One of our most valuable maritime treasures is the talent and steadiness of older practitioners. Their training of youth, as here
building the Pride of Baltimore can provide conlinuily. Photo, International Historical Watercrafl Society, In c.
SKILLS TRANSFER By Lance R. Lee
A spring line, unhurriedly snubbed with proper timing, can today, as it has for centuries, harness the energy of current, momentum and muscle to bring a winddriven vessel alongside in minutes, with an effortless accuracy which brings to mind the term "grace." In midwinter a few years back on the Tagus I had occasion to watch the handling of fragatas 28
-40-foot sailing lighters, a crew of two, sometimes three, sail and no oars-in the Lisbon docks, one of the consummately skilled workaday worlds still left today. The brilliance of that seamanship, together with the care lavished on the vessels led me to respect the living maritime heritage of Portugal as no written account of Prince Henry, Magellan
or the perseverance of Portugal' s dorymen on the Grand Bank s had ever done. Probing deeper then into this so direct and unique, waterborn nation, it has not surprised me to learn that in the case of every shipwreck and marine disaster, a protest is lodged against the most logical cause of the loss! "O Protesto Contra Mare Vento "-a Protest against the Sea SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1979