The good news
Hands lay aloft aboard Gazela Primeiro on a Grand Banks fishing voyage. Built in 1883, the barkentine carried on as the last working square rigger in this oldest of North Atlantic trades, until acquired by the Philadelphia Maritime Museum, who sail her in educational programs today. Photo by E. Baier. ŠLeeward Publications, Inc.
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is that the us Congress has now set up a $5 million fund for the maritime heritage. This was proposed by the Ship Trust Committee of the National Maritime Historical Society. It was proposed not to provide handouts to help meet deficits, but to support an integrated effort to achieve critical objectives-and so begin to change the whole scene of the maritime heritage. Let it be clear that this fund does not replace existing maritime efforts by the government (reported in "Ship Notes" in this issue) but is intended to support new citizen initiatives on projects of national importance-projects which, being everyone's business, have too often been the business of no one. As to bad news, we have none to report: only the very great challenge that is now laid upon this Society in its work, only the fact that whatever we have achieved together in the past, we must now do more to live up to the opportunity before us. Trustees and patrons of the Society met on the decks of the Gaze/a Primeiro in Philadelphia, as guests of Richard K. Page, director of the Philadelphia Maritime Museum on the stormy evening of September 12. The barkentine, now approaching her hundredth birthday and used in active sailing by the Museum, strained at the lines that held her to the pier, as Captain Irving Johnson spoke to us of his voyage round Cape Horn in Peking 49 years ago. Of 28 young men in Peking's forecastle, 27 became shipmasters, and one a distinguished aviator, in later life. That voyage of Captain Johnson's he has said, taught him to lean forward into life. It bids fair to live as one of the historic voyages that we shall continue to learn from, because of the specific learning and inspiration it generated. Let us know that we are not just in ¡ the business of restoring old wood, and iron. We are, as Irving Johnson tells us, in the business of restoring a living inheritance of priceless value to people. For in the abiding challenge of seafaring, people discover with deep refreshment what man can do and be. PS
SEA HISTORY, FALL 1978