Towards a World Ship Trust By Frank G.G. Carr
"I can think of no one so well qualified. " So Prince Philip, President of Great Britain's Maritime Trust, has hailed Frank Carr's work to establish a Ship Trust in the United States. Mr. Carr comes by this interest honestly, having sailed as a boy with his father, and first shipped to sea in a Thames Barge in 1928. Coming ashore after a year to take a job that paid more than the ÂŁ1 a week he earned aboard the barge, he became Assistant Librarian at the House of Lords. He wrote the classic Sailing Barges, and then a more general survey of England's heritage in sail, Vanishing Craft, and A Yachtsman's Log, which recorded the thousands of sea miles that he and his wife Ruth sailed in their cutter Cariad. Following naval service in World War II, he became director of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, a
In the Fall of 1949, the British Admiralty towed to sea the world's last surviving 74-gun two-decker line-of-battle ship, H.M.S . Implacable, and scuttled her off Spithead for the want of the ÂŁ500,000 that would have repaired, restored, re-rigged and preserved her in perpetuity in a specially constructed dry-dock where she could have been visited and enjoyed by countless generations of shiplovers in the years ahead. Tragic Losses I was there at the time, and never have I seen anything more beautiful than the sweet way in which that lovely hull, with all the dignity of her two rows of painted gunports, slid through the water, leaving scarcely a ripple in her wake as she was dragged relentlessly to her doom . Never again would human eyes see a line-of-battle ship under way. Sadly I wept as she sank, in the knowledge that I was witnessing a crime against posterity; a crime that I had been powerless to prevent. So passed the magnificent Implacable, built as the French Duguay Trouin in 1789, named after the famous corsair. In 1805 she fought against the British at Trafalgar and survived the battle, only to be captured three weeks later by Sir Richard Strachan's squadron. Thereafter she was incorporated into the Royal Navy and re-named H.M.S. Implacable; yet after 144 years
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quiet backwater which he trans!ormed into a thriving center generally recognized as the world's outstanding maritime museum. Retired against his will in 1966, he was saluted in one newspaper headline as "The Man Who Made the Maritime Museum. " In these two decades he also founded the society that saved the world's last clipper ship, Cutty Sark, and brought her into Greenwich. And with Prince Philip's support and encouragement, he led the campaign that established the National Maritime Trust. (These deeds and other interests of Frank Carr's are noted in a small publication, "Take Good Care of Her, Mister ... ," available from the National Society for $1.00.) Last fall, the Dutch established a National Ship Trust and paid tribute to Frank Carr, in doing so, as the man who made it happen.-ED.
of honourable service under the white ensign, she was deliberately thrown away as not worth the half-million pounds that would have saved her for posterity. Had some beautiful cathedral been razed to the ground to save a like sum needed to repair it, there would have been a public outcry, and the world would have thought those mad who sought to destroy it. But in all the world there was one, and only one, two-decker line-of-battle ship, a ship of French as well as of British history, and she was ruthlessly murdered. More recently, in 1964 the Philippine Government presented to the people of the United States, not be it noted to the United States Government, the last surviving American built deep water sailing ship, the Kaiulani. This unique relic from the glorious days of sail was for-
"Had some beautiful cathedral been razed to the ground to save a like sum needed to repair it, there would have been a public outcry, and the world would have thought those mad who sought to destroy it."
mally handed over at a ceremony in Manila, where she was officially accepted by President Johnson. Unhappily money was lacking to bring her home. Lying derelict, she was prey to scrap merchants who successively stripped her until, ten years later, so little of the ship was left that what remained was cut into seven pieces and brought back by the United States Navy. Gone for ever was the hope that one day an American boy might have stood upon her decks and revelled in the fact that his forebears had conceived, designed, built and sailed this magnificent creature over all the oceans of the world under the Stars and Stripes. An Ambulance Service These were tragedies that should not have been allowed to happen; and they would not have happened had world opinion been organized in such a way that it could protest and make its protest heard. To my way of thinking a historic ship or local type of craft in danger of being lost is like a person lying injured in the street after an accident. What is needed is an ambulance to get him to the hospital quickly, where there will be a chance of saving his life and restoring him to health. Left lying in the street, he is likely to die. I want to see an ambulance service for historic craft in peril. The ultimate aim should be, I believe, a World Ship