ISSN 0146·9312
No. 16 OFFICIAL
JOURNAL
OF
THE
WORLD
WINTER 1980 SHIP TRUST
CONTENTS 6 LETTERS 9 THE WORLD SHIP TRUST ESTABLISHED, Peter Stanford 11 "GHOSTS OF CAPE HORN" OBSERVED, Walter Cronkite 12 RECONSTRUCTING HMS WARRIOR, Vice-Adm. Sir Patrick Bayly 16 THE BELEM RETURNS TO FRANCE, Erik C. Abranson 19 WAS AN AMERICAN CHINA TRADER WRECKED OFF THE AUSTRALIAN COAST?, Graeme Henderson 21 COMING UP TO SPEED WITH THE MERCHANT MARINE TODAY 21
THE GOAL: RESURGENCE IN THE 1980s, C. Wm. Neuhauser
23
NATIONAL HONOR TARNISHED, Rep. John M. Murphy
24 THE THOMAS W. LAWSON, Simon Watts 28 OLD SALTS DO NOT LOSE THEIR SAVOR, Erik C. Abranson 29 THE JOHN F. LEA VITT, Capt. Francis E. Bowker 33 TRADE WINDS, Michael Gillen 34 SHIP NOTES, SEAPORT & MUSEUM NEWS 35
DO SOMETHING FOR THE SHIP, Irving Johnson
36
THE ROSE: WILL SHE OR WON'T SHE?
38 BOOKS 45 MARINE ART: ASMA's SECOND ANNUAL EXHIBITION, Peter Sorlien 50
ASMA News, Peter Rogers
SEA HISTORY is the journal of the National Maritime Historical Society, an educational, tax-exempt membership organization devoted to furthering the understanding of our maritime heritage. Copyright © 1980 by the National Maritime Historical Society. OFFICE: 2 Fulton St., Brooklyn, NY 11201. Telephone: 212-858-1348. MEMBERSHIP is invited and should be sent to the Brooklyn office: Sponsor, $1,000; Patron, $100; Family, $20; Regular, $15; Student or Retired, $7.50. CONTRIBUTIONS may be made for any recognized project. Make out checks'' NMHSShip Trust," indicating on the check the project to which you wish support to be directed. OFFICERS & TRUSTEES are Chairman: Admiral John M. Will, USN (ret.); President: Peter Stanford; Vice Presidents: Karl Kortum, John Thurman; Secretary: Alan G. Choate; Treasurer: F. Briggs Dalzell; Trustees: Frank 0. Braynard , Norman J. Brouwer, Robert Carl, Alan G. Choate, F. Briggs Dalzell, Harold D. Huycke, Barbara Johnson, James F. Kirk, Karl Kortum, Edward J . Pierso n, Kenneth D. Reynard, Walter F. Schlech, Jr., Howard Slotnick,
Peter Stanford, John N. Thurman, Shannon Wall, Barclay H . Warburton III , John M. Will, Charles Wittholz; President Emeritus: Alan D . Hutchinson . ADVISORS: Chairman: Frank 0. Braynard; Oswald L. Brett, George Campbell, Frank G. G. Carr, Harry Dring, Joseph L. Farr, Timothy G. Foote, Richard Goold-Adams, Robert G. Herbert, Melvin H. Jackson, R. C . Jefferson, Irving M. Johnson, John Kemble, Clifford Lord, Conrad Milster, John Noble, Capt. David E. Perkins, USCG (ret.), Ralph L. Snow, John Stobart, Albert Swanson, Peter Throckmorton, Alan Villiers, Robert A. Weinstein,Alen York. SHIP TRUST COMMITTEE: International Chairman, Frank Carr; Chairman, Peter Stanford; George Bass; Karl Kortum; Richard Rath ; Barclay H. Warburton, III; Senior Advisor, Irving M. Johnson . SEA HISTORY STAFF Editor, Peter Stanford; Managing Editor, Norma Stanford; Associate Editors, Norman J. Brouwer, Francis J. Duffy, Michael Gillen, Ray Heitzmann, Ted Miles, Naomi Person, Albert Swanson; Advertising & Circulation Director, Charles E.A. Muldaur, Accounting, Jo Meisner; Membership, Marie Lore.
Editor's Log In this issue we announce the World Ship Trust, formed at last. This undertaking, mounted by good souls and willing hearts, will not change our world overnight. But our world will be different henceforth: for ourselves we pledge the utmost in service we can render to this cause. In this issue we also undertake to bring ourselves up to speed with the condition of seafaring today-a promise long deferred which we pledge also to pursue, in the view that history is not an attic for relics of the past, but the sweep of man's experience across generations-including our own. If we had one message for the Ship Trust as it now begins its voyage into time, it would be one our cover painting, by the late .Anton Otto Fischer, well expresses: "We will not abandon you." We must never forget lost seamen, lost ships, the lost battles on which all later progress rests. A nation, or even a Society, that does so soon loses purpose, and all else besides.
* * * * *
Fischer's painting was one we had long promised ourselves to run. We saw it first in Katrina Fischer's superb biography of her father (available from NMHS for $45). She noted, among many responses to the publication of this work, one from a doctor in Germany who collected ship's portraits. "He had come across my book and immediately made the connection with a little watercolor of the Gwydyr Castle signed 'Otto Fischer' he had acquired three years before from the son of a German sea Captain who died in 1965. The captain's name was Paul Bergholz -and in my father's book Focs'le Days, 'Bergholz' was the name of 'the other German' who signed on the Gwydyr Castle with him in Hamburg in 1901." The little picture is reproduced at the head of this column, a teenage work Fischer later forgot: the deep blue sea, the white sai ls and bright flags signal the beginning of a long voyage, which in this artist's lifework, proved rewarding to us all. PS
NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY