curriculum that will provide both academic and character The first maritime school was established in 1874 when development. With continued encouragement from both the Congress passed an act authorizing the City to set up a high Principal of JHS 45, Isidore Bernstein, and Admiral Miller and school aboard the 149-foot full-rigged ship St . Mary's. The with buses from the Board of Education, we have now been students went on summer sail training voyages across the able to increase our classes from once a month to once a week.

Atlantic. Responsibility was eventually transferred to the At the College, students receive their regular instruction from State, leading to the establishment in 1913 of the State Univer- EHMS teachers in classrooms aboard the Empire State, parsity of New York Maritime College at Fort Schuyler in the ticipate in a team and leadership development course using 27Bronx. And for several decades the City maintained a marine foot monomoy lifeboats, and receive more individualized trades high school aboard the retired WWII Liberty ship John instruction from College cadets and professors working in W. Brown moored in the Hudson River. The East Harlem small groups .

Maritime School (EMHS) was granted permiss ion last year to Yes, New York City does have a maritime junior high use the facilities at the SUNY Maritime College, thanks in school and a real one at that. While we do not expect many of large part to President Admiral Floyd H. Miller's personal our students to take to the sea, we do hope to provide them with positive learning experiences and basic academic and personal interest in helping inner-city youth.

TheEMHS was started in the early 1970s by District Four's sk ill s with which they can go on to pursue their own educasuperintendent Anthony Alvarado. While initially successful , tional and career interests. So, please, if you see three monoit was unable to retain a qualified staff. But in the mid 1980s, moys rowing up the East River, honk your horn . We need the a new staff began to coalesce around one teacher's sail train- encouragement. It's a long way to Fort Schuyler! D ing experience aboard the barkentine Regina Maris and another teacher's experience working in the US Virgin Islands. Mr. Pennoyer, Marine Biology instructor at the East Harlem Initially, none of the planned activities could be funded by Maritime School, is President of Project Sail Inc . the Board of Education, so a nonprofit group, Project Sail Inc., At a Project Sail conference at the State Maritime College, Ft. was formed in January 1990 to raise fund s. This enabled us to Schuyler, last fall, East Harlem Maritime students show their stuff en list the schooner Ernestina for a spring sail training trip from Gloucester to New Bedford, Massachusetts, and to continue a pilot program at the Maritime College with each class spending one day a month on such maritime skills such as rowing, navigation and marlinespike seamanship .

Back in Manhattan, a model sail boat program was in its third year with seventh graders building boats for the annual race in Central Park and enjoying great successes. For two .years, a competitive rowing team , run in conjunction with the Empire State Rowing Association and the Roberto Clemente Park, has plied the Harlem River waters alongside the Manhattan , Fordham and Columbia crews, never overtaking but at least maintaining poise when passed. And for three years, a core of EHMS students has worked Saturdays aboard the Wavertree at South Street Seaport Museum loading coils of

OXFORD'S NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY TEAM:

The First Ten Years of MARE

By Timothy G. Dingemans Many great institutions are founded on the tery in the home of one of the people who had enthusiasm, foresight and inspiration of one been looting the wreck 20 years before. Reindividual. This is certainly the case of Oxalizing its potential importance, Mensun began to ask questions, but was told that to ford University MARE (Maritime Archaeolearn more he would have to see Reg logical Research), one of the biggest and Vallintine, the wreck's discoverer who had most successful maritime archaeological teams in the world, started by Mensun Bound tried to prevent the plunder by establishing a a decade ago. museum on the island. It was at a meeting Since Sea History was the first magazine with Reg that the decision was made to put to champion seriously the cause of the together a team to relocate the site. In effect, Falkland Island Cape Homers, it is approprithat day saw the birth of MARE. ate that this tribute should appear in these It was at this point, through an arrangepages, because Mensun is a Falkland Isment made by Peter Throckmorton , that lander whose interest in maritime archaeol Mensun , the young man of the sea, met the ogy was first sparked off by a fascination Grand Old Man of the Sea, Frank Carr, thus with the old square-riggers from the great beginning a relationship between Oxford and age of sail whose hulked remains dot his the World ShipTrust(ofwhich Frank was the native shores. After school in Uruguay, founding chairman) that has resulted in many Mensun went to sea in an old steamer that MARE Director Mensun Bound. fine ships being surveyed or excavated. Othplied between the Falklands, South Georgia, ers who were crucial to the success of MARE Uruguay and Chile. In 1971 he jumped ship in the Straits of and who joined at this time were Sir John Boardman, Lincoln Magellan and, over eight months, hitched to the States in Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology, Lord Bullock, a search of a university education. He spent over six years former Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, Prof. Francesco Nicosia, working and studying in New York, during which time he the Superintendent of Archaeology for Tuscany and Dr. Paola drove taxis, loaded trucks, worked as a research assistant at the Rendini , the Archaeological InspectorofGigl io. Reg Vallin tine Metropolitan Museum of Art, and spent many afternoons with joined to become the team's first Chief Diver. his books on the deck of the Wavertree (which regular readers One important person who has not yet been mentioned is will remember has a special association with the Falklands, as Joanna Yellow lees. She was studying at Oxford when she met she was condemned there) . In 1979, Mensun left his beloved Mensun . She was to be as enthusiastic as he about the world of Greenwich Village apartment, and, with top academic honors maritime archaeology. Indeed, so much so that she ended up in ancient history and archaeology, moved to Oxford to con- marrying him ; they now have a baby boy. Much of the early tinue his studies amidst the "dreaming spires." Soon after this, footwork was done by Joanna as they traveled around Europe he joined George Bass's team in Turkey, and then went on to securing information and support. work with the French on the famous Madraque de Giens The excavation of the Giglio ship, which was in 50m of wreck, followed by several stints on the Mary Rose in the mud water and can be dated to circa 600 BC, lasted six years and of the Solent. With this experience of the best universities, culminated in the recovery of a I 0-foot length of keel and its museums and archaeological teams in the world, the stage was associated lower timbers. This was an event that was widely covered by the world's press, so that overset for the formation of MARE. night, the work of MARE became famous.

MARE's Past Once the remains of the hull were ashore it The story of MARE begins with the Giglio The Oxford University MARE was evident that the ship was of sewn conship. This was an Etruscan wreck that was research vessel Ghibli . struction. found in the early 1960s by a British diver, Numerous other items were, of course, Reg Vallintine, off the Tuscan island of excavated, but since these will be the subject Giglio. Unfortunately, the artifacts showing of a future article, I will here content myself above the surface of the seabed were soon by mentioning only the musical pipes which the ship was carrying. These have recently plundered, but much of what was beneath the sand survived. The most spectacular item to been conserved in Florence. Through these be taken at this time was a Greek helmet pipes for the first time scholars have been beautifuliy engraved with wild boars and able to reconstruct the Etruscan musical scale. serpents: The quality of its workmanship and Replicas of the pipes have been made at the artistry indicates that it was not only a funcConservatoire of Music in Florence and later this year there will be a special recital. tional item of warfare but also a prestige Concurrently with the work on Giglio, object that was owned by a man of some conthe team was conducting a three-year survey siderable status. Sadly, it is now in a private of the ancient Punic-Roman harbor of Marcollection in a bank vault in Germany. The helmet is featured in the MARE crest. sala in Sicily. In addition to amphorae, the After the initial looting, the wreck beteam recovered ancient anchors and items of came lost in time until 1981 when Mensun fine ware and statuary. Other surveys carried saw by chance a fragment of Etruscan potout during the first half of the 80s were at 20

SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

Top , Oxford University MARE team descending to a site with grid-poles . At left, divers raise an amphora from the Roman wreck at Punta Fennaio in the Tuscan Islands. At bottom right , a diver at work at Monte Cristo is being watched by the team' s "yellow eyeball," a remote operated vehicle (ROV) fitt ed with video cameras that allows staff on the bridge abo ve to monitor operations.

team ' s project manager, Gigi Lazaretto, Pun to Fennaio and "I shall never forget the moment at Panarea Sacco, a nuclear physicist Giannutri, all of which places when, after many hours of excavation, a from Torino. are in the Tuscan archipel Panarea in the Lipari (or ago. complete skyphos seemingly jumped clear of the After the completion of sediment and came to rest in my hands, the first Aeolian) Island s became MARE 's next center of printhe Giglio wreck, the team hands to touch it in 2400 years." cipal activity. Here, off the turned its attention to the rock of Dattilo, the team benearby fabled island of Monte Cristo, made famous by the Count in Alexander Dumas' epic gan the excavation of an early 4th century BC wreck. This novel. Monte Cristo is a tiny uninhabited, prohibited island wreck had been carrying a large cargo of delicate blackwhere no boats are allowed to land unless authorized by both painted pottery fine wares. This site has the unusual feature of the Italian Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Forestry . being situated in the crater of a sunken volcano which, being On this island the center of interest was a Roman wreck in still active, means that the bottom is heavily punctuated by 50-60m of water off the tip of Devil's Point. The point turned open , gas-releasing vents. As the gas rises, it dissolves in the out to be aptly named and diving was extremely difficult. The water to create a dilute sulphuric acid, which , over time, has discovery of a World WarII mine (complete with all its horns) destroyed all the wood and other organic remains. The draby the team's submersible ROY (Remote Operated Vehicle) matic nature of this site, and the profusion of pottery from the provided excitement, but it was not of the period of history the classical era, made it an obvious choice to feature in the BBCteam was attempting to investigate. The island also has a PBS series " Discoveries Underwater. " The year 1989 saw the third MARE dinner and also its resident population of extremely venomous snakes. They are descendents of the vipers bred by mediev al monks who, from second conference, held at the Institute of Archaeology, on the the parapets of their monastery high on the hill , threw them at theme of underwater archaeology in Italy. This included attacking pirates and Saracens. Because of these vipers, the speakers from all over Europe and over one hundred attendees team lived and worked on a small cruiser provided by the from around the world.

SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

21

MARE's Present This past year MARE was also active off the Greek island of Zakynthos. This was the first work to be conducted in these waters by a foreign team since Peter Throckmorton 's work in the 60s and 70s. The project was a collaboration with the Ephoria of Underwater Antiquities and was co-directed by Mensun and the esteemed Greek archaeologist Caterina Delaportas. The island proved to have a remarkably rich submerged cultural heritage which ranged from a sunken habitation site, to a 6th century BC amphora wreck, and even a vessel from the period of Venetian occupation.

Later in the year the team went to the tiny Italian island of Gorgona,just west of Livomo (Leghorn). Because Gorgona is a prison island (in fact, it is frequently called the Alcatraz of Italy), it is closed to the public and thus has never been dived.

This work was a coll aboration with the Superintendency of Archaeology for Tuscany and involved the well-known Italian diving team Naupegos, led by Enrico Ciabatti. The operation proved very successful; many sites were surveyed and a wide range of articles were raised for examination. The team also made much use of its new underwater video equipment to film every aspect of the work.

But MARE is not only interested in wrecks from antiquity, for as this article goes to press, survey work under the direction of Mensun is being carried out on some of the 19th century hulks in the Falklands in an attempt to record them before they disintegrate. As with all MARE 's projects, this one is also being done in co llaboration with the World Ship Trust.

On March 23, 1991 , MARE in collaboration with the World Ship Trust will host an international conference on the

underwater archaeology of Greece. This will be followed by its annual dinner, held this year aboard HMS Belfast. Once again it is aiming to provide a forum in which new relationships can be formed and existing ones enhanced. To secure a report on this conference write to Oxford University MARE (4 Butts Rd, Horspath , Oxford OX9 lRH).

The Future In 1986 the governing body of the University of Oxford formally recognized the importance of the work being conducted, and itmadeMAREa permanent unit of the University.

More recently the University has offered a one and two year graduate degree program in maritime archaeology which is already attracting students from around the world. The academic program, together with the field work, make Oxford the leading center for maritime archaeological studies in England.

There is now a large group of people dedicated to the continued success of MARE. Overten years, one man 's enthusiasm has rubbed off on many. The growing awareness of the wealth of material hidden beneath our great oceans and lakes will keep the members of MARE busy for many generations to come. As always, the challenges will be many , but so are the rewards. I shall never forget the moment at Pan area when, after many hours of excavation, a complete skyphos (drinking tumbler) seemingly jumped clear of the sediment and came to rest in my hands, the first hands to touch it in 2400 years .

Timothy Dingemans worked as a volunteer diver on the Mary Rose project and has been active in MARE for several years, most recently serving as Administration Director.

'- _,

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SEA HISTORY's GUIDE TO Ame1kau and Cc111ad ian

MARITIME MUSEUMS

"If you're a maritime buff, Sea History's Guide to Maritime Museums is the book to take along whenever you travel."

-Jennifer Elliott, WoodenBoat magazine Sea History's Guide to American and Canadian Maritime Museums, edited by Joseph M. Stanford. New in November, this has become the standard guidebook, with listings of nearly 400 museums, profusely illustrated, with all needful detail on exhibits, admissions, parking, etc.

113pp, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches. Soft cover, illus. , index, $9.50. Shipping: USA and Canada $1.30; all other $1.75 surface rate.

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Anton Otto Fischer, Marine Artist, by Katrina Sigsbee Fischer and Alex A. Hurst. A comprehensive and lovi ng look at the artist's life and work as seen by his daughter. Beautifully produced on art paper with many personal photos, the artist's preliminary sketches, and 200 of his finished works , 103 in full color. 259pp, 9 1/8 x 13 114 inches, 60 full page illus., 50 sketches and drawings. $50. Shipping: $3 in USA, $6 outside USA .

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Stobart, by John Stobart with Robert P. Davis. The leading marine artist of our day sets forth his life and achievements in his own words and pictures. Presented in full co lor, fine art reproductions with extensive notes. 208pp, 15 1/4 x 9 1/8 inches 60 full page illus. , 50 sketches and drawings. $95. Shipping: $4 in USA, $8 outside USA .

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The golden era of J Class Americas Cup racing lasted a mere eight years from 1930 to 1937 Only ten yachts were built tc this rule, four in Britain and six in America. They were simply awesomt bodts.

No other class at no other time quite gripped the public imagination as much as did these T.O.M Sopwith, an aeronautical engineer, bought Sir Thomas Lipton's SHAMROCK V as a trial hor"' for his new boat. The painting shows these two stablemates meeting for the first time in Cowes Roads. ENDEAVOUR in 1934 was probably the fastest J afloat, certainly she was the most beauhful.

Her famous designer, Cl::. Nicholson is seen seated on the deckhouse as Sopwith, at the helm, feels thl' power of this great new greyhound of the sea copyright 1990 Frank H. Wagner

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So many seasoned sailors of big boats attained their feel for sailing and love of the sea in a small boat, and are rejuvenated by the intimacy and essence of their return. How fitting the tribute of the giant RESOLUTE and crew to the legendary genius and his classic 12 'h footer.

Commissioned to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Herreshoff 12 1h Foot Class, this beautiful painting is as much an affectionate portrait of the ultimate master of yacht design and construction.

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MARINE ART:

Michael Blaser's World of Steamboats

It is an evening in 1933 and the sidewheel steamer J. S. is backing out of the Streckfus wharfj ust below the Eads Bridge. Built in 1886 as the Quincy, the Streck/us fam ily bought her in 1911 and used her on the St. Louis-to-New Orleans run, later converting her to an excursion boat. "The Blues of St. Louis," oil on canvas, 24 x 44 inches.

"Since I was seven or eight, I've been enthralled by steamboats," says Michael Blaser, who was born in the Mississippi River town of Moline, Illinois, forty three years ago. His love of America 's waterways and the craft which have enlivened them was broadened by summers spent at Mackinac Island 's Grand Hotel, working his way through college.

Then came service in the US Marine Corps. After leaving the Corps in 197 1, he went to work in an art studio in Chicago, and for over ten years he polished his skills as illustrator and graphic artist. But by the mid- l 980s, it was time to say "yes" to his longing- to capture the vessels, the waterways and the river towns of America's heartland on canvas.

Michael Blaser has produced over fifteen scenes of river life. Most of his paintings portray the steamboats and waterfronts of a vanished era, which Michael recreates through meticu lous research. He spends hours in libraries and museums searching through books , newspapers, photographs and drawings for the details he needs to accurately recreate a scene. Then , he will visit the site to make working sketches and pho-

Every year the Belle of Louisv ille hosts a race f or authentic steam powered paddle-driven vessels working the western rivers. The Delta Queen is a regular participant. Shown here is the race of 1982 with the beautiful Natchez of New Orleans in the lead. "The Great Steamboat Race," oil on canvas, 24 x 40 inches.

26

SEA JHISTORY 57 , SPRING 1991

The famous Cincinnati-built cotton packet boat Thompson Dean off loads at the public landing in Cincinnati, Ohio. The new suspension bridge, designed and built by John Roehling, stretches toward the Kentucky shore in the background. The first Thompson Dean was built in 1868 but burned at a New Orleans levy in 1871. The hulk was towed to Cincinnati and those engines were used in this vessel of 1872. "Public Landing, Cincinnati 1875," oil on canvas, 20 x 44 inches.

tographs. Whenever possible, he talks to people who worked or travelled on the waterways, li stening to their recollections, not only for historic details, but for the bit of color and feeling particular to each story .

Blaser's love for his subject is expressed in thi s striving for accuracy. But, it is also revealed in his efforts to help groups that are working to save the heritage of our waterways. Blaser has issued limited edition prints of his paintings, and proceeds go to further the work of such groups as the Cincinnati Historical Society, which will be opening a new River Hi story Gallery later this year.

In the words of Michael Blaser, "Steamboats represent sheer adventure . . . . travelling across the water, going from one town to another, picking up colorful characters and all kinds of exotic cargo .... And when you look at the architecture of a boat like the J. M .

White, you realize that man has not created a moving monument like it in the last one hundred years."

NS

Downbound on the Mississippi, just above the great Memphis Bridge, a commercial towboat casts an admiring eye on the vintage propulsion system of the Delta Queen, in a present day scene reminiscent of the great era of riverboats. Detail from "Moonlight Above Memphis ," oil on canvas, 24 x 40 inches.

For more information about Michael Blaser' s paintings and prints, phone 1800-383-0669 or write Waterway Fine Arts, Post Office Box 915, Bettendorf, Iowa 52722 .

SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

27

Steaming the Ohio aboard the Delta Queen

An Ohio River Window

by Roger Williams III

A glance through an "Ohio River Window" into the era of the steamboat was afforded members of the NMHS thi s past year when the Society hosted a members ' 'cruise from St. Louis, Missouri, to Cincinnati, Ohio, aboard the Delta Queen.

Our readers know the Delta Queen as the steamboat that was fabricated in Scotland with shafts and cranks from Krupp Works in Germany, finished at Stockton, California, at a cost of$875,000 and dedicated on May 20, 1927. This steel-hulled, flat-bottomed steamboat of 250' by 58' by 11.5' served well until sold in 1947. It was then she captured the imagination of boat lovers. Under tow by the tug Osage, she made her now famous trip to New Orleans via the Panama Canal. After a refit she was to begin service on western rivers only to be stopped by a law prohibiting wooden superstructure on overnight passenger vessels. A last minute exemption from President Richard Nixon saved the day and the Queen had been working the rivers ever since to the delight of all who know her.

As we made the tum out of the Mississippi into the Ohio River, passengers were informed by the ship 's announcing system that a coin "cast upon the water" would ensure a safe journey and a probable return. As one trained to never doubt the authority or wisdom of a ship's captain, I pitched my coin into the coffee-colored water.

Where the Ohio joins the Mississippi , the flow of the Ohio is I '/2 times that of the Mississippi. The Ohio was the most important east-to-west route in the early western expansion days.

As super highway to the West, it had its share of adventurers, scoundrels and the famous , including George Rogers Clark, who helped establish Louisville, Kentucky, in 1778.

During the steamboat era, packets, or passenger boats, travelled almost 1,000 miles on the Ohio from Pittsburgh to the Mississippi. Locks and dams on the Ohio, begun as early as 1825, made possible year round navigation. Before 1875, however, there were no navigational aids on the river. The legendary river pilots literally memorized the river, noting the location of hazards with nearby trees, houses and rocks.

As we progressed up the Ohio, a rousing rendition from the Queen's steam calliope announced our arrival along the way.

Approaching Paducah, Kentucky, at the entrance of the Tennessee River, we saw a modem river town and what seemed to

be miles of barges and fleets of tow boats. Here, for the first time, passengers noted a flood wall and asked what it was. The specter of the 1937 flood came to mind , when Paducah itself was three-quarters underwater and lost most of its downtown area. The flood affected everything on or near the river for years to come. Flood walls were usually built to the 1937 highwater mark with three feet added for good measure.

An announcement sent all to the port rail to view the infamous Cave-in-Rock. Around 1800 this was the site wherea band of cut-throats and wreckers preyed on keel boats and other commerce passing down the river. Today it is a state park and people standing in the mouth of the huge cave waved at us as we passed.

Just below Owensboro, Kentucky, the Newburgh Lock and Dam creates a large pool over a section of sandbars. "Looks just like I thought a river ought to look," said one of the passengers. Indeed he ' s right. Some of the most picturesque portions of the river are located in this area. In these waters, Civil war action took place at Brandenburg, Kentucky, when Confederate General John Hunt Morgan appropriated the hapless packet Alice Dean in 1863, burning her after transferring his men to the northern shore.

Louisville, Kentucky, is often called the Falls City, from the two mile section of river that drops 25 feet. The first lock and dam , completed in 1825, was by 1840 inadequate to handle the growing river traffic. Further additions in 1879 and 1929 made the McAlpin Lock and Dam the only three-lock system on the Ohio.

Louisville is also the home of the Belle of Louisville. Built as the ldlewild in 1915 at Pittsburgh, the stem wheeler is now an excursion boat. An annual race with the Delta Queen highlights Louisville 's Derby festivities . While docked, we noted antlers being affixed to the Delta Queen ' s mast. The winner' s badge, a river tradition, made everyone rather proud.

The Belle of Louisville also acts as an unofficial training ship.

Many of the crew of the Delta Queen, Mississippi Queen and the Natche z got a start on the Belle.

Today there are only two overnight paddlewheel steamers.

How fortunate we were to be aboard one of them. It is hard to picture that in 1852 Cincinnati alone experienced some 8,000

Last summer' s cruiseon the Delta Queen withNMHS membersaboardwentfrornSt. Louis, Missouri , to Cincinnati, Ohio.

OHIO

INDIANA ILLINOIS

KENTUCKY

MO

Under Main Skysail in the Mediterranean

steamboat arrivals and departures. Some of the Queen 's predecessors included the beautiful Robert E. Lee, City of Saint Louis and Great Republic. These steamers appeared on the water not unlike some vast Victorian wedding cake, belching smoke and cinder, and hooting whistles of thunderous note.

Steamboat Gothic came into its own with these floating palaces. Magnificent staterooms, common rooms and dining areas were expected and provided. Naturally , if one travelled on a local or less than a star boat, accomodations were less grand. But the bar was always in good order and generally the food was excellent, considering there was no ice or freezer. No matter how one looks at it, though, first-class or economy, one thing remains: steamboats were the only way to travel at this time in hi story.

As we proceeded toward Cincinnati, we passed Madison, Indiana, noted for its annual speed boat regatta, and Carro lton at the mouth of the Kentucky River. A full " lock and dam" river, the Kentucky is a major tributary of the Ohio.

Cincinnati , our destination, was reached by steaming under the Roehling Bridge. Erected in 1866 between Cincinnati and Covington, Kentucky, it was the prototype for Mr. Roebling's better-known Brooklyn Bridge.

Cincinnati , the "Queen City," was given that title by no less than Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , half a century after the city was founded in 1788. Here the Delta Queen tied up, in the same area as thousands of steamboats before her.

To remind one of the unity of this water-girded globe, the NMHS cruise following the Delta Queen outing in the summer of 1990 was aboard the four-masted bark Sea Cloud in the Mediterranean. We went from Catania in Sicily to Athens, with stops along the way at Corfu and Kythera and other fabled islands. Corfu (in Greek Kerkyra) is, of course, classic Corcyra-the island whose revolt precipitated the Peloponnesian War of the later 400s BC. When you see it and think of the galleys creeping from headland to headland, utter) y dependent upon the shore for food and water, you can understand the island 's importance and why Pericles drew his line in the sand--or in the water-there.

Another high point of this trip was a visit to the excavation of a seaport of 1500 BC on Santorini, where we stood transfixed by the orderliness of this town, its beautiful murals and all the evidence of a prosperous, open society. I do the lectures on these tours, but always they develop into seminars, with people more learned than I on various subjects joining in.

Result: new perceptions of history all around and a li vely sense that it all matters.

Captains Ed Cassidy and Red Shannon, formerly of the USCG Eagle, are members of NMHS and add to the di scussion of ship types and square rig sailing. A multi-national crew keeps everything humming and demonstrate great elan and precision in sail drill, even to that lofty main skysail!

PS

Mr. Williams , a resident of Lexington, Kentucky, is a professional artist specializing in ship portraits rendered in watercolor and pencil.

Norn: This summer Sea Cloud sail s the length of the Italian peninsula, from the Riviera to Sicily and back. And it is her 60th birthday!

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MARINE ART NEWS "Maritime history ... is not well known toric ships showing the development of AK 99803 if you can help him gather to Americans," the speaker stated, "yet, sailing craft from 2000BC to the early historical data and representations of exit should be." Then, taking the premise 1900s; an Admiralty Model built in 1793; plorers' ships and trading vessels pertithat maritime commerce came to repre- three bone prisoner of war models; and nent to Alaska.

Newly restored , the Navy Art Gallery sent the lifeblood of the thirteen colo- the "Marple Collection" of nine excepnies, he regaled the crowd of well-wish- tionally fine models built over 30 years at the Naval Historical Center, re-opened ers with an inventory of episodes in by Ed Marple. The Ventura County Mari- in May last year with an exhibition of American history revolving around the time Museum is located in Channel works by the Navy's first eight combat country ' s innovative ways in maritime Islands Harbor, 2731 South Victoria artists from World War II. The Navy 's commerce.

Avenue, Oxnard, California 93035; 805 art program was begun in 1941 to document the wartime role of the Navy and This may sound like one but a history 984-6260. th.e collection has grown lesson this was not. It was to 10,000 pieces, includbackground for the opening workbyThomasHart ing on February 16 of a Benton, Joseph Hirsh, fine new maritime muKerr Eby and Reginald seum featuring an exMarsh . Currently on extraordinary art collection. hibit through August are Making the speech was works by World War II Harry L. Nelson, Chairand Antarctic artist Stanman of the new Ventura dish Backus.

County Maritime MuEnthusiasts of the late seum, a man well known John A. Noble 'sartofthe for the marinas he owns last chapter in the age of and operates along the sail will want to see the West Coast, less known new documentary film , for his outstanding col"Hulls and Hulks in the lection of marine art.

Tide of Time: a Portrait Until now that is. Russell of John A. Noble." The Jinishian of Mystic Mari"O utward Bound," Anglo-American painter Robert Salmon's 1819 oil of a film premiered last Notime Gallery, on hand at vember and is now on sale the opening, describes it Scottish harbor scene. One of the important nineteenth century artists from the Noble Collecas " probably the single represented in the Nelson collection at the Ventura County Maritime Museum. tion , 270 Richmond Terrace, Staten Islargest and most importantpri vately held * * * * * collection in the country" now available If you ' re interested in what artists are land NY 10301. A public showing will to the public. saying about their art and what gallery be held at South Street Seaport Museum Over the years, from an interest owners are saying about what sells, pick in New York on April 25 at 6:30rM. KH sparked in the early fifties by the college up a copy of the December issue of Exhibitions lectures of the late and eminent maritime Yachting. Louise Wareham ' s feature arhistorian John Kemble, Mr. Nelson has ticle " Visions of the Sea" surveys the December 6-May 12, Drawn from the built up a collection now approaching field , offering among others the perspec- Sea: Images and Artifacts from the 2,000 items, principally comprised of tives of artists Loretta Krupinski, John Maritime Collection. At the new Loring marine paintings in oil, gouache, and Atwater, John Stobart, ASMA president Gallery of Maritime Arts, Peabody Muwatercolor, dating from the 18th century Dennis Beaumont, Willard Bond and seum , East India Square, Salem MA to modem times. Rotating through the dealers John McFarland, Jim Marenakos 01970. museum's exhibit hall at periods no and Russell Jinishian. Discussion of digreater than than six months, will be ex- vergent styles and traditional, of the trend April 14-May 19, David Bareford: Rehibits. featuring the works of English in marine art towards denoting lifestyle cent Painting by an Important Ameriartists Franci s Holman , Clarkson rather than documentation, and the de- can Impressionist. Quester Galleries, Stanfield, J. M . W . Turner, Samuel gree of closeness contemporary artists on the Green at 77 Main Street, StoningWaters , and Montague Dawson, and have to their subject make this a good ton CT 06378.

American artists inc.J~ding Fitz Hugh read.

Lane, Robert Salmon, James ButtersExpanding geographical rather than April 21-June 16, Second Annual worth, Antonio Jacobson, Fred Cozzens, stylistic boundaries of marine art is the Mystic One Hundred, one hundred new Otto Anton Fischer, Tom Hoyne, Tom aim of Juneau collector Dr. Bob White. works by leading maritime artists. At Wells and Bill Gilkerson.

Over the next three years White is com- Mystic Maritime Gallery, SO GreenmanThe museum 's opening show, featur- missioning paintings of historic ships in ville Avenue, Mystic CT 06355. ing 34 works spanning 300 years, is the maritime heritage of Alaska, a region called "The Development of Style in passed over previously. This year ma- May 30-September 1, Mirror of EmMaritime Art." Complementing the pic- rine artist Chris Blossom will be on pire: Dutch Marine Art of the Seventure collection are ship models. Museum board White 's 60-ft trawler Sea Comber teenth Century. The Los Angeles director Frank Crane reports the ship in the fjords of Southeast Alaska. Con- County JMuseum of Art, 5905 Wiltshire model s include some 24 models of his- tact Dr. White at PO Box 34699, Juneau Boulevrurd, Los Angeles CA 90036.

30

SEA JHISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

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Michelle Shuster National Maritime Historical Society P. 0. Box 646, Croton-on-Hudson, NY 10520

Hotline: (914) 271-2177 SEA !HISTORY 57, SPRING 1990

SHIPNOTES, SEAPORT & MUSEUM NEWS IRVING M. JOHNSON (1905-1990) Irving M. Johnson , born on the Fourth of July 1905 , died at age 85 on January this year. Senior Advisor of the National Maritime Hi storical Society, he was a member of the Corporation of the Sea Education Association, who sail two big schooners patterned on his brigantine Yankee. He was trustee emeritus of Mystic Seaport Museum and a member of the Royal Ocean Racing Club. These were not paper affiliations, but real, and as it were bred in the bone. He was the sailorman par excellence.

His life story has been told time and again and will be for a long time to come-for his sailing toward distant horizons inspired others, and changed people ' s lives. He himself said of hi s first great voyage, in the big square rigger Peking (now at South Street Seaport Museum in New York) , "that taught me to lean forward into life."

ways of Europe, from the skerries of Norway to the reaches of the Upper Nile.

Coming ashore in the 1970s, theJohnsons concentrated on making other people ' s dreams come true. Irving presided at the inauguration of the American Ship Trust aboard the barkentine Gaze/a in Philadelphia ("a perfect ship for sail training"), and I remember him walking the streets with me in a difficult time saying "Never give up. " Irving believed profoundly that people should follow their own bent, and he proved to a world sadly in need of such lessons that in a good cause, anything can be accomplished.

The world to him never stopped being a wide, and wonderful place. His grandson Clifton at Johnson 's memorial service called him " the embodiment of dreams-a link between the ordinary in our lives and the exhilaration of adventure," and said that Johnson 's stories taught him that "dreams are not frivolous fantasies but goals that we can make real ... ."

PS RUFUS

~

:;

ffi

~

:::; ~

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He met hi s wife Electa (known to us all as Exy) aboard Warwick Tompkins ' Wander Bird, a wooden German pilot schooner now sailing in San Francisco Bay. She became part of his dream to sail to far horizons with young people in crew-indeed, she did everything to make it possible. Together they sailed the wooden schooner Yankee three times around the world, before World War II, and the steel brigantine (for so he called her) Yankee four times around the world, in the years after the war. Deeply interested in the peoples of the Pacific Islands, they maintained a museum of island craft, paddles and head-dresses in the barn of the family home on the Connecticut River in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

In later years they sailed the 50-ft steel ketch Yankee through the waterSEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

C. JEFFERSON (1919-1990)

Last seen sailing the Chebomnicon Bay, Lake Superior, on Sunday afternoon, September 23, 1990, Rufus Conable Jefferson departed this life aged 71, at the helm of a 15-ft double-ended dinghy of his own design, in the heart of the country he had come to know so well, and where he had become, himself, something of a legend.

"It seemed almost everyone in the area either knew or had heard of Rufus ," said his friend Mike Caswell in the Blue Water Boat Guild 's journal Soundings.

"People meeting him for the first time were invariably stunned by his level of activity.Hewasamanofeccentricgenius .. .. It was actually impossible to schedule a short visit to the Jefferson cottage ... he always had so much to say or to show you that you'd better have the whole afternoon to devote to him . .. more time would be better." So indeed it would , but that more time was not to be.

Rufus ' sinterests reachedouttoocean voyaging. He was a volunteer on an NMHS Falklands Islands expedition to work on the hulks of sailing ships abandoned there after battle with Cape Hom. He was a good friend of the Maritime Museum in San Francisco, and South Street Seaport Museum in New Yorkand of this Society, which he served as Advisor, gadfly and encourager, always eager to know what was up and to lend a hand in whatever way he could. He

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1990- Another brilliant year-ROSE visited Halifax, Lunenburg, Rimouski, Quebec, Montreal, Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, St. Claire, Mackinac Island, Grand Haven, Chicago, Racine, Manitowoc, Pl ymouth, New Bedford, Newport, Port Jefferson Thanks to all.

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~a:;~-~~· 170 John

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.

generally found a way.

My last talk with him was by phone, about our plans, and about plans to bui ld a new seagoing vessel to replace a Great Lakes ketch lost off Iceland. He gathered these farflung concerns as a farmer might bring home windfall apples from an evening stroll through his orchards.

To us who are left behind it will seem that Rufus is out on his beloved Lake Superior forever, garnering new ideas about his boat, new projects to set in motion.

PS CONRAD

P. NILSEN

Captain Nilsen , past president of the Marine Society of New York and Honorary Trustee of the National Maritime Historical Society, died September 26, l 990 at age 70, followi ng a fall in his home in Bloomfield, New Jersey. A veteran of 40 years service in the merchant marine, he had served in World War II as captain of a troop carrier. Following his retirement from the sea ten years ago, he remained active in maritime causes, particularly the saving of the Liberty ship, John W. Brown, now preserved in Baltimore.

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Did Robert E. Peary reall y reach the North Pole in 1909-the first person to do so? A report by Rear Admiral Thomas B. Davis, USN (ret.) in the Naval Institute Proceedings, February 199 1, says that Peary did reach the Pole. Davis finds that Peary 's soundi ngs check out with present-day knowledge of underwater contours (which could not be known except by on-the-spot soundings in the early 1900s); photogrammatic analysis of the photographs taken at the Pole; and claimed observations of the sun. Perry's observations are consistent and show "scatter" error which matches his observations made on other occasions. On April 19 the fi ndings will be discussed at a seminar, "All Angles: Peary and the North Pole," at the US Naval Institute's l 17th Annual Meeting at Annapolis MD. (US Naval Institute, 2062 General 's Highway, Annapoli s MD 21401) SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 199 1

SHIPNOTES, SEAPORT & MUSEUM NEWS WE WOULD LIKE A COPY OF SEA HISTORY IN EVERY LIBRARY IN AMERICA HERES HOW TO DO IT! Contribute a 3 year, $24 gift subscription to yo ur favo rite public school , college, military, or ship's library.

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Garlanded tugs line the canals ofAmsterdam; in the foreground is Rosaline, 101 years old.

The Flower Tugs of Amsterdam One of the features ofihe SAIL Amsterdam festivities which was not noted in Sea History 56 was the presence of Holland 's Steam Boat Society of which NMHS member William Murphy of Florida is a member. He is owner of the steam tug Roek. He tells us there were present at SAIL '90 some 18 tugboats owned and maintained either by museums or by private individuals. They appear throughout the year at various steam and other types of marine shows.

All sail under the Dutch flag with the exception of the Dutch-built but Belgian registered Succes, a 120-ft, twin screw steam tug which once towed barges on the Rhine. Mr. Murphy and his Dutch partner rebuilt her into a classic passenger ship and equipped her with a steam calliope from the Mississippi River boat, Washington.

A special touch was added to the SAIL '90 gathering. Nine of the boats, those with collapsible smoke stacks, went on the Friday evening to Aalsmeer to be flower decorated for a series of parades through the harbor on Saturday and Sunday. "It is remarkably dramatic to see these boats," writes Murphy, "which are all heavy black iron boats, completely covered with remarkable and artistic decorations of brightly colored flowers. Our boat, Roek, was decorated largely with pink flowers reminiscent of a disco. " Good News for Merchant Mariner Memorials Thanks to an aggressive public letter SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

writing campaign and the tireless support of Congresswoman Helen Bentley and her staff, President Bush signed into law November 16, 1990, a bill containing provisions that are boon to organizations dedicated to maintaining merchant marine memorials. The Federal Maritime Commission Authorization Act, HR 4009, prov ides funding of merchant marine memorials such as the Liberty ships Jeremiah O'Brien in San Francisco and John W. Brown in Baltimore and the Victory ship Lane Victory in Long Beach, without dipping directly into the Federal treasury. Section 709 of the bill calls for proceeds from the scrapping of obsolete ships from the reserve fleet to be directed to those non-profit organizations maintaining the memorials . NMHS President Peter Stanford in his letter of support describes the bill as "encouragement to Americans to remember the cost of freedom and the sacrifice of those who served at sea in World War II particularly."

To qualify, each group must have raised at least $ 100,000 from non-Federal sources for the purpose of establishing a memorial, before the date of the bill 's enactment. The groups must then collaborate as parties of two and not more than three to arrange the sale and division of proceeds from the scrapping.

At this point, reports Jeremiah 0 ' Brien representative Marci Hooper, her organization is teaming up with the US Merchant Marine Veterans WWII in Long Beach and Project Liberty Ship is joining with American Merchant Mariner's Memorial in New York. In addition,

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international support for the project. (Edwin Fox Restoration Society, PO Box 89, Picton, New Zealand)

The Howard Ends Her Long Wait

Not just a gunnery expert but an 18th century gunnery expert, if you please.

Charlie Finger, project director of The Columbia Project, the reconstruction of Captain Robert Gray ' s ship Columbia, is looking for this specialized knowledge to bring the replica as historically close to the original as possible. The Columbia was the first American vessel to circumnavigate the globe and was the vessel that discovered Gray's Harbor in Washington. She was also the first to sail over the bar of "the Great River of the West" which Gray named for hi s vessel.

Mr. Finger reports that the backbone of the replica is on the ways and the goal is to get the completed vessel "across the Columbia River bar by April 11 , 1992."

(TCP, PO Box 1019, Aberdeen WA 98520; 206 533-4670)

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On Monday, December 17, the South Street Seaport Museum 's 1893 Gloucester fishing schooner Lettie G. Howard was hauled out of the water to begin a twelve-month, $750,000 restoration. The Howard was towed at dawn to Weeks Marine in New Jersey, fitted with slings, hoisted by crane, and placed in a cradle aboard a barge now positioned between the tall ships Wavertree and Peking. The entire restoration to "as built condition" may be viewed there by the public.

Since 1968, the Howard has been kept afloat by the Seaport Museum but suffered deterioration due to lack of funds to finance her restoration. A $250,000 Environmental Quality Bond Act grant from the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and additional matching funds from the Rouse Company ($150,000) and an anonymous donor ($50,000) have now reversed the Howard's fortunes. (South Street Seaport Museum, 207 Front Street, New York NY 10038)

Edwin B. Fox: Handmaiden to Colonial History The Edwin B. Fox disembarked its six passengers and general cargo onto southern shores for the first time in 1858.

What that began was a record of voyages that made her a handmaiden to the colonial history of Australia and New Zealand, carrying convicts to Australia, immigrants to New Zealand and general cargo to both countries. Five years ago, lying in three feet of water at hi gh tide off the New Zealand coast, the Edwin Fox reflected her dying days as a coal boat rather than her glory days as an international carrier. But as the last surviving specimen of a British East Indiaman she has the potential to vastly increase our knowledge of shipbui lding technology and to memorialize the heady days of colonization. A vigorous program to restore and document the ship is now underway in Picton, New Zealand, where the Fox was towed in 1986. A new, twostory Edwin Fox Centre built next to the 160-ft hulk will provide interpretive displays on the 800-ton vessel , built 1853 in Calcutta. The World Ship Trust has expressed interest in the project and discussions are underway to encourage

Tall Ships '91 on the Chesapeake There is one place to see some of the best East Coast sail training and historic ships this coming summer. During the second week of June, beginning June 8-9 with the Norfolk Harborfest in Norfolk VA , contin uing June 10-12 with the ASTA Tall Ships Rally at St. Marys on Chesapeake Bay, and ending June 14-15 with the First Annual Fells Point Maritime Festival, in Baltimore MD, these vessels will be participating in parades of sai l and sail training exercises. Scheduled to participate for al I or part of the events are the Gaze/a ofPhiladelphia , Bill ofRights, Susan Constant, Skipjack NOJjolk, Patricia Divine, Dove, New Way, Providence, NOJjolk Rebel, Ernestina, Lady Maryland, Mabel Stevens,Alexandria and the Harold K. Acker.

Adding the "tall" to the parade of tall ships into Baltimore on June 14 will be the special appearance of the four-masted topsail schooner Juan Sebastian de Elcano(seeSeaHistory54,p.14). With mast tops 160 feet above the waterline, the Spanish Navy training ship will be easy to spot. (ASTA, PO Box 1459, Newport RI 02840)

"The City is Returning to the Sea" With the opening of the new South African Maritime Museum in Cape Town on December 4 , 1990, Capetonians are rediscovering Table Bay harbor and breathing n1e w life into the Alfred and SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

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SHIPNOTES, SEAPORT & MUSEUM NEWS Victoria Basins, says Tom Graham, curator of the museum. "Cape Town' Mother City, Gateway to Africa and Tavern of the Seas' -is returning to the sea," he notes. Already popular since the opening are the two museum vessels, the 1941 Boom Defence Vessel SAS Somerset, built as HMS Barcross, and the former coal-fired harbor steam tug Alwyn Vintcent, built 1958. As part of a major harbor redevelopment project, the museum has found its place in a 4,000 square-meter former railway workshop now housing ship model s, an old whaling boat and many artifacts from the Birkenhead, the naval troopship sunk near Cape Agulhas in 1852.

The museum is already involved in a proposed salvage of the wreck of the Dutch East India Company vessel Doster/and which sunk in rough seas in Table Bay in 1697 and is lying 200m. offshore. The Doster/and was one of the first ships to carry the French Huguenots to the Cape in 1688. For information qmtact Nigel Fawcett, PO Box 34, Simon's Town, 7995, Cape Province, South Africa.

The Columbus Caravels The Columbus caravel replicas now plan to depart Palos, Spain on October 12 for the Canary Islands and the Canaries for the Caribbean in November. The Spain '92 Foundation reports that port visitations on the US mainland will commence in January, 1992.

BRIEFLY NOTED

The Fourth National Maritime Heritage Conference, sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the National Maritime Alliance, will be held June 13-15 , in Baltimore, Maryland. Sessions will include maritime education, hi storic vessel preservation , marine archaeo logy, sail training and waterfront revitalization. For detail s contact the Office of Maritime Preservation , National Trust for Historic Preservation, 1785 Massac husetts Avenue, NW, Washington DC 20036.

A new newsletter, Ships and Shipwrecks, fosters responsible sport diving with artic les on the whereabouts of wrecks, wreck diving regulations in various states and how to work with archaeologi sts. The editor is Lynn K. Sibley and the 8-page newsletter comes in six installments yearly for $36.00.

(Ships and Shipwrecks, PO Box 589, SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

Riderwood MD 2 11 39-0589) The Maine Maritime Museum will be holding its 19th Annual Maritime History Symposi um, presenting papers and programs on maritime history , on May 3-4, at the museum on Washington Street, Bath ME 04530; 207 443-1316.

The North American Society for Oceanic History will hold its 15th Annual NASOH Meeting atS.U.N.Y. Maritime College, in the Bronx, New York, May 30 through June I. On May 22, the nation wi ll celebrate Maritime Day, in honor of the 5,662 merchant seamen lost during World War II. In San Francisco, the SS Jeremiah D' Brien wi ll havedailyfive-hourcruises May 17-18, including a brief service in honor of deceased merchant seamen.

At the end of 1990 the Sc hooner Ernestina Commission closed down operations in view of the State of Massachusett's fiscal crisis. The commission is still hamstrung by the interruption, with $200,000 of advance bookings for 1991 it is in need of $25,000 to get underway . To offer assistance contact Schooner Ernestina Commi ssion, 30 Union Street, New Bedford MA 02740.

The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, has launched a projectto build a 70-ft replica of Charles II 's yacht in the museum 's grounds. The 17th century Stuart Royal Yacht Replica wi ll be built over two years at a cost of approximately $5 million , and used to promote the Museum and maritime history. (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London SEIO 9NF)

To stay in touch with what's coming up, subscribe to the Sea History Gazette, a maritime heritage monthly digest, $18.75 to NMHS members and $28.75 to others. Write NMHS, PO Box 646, Croton -on-Hudson NY 10520-0646.

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Night and Fog, Ame Brun Lie with Robby Robinson (W.W . Norton & Co. , New York & London, 1990, 254p, index, $ l 8.95hb) As a nineteen-year-old in occupied Norway during World War II, the author was picked up on the fringes of a resistance group and shipped off to Germany, where he was told he was already dead, partofthedreadNazi "NachtundNebel ," or " night and fog"-the empire of the concentration camps. Enduring horrors and degradations, he became a lonely suvivor. But loneliness and the guilt of the living while his friends were dead , were only part of the problem Ame Lie faced endeavoring to put hi s life together after the war. The meaninglessness of the experience, and the terror that shook him by night and the rage that consumed him by day haunted him and would not go away. Frighteningly, he found people would not face what happened. Young people did not feel accountable for the horror of the camps; older people found ways to deny it.

On a voyage across the Alantic with two young friends, Lie seeks to confront his experience, not to deny but surmount it, forty years later in hi s half-wrecked life. In this eminently readable work , he tells the intermingled tale of the two voyages-the tale of a demanding ocean crossing in a small yacht and the somber mental passage he embarked on to confront the meaning of man's inhumanity PS to man.

The Steam Collier Fleets, by J. A. MacRae and C. V. Waine (Waine Research Publications, Albrighton, Wolverhampton, WV7 3JJ, England, 1990, 226p, illus, £19.95hb) This book is a treasure to behold.

Charles Waine publishes a select list of titles-large format, lovingly produced volumes, illustrated with copious plans, line drawings, and colored elevations, as well as photographs. When such workmanship is allied to a compelling subject, then here is joy.

The steam collier was a real linchpin in making Great Britain great; it enabled the massive shipment of coal around our shores and for ex port. It underpinned the creation of power in London and other major cities for decades. It flourished quite specifically from 1841 to 1983.

The colliers became the image of activity in South Wales ports, and part of Tyneside's scenery. On the London River they were ubiquitious, and indeed a

generation of ship spotters knew the distinctive shape of a "Battersea Flat Iron" even though they might but rarely see one and live many miles from their haunts. To those not in the know, these were the vessels specially profiled to get under the London bridges and reach Battersea Power Station.

When I went aboard the Cliff Quay loading on the Tyne in 1983, I marvelled that the steam colliers still ran . In fact, this was their last year.

The subject was well worth a thorough study , and here it is. Captain MacRae was a collier master and so the ideal author, though, sadly , he died before the book 's publication. Reminiscences of the human side of the bu si ness abound. Little detail s like how one worked the hatches, or more serious matters like working the tides through the London bridges, make the book breathe life. Working the colliers in wartime receives worthwhile attention.

However, the volume is far more than good reminiscence. The origins of the vessels, the owning groups, the background to the coal trade, the loading installations are all presented, looking right back into the middle of the last century. Lovely maps delineate all the wharves, once a hive of activity on the Tyne and Thames alike.

Doubtless, there must be some slips of detail, and, to be sure, I would have liked more emphasis on the end, which was a very clear-cut event in 1983. In sum, though, this is a publishing gem to start the new decade, offering a real feel for the working vessels and their crews around British coasts in our maritime ROBERT N. FORSYTHE heyday .

The Helicopter Story of the Falklands Campaign, John Hamilton (David & Charles: order from Offshore Publications, Tresco, Scilly Isles, Cornwall UK, 1990, 96p, illus, £25 + £2.50 ppd) John Hamilton served as a soldier in World War II but has a deep understanding of war at sea. As an artist and a writer, he has undertaken the huge task of portraying the part played by some 175 helicopters of seven different types and their crews in the combined operation to recapture the Falkland Islands. John Hamilton 's enthusiasm , dedication and meticulous research, including a long trip to study the actual places where the events 1took place, has given his paintings aq1uality which demonstrates clearly how an artist can transcend the best SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

FREE Nautical Catalog efforts of still or video photographers.

As one who served continuously at sea throughout World War II and later became deeply involved in the use of helicopters for search and rescue, the picture that moved me most was the one of the burning landing ship Sir Galahad and the Sea Kings hovering in the smoke.

There are over 40 other action paintings which show an astonishing variety of helicopter operations.

I commend The Helicopter Story of the Falklands Campaign to all who took part or supported the brave servicemen portrayed. It is also a fine record of the Falklands and South Georgia scenery. In his paintings, John Hamilton has captured and recorded both the events and the spirit of those days and a remote but beautiful part of the world.

JoHN A. DOUGLAS

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Armored Ships; The Ships, Their Settings and the Ascendancy that They Sustained for 80 Years, paintings and text by Ian Marshall (Howell Press, Charlottesville VA, 1990, 180p, color illus, biblio, index, $39.95hb) "By an extraordinary chance this ship was never scrapped," remarks the author about the Warrior of 1861 , elder statesman among the armored fighting ships that have survived to bear witness to an age in which, as the author justly observes, battleships were arbiters of the world 's affairs . The armored ship, one of the most important products of the Industrial Revolution, may be said to have played this dominant role on world affairs for 80 years, from the Warrior' s launch in 1861 to the destruction of the US Navy battle line at Pearl Harbor in 1941. From half-sailing ships like the Warrior (though she could well have dispensed with mast and sail, as she needed them only to get sufficient cruising range with her early, inefficient engines) through curious armadillos and lizard-shaped vessels , through to the clean-lined, heavily gunned fast battleships built by the competing powers for World War II, Marshall tells the story of these ships and highlights their encounters with accuracy, feeling and verve.

And he paints them in entrancing watercolors-in drydock, in the industrial seaports that were their main bases, in transit through canals , or visiting medieval

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42

Maritime Museum , Bath ME, 1987 , 671 p, illus, index, biblio, notes, appendices, $45hb) The Maritime History of Maine, William Hutchinson Rowe (Harpswell Press, Gardiner ME, 1948-reprinted 1990, index, biblio, notes, $14.95 pb) At first glance, even devoted maritime history buffs might conclude that Mr. Rowe ' s The Maritime History of Maine and Mr. Snow' s Bath Iron Works: The First Hundred Years are unlikely candidates for an evening of pleasurable reading. But a second, closer look should change their minds. Rowe and Snow, two maritime hi storians whose enthusiasm for their subject infuses their erudition , have encapsulated the facts and figures of four centuries of Down East shipbuilding and seafaring in narratives that come alive with the color and drama of an incredibly rich maritime heritage.

"He who would paint a picture of maritime Maine must have a wide canvas and palette holding many colors," the late William Hutchinson Rowe wrote forty years ago when W.W . Norton first published his work (now reissued in paperback by the Harpswell Press). A smal !town druggist in Yarmouth with just a year of college at Colby, Rowe pursued historical research only as a hobby sandwiched between the demands of his business and a busy civic life as town official and state legislator. But the range and thoroughness of his research would do credit to any full-time historian . He spanned three centuries of seafaring and shipbuilding from the first winter fi shing stations on the offshore islands of Maine in the early 1600s to the famed clippers and Down Easters of the late 1800s.

Typical of the colorful yarns Rowe weaves into his tapestry is the story of Mugg, an Indian chief who was determined to burn Boston and clear New SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

England of its European intruders. B ut first, he told his braves, "we must go to the fishing islands and take all the white men's vessels." Stealthily entering harbors at nightfall, the Indians seized some twenty fishing vessels between Wells and Casco Bay during July 1677. B ut they didn't hold them for long. "A large vessel was equipped as a man-of-war and sent out to retake the prizes, "Rowe reports. "This was easily accomplished, for the ketches had already been stripped and abandoned. The savages had found them too heavy to be managed with padd les, and they did not understand the use of sails."

The narrative goes on to tell of smugglers and privateers in the early years of the Republic, and of shipbuilders such as the remarkable William King, who in the 1790s arrived barefoot in Bath driving a pair of oxen before him and went on to dominate shipbuilding in Bath for half a century, eventually becoming governor of the state.

Growing up on the Maine coast in the late 1800s, Rowe no doubt met and looked up (with a small boy's awe) to some of the skippers who sailed Maine ships to the ends of the earth in those closing days of the age of sail. His admiration spills over into the pages of this history again and again, as when he tells of Captain William H. Blanchard, of Searsport, who lost the rudder of his bark, Hel'.bert Black, in a South Atlantic storm, rigged a jury rudder, rounded Cape Horn, called in several west coast ports, and returned to New York without stopping for further repairs.

Although The Maritime History of Maine did not first see print until 1948, well into the era of steam and steel, William Hutchinson Rowe was content to stick with sail, closing with the great schooners that carried lumber, lime, ice, and granite well into the twentieth century. The gap he left by his disdain for steam, has been largely and handsomely filled by Ralph Linwood Snow's Bath Iron Works: The First Hundred Years .

Bath Iron Works isn't the only show in town when it comes to ship- and boatbui lding in our times. There is a book, or several books, yet to be written about the smaller-scale firms and individuals who continue to build workboats, yachts, and even small ships of exceptional quality along the Down East coast. But Bath Iron Works, with close to 12,000 currently on its payroll, dominates the shipbuilding scene in Maine.

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REVIEWS Indeed, this extraordinarily long-lived firm, with its international reputation for efficiency and quality, is one of only a handful of world-class shipyards left in the entire United States.

I must confess that the author had me hooked from page one, which opens at 0001 Hours , Friday, 13November1942, with Task Group 67.4, Rear Admiral Daniel Callaghan commanding, entering the Len go Channel off Guadalcanal.

Callaghan's group of five cruisers and eight destroyers is advancing to intercept a superior Japanese force that is steaming down the Solomon Islands slot in the opening thrust of a plan to recapture Guadalcanal from the marines who had seized the island three months earlier in the first United States offensive of World War II. As the opposing forces meet in the dark off tiny Savo Island, Snow focuses on the Bath Iron Worksbuilt destroyer O' Bannon, only twenty weeks out of the shipyard in Bath. In the ensuing nightmarish melee, which, as a marine, I actual! y watched from the beach on Guadalcanal, the rival warships slugged it out at such close range that O' Bannon found itself literally under the guns of a Japanese battleship-so far under the guns that the Japanese could not depress their big sixteen-inchers low enough to fire on the American destroyer, while 0 ' Bannon' s crew raked the enemy's battleship with small arms fire . In the end, the Americans got the worst of the exchange, losing half of their ships.

But, the badly wounded Japanese fleet turned and fled back up the slot and Guadalcanal was saved. O' Bannon, having proved herself worthy of a shipyard credited by old Navy hands with producing "the Rolls Royces of our destroyer fleet," emerged from the battle largely unscathed, ready to fight again.

Having set the stage thus dramatically, Snow goes on through 570 pages (plus an extensive appendix) to describe the evolution of the old Bath Iron Foundry, producers of capstans and other hardware for sailing ships, to Bath Iron Works, renamed in 1884 by its founderpresident, the remarkable Civil War General Thomas Worcester Hyde, who was determined that Bath would make the transition from building wooden sailing ships to a new age of iron and steam. Bath Iron Works ' first ship, the passenger steamship Cottage City, launched in 1890, actually had a wooden hull subcontracted to another yard, but in the following two years General Hyde SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

delivered two iron gunboats to the Navy , beginning a long association which , despite many ups and downs, was to prove highly satisfactory to both parties.

In its first couple of decades, Bath Iron Works produced a variety of craft, including commercial vessels and some of the most elegant yachts of the era. But more and more, the workload was dominated by naval vessels, especially after the first destroyer was produced in 1909.

Snow enthusiastically charts the often colorful careers of many of these vessels through war and peace to their ultimate scrapping. But the heart of his story and principal focus of his attention lies in the men and women who built the ships, especially the remarkable series of leaders who, against all adversity, kept the yard alive through good times and bad, twice resurrecting it from the scrapheap (it was once converted to the production of paper plates!) and always striving to keep ahead of the competition by seeking more efficient ways to build ships. The shipbuilders of Bath are so good at what they do, he believes,that they may now be able to compete on the world market against Japanese and other foreign yards, where rising labor costs are beginning to wipe out critical cost differentials. Snow's account of the first hundred years at the Bath Iron Works certainly raises hopes for the next century in Bath.

JAMES P. BROWN Camden, Maine Reproduced in condensed form by permission from the September 1990 issue ofDown East magazine, copyright 1990, Down East Enterprise, inc.

American Indian Holocaust and Survival, Russell Thornton (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman and London, 1987 312p, illus, index, ISBN 0-80612074-6. $29.95 hb, $12.95 pb) Do not be put off by this book's title.

Its focus is the demographic decline of Native American populations in the United States with comparative materials from Latin America, Canada, and Greenland. But Russell Thornton offers much more than another recounting of the Indian-as-victim. Not only does he fully describe the epidemiological and social processes at work following the discovery, exploration and colonization of North America, but he also discusses some of the Native American responses to their Joss . Although these responses generally were unsuccessful, Thornton's description puts them into sympathetic

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REVIEWS The Official Journal of the Maritime Alliance

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cultural contexts.

The pre-contact population in the western hemisphere is estimated to have been between 8.4 million and 112.6 million, depending on the scholar and the technique used to generate these data.

In 1492 the population of the rest of the world may have totalled 500 million.

Thornton explains how these figures are derived and accepts the estimate of 72 million Native Americans, of which 7 million lived north of the Rio Grande.

By 1800 the Indian population of the US had dropped to 600,000 while the nonIndians had increased to 5 million.

Originally, the main causes of death for pre-contact Native Americans were warfare, human sacrifice, accident, infant and female mortality in childbirth, famine and parasitic disease. European explorers and settlers brought the intentional and unintentional extermination of Native American populations through epidemic diseases, including alcoholism, and through warfare and genocide.

Thornton 's description of these early processes is a prelude to his discussion of later US governmental policies. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 relocated eastern tribes to lands west of the Mississippi, and then the General Allotment Act of 1887 parceled out portions of those lands to individual Indians, opening the remaining acres to non-Indian settlers. In 1934 the Indian Reorganization Act revived Indian self-goverment, but by 1975 the US had terminated its relationship with 61 tribes. At the same time, Indians moved to urban areas, away from their supportive home communities and traditional life styles.

Native Americans frequently responded to their poor conditions by appealing for supernalural intervention.

As an example, Thornton traces the development of the Ghost Dance movements of 1870 and 1890. These attempts by some Indians to relieve their situation were formalized, well-documented, and ultimately ineffectual.

In the twentieth century, the population decline reversed until the Indian birth rate peaked in 1964. Thornton suggests that factors in this change included the increasing quality of health care, intermarriages between individuals of different tribes and with non-Indians, and changing the legal (separate from the ethnological) definitions of what it means to be Indian to include such biological mixing. By 1980, the census showed that there were 1.37 million

Indians in the US with 900,000 individuals enrolled in the 300 federally recognized tribes.

Thornton provides a balanced synthesis, using a good variety of sources.

There are a few minor errors and omissions. For instance, he defines the Spanish adelantados only as advancers and completely ignores the Black Legend debate. Although some of the chapters read as if they had been prepared as separate papers, Russell Thornton writes well and the technical explanations of demographic methodology are set in clear, understandable prose.

American Indian Holocaust and Survival would make a good undergraduate text and should be added to any American Indian history bookshelf.

D. K.

ABBASS

Newport, RI Reprinted with permission from Terrae Incognitae, V. 21 , 1989. Dr. Abbass is a member ofthe NMHS Advisory Council.

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Down Channel in the Vivette

by E. Keble Chatterton Chatterton, antiquarian and scholar of old ships and old ways, had already published his well-known Sailing Ships and Their Story, when in the years just before World War I he acquired the 25-foot cutter Vivette, a miniature of the great Edwardian yachts of the day, and decided to make a two-year voyage down the English Channel to the West Country.

He was, he confessed, a land-bound animal, and made no famous passages in deep water. But he found adventure enough poking along from port to port, and his book Down Channel in the Vivette, published in 1910, is justly celebrated in the small circle who know it,for its very English joy in commonplace things, and sense of adventure discovered in small matters.

Here he and his cruising companion, the artist Norman Carr, try out a bit of deepwater seamanship learned, of course,from their extensive reading of one of the classics of sea literature.

Off Plymouth the breeze freshened and a lumpy sea got up.

Had we passed here twelve days later we might have got the wind more southerly, in which case we should have had most of the accidents of time and air that were present in 1588 when the Armada came running up Channel past Rame Head---or Ram 's Head , as one sees it called on theearlycharts. "The very next day ," says the old chronicler, "being the 20th of July about high noone, was the Spanish Fleete escried by the English, which with a South-west wind came sailing along, and passed

by Plimmouth."

As we sped on across Bigbury Bay we soon realised we were carrying all the sail that we needed, and sometimes the puffs would come down so viciously for a few moments, that I had to run the little ship into the wind until the worst of the squall was passed. As the day declined we thought that the breeze might moderate, but instead of that it only increased, and finally we decided to roll in some more of the main, as we could not carry in any comfort all that we had. For a time we ran along with greater ease, but the nearer we approached to Bolt Tail the worse it became. There is something of a swell off the coast between Bolt Tail and Prawle Point at the best of times, and to-day we expected to have our full enjoyment of excitement. We got it.

RUNNING PAST BoLT TAIL

Inset shows method of towing warp

SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

With the wind now in the direction of about north-west, having backed a little, the water off Bolt Tail was considerably disturbed, and the waves with all this open drift were quite awe-inspiring as they rolled up astern and threatened every moment to come aboard us. What a conirast to the day when we had passed here last, bound west, and we lay becalmed in Bigbury Bay with not even a suspicion of an air to give us steerage way! For an hour and more we spent an anxious time.

Once we lowered staysail, but we soon had it up again when the squall passed, as we might as well run on and get it all over.

But at last something had to be done, and what we did was so effectual, and, as far as I know, has never been tried before on a small yacht, that the experiment may not be without interest to yachting men. The success is entirely owing to the inventiveness, or rather the adaptabi Ii ty, of the mate. Whilst we were lying in Fowey harbour we had discussed the voyage of the

EKTERI NG SALCOMBE HARBOUR

celebrated Captain Slocum, who had sailed single-handed round the world in a small vessel. In his book, the reader will probab 1y remember, SI ocum says that when running across the ocean with a nasty big sea following he used to pay out two thick warps astern from either quarter, and the result was that just when the waves looked their worst, and were about to break over his ship, the warps somehow seemed to prevent the worst from ever happening. We decided, therefore, to see if there was anything in the idea for ourselves, so before leaving the Cornish port we selected a ten-fathom warp of about two inches in diameter, and made it fast to the thwarts of the dinghy, stowing it in the boat in such a manner that by the assistance of a boat-hook we could easily throw the end overboard and let it tow astern. Although Slocum had two warps for the ocean, we reckoned that one would be adequate for our purpose. Therefore when off Bolt Tail, and the waves were in all reality threatening enough, we concluded that this would be an ideal opportunity for putting our experiment to a test: so overboard the warp went.

The immediate result of this manoeuvre was twofold.

Firstly, it caused the yacht to be more buoyant and "corky," so that she ran, if more slowly, yet more sweetly and with an absence of drag: her motion through the water was cleaner and with less resistance. Secondly, when the waves towered up astern, and seemed about to carry out their threats, the warp bisected and cut deep into the former, so as to take away the

47

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DR . W ALTER F. SCHLECH ,

JR.

JR.

J . W ARNECKE

w.

R OLAND GRIMM

R OBERT J. H EW ITT

CHARLES HILL

ARTHUR

s.

R OBERT W. JACKSON Liss

RICHARDO LoPES

RI CHARD D. McNISH H ARRY OAKES

CAPT . ROBERT V. SHEEN, JR. CDR. V1 cTO R

B.

JoHN

S 1R GORDON WH ITE, KBE

V OLK

R.

CLYDE D. PHILLIPS

LUDWIG K . R UB INSKY SHIPS OF THE SEA MUSEUM

STEVEN,

C.

CLYTIE MEAD

H ARRY J. OTTAWAY

R . ANDERSON P EW R AY R EMICK

RICHA RD P. VOGEL

MALCOLM DI CK

J AMES P. FARLEY

LCDR B. A. GILMORE

P. LIND

CAPT. D. E. PERKINS

CAPT. JoHN W ESTREM

Ill

GEORGE M . I VEY, JR.

ALFRED J. REE SE, J R.

J AMES D. TURNER

CIRCLE LINE PLA ZA

P. DEFRANK

H ENRY FAIRLEY ,

MERRILL E. NEWMAN

ill

L.

BRUCE B . M CCLOSKEY

CAPT. EDWARD SKANTA

power they had amassed. For several miles the mate stood with his face towards the following sea, and watched carefully the interesting manner in which wave after wave would advance, only to be cleft in half and die away astern. The principal reason which had actuated us in adopting the experiment was, originally, not so much in order to make the yacht more comfortable in a sea-way, as to prevent the dinghy from charging down on us. But in practice the warp out astern succeeded in doing both, and we were not a little pleased.

Punching to windward and crashing through the spray came a Brixham trawler. As she stood on the port tack close in-shore we should have to give way presently unless she went about. To gybe in that wind and sea was not a proceeding that we looked forward to, and we began to shorten in the sheet in readiness; but at the last moment, happily, the trawler went about on the other tack. She looked magnificent with her tanned sails against the green waves and the white spray splashing about her bows. At length we opened up Bolt Head and the entrance to Salcombe Harbour, and got the staysail down in readiness for a beat up between the high land.

Although we had as much as three reefs rolled in the mainsail by this time, yet as soon as we came on a wind we found that we could not have set much more than we already had up. As is usually the case in respect to rivers, especially between high banks, the wind, which outside was nearly parallel to the shore, was now blowing right out of Salcombe, and we had a period of nasty squally tacking, in which the wind would come down from the high hills in weighty puffs and fluke for several points of the compass. Round we would go on the other tack, with the jib sheet thrashing and getting fo ul of the capstan. A calm

48

DELOS B. CHURCHILL

JoHN H. D EANE

J . E. FRICKER JR.

P ETER LAHTI

GEORGE

GEORGE S1MPSON CARL W. TIMPSON,

MR S.

PETER ANSOFF DAVID M. BAKER W . J . BURSAW, JR .

CRAIG BURT, J R.

DR. AND MRS. D AV ID H AYES

PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOLSH IP Assoc.

QUICK

&

MR. AND MRS. R OBERT W. H UBNER

MICHA EL M URRO

THEORDORE PRATT

MR.

STAN D ASHEW

FREDERICK S. FORD

ELIOT S . K NOWLES

JR.

WALTER J. ANDERSON JAMES H. BROUSSARD

MR. AND MRS. STUART EHRENREICH

FREDERICK H ARWOOD

R A LPH W. H OOPER

WILLIAM R . M ATH EWS, CARLETON MITCHELL

J AMES E. CHAPMAN

ALICE D ADOUR IAN

JoHN D USENBERY

WILLIAM H . H AMILTON

II

CARL W. HEXAMER

J. PA UL MICHIE

B O YD CAFFEY JoHN C. CURRY

R EYNOLDS DUPONT

MRS. H UGH

C. B . GUY

JI!

JAMES C. COOK

THOMAS AKIN J AMES R . B ENNETT

JR.

STOLT-NIELSEN, I NC. R AYMOND E. W ALLACE

E. W ILCOX

J AMES H . YOCUM

would follow, and we made a bit by luffing up, only to have another squall. Once-and this is the only occasion since I have had Vivette-she heeled over to a sudden blast until the water came up to the cabin-top, but at last with the young flood just making we got in between the bar and the western shore, and dropped anchor in our old spot abreast of the town.

The next morning, finding that our present anchorage off Salcombe town was somewhat lively, and that there was every prospect of the weather going from bad to worse, we ran round the point farther up the river and made fast to a buoy in the snuggest of little bays, locally known as "The Bag," with hills on either side of us, and a glorious panorama of scenery on which to gaze. Nothing mattered here. We were near to the shore for getting supplies, and the wind could blow as hard as it willed without inconveniencing us a moment. Presently several other craft, finding the first anchorage not pleasant, ran round also and kept us company. D

SEA HISTORY 57, SPRING 1991

~

MODEL

SUCCESS STORY' "The Maritime Prepositioning Ship program is a model success story, and I couldn 't be more pleased. MPS is on schedule and proving to be an extremely valuable strategic asset."

- General PX. Kelley Commandant U S Marine Corps

*

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

*

RAYMOND T. McKAY PRESIDENT

JOHN F. BRADY EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

Outbound from San Francisco Bay, the PRESIDENT TRUMAN makes its way to ports of call in the Far East. It was the first of five ClO-class vessels built by American President Lines and is crewed by MM&P Licensed Deck Officers.

This is MM&P Country.

Oakland, California: This is the West Coast export port for American President Lines and its new ClO-class vessels. The PRESIDENT TRUMAN was the first of five such "postPanamax" vessels constructed for American President Lines using new and highly-efficient technology. The PRESIDENT TRUMAN and her sisterships, PRESIDENT ADAMS, PRESIDENT JACKSON, PRESIDENT KENNEDY and PRESIDENT POLK, are crewed by Masters, Mates & Pilots Licensed Deck Officers, as are all APL vessels.

With a beam of 129 feet , these Cl Os exceed the limitations of the Panama Canal and are designed specifically for trans-Pacific container shipping service . At 903 feet , LOA, they are longer than three football fields , tower 20 stories above the water and displace 77 ,000 metric tons , yet the 57,000 horsepower engine on these ships gives them a service speed of 24 knots. The PRESIDENT TRUMAN and her sisterships incorporate the latest in navigational and operational technology, including computerized vessel management systems and the latest Automatic Radar Plotting Aids (ARPA).

MM&P Licensed Deck Officers on the Cl Os and all other American President Lines' ships train and sharpen their skills at MITAGS, the Maritime Institute of Technology and Graduate Studies, located in Linthicum Heights, MD. Convenient to Baltimore and Washington, D.C. , MITAGS is the most advanced maritime training school in the world. Adding to its already full range of shipboard training courses, MITAGS developed its own ARPA course, setting another industry standard. The MITAGS ARPA course was the first in the nation to receive U.S. Coast Guard approval.

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

International Organization of

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