Sea Letter:
Aboard the US Coast Guard Bark Eagle at Sea, June 1980 By William E. Burgess, Jr.
"Think, these pictures are not 100 years old, but 100 days old, '' writes the author, a selj-sytled middle-aged insurance man and volunteer at the National Maritime Museum, San Francisco. "And from the decks of an American ship!"
"She is the lovely teacher of our young. "
8
"Ready on the fore! Ready on the main! Ready on the mizzen!" The officer of the deck yells smartly to the sail stations as he cons the bark Eagle off Boston, at the start of the Sail Training Association's Tall Ships Race to Norway. The Eagle will not complete the race, but is starting with the other ships after the celebration of Boston' s 350th anniversary in Op Sail 1980. Eagle will break off to slope south to St. John's in the Virgin Islands, on a 2,500-mile sail training cruise. Eagle ex-Horst Wessel is a 3-masted bark, built by the Germans in 1936 as a naval training ship. Allocated to the US as a war prize, she was sailed here by a Coast Guard crew in 1946, and has served since as a training ship for the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. I had heard of this splendid vessel for years, and had followed her career closely ever since I was a teenager growing up in New England. Aboard for our cruise are 147 Coast Guard cadets (IO percent of them women), 40 enlisted men, 13 officers, and 4 guests. As one of those guests, I am aboard to learn! I came aboard June 3, pushing through joyful crowds, estimated at 6 Yi million people, who came to the waterfront to see the Tall Ships. A mounted policeman asks who I am. I point to my ship and say, confidently: "Eagle-crew!" He waves me through. I dump my gear in a small stateroom abaft the officer's galley, on the starboard side under the mizzen shrouds, which I am to share with the ship's doctor. The next day, June 4 brings squalls, sun, and crowds of happy, proud people waving farewells. The sea sparkled, dense with a glut of boats and the Tall Ships going this way and that. At last, the start, at 2:45 PM. There is a robustious din as all vessels let loose with horns and whistles. To our port is Radich, to our starboard Fock with Guayas beyond her. Radich misses a tack in light airs-can't get her head around. Eagle sails by her, and takes the lead in the Tall Ships Race. We kept that lead. At 8 PM Fock was 1Yi miles astern, with Guayas behind her on the horizon. Radich was 1Y2 mile on port side, slightly astern, Creole to starboard, also slightly astern. Eagle forged ahead during the night and kept the lead until 8 AM next day, when we requested permission to leave the race. We had to begin our passage to St. Thomas. The Eagle offers the ultimate in group training. There are lO SEA HISTORY, FALL 1980