Elissa Sails
''The Ship Is Now Real and Beautiful'' A report on what transpired between the return of the bark Elissa to Galveston as a hulk in July 1979, and her sailing out rigged through to the royals in September 1982 by Walter P. Rybka Restoration Director
Mr. Rybka has reported in an earlier Sea History the first stage in the restoration of the Elissa, Alexander Hall's delicate-lined bark of 1877-the two-year effort beginning July 1977 in Piraeus harbor (SH 15: 16-21). Preceding that, there had been the Long, always-threatened struggle to save the ship, since she had been spotted in the Mediterranean in 1961 by Peter Throckmorton. The welcome to Galveston in 1979 was quite an occasion, and all who followed the Elissa!elt the tide had at last turned for her. She had been granted $500,000 from the Maritime Heritage Fund, a grant partly matched by $250,000 from the Moody Foundation of Galveston, and was in striking distance of the $1 million estimated cost of completing the restoration. But... the Federal grant was to be paid as 50 percent of cash actually Laid out, the Moody grant was initially made dependent upon achieving the whole budget. "None of the money was immediately accessible," Rybka noted, "and the ship was roughly $300,000 in debt from Loans taken out to get her back from Greece. " The Lenders, he notes, were "understandably tense. "
None of the work done in Greece was very visible and the ship still looked like an old rust bucket. The general opinion was that the donors had been severely taken advantage of and made to look foolish . There was no one to work on large scale fundraising. The Historical Foundation staff was stretched thin to cover ongoing building restorations and the Elissa committee members were volunteers with little experience in fundraising. The ship staff consisted solely of myself and I was swamped between arranging for berthing (another strange epic), researching the ship's appearance, writing specs for further steel renewals, and obtaining bids for the work. When the bids came back it was obvious that our budget had again been underestimated. It took several months for the full extent of the disaster to be appreciated. Much more was at stake than the ship. By th e end of I 979 the Galveston Historical Foundation, with -a very small dedicated staff under the leadership of Peter Brink, had been working for nearly a decade saving one building after another . The Strand, formerly the commercial center, was being revitalized. Ashton
Villa, a pre-Civil War mansion, had been restored and opened as a museum. The Hendley building was being restored as a permanent home for the Foundation. Slow, steady, hard work had added up over the years to an impressive string of solid successes. The idea ofrestoring a ship was complementary, but not essential, to the Foundation's overall goals. Yet the Elissa project had created a monster which was now about to devour the parent organization with indebtedness and lost credibility. Someone was desperately needed to work full time on the money problem. The Historical Foundation in all its projects and particularly with the Elissa, had always relied very heavily on volunteer support. The idea of hiring someone to concentrate on fundraising represented a fundamental change in policy and was accepted only with difficulty, but accepted it was. The person who fit our needs and was available was David Brink, formerly Director of the Pioneer Marine School and Waterfront Director at South Street Seaport Museum . Through the winter of 1979-80 David made several trips to
The noble Alexander Hall bow of 1877 is reborn in a Perama shipyard; and at right, the ship lies at Gibraltar through the winter of 1978-9, awaiting tow to Galveston. Photos Doug Manger, Michael Creamer.
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SEA HISTORY, WINTER 1982/8 3