Harry Lundeberg Has Been Heard From: The Part Played by a Seafaring Labor Leader in the Rescue of Certain Ships, Leading to the Establishment of the Historic Fleet at San Francisco By Karl Kortum, Chief Curator National Maritime Museum, San Francisco Karl Kortum was at sea in the last Cape Horn voyage of an American square rigger, the Kaiulani, when Harry Lundeberg, secretary-treasurer of the Sailor's Union of the Pacific, first stepped in to save an historic ship in San Francisco. Lundeberg himself had served in square rig, and was the kind of man who never forgets where he came from-as Karl Kortum 's account of their working together to save the historic ships makes clear. The first time Harry Lundeberg saved the Balc/utha, the square-rigged Cape Horner now in the National Maritime Museum, was in 1942. Frank Kissinger,* the Texas carnival man who owned the vessel and was exhibiting her as a " pirate ship," asked him to intercede with Admiral Land, head of the War Shipping Administration in Washington, D.C. A man named Bradley, the local representative of the WSA, wanted to cut the ship down to a coal hulk. A young lieutenant on his staff felt that she should be part of the war effort. In the excitement just after Pearl Harbor even historical relics (much less a "pirate ship" that wasn't a pirate ship) were fair game. The classic old battleship Oregon, launched by the Union Iron *A word about the Kissinger era-twenty years. II may have been an historically atrocious period in Balclutha's life but ii kepi her alive. These were the twenty years when all her sisters in Oakland Creek except one, Star of Finland (Kaiulani), were being dismantled into barges or sailed across to Japan to the scrapyard.
Works at San Francisco in 1893 and preserved at Portland, Oregon, was handed over to a scrap metal drive by the city fathers. A foolish gesture. As it turned out, she was only part way scrapped and the hull was used as a barge in Guam. After the war she was scrapped-in Japan. Conversation between Bradley, the WSA man, and Frank Kissinger after Lundeberg's phone call to Washingto n: "Well Frank, you win. We' ll make other arrangements for a coal barge. Now take that ship of yours and hide it before another 'ninety day wonder' has another brain storm."
Harry saved the Balc/utha again, twelve years later. The Board of State Harbor Commissioners had turned down the San Francisco Maritime Museum's request for the berth the ship now occupies at Fishermen's Wharf. Without it we could not proceed with our plan to buy the ship. I asked Harry to intercede with Governor Knight. Hi s letter to the Governor straightened the matter out overnight. Governor Knight had his eyes on the vicepresidency of the nation at this point in history, on the Republican side. And Harry Lundeberg was that rare creature, a Republican labor leader. Harry saved the ship a third time, in that same year 1954. He had become a Museum trustee but seldom attended meetings. I asked him to come to a meeting of the board and take care of a rebellion in the ranks. After a year of unsatisfactory negotiations with the owner by the Ship Committee, powerful elements in the
board were ready to throw in the towel, including the most vociferous voice on the Ship Committee-loudest for the ship up until the present, but a voice that was now beginning to express doubts. Dangerous! At this point in the history of our fledgling organization it was a lot easier to stick with ship models, safe in their little glass cases. After all , the rusty old sailing ship being contemplated was the same size as the museum building that held the models. One of the many holes corroded through the side of the ship was big enough to put your head through . The Balc/utha was a bizarre project for a small historical society. There was only $15,000 in the bank, little more than a tenth of what was required to put her back in shape. But sometimes bizarre projects are the best kind. A couple of weeks earlier another member of the Ship Committee, Scott Newhall (original patron of the whole museum), had adroitly saved the Balclutha by a parliamentary maneuvr at an Executive Committee meeting. He blocked action to kill the ship project by pointing out that the Ship Committee had not reported to the Executive Committee. So the E. C. could not take action . T he ship's survival hung on such slender threads. An account in Ventu re magazi ne, February 1965, tells about the meeting of the full Board. ''The morning of that day found Kortum pleading his cause in the offi ce of Harry Lundeberg, then secretarytreasurer of the Sailors Union of the
Harry Lundeberg in action, a leader who never forgot where he came from .