LETTERS Hauling the Braces Enclosed please find a check for $100 to help "haul the braces" of the Society as your drawing indicates. Having hauled the
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CAPT. SOREN BRINCH Lindenhurst, New York Over 500 contributions were received in the last week of1981 alone, bringing Society membership and patrons' income up to a healthy $258,441-45% ahead of 1981. Thanks to Captain Brinch and others for hauling on the braces to get our ship on an offshore tack, with blue water ahead. -ED.
"Give Her Whatever She Needs" I had always wanted the Wawona (Pacific lumber schooner; see SH 21 & 22) to sail with passengers but couldn't seem to spin a thread with the chap who owned her in '49 or '50. He apparently did little to prevent her running down. So sad and so unnecessary. What a wonderful time I would have had with her! However, the Victory Chimes is probably more practical as she is a little less than half the tonnage of the Wawona and also a beautifully built schooner. We enjoy keeping right after her all the time and give her whatever she needs. CAPT. FREDERICK B. GUILD Castine, Maine The Victory Chimes is a three-masted schooner 132 ' on deck, she was launched in 1900 in Delaware and is superbly maintained today foil owing the excellent doctrine set forth in Captain Gould's letternote his emphasis on enjoying the work! A life-giving principle. For a brochure on the ship and map of her cruises: Maine Coast Cruises, Castine ME 0442 I-ED. 4
A vanti Sail Training! strongly favor special exceptions for volunteer trainees in recognized organizations such as Mariners International, pertaining both to barring passage between US ports in a foreign or foreign-built vessel, and to the strict requirements of the passenger-for-hire regulations. The latter will not be easy, as seaworthiness and safety of personnel are difficult to measure; but in my opinion it can and should be JOHN G. ROGERS done! San Francisco, California Mr. Rogers, a trustee of the National Maritime Museum Association, is one of many to write calling for revised rules and regulations governing sail training vessels, in response io an appeal by Erik Abranson, Chairman of Mariners International, published in SH 21:2-ED. The Chance of a Lifetime The most marvelous thing happened to me three days ago: Heralds of Their Age arrived! It is a priceless expression of the deep affection felt by the people who love sailing ships and the oceans they sail on, but who often cannot express that themselves . Among others, I would like to have a copy to give to the widow of a man who sailed mate on the Thermopylae before he had his own commands, who ended up as a writer of sea stories for the Old Saturday Evening Post, and who got me started on my wanderings . .. including a trip in square rig. I sailed, Vancouver to New Caledonia, in 1926, on the old bark Bougainville, exStar of Peru, ex-Himalaya, built in Sunderland, England in 1863. Slow she was, but sure, and when she was pushed out of the grain trade she did her stint on the Alaska salmon run. I happened to be in San Francisco just at the right time-plenty of yards still crisscrossed the San Francisco Bay sky when the Star of Peru was bought by Ballande et Cie, to be renamed Bougainville and sailed across the Pacific with a load of lumber and salmon, ending up as a warehouse barge in Port Villa, New Hebrides . That transpacific trip was the chance of a lifetime. It was marred for me by typhoid all the way to Fiji, but sick as I was, I never regretted going. Another woman, in her twenties, too, went with me, and we had to sign on as midshipmen, since the Bougainville was not licensed to carry passengers. We each paid $125 (imagine!) for the 62 days: 44 to Suva, 2 weeks at Queen's Wharf in Suva, and 4 days to Noumea, where old Captain Chateauvieux warped her into the wharf under sail-no pilot-a beautiful sight to the Noumeans lining the shore!
I'm 84 now, and I can still feel all the old thrill when I look at my photo of Bougainville leaving Vancouver Harbor, all sails set. In my old age I still have two loves-sailing ships and wolves. I can't cart square-riggers around, but I do cart wolves to schools, science centers, etc. What I can do-and do do-about sailing ships is to spread the world about the National Maritime Historical Society. JEANS. SMITH Clearwater, Florida Melvin Conant's book on the naming of clipper ships, Heralds of Their Age, was given as a Christmas present inscribed by the author, to all patrons of the Society-of whom Mrs. Smith is one. Her shipmate in Bougainville's last voyage, Viola Irene Cooper, wrote a book on the passage, Windjamming to Fiji (New York, A.L. Burt, 1929). In it Captain Leon Vieuxchateau gives a picture ofMrs. Smith (then Miss Schoen) as "a well-built brunette with almond shaped, hazel eyes, curly hair and dancing dimples. "-ED.
Kublai Khan's fleet of 1281 Since my underwater excavations have been reported in newspapers worldwide, I have been bombed by over one hundred important letters which I am trying to deal with. It must be recognized that the level of Japanese underwater archaeology is low compared with other countries. So at the moment, even though we are being watched with great interest and excitement, we are not in a hurry for the excavations of cultural properties underwater. First, we are trying to find the best methods of searching out ship remains, not only underwater but under the seabed. We hope also to find out the quality of remains before we dig them out-and we don't want to dig them out hastily. Second, we want to investigate methods of underwater archaeology itself. Very few Japanese scholars have experience in this area. Third, we must investigate chemical methods of preservation of the archaeological properties. In line with our policy, we have to date dug out only a few stone and metal works from the ships, for sampling purposes only. Most of what we found, we left underwater as we considered these things works of the future. I am just now on my way to China for further investigations. The project is under way. We'll be in touch. TORAOMOZAI Ichikawa, Japan We salute this epochal effort. See "Ship Notes. "-ED. SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1982