The Star is Reborn! by Kenneth D. Reynard Fleet Captain, Maritime Museum Association of San Diego
NOTE: Four years ago we reported (SH No. J, p. 32) the seemingly insuperable obstacles faced by Captain Ken Reynard in getting the restored bark Star of India, of San Diego, out under sail. Under his tough and able management the ship had been trans/ormed from hulk to museum ship; master rigger Jack Dickerhoff made and sent up her rigging, Ken himself had sewn her a complete new suit of sails-an immense task pursued in his evenings, year after year. "Captain Reynard, " we concluded, "is determined to take his ship to sea, and we're sure he will overcome the problems that such a goal entails. " On July 4, while Operation Sail was in progress in New York, Captain Reynard did just that. In an account that tells much of the ship and the man, he gives us his report.-ED.
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Tugging gently at her lines on San Diego's Embarcadero lies an iron barque, the oldest merchant ship afloat today . This doyenne of all the world's sailing ship fleet was built at Ramsey on the Isle of Man in 1863 and launched on 14 November of that year as Euterpe, the goddess of music and lyric poetry. The young Queen Victoria was on the throne, Abraham Lincoln was President of the United States, and some of the worst fighting of the Civil War had yet to be fought . The English people were more or less openly friendly to the Confederate cause, but not the forthright Manxmen who saw to it that the Stars and Stripes flew with the Red Duster on that day of her launching. The year 1863 has its own significance: the Lloyds of London scantling requirements were reduced to nearly half, as it was now realized that ships of all metal construction need not be nearly so heavy . Thus, this old relic of a dimming past, the Star of India, exEuterpe, was astonishingly heavy of