Sea History 039 - Spring 1986

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ISSN 0 146-93 12

No . 39

SEA HISTORY

OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE WORLD SHIP TRUST

SEA HISTORY is publ ished quarterly by the National Maritime Historical Society , 132 Maple Street , Croton-on-Hudson , NY 10520.

Application to mail at Second C lass rates is pending at Croton-on-Hudson , NY .

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Sea Hi story , 132 Maple St. , Croton , NY 10520 .

COPYRIGHT © 1986 by the National Maritime Historical Society. Tel. 9 14 271 -2 177.

MEMB ERS HIP is invited: Sponsor $ 1,000; Donor $500; Sustaining Patron $250 ; Patron $ 100; Contributor $50; Family $35 ; Regular $25 ; Student or Retired $ 12 .50 . All members outside the USA please add $5 for postage.

OFFICERS & TRUSTEES are Cha irman_· James p_ McAllister; Vice Chairmen : James Ean , Barbara Johnson; President: Peter Stanford; Vice President.- Norma Stanford ; Secretary: Alan G . Choate; Treasurer: J . Kevin Lally; Trustees: Alan G . Choate , Ellen Fletcher, Peter Goldstein, Thomas Hale, Barbara Johnson , Karl Kortum , J . Kevin Lall y, Richardo Lopes, Robert J . Lowen, James P .

McAlli ster, Conrad P. Nilsen, John H. Reilly , Jr. , Spencer Smith , Wolf Spille , Peter Stanford ; Chairman Em eritus: Karl Kortum ; President Emeritus : Alan D . Hutchison.

OVERSEERS: Chairman: Townsend Hornor; Harris L. Kempner, Clifford D_ Mallory, Schuyler M . Meyer, Jr. , John G _ Rogers, John Stobart.

ADVISORS: Chairman: Frank 0 . Braynard; Raymond Aker, George Bass , Francis E. Bowker, Oswald L. Brett, David Brink, George Campbell , Robert Carl , Frank G . G . Carr , William Main Doerflinger, Harry Dring, John Ewald, Joseph L. Farr, Timothy G . Foote , Richard Goold-Adams, Mel Hardin, Robert G .

Herbert, R . C. Jefferson, Irving M . Johnson, John Kemble, Charles Lundgren, Conrad Milster, William G . Muller, George Nichols, Capt.

David E. Perkins USCG (ret ), Richard Rath , Nancy Richardson , George Salley, Melbourne Smith , Ralph L. Snow , John Stobart, Albert Swanson, Shannon Wall, Robert A. Weinstein , Thomas Wells, AJCH . Charles Wittholz. American Ship Trust, Secretary: Eric J . Berryman .

WORLD SHIP TRUST: Chairman.- Frank G _ G . Carr; Vice Presidents_· Sir Rex Hunt, Rt .

Hon . Lord Lewin, Sir Peter Scott, Rt. Hon .

Lord Shackleton; Hon _ Secretary.- J _ A_ Forsythe; Hon . Treasurer_· Richard Lee; Erik C .

Abranson , Dr. Neil Cossons, Maldwin Drummond , Peter Stanford. Membership: £ 10 payable WST , c/o Hon. Sec. , 129a North Street, Burwell , Cambs . CBS OBB , England . Reg. Charity No. 27775 J _ SEA HISTORY STAFF: Editor: Peter Stanford ; Managing Editor: Norma Stanford ; Assistant Editor: Lincoln P . Paine; Assistant to the President: Barbara Ladd; Accounting : Alfred J . Schwab; Advertising_· Annette Stanton; Membership Secretary: Heidi Quas; Membership Assistant_· Patricia Anstett; Corresponding Secretary: Marie Lore.

SPRING 1986

CONTENTS 3 6 7 8 11 12 15 19 23 28 30 32 33 34 34 38 44

LETTERS EDITOR 'S LOG IN MEMORIAM: A. TIMOTHY POUCH , JR .

NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY: THE REAL TREASURE, Peter Stanford MEDITERRANEAN ORIGINS , Lincoln P. Paine ARCHAEOLOGY-ALL AT SEA? Martin Dean THE MARY ROSE: THE FINAL TRIUMPH OF A SHIP THAT FAILED , Susan Dempsey Barnes FIRST LIGHT ON THE REEFS , Love Dean THE KEY WEST MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY FOR THE FLORIDA KEYS , William P. Frank THE LAST DAYS OF THE CORIOLANUS , Fred T. Comee MARINE ART: HERB HEWITT, Philip Hurdle MARINE ART NEWS SAIL TRAINING: THE WESTERN UNION , by Mary Harper CONTROLLING RISK AT SEA , Peter Stanford ASTA NEWS , Report of the American Sail Training Ass' n.

SHIP NOTES: A SUMMER OF SAIL IN NORTH AMERICA REVIEWS A ONE-TRIP COMMAND THAT LASTED SIX YEARS : PART II, Fred Klebingat

COVER: Divers recovering amphoras from the seventh-century wreck at Yassi Ada in southern Turkey. The efforts of archaeologists at the Insti tute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A & M University exemplify the best achievements of this young and growing discipline. See pages 3 and 7 through 19 . Photo by Donald Frey.

The National Maritime Historical Society is saving America 's seafaring heritage. Join us.

We bring to li fe Ame rica ' s seafa ring past th rough researc h, archaeo log ica l ex pedi tio ns and ship prese rvatio n effo rt s. We wo rk with mu seums , histo ri ans and sa il training groups and report on these acti viti es in our qu arterl y journa l Sea His1ory.

We a re also the American arm of the Wo rld Ship Tru st, an int ernati onal gro up wo rk ing wo rldwide to help save ships of histo ric impo rtance .

Won' t you jo in us to keep a live our nati on's seafaring legacy?

Membership in the Society costs only $25 a year. You' ll rece ive Sea His1oi-y, a fasc in ating magaz ine fi ll ed with arti cl es o f seafa rin g and hi stori ca l lore. You' ll also be eli gibl e fo r di sco unt s on boo ks , prints and oth er it ems. Help save our sea fa rin g herit age. Jo in th e Natio nal Maritime Hi storica l Soc iety today '

TO: National Maritime Historical Society, 132 Mapl e St. , Croton-on-Hudson. NY 10520

YES

I wan t to he lp . I understand that my co ntributi o n goes to fo rwa rd the wo rk o f the Soc iety ' a nd tha t 1·11 be ke pt info rmed by rece iving SEA HI STO R Y qua n e rly . Enc losed is:

0 $I,000 Sponsor0 $500 Donor0 $100Patron0 $50 Contributor0$35 Famil y0 $25Regular0 $12.50 Student/Retired NAM E

{please pri m )

ADDR ESS - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - ZI P Conlributions to NMH S art' lax deduclible.

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY

39

On April 23, 1838, the wooden-hulled paddle steamer SIRIUS arrived at New York , responsible for starting the first North Atlantic steamship service, heralding a new era.

On April 25, 1981 , we, the men and women comprising the SIRIUS crew of today, moved across the East River and settled into our own and permanent berth alongside this historic shore. Please note our new address and communications numbers below.

Capt. Wolf Spille, President TANKER DEPARTMENT: Theo Theocharldes, V.P. EdWlllls Hugh Bellas-Simpson

TI8~30,:1 718-330-1 810 718-330-1 812 718-330-1 806

DRY CARGO DEPARTMENT:

71 8-330-1808

Janet Forti SIRIUS HOUSE · 76 Montague Street Brooklyn Heights, New York 11201 Telepho ne: (71 8) 330-1800 1 Cable: 'SIRIUS NEWYORK" lnt'I Telex: TAT 177881 / ITI 422871 I RCA 225111 Domestic Telex: WU 126758 1645934 / TWX 710-584-2207

OPERATIONS AND RESEARCH: Capt. Arnaldo Tassi nari, V.P.

718-330-1830

FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION: Jose Florenzano, V.P.

71 8·330-1835

Please note price change in ad below.

This corrects our error in SH 38.-ED.

COLLECT AND SAVOR BOTTLED SEA HISTORY

U.S. BRIG "SWIFf" 1778 One of a new series of reasonably priced, remarkably fine quality Ships in a Bottle made in the traditional way. Fine collectibles to own and display.

Special Price $35

plus $3 .50 shipping/ handling (Free portfolio sent with orders.) Send check/money order or charge to your Visa or MasterCard account (give number and exp. date).

Craftsmanship lo give lasting pleasure from under $15 to $2 ,500 and over from:

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SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1986

LETTERS After Forty-One Years This letter is intended as a kind of postscript to the article " After Forty Years, " that I contributed for the Spring 1985 issue (SH35), which recounted the 1944 experience of the American Liberty Ship SS William Gaston being pursued out of Buenos Aires by a small Argentine vessel for five days and nights before being torpedoed and sunk by the German U-861.

In recent months Baroness Lida von Schey-Koromla, MBE , an Argentine journalist-historian who is collaborating with me on a proposed book , has established that Besugo , reported by US Naval Intelligence in 1944 as having a radiotelephone on board , was in fact owned and operated by Nazi agents in Buenos Aires . She has also located and interviewed a former Nazi agent who fled to Paraguay in 1945.

Besugo was a 200-ton coal-burning coastal vessel, with the Argentine flag painted near her bow to indicate that the ship was "neutral."

Bear in mind that the full details of our sinking were never known to any US agency-State Department , Navy or Army Intelligence, FBI, or OSS. It took another year, but I believe we have solved the mystery .

HAROLD J . McCORMICK Lt. Commander USNR (Ret.) Stamford, Connecticut For the Wavertree: Oysters & Oysters!

It is good to know there will be a Wavertree Room in the Yankee Clipper Restaurant in lower Manhattan. What a fitting place, within Baker, Carver, Morell's granite facade looking out across the "Street of Ships" in permanent welcome to the majestic Cape Horner from Liverpool.

Marty and I wish we could attend the opening, having spent many a pliant hour at the bar of Pat Cooney' s establishment in our days at South Street. Every now and then I yearn for oysters and oystersfirst raw on the half shell, then plump and fried with gobs of tartar sauce.

There's none better in the city.

Fair winds to the Wavertree and her valiant volunteers!

JOHNB. HIGHTOWER, Exec. Dir. The Maritime Center South Norwalk , Connecticut Mr . Hightower , former president of South Street Seaport Museum, is now in charge of an innovative center devoted to things of the sea, in a port where the oysters came from. Mr . Cooney' s Yankee Clipper is much frequented by sea people and historians, and it now has a splendid room dedicated to the continuing heritage of the South Street Museum's Cape Horn sailing ship Wavertree.-ED. SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

EDITOR'S LOG Wawtry? Forget It. Salts and buffs alike prize themselves on using the "correct" pronunciation of nautical terms with bosun for boatswain, focsle for forecastle , with winard and looward for windward and leeward. The English have their pride in pronouncing proper names such as Coburn for Cockburn, Salzbury for Salisbury, and even T ems for Thames.

The other day I lost my place in the Oxford Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 2nd edition, and stumbled on the word Wavertree with the traditional pronunciation given as Wawtry.

As you are our recognized keeper of maritime truths, should we speak of that British sailing ship at South Street Seaport as the Wawtry?

MELBOURNE SMITH Annapolis , Maryland This is a rare example of too much book larnin from Captain Smith , renowned sailorman, builder of Pride of Baltimore and Californian and, we hope, a fullscale sailing replica of the China clipper Sea Witch. The only test is what the ship's people called her. We knew two before they slipped their cables, and they called her Wavertree, the way it's spelt.

We do allow Wovertree- that' s what Captain Juan Jose P . de Valle called her, delightedly , when he learned her name after she had spent twenty-three years as a sand barge in the Stygian waters of the Riachuelo. -ED.

The Leyland ships, of which Wavertree was one, were named for suburbs of Liverpool.

This magnificently adorned van from the excellent City of Liverpool Museums advertises the fact.

The Real Payoff I was an assistant purser (ticket money) on the Alexander Hamilton in 1943-44 , and was glad to read in your recent Hudson River issue (SH37) that that superb painter William G. Muller served aboard her as well-albeit a little more recently.

I recall my services on the Hamilton as a seventeen-year-old, and later, being a passenger. She was a beautiful vessel and her crew were great people, helpful to me and obviously devoted to the Hamilton.

I also served some days as cashier in

In this SEA HISTORY we take up an argument on which we have a strongly held and strongly felt viewpoint: we believe that historic shipwrecks are an important part of the heritage of all mankind, and that there should be laws to protect them from depredation. A bill to protect wrecks in American waters is now before the Congress and we heartily support its passage into law.

We take a look at the origins of the young science of nautical archaeology in the Mediterranean, and its triumph in such undertakings as the Mary Rose, a Tudor warship recovered from the seabed where she sank over 450 years ago. We see it on trial , and for the moment on the defensive, in the argument now being waged in Key West , Florida, over who shall excavate the wreck of a sixteenth century merchantman, and to what purpose .

Left, carrying seventh century timbers in~a custom-made wire basket. Right, using stereo-photogrammetry to reconstruct a hull plan. Photos courtesy Geo. Bass.

The color and the drama that sways public opinion on such issues has been, up till now , on the side of the treasure hunters, the commercial exploiters of historic shipwrecks-to say nothing of the dollars to ensure that this message is heard and bought!

We mean to change that through knowledge and understanding. The true color is not in pinchbeck adventurers wearing gold chains looted from longdead Spaniards. The true drama is not in seizing coins off the seabed, but in reconstructing the ships and the lives of the people who sailed in them .

Join us in this endeavor! We voyage to recover the real treasure the old ships carried, and it's our purpose to deliver it from past generations to those still to come.

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As this SEA HISTORY goes to press, we learn that the Key West Historical Society for the Florida Keys has under pressure withdrawn its claim to the Channel Wreck . But that will not be the end of this story, we promise. ...

PS 3

LETTERS the dining room aft, a beautiful room, excellent food and a panoramic view of the Lordly Hudson. The prices in those days were unbelievable-meals from $1. 7 5, and good ones at that.

It was a great job: a uniform, good food, great company and marvelous scenery . They paid us, too! I received, I think , $80.00 per month. The salary, however, was incidental. The real payoff was the joy of sailing on the river, some days as far as Albany, and the excitement of the Hudson during wartime. It was fun .

COLIN H. KIDD Hackensack, New Jersey

The St. Mary Lives!

Interesting to find you offering a poster of the St. Mary . Wonder if it has come to your attention that a forty-foot section of her hull has been salvaged intact and reconstructed in the "Made in Maine" exhibit at the Maine State Museum in Augusta. I suspect that some of your readers would be fascinated by the saga of its discovery in the Falklands and its retrieval in the Falklands and its subsequent removal and long journey home (via England) to Maine-where, at the least, some thirty tons of her are not dead yet!

ROBERT A. HlCHBORN Hallowell , Maine This exhibit is well worth a visit . The St. Mary 's wooden wall was recovered by a National Society expedition led by Peter Throckmorton, a saga recounted in SEA HISTORY 11 ' page 28-copies available upon request.-Eo.

Fletcher & Daughters I was interested to see the ad in SEA HISTORY 37 which featured the paddle wheel steamboat Andrew Fletcher, and noticed also that the NMHS helped design the program for the ship. By coincidence, Andrew Fletcher was the grandfather of my wife, Molly . His company, the W. & A. Fletcher Company of Hoboken, built ships and power plants, and repaired vessels. As a matter of fact, a year or so ago while visiting the Shelburne Museum and going through one of the vessels that used to be active on Lake Champlain, I saw that the engines in the vessel had been produced by the Fletcher Company. All this is a roundabout way of trying to ascertain whether or not there is a connection between the two names .

KENNEDY B. MIDDENDORF St. Louis, Missouri According to our trustee Ellen Fletcher, herself a descendant of William Fletcher (the W. in W. & A.), the two brothers 4

set up shop in New York City before moving to Hoboken . Upon the deaths of the brothers, Andrew Junior took over the company. The vessel at the Shelburne Museum is none other than the Ticonderoga, one of only two vessels still extant with Fletcher engines. The other is the Eureka in San Francisco. - ED .

A Pride of Towboats Since my husband worked on towboats for forty-two years, I decided to send our grandchildren a river or boat postcard each month . I hoped to keep them aware of our river heritage . That is when I discovered that there were no postcards of towboats . There were excursion boats, showboats, cruise ships, old-time packets and sea-going vessels , but no towboats. So we took our idea to the Belpre Historical Society who printed a series of towboat cards as a fund-raising project.

It would be great if you could educate the public on just what a towboat is . We took a Delta Queen cruise on the Ohio and would pass towboats pushing as many as fifteen barges. People would say, "Oh, look at that great big barge!"

Here on the Ohio the number of barges is restricted due to the locks; but on the Mississippi there may be as many as thirty or forty barges in a tow .

The Society is printing a second series

of cards this spring, which will include pictures of towboats from the Sprague (1901) to modem 10,500hp boats. Both sets of nine are available from the Society, Belpre, Ohio 45714, for $2.50.

MRS . E . CLARE CARPENTER Belpre, Ohio

The South Will Rise Again As far as I know, I am the only steamship artist in this area. I only learned of the Society a month or so ago although I have been a ship lover all my life. It occurred to me that there must be others in the South that do not know of the Society.

I attend many art shows-Memphis, Houston, Dallas, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Mobile to name a few . As the only steamship artist there, I get a good bit of attention with people going to get friends who are ship lovers to come see me.

If you would send me some membership forms I would be happy to tell people of the Society and perhaps pick up a few members .

JOE WILHELM New Orleans, Louisiana There is a burgeoning interest in the maritime history of the South, inland along her mighty rivers and across the Gulf Coastfrom the Keys to Texas. We welcome new members to help spread word of our work, and to contribute to our own knowledge of that region' s long and storied past .-Eo .

The U-505 Re-Reconsidered Replying to letters from John Kennaday and John J . Jacob, USNR in the Autumn issue of SEA HISTORY-there is a book written by RADM Dan V. Gallery in 1956, Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea . This book gives a very complete story of the U-505 with pictures, and gives a major part of the credit for the capture of the U-505 to CDR Earl Trosino, the engineering officer of the Guadalcanal .

THOMASH . HOFFMAN , Cdr. USN (Ret.) Oxford, Maryland

By Any Other Name ...

I am pleased to accept your invitation to join the Society . In the colored brochure that accompanied Emil Mosbacher's letter, I noticed a picture of the cover of a past issue showing the stem of the bark Elissa, with the words "Elissa Sails ." I would be very interested in obtaining a copy of this issue.

My daughter Elissa, who is just old enough to have started complaining about the constant confusion surrounding her name (her school seems to be full of Melissas, Alyssias, Elizas, Alicias ... ) , would be thrilled to see such a majestic vessel bearing her name.

Her birthday is next month . Could you send me a copy right away?

SCOTT R. BRIGGS Sebastopol, California We hope this serenely beautiful ship (which your editor has been fortunate enough to sail aboard) will give Mr. Briggs's Elissa renewed joy in her name on her birthday.-Eo .

CORRECTIONS In the review column of SEA HISTORY 38, Ruthanne Lum McCunn's book was incorrectly named . The correct title is Sole Survivor. -ED. (Continued.)

SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1986

INSURANCE BROKERS, CONSULTANTS AND ADJUSTERS OF AVERAGE

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Seahawk International New York 212-962-0144

Seahawk SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

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IN MEMORIAM

A. T. To set something straight in your books section about The Lore of Sail (SH 36, p 41): this is from the 1975 edition of The Lore of Ships, a revised edition of the 1963 books for which Bill rewrote ''The Hull'' chapter. The existence of this second edition is not generally known.

The two editions look the same on the outside except that one is by Tre Tryckare and the other by Nordbok; 1963 was distributed by Holt Rinehart, and 1975

by Crescent. The new little book seems to have still another publisher.

I thoroughly enjoyed a trip in Sea Cloud-Italian and French Rivieras and Corsica, and hope to sail in her again.

RUTH (MRS. WILLIAM A.) BAKER Hingham, MA Commodore Harry Anderson, Chairman of the American Sail Training Association, was the first to point out our egregious error in SEA HISTORY 38, where we mentioned the bark Polly Woodside as being in Sydney. But she's in Melbourne, of course! Sydney does have an outstanding fleet of historic craft, including the iron bark James Craig of 1874.

She is expected to be restored in time to celebrate the Australian Bicentennial in 1988 .

QUERIES SEA HISTORY 37, with its great articles and pictures of Hudson River steamboat days, reminded me of a trip we took on the Day Line in 1942. Unfortunately I do not remember which boat!

Would anyone be able to tell me what boat we would have sailed on from New York City to Bear Mountain on Monday morning, June 8, 1942? We were on our honeymoon, which accounts for my lapse of memory for boat names.

ELLIOTT G. BARS KE 98 Pool Road North Haven, CT 06473 Where I can locate a color photograph of a Liberty Ship in wartime dress? My wife's a professional painter, but since she is a desert girl, she has no feel for ships or the ocean. Consequently, I need a good color shot, large enough to show all the necessary detail, for her to work from.

I've been seeking one for years. I've tried the Navy, my old Alma Mater, King's Point-even the General Service Administration. I've managed to collect a fairly good sample of black and whites, but nothing in color.

AL MILLER Wolfe Pub!. Co. PO Box 30-30 Prescott, AZ 86302 6

POUCH,

JR.

On February 17, Tim Pouch died in his home in Staten Island. I was in England, and could not attend the funeral, but I heard about it from Norma Stanford: a church full to overflowing, with people from all walks of life and from various comers of the world where Tim had made a difference-that and a song Tim liked to play on the piano: "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me."

People like Tim who try hard and despise fakery are never satisfied with their own performance-but as Tim had to know, a lot of things began with him .

Many more things than I, whom he had befriended, was ever aware of while he walked-or perhaps more accurately, bounded along-th is earth . I don 't remember how I first met him , but I had met him by the time we had the problem of docking the huge hulk of the square rigger Wavertree in New York harbor (a problem we welcomed, after such long and anxious effort to get her there-but still, a problem). I called Tim in his office across the Upper Bay in Clifton, Staten Island . I can hear him now: "Are you kidding? Of course we'll dock you.

No, we won'tcharge, we know you don't have any money. Or much brains either, bringing in that kind of monster. How do you ever expect to take care of her?"

That was Tim. Instantly welcoming, supporting, open-handed-and full of almost equally instant deprecation, questioning, knocking the pretense out of everything including his own generosity.

You had to love him for it. In the case of the Wavertree he never gave up, despite later experiences with that project that would make many a man take up his oar like Ulysses and walk inland until people asked him what he was carrying.

Tim picked up and looked at many things, but he did not easily lay down those that he felt mattered.

Since 1966 he had been president of Pouch Terminals (founded by his grandfather Alonzo Pouch in 1917) , a span of some twenty years . Those years had seen mighty changes in the marine terminal business, with many companies going out of existence in the face of the container revolution which demanded vast docks and immense hinterlands to handle acres of cargo containers spread out for quick unloading and quick pickup by truck. Tim dug in his heels . Before the decade was out he had converted the big family warehouse into a startlingly handsome, modem office building, and had sold off the piers to the city for bus storage-a coup he was particularly proud of. That kind of imaginative transformation was the kind of thing Tim excelled in, and

when combined with his tenacity of purpose it made him a formidable contender.

Tim had served in numerous shipping and harbor causes-past president of the American Shipping Society, director of the Maritime Association, Rudder Club, the Whitehall Club. He loved the camaraderie and thrust and riposte of dockbuilders, tugboatmen and freight agents, and any cluster of people he joined seemed to brighten with his mile-wide smile .

He had an invincible sense of community. He was a trustee of the Greater New York Council of the Boy Scouts of America, president of Staten Island's Fund for the Advancement of Mental Health, and a member of the State Advisory Committee on Coastal Management. He was a board member of the Alice Austen House (a cause dear to our hearts), the New York City Partnership and the New York Chamber of Commerce. He had served on the boards of the Staten Island Academy, the Staten Island Hospital, and the Chamber of Commerce.

His wife Nancy survives him, with three sons, Alec, Michael, and Timothy, and three daughters, Anne, Kate and Melissa Pouch. He was only sixty-one when he died, full of life and hope and cracking jokes when I last spoke with him. One feels his presence in our affairs (''What the hell are you doing that for?''

I can hear him saying even now-and I listen) . Frank Farrar (who Tim introduced to us and who wrote the anchor piece of our Seamen's Recognition issue) called after Tim had slipped his cable.

"So Timmy's gone." Yes, that's true.

"You know, he was a good shipmate. " Yes, that is true-gloriously so, like sunlight breaking through the clouds, to the enrichment of so many lives.

PETER STANFORD

Tim Pouch wanted to see an endowment fund set up for the Society, so we have renamed our small endowment fund ($3700 at last count!), the A.T. POUCH, JR . FUND . Contributions to it are welcomed in his memory.

SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1986

NAUTICAL ARCHAEOLOGY:

The Real Treasure

by Peter Stanford It is a young discipline , after all-George Bass directed the first complete, professionally controlled dig on a wreck on the seabed in 1960, just over a quarter century ago. So perhaps it is not surprising that the public seems still largely unaware of the treasure that humankind has in the ships of the past four thousand years-ships which litter the floors of the lakes , rivers and seas that people before our time traversed in developing their civi lizations and opening the world to human awareness and interchange. Dr. Bass , testifying recently in support of federal legislation to protect these priceless relics of our voyaging experience, has deplored the false colors that looters of these shipwrecks march under-the colors of "free enterprise. " With restrained anger, he compares them to the " free enterprisers" who destroyed Greek temples to bum their marble forlime. " Today ," he notes quietly , "society regrets their acts."

And he speaks for many in expressing his own sense of loss, irreparable loss that has already been incurred: I have conducted underwater surveys off the Italian coast, and found nothing; shipwreck site after shipwreck site had been stripped bare by amateur souvenir hunters and professional looters. Some of these sites once had held remains of Phoenician ships, so the world has been thwarted in attempts to learn how the most famous of ancient mariners constructed their vessels-and future generations of Italian amateur divers have lost the opportunity of even seeing ancient shipwrecks.

And he suggests that American amateur divers should work to protect shipwrecks as they do coral reefs. Well , this was a year and a half ago , and now amateur divers' organizations are aligned with the archaeologists , with the support of President Reagan 's administration, to adopt federal legislation protecting historic wrecks . But the papers , television and even one maritime museum official have trumpeted the right of the treasure hunters to take what they can get as reward for their labors. Shouldn't finders be keepers?

The Unfinished Voyage In a word, no . They should not. For what the treasure salvors find is not theirs just because they can get to it first. The care needed to recover these precious relics of our passage through the world comes only of thoughtful and deliberate action , not hasty grabbing. And in many cases we should postpone our inquiries on the seabed until we have the tools and refined processes necessary to good work.

Somewhere we have to draw a line beyond which things are in the public realm and belong to all mankind . In this issue of SEA HISTORY , we are drawing that line around all the threatened wrecks which historians and archaeologists deem valuable, from the astonishingly well preserved ship that rests in the shelter of Swallow Harbor in Southern Turkey to the scanty and scattered remains of the sixteenth-century Channel Wreck in the Boca Chica Channel off Key West.

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It is a fascinating world, the underwater world of the archaeologist. From small differences in the fashioning of odd timbers recovered from under Mediterranean mud (in the World Ship Trust project on the Etruscan Giglio Ship, which is providing much falling-into-place of pieces) we are getting a new picture of the Mediterranean as a curiously segmented thoroughfare, commanded in different regions by different cu ltures , sometimes centuries out of step with each other.

And it is not just technical knowledge we acquire, it is a new sense or feeling for the past-the elaborate, dressy finish SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

of things found aboard the Mary Rose, for example, bring us at a bound closer to the High Renaissance, in a way no picture or description of them could. The ship has always been an ultimate effort of the society that launches it, a thing representing the ultimate reach of thought (and art) and technology in its day. A shipwreck catches that flowering life in midstride, not through old, exhausted, worn-out things recovered from garbage heaps , but loaded cannon awaiting the linstock, backgammon games put away the night before, prayer books hastily set aside. These ships must be allowed to complete their interrupted voyages, to deliver their cargoes of purpose and meaning to all of us. J,

What You Can Do ...

The Abandoned Shipwreck Bill, supported by preservationists and also by sport divers and diving equipment manufacturers, is designed to assure a future for historic shipwrecks in American waters while allowing sport divers to pursue their recreation .

The Society hopes you will support this position and help assure passage of the legistation now before Congress.

Sign the postcard bound into this SEA HISTORY , and mail it. If someone has already used the postcard , then you can write to Senator Malcolm Wallop, Chairman, Subcommittee on Public Lands, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, US Senate, Washington , DC 20510, or Congressman Walter Jones , Chairman, House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Commjttee, US House of Representatives, Washington , DC 20515.

Testimony about the bill can be obtained by writing the Oceanography Sub-Commjttee, House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee, 541 House Annex Two, Washington, DC 20515.

7

Nautical Archaeology: Mediterranean Origins

by Lincoln Paine

For as long as ships have been sinking , people have been going after them. In the Mediterranean, where there is an extensive sponge fishing industry, sponge divers have for centuries salvaged bits of wrecks for their own purposes, and occasionally on behalf of an owner. Even early on, when valuable cargo was known to be aboard a wreck, attempts were made to raise it for profit. But until the advent of sophisticated technology and buyers' markets, the mercenary exploitation of antiquities was minimal.

The development of the diving suit in the nineteenth century made deeply submerged wrecks accessible . The subsequent invention and popularization of the scuba put wrecks that had lain undisturbed for centuries-and in more than a few cases, for millenia-at serious risk . An appalling number of wrecks whose excavation was not possible without trained crews were destroyed by sport divers "perhaps seeking non-existent gold," as Peter Throckmorton described the dynamiting of one discovery, "not from malice but from stupidity , like a bored child spilling the sugar on a rainy afternoon."

Cosmopolitan, expansive and willing to digress at length for the sake of a good story, Throckmorton has as good a claim as anyone to the title of father of modem underwater archaeology. But he stands in the same relation to this field as Herodotus does to history, and though he has travelled , dived and written extensively on the subject of old ships , his greatest contribution must be seen in light of those who followed him to the seabed. His identification in 1959 of a twelfthcentury BC shipwreck off Cape Gelidonya in southern Turkey, and its subsequent excavation the following year by a team sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Museum and led

by George Bass, marks what has been called the coming of age of nautical archaeology .

Bass, then a doctoral candidate in pre-Classical archaeology-and now Archaeological Director of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) at Texas A & M University-was the first trained archaeologist to supervise a submerged excavation. Since there were virtually no precedents to follow , Bass drew extensively on his experience as a land archaeologist to map and record the Bronze Age ship and its cargo. As on a traditional dig, all objects were carefully marked and drawn before being removed from where they lay . In place of aerial photography to map the site from overviews, a diver swam above the wreck and took pictures from stations marked by plumb lines . Loose debris and smaller artifacts were removed with the help of an air-lift, or suction pump, while larger objects were placed in baskets that were raised to the surface by balloons.

The expedition was able to recover nearly all that remained of the ship's original contents . Although little of the ship itself survived, by drawing what timbers could be seen, it was possible to compare the vessel's design to models , pictures and carvings from the same period. Seven years after first visiting the site, Bass published the analysis of the finds which concluded that the ship was of Canaanite provenance and that it was carrying a cargo of copper ingots (called ox-hides from their pinched rectangular shape) from Cyprus to the Aegean.

The actual artifacts were placed in a museum established for the purpose at Bodrum, the ancient Halicamassus and birthplace of Herodotus .

In 1961 , Bass and his colleagues turned their attention to a group of wrecks that had been discovered by Throckmorton during his exploratory dives off the island of Yassi Ada in 1958-59. Working with a larger crew than had been at Gelidonya, Bass supervised the excavation of one ship , a seventh-century Byzantine merchantman, over the course of 8

four summers . The Yassi Ada wreck proved to be a showcase for the possibilities of archaeology underwater because of the wealth of material finds and the methods developed for their recovery and study. Moreover , enough of the hull remained for accurate model reconstructions to be made .

Bass has estimated that for every month spent diving on a wreck, two years are needed for analysis and conservation of the finds. Although various articles and reports were released from the beginning of the work at Yassi Ada, the definitive study on the wreck was not published until 1982. It is a remarkable document that records in almost intimate detail the nature of the ship, her cargo and her trade.'

The Yassi Ada ship was a small cargo vessel of about 65ft, built in the traditional hull-first fashion of early Mediterranean ships. Evidence from the coins found aboard her (about seven solidi worth) shows that she probably went down in the sixteenth year of the reign of Heraclius, about 625 or 626. Her Captain's name was George, as we know from an engraved ¡steelyard found in what had been his cabin. In addition to the captain and his crew (contemporary law established fixed wages for helmsmen, carpenters, boatswains and cooks) there could have been passengers , one of whom has been identified as a merchant named John .

Her holds were filled with nearly 900 amphoras , some (if not all) of which carried spiced wine. The style of pottery, as well as the mint signatures on the coins , strongly suggest that the ship sailed from a northern Aegean port and that she was headed south when she foundered. Her exact destination remains unknown, and probably unknowable.

From 1977 to 1979, an eleventh-century wreck was excavated at Sen;e Liman (Swallow Harbor) , also in southern Turkey . Originally identified by a few glass shards and an amphora, the Ser~e Liman find is popularly known as the Glass Wreck. Although it did yield nearly three metric tons of broken glass , it is more important for its hull remains which clearly date from a transitional period in naval architecture. Although only about a quarter of the ship survives, the fragments come from the full length of the hull. In the words of Richard Steffy , a specialist in ship reconstruction at the INA , the Ser~e Liman wreck has yielded considerable evidence indicating that skeletal hull construction gradually evolved into being within the Mediterranean world out of the earlier Greco-Roman shell construction method, in which framing was installed within an already assembled shell of hull planking. The emergence of skeletal building was to have important historical consequences , for it helped produce the ships that enabled Europe to explore and colonize other parts of the world. 2 Plank-on-frame construction , which is still employed in the building of wood and steel ships , we now know to have evolved around the tum of the first millenium.

The Ser~e Liman ship' s cargo of cullet-recycled glass used in the manufacture of new glass-is almost as spectacular a find . Between half-a-million and a million pieces of glass were raised , marked according to their location on the site and segregated into groups of different colors and textures-about twenty primary categories . These in tum were separated according to shades of color and the thickness of the fragments.

1 Yassi Ada: A Seventh-Century Byzantine Shipwreck, George F. Bass, Frederick H. van Doominck , Jr., et al. (Nautical Archaeology Series, Vol. I, Texas A & M University Press with the Institute of Nautical Archaeology , College Station , TX , 1982, illus , 349pp, $79 .50).

2 Excavation of an 11th-Century Shipwreck at Ser~e Liman, Turkey, J. Richard Steffy and Dr. Frederick H. van Doominck, Jr. (National Geographic Society Research Reports , 1976 Projects).

SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1986

Above, divers raise artifacts from the seventh-century Byzantine wreck at Yassi Ada. A study of the ship's hull fragments led to the model shown at right.

Above right, marking the timbers of a later vessel also found at Yassi Ada. Cannonballs (both stone and cast), the absence of cargo, and a four-real coin minted under Philip II suggest that the ship may have been part of the Ottoman Turks' navy-and could have taken part in the Battle of Lepanto (15 71).

Below, Ann and George Bass with artifacts recovered in 1975 from the ยงeytan Deresi wreck. Below right, some of the nearly one million pieces of glass from the Ser~e Liman wreck. Hundreds of vessels have been pieced together, yielding the largest collection of Medieval Islamic glass.

SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

9

" ... a ship goes down with everything ... virtually all of it useful, in place, and often intact."

This systematic differentiation of so many pieces-much as one prepares the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle for assembly-allowed the team to piece together several hundred vessels including cups, saucers , plates, lamps and bottles among many other shapes. In these reconstructions it is possible to distinguish between originally defective glasswear and that which had been used for a long time before being discarded. Examination by experts of the Coming Museum of Glass as well as comparisons with other medieval glass samples show that the glass is of Islamic manufacture.

Ceramic tablewear also was found from throughout the ship , including imitation T' ang dynasty bowls from China that were then popular in the Moslem world, and Egyptian jugs. Weights and coins of mixed (Islamic and Byzantine) origin were found, and the latter date the ship to the first quarter of the eleventh century . Almost ninety amphoras , probably for wine , and most incised with Greek names or monograms , were also distributed throughout the find . They probably came both from the ship 's stores and the general cargo. The anchor remains are similar to those retrieved from wrecks in Cyprus and Italy .

The eleventh century was a period of enormous upheaval in Asia Minor as the balance of power swung violently between the retreating Byzantine Empire and the advance of Islamic hegemony over the region . While it is therefore not surprising to find a ship with remains of such diverse origins in (now) Turkish waters, the difficulties in ascertaining its provenance are considerable. The Sen;:e Liman ship's construction and original ownership are of major importance to the study of the course of maritime history and to the commercial history of the eastern Mediterranean. These two issues are the primary focus of the ongoing interpretation of the wreck.

As more wrecks were found and excavated through the 1960s and 1970s, and nautical archaeology grew more sophisticated, its proponents and practitioners drew criticism from

traditional archaeologists for the haphazard and seemingly inconsequential nature of the finds. One argument was that the nautical archaeologists worked on ships of entirely different periods indiscriminately. Some also criticized the study of shipwrecks because they reveal onl y a discreet moment in time , whereas the study of cities reveals the whole spectrum of a society over a period of time.

Although Bass, originally trained as a Bronze Age archaeologist, might substantiate the first criticism, the discipline which he is helping to pioneer is only twenty-five years old.

He looks forward to the time when the field is well established and there are specialists for every period of nautical history.

The second criticism is essentially groundless. Shipwrecks are especially valuable to the historian for the very reason that they freeze a moment in time. Unlike the study of abandoned sites , where one uncovers primarily the ruined structure and discarded item, a ship goes down with everything , clothing, food, cargo, instruments, virtually all of it useful , in place, and often intact. In this regard, the land sites that most closely resemble shipwrecks are the disaster sites, like Pompeii and Herculaneum, which have yielded such rich information.

Moreover, shipwrecks allow us a close examination of the nature and diversity of commercial enterprise, as well as its limitations and expanding capabilities.

The ships at Gelidonya, Yassi Ada and Sen;:e Liman are valuable discoveries because they are commonplace workboats. Had they completed their voyaging, they would have ended their days in some backwater, stripped of anything that could be reused, and ultimately they would have vanished .

This was and is the fate of very nearly all utilitarian objects no matter how large . Having rescued one ship and constructed its story, we are able to throw a slender but penetrating light on a past age-and so much the better, on a specific day of that past. w

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Archaeology-All At Sea? A British Perspective on Preservation of the Underwater Heritage

by Martin Dean Maritime archaeologists are fortunate to be living at an extraordinary time in the development of their field. The rapid increase in the number of divers over the last few decades has resulted in numerous discoveries of wrecks in the seas of the world.

Many of these new sites are of archaeological and historical interest and many coastal states have either had existing legislation modified or specially drafted to give some legal protection to this comparatively new class of antiquity .

There are very few professional archaeologists engaged full time in underwater archaeological matters , perhaps hardly more than fifty in the whole world outside of the university campus .

But the number is increasing as more archaeological students learn to dive and see the undeveloped potential of archaeology underwater, and as universities throughout the world begin to offer postgraduate education in maritime archaeology .

Few coastal states have yet had the foresight to encourage the protection of the most important of their underwater sites by developing archaeological units with an underwater capability . There are exceptions , among them Canada, Denmark, France, Israel, Norway , Sweden, Western Australia and, now , Britain . These units operate in different ways, some assessing and monitoring sites, others undertaking large-scale research excavations and some simply collecting and collating information about archaeological sites underwater. But they also perform an important function in trying to educate the diving community.

Interest is developing throughout the world in submerged antiquities , but there is an increasing threat to underwater sites from a variety of sources: sport divers collecting souvenirs, damage caused by commercial exploitation of the sea, and the pilfering of underwater archaeological materials for financial gain . The latter threat is not peculiar to, but prevelant in the Americas . This contrasts with Scandinavia where the past is respected by society in general. Antiquities are considered a community asset, and public consciousness of underwater archaeology , roused by the raising of the seventeenth-century warship Vasa in 1969 , has remained constant ever since .

The most effective way to promote protection of the underwater heritage is through social engineering so that peer pressure operates to prevent the destruction and damage of cultural remains on the seabed . Strong legislation alone has little impact because it is the effectiveness rather than the strength of legislation that is important. The effectiveness is dependent on many factors , including policing (always difficult underwater) , society's attitude to the past and public support for the aims of the legislation .

Italy is a typical example of a country where an understanding of the past has developed , and it has become increasingly less acceptable for divers to take antiquities off the seabed .

Unfortunately such vandalism still occurs but it is now more likely to be diving tourists rather than Italians aware of the significance of the cultural heritage .

Australia is another country where the prevention of plundering of historic wreck sites was once thought impossible. Careful legislation and the influence of a group of maritime archaeologists based at the Western Australia Museum has caused a dramatic change of attitude by the diving community-both amateur and professional-resulting in increased protection of known sites together with many more new sites being reported.

These two examples are from the extreme ends of the scale of maritime archaeological cultures, with Italy having hundreds of known wrecks more than 1000 years old, and Australia having comparatively few more than 150 years old. Both show that, given the will , advances can be made in the battle for the preservation of our maritime heritage under the sea.

SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

In Britain we are fortunate that there is no verified example of serious damage to a major underwater archaeological site by unauthorized or unthinking divers . There have been instances , however, of shipwrecks being tom apart by salvors in search of treasure. These characters often claim that they are involved in maritime archaeology , but this usually means they are simply employed in the commercial exploitation of archaeological material, usually without benefit of proper archaeological guidance. Their one redeeming feature is their often quite genuine interest in the past. This is what needs to be developed so that they can be persuaded to take a more responsible attitude toward archaeological sites .

One of the hardest things to get across to such people is that excavation is a totally destructive process . Unless high levels of skill are employed in the excavation, recording and conservation of a site and its artifacts, the whole exercise is reduced to nothing more than looting . It is during this process that information which is not recognized by the untrained and which is important in piecing together our knowledge of the past, is lost forever.

In Britain it is perfectly legal to destroy any underwater site , regardless of its age or archaeological importance , unless it has been specifically designated under the Protection of Wrecks Act. As there is no legal requirement to report new sites, the initiative to do so rests entirely with the diver. That is not always sufficient , especially since tracking down an interested authority can be surprisingly difficult for those who have had no previous connection with maritime archaeology .

Although the situation is far from perfect in Britain things are slowly improving . A major new development has been the setting up of a government-funded Archaeological Diving Unit to assist with the working of the Protection of Wrecks Act. This unit, based at the University of St. Andrews, will advise and assist those who have licenses to survey or excavate designated sites, and will make on-site evaluations of the work undertaken . It will also monitor designated sites where licenses have not been issued in recent years to check for natural and man-made damage, and assess the archaeological, historical or artistic importance of new sites proposed for designation .

The influence of this new unit should spread far beyond those sites selected for legal protection and will help raise the general standard of underwater archaeological work throughout Britain. It should also help to promote a better understanding of archaeological values within the diving community.

If public opinion is swinging to support historic wreck protection in Britain and other parts of the world, why is it that in the United States, maritime archaeologists are so frequently outmaneuvered by treasure hunters? This may be partly due to the fact that a significant proportion of archaeological wreck sites around the US have contents of exceptionally high intrinsic value, making the unscrupulous try particularly hard. The more important factor is that the American lobby is not as strong as it could be. Many of the best American archaeologists involved with underwater sites concentrafe their efforts outside of the US, and this may be to the detriment of their own local heritage.

Whether or not this trans-Atlantic perspective is entirely accurate, the principal solution to the problem of underwater archaeology remains the same-well organized , precise , hardhitting and sustained lobbying on all fronts and at all levels.

The ability to achieve this certainly exists in American maritime archaeology . Is the will to do so strong enough to succeed?

Mr. Dean, until recently Underwater Archaeologist at the National Maritime Museum in England, is now with the Archaeological Diving Unit at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.

11

This is it! The awesome reality of those fantastic Tudor ships with their towering fore and after castles and billowing squaresails comes home when you confront the actual wooden structure . Something else emerges in these photographs-the massive weight of wood shaped to fine ends, a blending of grace and strength.

We have no plans of such a ship.

Our understanding of their shape and fun ctioning depended on finding one. (She was no slouch as a sailer: see Peter Whitlock's " To Raise the Mary Rose" SH23 ). Photos courtesy the Mary Rose Trust.

At right , these shoes, looking so ordinary and familiar, still bear the shape of the f eet that walked in them 440 years ago .

Photo by the author.

12

SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1986

The Mary Rose: The Final Triumph of a Ship that Failed

by Susan Dempsey Barnes The Mary Rose is on an even keel again. She has been brought upright, with infinite pains, over 440 years after she took the list that sank her with almost all her complement of 700 men.

Even with the mist-spraying-used to keep the Tudor timbers damp and to leach the salt out of the wood-she is now again recognizably a ship. The starboard side looms up in breathtaking wholeness , with some of the shattered poop remaining, and early this year the task of reinstating numerous deck beams and other interior structure was begun by the people of the Mary Rose Trust.

This is a very different scene from the one presented when Henry the Eighth's flagship was first lifted from the Solent, on England's south coast, in 1982. Then she appeared as a mass of dark wood , sandwiched between the yellow metal of the lifting frame and cradle-giant structures undreamt of in her builders ' time. Lying at 60 degrees , the angle at which she sank and settled into the seabed, it was a hazardous business bringing her up. Very little of the port side was left, but its remains, and much interior structure including deck beams , planking and the gear and weaponry they held , had to be removed before lifting could be attempted. These things are stored, a haul of some 17 ,000 artifacts , in suitable conditions all over Portsmouth, the base the ship sallied forth from on her last outing in 1545 , and still a home to the Royal Navy 's ships today .

It is incredible that Alexander McKee , diving in search of the buried hulk in 1966, wrote: "We found the most complicated seabed we had yet seen, consisting of juicy harbor mud, occasional eroded lumps of clay upstanding from it, beds of limpet shells in layer-lines as if sorted by wave-action . . . .

There was never a more depressing or hopeless seabed." It seemed an impossible task to find the Mary Rose . The places where she was supposed to have sunk, as described in various documents , were as much as six miles apart. Also the area, heavily used by shipping, had a great number of wrecks. There was some argument, based on Mediterranean experience by Sub-Aqua divers, that no timber or metal could have survived so long under water. Another hazard was that wrecks which impeded shipping in the harbor had often been deliberately destroyed . But McKee had a theory that the silt would act as a preservative and , based on some other surveys , that ships in that area made themselves a scour pit so that a ship could disappear into an oxygen-free environment very quickly. A stroke of luck was McKee 's finding a chart which at least gave the exact site of the sinking.

The years 1969 and 1970 were heavy-going and unrewarding. With the use of sonar equipment, three anomalies were discovered on the sea bottom in the right area . Two were thought to be geological and attention was paid to the one that seemed most promising. Water jets created thick black fog for the divers and the silt appeared bottomless. The site had no legal protection so it had to be secretly marked at the end of each season. With some reluctance an excavator was used to clear silt and debris from the surface. After a great deal of discouragement, an object described by McKee as looking like "a thin brown sausage" was brought up. Part of the concretion broke off on the deck and grey-blue metal showed through: it was a Tudor gun . While this find proved that McKee and his divers were on the right track , the lack of any other finds brought back gloomy speculation that the ship herself had not survived. This was supported by the fact that two brothers called Deane, diving on the Mary Rose in 1839 , had recorded that they had used explosive charges to get through the sand to the hull.

In 1971, while looking for the bouys of the previous year's trench, Percy Ackland discovered part of a ship's side . McKee SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1986

was still cautious-but the Mary Rose had been found! At that stage no one knew what the timbers were that had been seen, or if any other part of the ship was preserved. The Mary Rose dig continued as an act of faith during the next few years, particularly si nce at the end of every diving season the exc;:avation had to be filled with silt so the timbers were not left too long exposed. There was a great deal of discussion about how the ship was lying and the meaning of the various timbers.

One of the timbers was identified as the stempost, and it was established that the great hull , still mostly buried , lay at an extreme angle of heel, over on her side at 60 degrees from the vertical.

What was one of the world's most ambitious underwater archaeological sites was manned very largely by unpaid volunteers and run generally on a shoestring. As more important finds came to light-a length of the keel , gunport lids , planking in excellent condition-a more professional approach was indicated. In 1978 , the Mary Rose Trust was set up. The plan was that the artifacts being recovered would be conserved in a center set up in Portsmouth , and that funds would be gathered to undertake the Herculean task of raising the ship and putting her on exhibition.

The rebirth of the Mary Rose, which is being achieved through painstaking conservation and study of all she was and all she carried with her, takes one to a brilliant, long-vanished era-an era of flamboyant pride , artistic flowering and growing technological achievement. From the quantities of still-serviceable longbows recovered , we have learned the weight of pull (100 pounds and more) that the English yeomen archers had to apply to pierce the armor of French knights at Agincourt , only a hundred years earlier. And in the variety of guns, and the whole design of the great ship as a broadside-fought battleship , we can see the ponderous beginnings of the new age of metal and chemical technology which was to shape the next half millenium of world history .

The ship was a living city when she went down under the This long range, light calibre cast bronze gun was recovered from the stern castle.

It is displayed on a replica of its carriage, which was also recovered. Photo by the author.

"The site had no legal protection, so it had to be secretly marked at the end of each season."

King's eyes. What a sight she must have been to Henry the Eighth on the calm, still, sunny day of July 19, 1545! When she was first built in 1509-11 an order was given for " tukes , brussells cloth and chameletees" to make pennants and banners. In the only contemporary picture (dated a year after she sank) the banners and the green and white streamers (Henry ' s colors) are shown along with the heavy armament and the very low gunports for her new guns. She carried ninety-one guns and she handled well in her trials in the Channel after her rebuild five years earlier into what was a floating gun platform .

On that day she carried her normal crew of 415 seamen and 285 heavily armed soldiers , many of whom were longbowmen .

Together with their arms and equipment, these soldiers added another twenty-four to twenty-five tons to her topside weight.

The day was so calm that the English fleet was vulnerable to attack by light French galleys maneuvering under oars; but a slight breeze came up and the fleet , under fire from the galleys, started to move towards the French. The Mary Rose suddenly heeled over-perhaps in an effort to come about to bring her guns to bear on the French. She sank within minutes.

A large number of skeletons have been found, some on the open weather deck where they were trapped by the anti-boarding net, other below decks. It was clear from their positions and the surrounding weapons that the ship was still in action when she sank.

The clothing that has been recovered is mainly the leather or woolen jerkins used by seamen , but some fancy stuff worn by officers has also survived, and a strange picture of foppery has emerged, which jars with the ship's fighting capacity and her tragic end. An extensive array of personal gear has been recovered including a backgammon board , other gaming KEY WEST BAR PILOTS P.O. Box 848 Key West, Florida 33040 Cable KPILOT Telephone 305-296-5512 or call through Key West

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boards, dice, pocket sundials , a manicure set, a housewife (sewing kit), combs, a pomander, razors, herbs and spices, and an array of fresh and preserved foodstuffs.

And there is a complete barber's chest! This is still considererd the most important find, opening a new awareness of Tudor medicine . Study of the men and their clothing and weapons will also lead to a better understanding of Tudor nutrition and hygiene.

In the Exhibition Hall guns of startling variety and fineness of finish-the Tudors were a people of the High Renaissance!- speak of an expressive age , sure in its design , confident of its ability to enforce its intentions. But there were so many of them-probably they were the real culprits in the ship's sinking.

It will take years before all the finds are displayed and a coherent picture of a Tudor ship and her crew really emerges .

The experts seem very wary of putting anything in print that is not heavily documented, and the samples of finds now on display are tantalizing in what they reveal or suggest.

The Mary Rose project has led to vast improvements in technique and in the equipment available to the divers . But the divers emerge as the actual heroes of the operation, almost as single-minded as the crew in their love of the ship. A final contribution of the Mary Rose and her people of today and the distant past is the interest and impetus they have lent to the whole heritage of underwater archaeology . ,i,

Mrs. Barnes, an American living on England's south coast, is an amateur archaeologist with a particular interest in early British craft.

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SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

Safeguarding Coastal Traffic along the Florida Keys

First Light on the Reefs

by Love Dean

A distinguished student of the life and sea lore of the Florida Keys gives an arresting picture of the development of the lighthouse system which warns shipping of the dangers of these waters. Today, this is the scene where archaeologists are fighting to save the cargoes and remains of ships that have been lost here for over four centuries.

Sailing southwest and westward along the Florida Keys at night is a precarious adventure. Ships hug the treacherous coral reefs lying offshore to avoid the strong northward-flowing current of the Gulf Stream. In the daytime and in clear weather there is no problem . The color contrasts in these waters are clearly visible and provide mariners with sure knowledge of their location . The water in the Gulf Stream is deep blue and there is a pretty clear demarcation line along its western edge.

The light green water over the reefs is mottled with pale ochre and dark brown. Ships find safe sailing in the clear aquamarine water between the Stream and the reefs.

Northbound ships seek the maximum Gulf Stream current to speed them on their way. But before lighthouses were built along the Florida Keys mariners had no way of knowing at night how close they were sailing to the reefs at night and during storms . As a result , the area has long been a menace to shipping.

The chain of dangerous reefs and shoals lies about five miles from the keys extending in a circular sweep from Virginia Key near Cape Florida to Loggerhead Key in the Dry Tortugas, a distance of about 192 miles . On early sixteenth-century Spanish charts the islands were often indicated in the wrong places, sometimes closer to Cuba than Florida; the number of islands varied; and most reefs were uncharted. The Spanish called the Keys "Los Martires ," the Martyrs , and perhaps the name referred to the many ships that had been swept on the reefs during severe storms and destroyed.

Once the Spanish establi shed colonies in Central and South America, the riches of the New World began to pour back to Spain and the rest of Europe by way of the Gulf Stream. This northerly course ran perilously close to the reefs off the Keys.

Treasure from sunken Spanish ships is still being discovered today , and remains of four centuries of shipwrecks can be seen on the coral reefs.

The reef system running parallel to the islands from Key Largo to Lower Matecumbe was known as Carysford Reef, named for HMS Carysford, which ran aground there October 23, 1770. By 1848 the name of the reef had changed to ''Carysfort, " and one US navigational chart noted its " great extent of dangerous shoals and sunken rocks. " Beginning in the late eighteenth century, sav ing ships that went aground or sank and recovering cargo were lucrati ve businesses. Millions of dollars worth of cargo was shipped along thi s Gulf Stream route. Companies, merchants and foreign governments as well as ship owners and operators began to demand better charts and navigational aids for the Keys . They also wanted the United States government to take action against the pirates operating in the Florida Straits.

Congress eventually felt the pressure and in 1822 appropriated money for lighthouses to be built at Cape Florida and on the Dry Tortugas , and for a naval base at Cayo Hueso (Key West) which had become a pirates' haven . An estimated 10,000 pirates operated around Cuba and the Florida Straits in the early 1800s .

With the rapid development of Key West as a major port and naval base , the government erected an eighty-five-foot high masonry lighthouse there in 1825. The following year a smaller brick lighthouse was constructed on Sand Key seven miles to the southwest. There were still hundreds of miles of SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

Above, salvagers, locally called "wreckers ," at work along the Florida Keys . Elsewhere "wreckers" often referred to those engaged in the intentional destruction of vessels by the placement of false lights along the coast. Courtesy the Monroe County May Hill Russell Public Library, Key West . Below, the innovative wrought iron structures which have successfully withstood the corrosive and destructive environment of the sea . Ships often stopped at the lighthouse for water: " Capt. Charles Baker of the Schooner Rapid boarded this station in want of water and provisions," runs one keeper's journal. " / exchanged, with the consent of both assistants, a barrel of flour , a little pork, and a quart of vinegar for different kinds of fruit."

Sometimes the keepers would board vessels to post letters, to pick up newspapers, or just talk.

unmarked coral reefs, and Carysfort reef was considered one of the most dangerous. It was estimated that more than twenty percent of all the wrecks between Cape Florida and the Tortugas went down along Carysfort .

The Lighthouse Service realized it was essential to mark Carysfort reef in some way , but the engineering techniques for building a lighthouse exposed to the open sea had not yet been developed . Until this time lighthouses in the United States and Europe were constructed of either wood or masonry and

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The Carysfort light was automated in 1960. A solar panel now charges the batteries powering the first-order light that automatically shows a group of three flashes every thirty seconds. In the daylight its web-like iron pilings painted red are easily identifiable. For 133 years Carysfort Lighthouse, the first light on the reefs, has helped guide mariners safely around the reefs and today is the oldest functioning lighthouse of its kind in the United States.

built on land or large rock outcroppings in the sea . In 1824, therefore, Congre~s made an appropriation for a lightship to be placed on station on the ocean side , eight miles off the reef. This proved difficult to implement. When completed in June 1~25 , the lightship sailed to the Keys, but off Key Biscayne 1t was blown onto the reefs in a storm and abandoned by the crew . Salvagers took possession of the ship and the "contractors for the vessel were obliged to ransom it from the wreckers ." Problems continued to plague the ship. Frequently blown off station in storms, she once went aground on Carysfort. After five years the vessel had to be replaced due to extensive dry-rot.

The next lightship , the Florida , experienced many of the same problems and new tragedies . The Second Seminole War beg~n in 1835. The Indians raided settlements all along the Flo.nda coast. At first they did not threaten any lighthouses , which they called " the white man ' s great moon ." But on July 23, 1836 they attacked and set fire to the Cape Florida Lighthous~ . And a year later they ambushed the crew of the lightship Florida, who had come ashore to cultivate their vegetable garden, and killed the Captain and one crew member.

The Indian Wars continued until 1842 and prevented the government from building a proposed iron screw-pile lighthouse on Carysfort reef. This innovative type of lighthouse was designed by Alexander Mitchell in 1836 for Trinity House , which administered lighthouses in England . A navigational aid was needed in the Thames estuary, but the sandy seabed ~ade conventional construction impossible . Maplin Sand Light, the first of its kind , was built with wrought iron piles screwed into the ground . The lightkeeper' s quarters were built over the iron piles and a lantern was placed on top of the structure.

The ~arysfort Lighthouse was eventually designed by I. W. P. Lewis and completely assembled at a foundry in Philadelphia to make sure that each piece met specifications . The structure was then di~assem~led and shipped by schooner to the Keys.

The prefabncated mterchangeable parts were made in sizes that would enable the men to move and assemble them efficiently on the reef site. Plates and sections were designed to be quickly bolted together. Cast iron fittings held the skeleton together by friction until the shell could be erected and adjustments made. The workmen, all trained at the foundry during the preliminary erection of the tower, expected no difficulties in constructing the lighthouse.

However, a serious problem arose from the reef site itself.

The location selected was a submarine site, four-and-one-half feet underwater on the outermost bank of Carysfort reef. The engineers, expecting the coral to be solid, planned to screw the foundation piles deep into the reef. But the coral was not solid, only the exterior crust was hard . Beneath this was a 16

softer mass of calcareous sand. Large iron discs were therefore designed and used to "diffuse the pressure over the 130 square feet of surface crust.'' The foundation screwpiles were then passed "through the center-eyes in the plates and driven 10 feet into the sand . " The construction of the lighthouse had been underway for over two years when the engineer in charge suddenly died. Lt. George G. Meade, who had assisted in the construction of a screw-pile light in Delaware Bay, was chosen to take his place.

As a brevet second lieutenant of the 3rd Artillery, Meade had been sent to Florida at the outbreak of the Seminole War. Later, while serving with the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, he surveyed and charted the Florida reefs. The knowledge he gained of the waters off the Keys , combined with his experience in building the iron screw-pile lighthouse on Brandywine Shoal, made him the obvious choice to complete the Carysfort Lighthouse.

Meade had one year to complete the work, but construction was repeatedly halted for lack of funds . Meade barraged Congress for the needed monies, and when the appropriations arrived, he made up for lost time and finished the lighthouse in 1852 on schedule .

The dwelling had provisions for collecting rainwater from the roof and storing it in tanks that could hold 3,500 gallons.

The lightkeepers had a set of Elfords signals for ships, two boats with oars , and one twelve-ton sailboat. The keeper was instructed '' to board all wrecks or distressed vessels and to succor them as far as it is in his power. " The light itself was comprised of eighteen lamps with 21inch diameter reflectors , eleven in one circle and seven in the other. The Fresnel lens originally intended for Carysfort had been shipped to the customs house in New York for storage until it could be installed . It remained there for nine months when for some inexplicable reason, it was sold to the highest bidder. ' Another concern of Meade's was that the characteristic of Carysfort light was " fixed , " the same as the Cape Florida light forty miles northeast, and Meade felt that a ship might possibly mistake one lighthouse for another. Meade was, however , completely satisfied with the durability and strength of the iron pile structure. Because of the screw-pile and disc construction he knew the foundation would not settle, and the braced open ironwork would withstand high winds and the force of the sea .

Carysfort' s light was first displayed on March I 0 , 1852 .

Two months later the Lighthouse Board transferred Meade to Sand Key off Key West harbor, to supervise the construction of another iron pile lighthouse . The brick lighthouse built on the sand island in 1826 had been destroyed by the 1846 hurricane, and the Lighthouse Board was convinced that the new iron screw-pile design should be used for all future lighthouses built to mark the Florida reefs.

Meade completed the Sand Key Lighthouse in 1853 and then built Sombrero Key Lighthouse off Key Vaca (Marathon) in 1858. Three more iron pile lighthouses were constructed between 1873 and 1880: Alligator Reef Lighthouse off Lower Matecumbe; Fowey Rocks Lighthouse, off Biscayne Bay and Cape Florida; and American Shoals Lighthouse , southwest of Big Pine Key. Together these six lights fulfill the dream of many for vessels to navigate from one light to another safely outside the dangerous reefs of the Florida Keys . .i,

Captain Dean conducts environmental charter tours in the Florida Keys . This article is based on research done for her book Reef Lights: Sea-swept Lighthouses of the Florida Keys (Key West Historical Preservation Board, 1982).

SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

HELP US CELEBRATE AN IMPORTANT 75th BIRTHDAY! Yes , that' s how old US Naval aviation is this year-75. The gallant few who took their flim sy canvas-and-wood contraptions aloft in 1911 knew they were doing something important- but could they ever have dreamed how important?

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Preserving a way of life earned from the sea:

The Key West Maritime Historical Society for the Florida Keys

by Captain William Frank Here in the Florida Keys exist some of into our fifth year. After a good start, the greatest of our nation 's untapped re- we bogged down for lack of local supsources for the study and application of port. We turned to building up our library maritime history. For hundreds of years and archives and to obtaining support in modem times-and for many more from the rest of the maritime historical before the coming of Europeans to the community. Many groups and individuAmericas-these islands have been at a als have lent their energies to the cause. crossroads of the maritime world and Outstanding in their efforts to help and they have witnessed much of the progress advise were Mystic Seaport, the Kendall and dispersal of civilization in the Whaling Museum, the National MariAmericas. The list of important events time Historical Society and the Internataking place in the Keys is too long to tional Congress of Maritime Museums. present here. Let it suffice to say that no There were others, of course, from period in our continent's development Maine to California, and from as far off has been unaffected by changes emanat- as Alaska and Australia. ing from the Keys.

The result of all this was our beginning The Key West Maritime Historical So- to grow and accomplish some of our ciety for the Florida Keys has three basic goals. Our membership has increased , aims in terms of the sea, its history and and with it interest from city governits potential. The first aim is to preserve ment. We have acquired an historic sailand protect maritime sites in respect to the ing vessel, Susan I/, one of the last Bahaknowledge and artifacts they hold for us mian sloops ever built in Key West , and about our past. The second is to present we have a member-owned flagship , the this material wealth to the public through 70ft Down East-built schooner Clione . our museum, which also houses an archi- We also have a boatbuilding and rowing val library for scholars. The third is to program involving the local community promote interest in this work and in the college and high school. (Members of application of its results to the future of the rowing team will be competing in our national archives and maritime trades the Operation Seamanship races taking and industry, not only locally , but through- place in New York Harbor this Fourth out the state and country . of July during the events planned for the There are two groups of special impor- Statue of Liberty Centennial.) tance to our work: those people still livWe are presently engaged in a number ing who retain first-hand knowledge of of other projects, some small and charting the Keys since the tum-of-the-century; their own courses, others of paramount and the young people of the Keys who-- and immediate importance. The most signot for lack of interest, but rather for a nificant of these involves a wreck site that lack of programs and activities-are un- may be the oldest known in these waters. aware of the opportunities available to We hope that this project will be undertathem for understanding and utilizing ken with a combined effort including the their extraordinary maritime past. society, the Archaelogical Institute of Today the Keys are undergoing a rad- America and the US Navy. ical transformation. Tourism, retirement Last year we filed for authority to concondominiums and the service industries duct an on-site investigation of the sothat support this expansion are crowding called "Channel Wreck" (which has tenout an age-old way of life earned from tatively been identified as a sixteenththe sea, and with that , its history and century Spanish merchant vessel) which materials. What has been taken for sank in the passage between Key West granted as a way of life for centuries- and Boca Chica, toward the tip of the ones of slow change-is disappearing Keys (see map page 15). Unfortunately , overnight. Each day, another old salt confusion has surrounded the project alslips his cable. An antiquated maritime most since the beginning of our involvebuilding is ¡ tom down to make way for ment , with some people questioning our a hotel. A sea captain's house is sold aims and intents , and others our ability and an attic full of valuable artifacts and to do the work responsibly . At the moinformation (clues and keys to our past) ment, we are faced with a problem about is disseminated to dealers and museums the wreck 's jurisdiction. The exact locaup north. Rich and valuable history dis- tion of the wreck is known only to its appears unnoticed because we are with- original discoverer; but it is known that out the means to save it in the Keys . The it lies either in , or very close to, restricted research opportunites here now are al- navy waters. However, if it lies in unremost limitless , for today the door to the stricted waters, it is subject to conflicting past is open wide. Tomorrow, it may be claims by the discoverer, the state and closed forever. the federal government. The conflicting We, as society and museum , are well claims over custody of the ''Channel SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

A Cuban fishing boat and the Susan II, a Bahamian.fishing sloop are undergoing restoration. Below, the rowing program involves local high school and college students and will be sending a team to compete in New York Harbor this Fourth of July.

Wreck" illustrate the importance of the need to rewrite Jaws governing historic underwater sites (see page 11 for a discussion of the Abandoned Shipwreck Bill).

The Society is involved with the Channel Wreck on behalf, and with the support, of the entire nautical historical and archaeological community, and we will stay with it as long as they say we should.

What they tell us to do we will do; and if they tell us to pull out, we will pull out.

Otherwise, we will not walk away from our responsibility to the larger community.

The Channel Wreck is but one of the projects with which we are involved today .

At the same time as this and other activist programs are going forward, we are receiving artifacts and research materials .

The Key West Maritime Historical Society for the Florida Keys is expanding on all fronts , and with it, the awareness of the people of the Keys and the nation that we must preserve the enriching and vigorous past of these islands . .i.

Bill Frank learned the ropes sailing as crew in some of the last Down East commercial schooners. He founded the Key West Society, of which he is now president, working with Keys citizens.

You can send your tax-deductible gift to them at 1009 South St., Key West, FL 33040; 305 294-5789.

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SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1986

The Last Days of the Coriolanus

by Fred T. Comee It was early in the evening of July 17 , 1929. The iron bark Coriolanus swung to her anchor off the Hen and Chickens buoy, five weeks behind her intended schedule. That sultry morning she had taken aboard the last of her passengers and cargo at a wharf in New Bedford , and the tug had come about noon . Now she awaited a fair wind for the start of her voyage as a packet to the Cape Verde Islands, this time to her home port of Praia on the island of Sii.o Tiago. It was destined to be her last voyage.

Foremost among the passengers was Norman Matson, a thirty-five-year-old author from Provincetown , Massachusetts , who had booked passage for seventy dollars. He had been given the best cabin , the Captain's cabin in the original scheme of things and now that of the old bark 's owner, Senhor Abilio Macedo , when he was aboard. In the course of the voyage, Matson was to write a book , The Log of the Coriolanus, which was published in 1930, depicting this passage and his shipmates.

Provincetown, where Matson lived , is situated at the bitter end of Cape Cod some fifty miles east of Boston-a natural port of refuge for ships seeking shelter from the gales of the North Atlantic . During the late 1920s and early 1930s when I was growing up there , schooners in the coastwise trade frequented its waters and almost every winter saw at least one shipwreck. Commercial fishing and summer visitors were the main means of livelihood , supplemented for some with furtive rum running. Fascination with ships and the sea and the vanishing days of sail, was for me, inescapable. Provincetown had been a haven for artists and writers since the early 1900s, and during my youth Norman Matson was a familiar figure along its narrow streets. But I was unaware of his seagoing adventure or of the Coriolanus until I discovered and read his book in the local library.

Christmas of 1934 brought me Alan Villiers's Last of the Wind Ships and from it I learned that the Coriolanus was laid up at Bath, Maine. Early in 1935 I contrived a trip "down east'' to find her. An apparent derelict, she lay in a dilapidated slip near the Bath Iron Works, her fore topmast and everything above it missing, together with the uppermost yards on the mainmast, and her decks splintering and cluttered with debris.

In the summer of 1965 when I was living in the San Francisco area, a local paper reported the 33ft sloop Spirit, out of the St. Francis Yacht Club, as having sailed to Newport , Rhode Island , to participate in the Bermuda Race that year. Among her crew was a Norman Matson of Sausalito, California. Investigation revealed him to be a nephew of the elder Norman Matson-the son of hi s brother Alfred . I obtained the author's address in New York and wrote to him , recalling Provincetown days , expressing my long-ago enjoyment of his book and asking if he had taken any pictures during his time in the Coriolanus . That fall his wife replied that Norman had died on October 18th and that my letter, which he had been unable to answer, had given him great pleasure. He had taken pictures and when she could find them among his things she would send them to me.

* * * * * Above left, one of seventy-four cars brought to the Cape Verdes from New Bedford. Seven were carried as deck cargo.

At left, Capt. Piedade at the helm. Matson noted in his log on July 23, 1929: " Now we go SE by S, a fair wind, constant and strong.

The mainsail, willing to take all the pull, must be drawn up by her starboard corner so that the foresail may do her share."

23

This photo, taken aslant from one of the ship's boats while they were becalmed, may be the last picture taken of Coriolanus under full sail.

In 1929 when Matson sailed in her, the Coriolanus was an old vessel in the twilight of her years. Her gradual decline from immaculate clipper to decrepit packet, and beyond , is typical of many of her contemporaries in the last days of sail.

She had been launched in 1876 as a full -rigged ship with main skysail from the yard of Arch . McMillan & Son on the River Clyde, Dumbarton, Scotland, for J. Patton Junr. & Co., London. A small ship of 1046 tons register, her length was 217.4 feet, breadth 35.2 feet, depth 20. 1 feet. Intended for the tea trade from China, she is considered to have been one of the finest and most beautiful iron clippers ever built, and at the Shipwright's Exhibition in London in 1877 her model won the Gold Medal-the highest award . On her maiden voyage in 1877 she set a record which still stands: 69 days from the ScilJy Isles to Calcutta, around the Cape of Good Hope. In the 1878-79 tea season she left Shanghai on June 28th and came home to London in 150 days. Thereafter she entered the India jute trade where she remained while under Patton ' s ownership.

In 1886 Coriolanus was sold to John Stewart& Co., London , who operated her until 1891 when she was sold to German owners . In 1902 she was sold to Norwegians who cut her down to a bark, and except for a brief return to British ownership during 1903 and 1904 she remained under Norwegian registry and her original name until after World War I. In July 1921, flying either the Norwegian or the Panamanian flag and named Tiburon, she was seized in Boston with alcohol in her cargo and sold thereafter at a U.S . Marshal's Sale for $7 ,525 to Capt. Louis d'Oliviera, former master of the bark Charles G . Rice. He refitted her, named her for his wife Eugenia Emilia, and with American registry put her in the Cape Verde trade, in which he had sailed in the Rice, with himself as master. These were the Prohibition years in America and when d'Oliviera brought her back to New Bedford in 1922 24

she was seized again for rum running and carrying narcotics .

In the spring of 1923 she was sold at a Marshal's Sale in New Bedford to J. 0 . Amarantes for $6,750. He is reported to have put the old bark in first class shape, and when she sailed for the island of Sao Vicente, Cape Verde Islands, on November 1, 1923 , she was to be sold on arrival to Solomao Benoliel of Lisbon .

She was not seen again in New Bedford until June 28, 1926, when she flew the flag of Portugal with her home port at Praia and was named Lina. A rusting hulk, she lay at anchor off the Butler Flats Lighthouse all that summer, her captain unable to meet quarantine regulations for lack of funds . By the latter part of November her captain was in jail and her crew had deserted , and in February 1927 she was sold again at a Marshal's Sale, for $1,000-less than one dollar per ton.

The new owner was Abilio Monteior de Macedo, the mayor of Praia and the owner when Norman Matson sailed in her.

Senhor Macedo restored her original name, and it may have been on her first voyage for him in 1927, presumably with renewed gear and her bottom cleaned, that she showed her heritage with bursts of speed up to 16 knots by the log and, despite a three-day calm, made the passage to the Cape Verdes in 17 1/2 days, which events are mentioned by Matson and others.

On November l, 1928, the Coriolanus left New Bedford with 160 passengers and a crew of 30, which included some musicians as a ship's band. During a gale she was knocked down , some cargo shifted, and the deck cargo had to be jettisoned to right her. The passage was completed without further incident and she was back in New Bedford in May 1929 , at which time Matson made his arrangements to sail in her.

Two months later, on the afternoon of Friday, July 19, the wind came fair from the west and by dark Coriolanus had weighed achor and set sail for Praia with some eighty people SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

Twin deck houses added under the boat skids contained cabins and the radio. The hatch leads to the "steerage" area.

aboard. In her crew were about twenty-five men before the mast and an afterguard made up of Alfredo Piedade , Captain; Francisco Rosario, First Officer; another Francisco as Second Officer; a shop's doctor of advanced years, and a radio operator named Olavo. All except the doctor were black, and Portuguese was their native tongue. Capt. Piedade had spent most of his life at sea, always in sail and only on the Atlantic. Starting as cabin boy, he had eventually become captain of several schooners and a full-rigger , and before he had the Coriolanus he had spent some time ashore as Harbor Master on Fogo, the '' Isle of Fire.'' He and some of the others spoke a little English and First Mate Rosario also spoke French, which .reveals a West African heritage. Among some fifty passengers were nine who had come from Praia in April in the schooner John R . Manta to find work in America. But as they had no passports, they were now being deported . Predominant in the cargo were seventy-four old autos, including a 1917 Packard, seven of which were carried on deck.

It was the usual sort of summer voyage with light to gentle winds, great billowing clouds, calm seas flecked with whitecaps when the breeze freshened, an occasional squall, frequent showers, sometimes a rainy day, every day lazy and ranging from warm to hot. The best day's run was 209 miles; the worst 17. Some 500 miles west of the Azores in the vast emptiness of the mid Atlantic they lay becalmed for six hot cloudless days and passed the time by fishing over the side of the ship and from the two smaller lifeboats , catching big bluefish, scores of little ''masusa,'' and a couple of sea turtles .

The calm ended on August 5th with a lively breeze from the SSW and whitecaps on a sparkling sea. But over the next day the wind backed in the SE and the captain became irritable , not being able to fetch the Cape Verdes . If he went too far south he would have to beat back to Praia against the Northeast tradewinds, so he sailed northward away from his goal, trying to make easting and find the fair winds near the 30th meridian .

In the week that followed they spoke a westbound steamer, the first ship they had seen thus far, and another, headed for South America, changed course to pass close by and let its passengers see the old square-rigger and its strange crew. The headwinds prevailed for another week but changed at last on August 18th and one month after leaving New Bedford they entered the tradewinds and set a course to pass to the northeast of the Windward Islands of the Cape Verdes.

The crew was now put to work giving a fresh coat of paint to the rails, life preservers, after deck house and the small boats. And the passengers began to make ready their shoregoing clothes . As the coast of Africa was approached, the wind was warm and moist from the ENE with a fine sand in it from the Sahara. During the night of August 23rd the light on Sao Tiago was on the horizon and their destination was almost in sight. But the wind vanished only to return that night blowing dead ahead . Loathe to beat into the harbor in the dark, Capt. Piedade put about and ran off toward Africa. On the morning of August 26th the wind and tide were fair and by mid day the Coriolanus sailed in past a barren headland to anchor in the harbor, ending a thirty-eight-day passage from the Hen and Chickens buoy.

Middle photo , the Captain's 40th birthday, July 27, the officers and Matson record the occasion with a photograph. Standing, left to right: Capt. Alfredo Piedade, Norman Matson, First Officer Francisco Rosario. Seated, left to right: Radioman Olave , Bosun Frank, Second Officer Francisco . Bottom photo, fine sailing in the Northeast Trades, with Rosario, the Mate, at the wheel. Note the handsome companionway and signal flag locker within.

SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

i

August JO, 1936: the end comes for the beautiful Coriolanus in thi; picture a recent arrival at the breaker' s yard in Fall River, Massachusetts. This photo by the author. All others by Norman Matson .

There being no wharves in Praia, only a stone quay , the passengers were disembarked in small boats to return home on Sao Tiago or await a vessel for Fogo or Brava or an island in the Windward group . The cargo , too, went ashore in small boats in the course of the next three weeks, and the old autos which had cost about $25 in New Bedford began to sell for as much as $300.

Once the cargo was out of her, Capt. Piedade felt free to leave the old bark and go to the island of Fogo for a visit with his wife and young children , two boys and a girl. He may have decided to take back his old job as Harbor Master, for he was not aboard when Coriolanus sailed again. Norman Matson explored Sao Tiago for a few days and took a side trip in the steamer to Guinea before beginning his return to Cape Cod by way of Dakar and Marseilles. The pictures he had taken on his seafaring and book-writing adventure in the summer of 1929 give us a glimpse of the Coriolanus near the end of her days and of her people and life aboard as she made her last passage to Praia.

Despite Matson ' s observation at the end of his book that the Coriolanus had left for America before his return from Guinea, I have been unable to find any evidence that she returned during the fall of 1929 or the first half of 1930.

Perhaps Capt. Piedade had taken her to Fogo. But there are reasons to believe that she did not return to America but remained in the islands for about a year, possibly trading among them or to Dakar or Lisbon.

Almost a year later, on August 8, 1930, the Coriolanus left Fogo for New Bedford under the command of Capt. Francisco Jose de Rosario, unmistakably the same Rosario who was First Mate in her the previous summer. The new Mate was Joao de Deus Lopes Silva and the supercargo was identified as Loava Lopes Monteior Cardoza, son of the owner, and certainly Olavo the radio operator. There were thirty-eight in the crew and eight passengers. Somewhere in the western Atlantic she was partially dismasted, by one account in a hurricane, by another in a squall , losing her fore topmast with everything attached to it-six of her ten yards. The passage of thirty-five days was completed under jury rig and the Coriolanus arrived 26

in New Bedford on September 11 and lay at anchor in the upper harbor until a bond could be furnished . "The Cape Verde Packets, Part II" in Sea History 9 (Fall 1977) show her at this time docked on the south side of the old Philadelphia & Reading wharf.

The passengers went ashore and in a few days six of the crew voluntarily returned to the Cape Verde Islands at their own expense. Thirty-two others remained aboard, pending settlement of the insurance claim, until March 1931 when twenty-nine of them were taken to Boston and deported in the steamer Patria . Capt. Rosario, the Mate and the Supercargo were left to keep up the bark, and Senhor Macedo posted a $1,000 cash bond with the immigration inspector to ensure their presence aboard. But Macedo could not afford to rerig her nor to pay the wages of the keepers, which left Rosario, Silva and Olavo practically destitute and dependent on help from friends ashore. During the summer of 1931 the Coriolanus was sold at auction for $690 to Capt. Arthur B. Cotnoir of New Bedford, and the last three of her crew on her last voyage under sail were sent home to the Cape Verde Islands at the expense of the Portuguese government.

The Coriolanus now lay unattended alongside the P & R wharf and vandals, like rats, ran over her at will, stripping her of everything it was possible to remove and sell, including her figurehead of the tempestuous soldier in Shakespeare's play for whom she was named.

In December 1931 Capt. Cotnoir sold her to Clarence Nelson Rogers of Boston, a seasoned shipping man, for a reported $250. His West Africa Trading Company planned to put her back in service to the west coast of Africa carrying adventureseeking passengers and cargo, with Prospect Harbor, Maine, as her home port. A watchman was put aboard and while she was being made ready for towing down to the Bath Iron Works for rerigging and restoration Alan Villiers came to see her, reportedly at the request of a former head of John Stewart & Co. , her second owners . He and Rogers met and Villiers is said to have told him that he and a partner had bought a big four-masted bark in Hamburg, ready to sail, for $11,000, about half what it would cost to get the Coriolanus fit to go to sea again . But the old iron clipper had a distinguished and romantic history and Rogers had a dream that was long before its time.

Early in 1932 the forlorn bark was towed to Boston where she lay at anchor off Governor's Island for several months and was then tied up for a time at Battery Wharf. One June 1, 1932, Coriolanus arrived at Bath, Maine, in tow of the oceangoing tug Cumberland, twenty-two hours from Boston. No work was ever done on her, apparently because no agreement could be reached regarding payment.

In the summer of 1935 the West Africa Trading Company became insolvent and had to abandon a cruise from Boston to West Africa in the chartered three-masted schooner Frank Brainerd, for which ten college students had paid $550 each.

In liquidating the assets of the bankrupt company, Rogers had to sell his beautiful bark for scrap.

On August 5, 1936 , Coriolanus arrived at Fall River, Massachusetts, in tow from Bath, to be broken up at the General Iron Smelting Company . By the end of December she was cut down to the waterline, and in a few more months she was gone . <!,.

Fred Comee is retired from the construction materials industry and lives in Dallas, Texas. As a young man he made a voyage from Boothbay Harbor, Maine, to Greenland in the schooner Bowdoin. Now a woodsmith, he makes custom furniture and an occasional ship mode l as a hobby.

SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1986

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SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1986

A portion of any profits from Steamer's Wake has been allocated to the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society and the University of Washington Library photo collection.

27

Herb Hewitt, Marine Artist

by Philip Hurdle

The 60-ton steamship Boston left Rose Wharf on Atlantic Avenue, Boston in late June 1932 bound for New York . Aboard the proud steamer rode a twelve-year-old boy, who leaned against the rail of the ship as it passed through the Cape Cod Canal at sunset and waved to the people lining its banks. When night fell the boy snuck from the stateroom he and his uncle shared and ventured to the deck where he could hear passengers talk and laugh as they danced to the music of a live orchestra.

Much later the boy fell asleep with the sounds of music and the Atlantic Ocean coming from the open porthole next to his bunk. While the boy slept, many decks above him stood Captain McDonald, master of the Boston.

Unlike ships passing in the night the paths of the boy and the captain crossed many times . During the passage of more than fifty years the two became friends. The boy , Herb Hewitt, became a man and a marine artist. An oil painting of the Boston by Herb Hewitt hangs in the permanent collection of the Peabody Marine Museum .

Herb Hewitt was born in 1922 on Beacon Hill in Boston.

At the age of five, an accident left him with sight in only one eye, but Herb never felt that it was a handicap . When he was ten the family moved to Melrose , a suburb eight miles north of Boston . His early school work was " Exceptionally poor. I found school boring . Absolutely nothing excited me except art classes, in which I did very well." He often skipped school and went to the Boston waterfront, where he found comfort in the slow and peaceful pace of the loading and unloading of ships as they lay in their berths. The sights and sounds of foreign ships with their exotic flags and gruff crew members intrigued him . For a penny he could take the ferry from Boston 's waterfront to East Boston , a twenty-minute ride that delighted the young boy.

Herb 's interest in art was encouraged by Vesper George , his godfather, uncle and Beacon Hill next-door neighbor.

George was an artist who specialized in oil painting of marine subjects and ran a school for aspiring young artists, in which Herb was promised a bright future pursuing his only true interest. It was Vesper George who took his nephew to New York on at least a dozen occasions on the overnight boat to explore and share the wonders in the fine art museums. When Vesper George died during the Depression, so too did Herb 's dream of attending the revered art school.

On Herb's sixteenth birthday he quit school to begin work as a construction contractor's helper and contribute to his family's income. His parents had divorced several years earlier, and his mother had given up a modeling career to become a 24-hour-a-day nurse. Construction work seemed to be the best way to make money. During the Depression the likelihood of supporting oneself with the sale of paintings was next to impossible.

Shortly after getting married at 20 in 1942, Herb was drafted into the armed services . He was taken into the army despite his impaired eyesight and, ironically, served as a field artillery scout and observer. He supplemented his meager monthly allotment by accepting small painting commissions to decorate war souvenirs for servicemen returning from the front lines.

Herb 's favorite projects were for navy personnel , who received special rates in exchange for relating their experiences on the high seas while Herb labored over their souvenirs.

Herb's natural artistic ability did not fail to impress his superiors. Soon he found himself painting elaborate and colorful insignias on the small aircraft used for observation patrols.

Before long his commissions included painting name signs for the office doors of ranking personnel. Each door sign was a work of art in its own right. " What a perfect situation ," Herb reflected with a smile , " I could make a simple door sign into

28

a major project. Depending on what other tasks I was facing, a sign could take a few hours or an entire day. I think I escaped more KP than anyone else in the Army.''

Returning to civilian life after three-and-a-half years in the service Herb , like so many others at that time wanted to throw himself into a career that provided a steady source of income for a growing family. He worked in several construction firms and worked his way up to foreman.

While striving to advance his career in the construction business , Herb always found time to visit museums in the Boston area. Both the Peabody Marine Museum in Peabody and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts were sources of endless hours of enjoyment, especially when paintings of the sea were exhibited. He read books concerning the sea with fascination. ''I never missed a chance to find a new book on the sea, whether it was strictly art related or historical in nature .

In 1952, Herb started his own construction company. He wasn't in business long before he got a call from a boat captain who needed a garage constructed next to his retirement home . ''The garage took much longer to put up than I had expected and I didn ' t make a great deal of money on it," commented Herb , "but it turned out to be a project from which I received more than a paycheck. The retired boat captain turned out to be Captain McDonald , skipper of the Boston, on which I used to sail down to New York when I was a small boy. An instant friendship <level oped and grew until his death in 1979. While working on his garage I spent more time talking to him about the ocean than I did driving nails.'' It was with the encouragment of Captain McDonald that Herb acquired his first boat.

In 1959 Herb's wife , Lillian , became ill and required considerable medical and personal care. Herb turned to painting as a hobby to take his mind off the pressures of Lillian 's illness and need for extensive care. When he sat in front of his easel, all his worries and troubles seemed to disappear.

A kidney operation in 1970 took Herb away from active work but afforded him an extended opportunity to pursue his painting. "I turned to painting because it was not only a lot of fun but took my mind off the discomfort of the health problems that I was experiencing. I used whatever materials I had at my fingertips during that time . Even housepaints found their way into my paintings . I enjoyed experimenting , although I can't say that I have kept any of those early works for their artistic merit. Without formal instruction in painting techniques or materials , I just went ahead and started painting." Eventually Herb did take painting lessons from a private instructor.

The paintings of Herb Hewitt-which depict square riggers, paddle wheel steamers, tugs , and a variety of other ships and now hang in corporate boardrooms, private collections, and museums-reflect the artist's early willingness to experiment. ''Throughout my study of the marine paintings I fo und in museums and books, I was struck with a feeling that there were many opinions and approaches; no one was right or wrong. I was confident that the style of my paintings and the techniques and materials that I used would evolve at their own comfortable pace . In my early years I must have made a billion mistakes , but I was smart enough to realize that I had to remember the good and disregard the results that I didn ' t feel quite right about. Even now I try new approaches to such things as brush strokes, brushes , and paints. The most important aspect of innovation is the ability to keep the changes fluid and not take the process so seriously that it ceases to be fun .

Collectors of Herb Hewitt paintings often cite his renderings of sky and water as the most important element of his paintings. " God made the sky and water," commented Herb , "They are always changing; they' ll change right in front of your eyes.

SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

Built in 1900, the sidewheel steamship Nantasket carried passengers on an hour and a half trip from Boston to the amusement park at Nantasket Beach for 50 cents. Her name was later changed to Keansburg as she operated on the Hudson River in New York until April 16, 1928, when she was destroyed by fire.

The USS Connecticut, which helped open up trade to the Far East as part of Admiral Dewey's Great White Fleet, is shown offExecution Rocks, Long island Sound, New York.

Bluenose is pictured in October 1938 as she passes Eastern Point Light at the entrance of Gloucester Harbor to prepare for the last international Fisherman's Race, in which she beat the Gertrude L. Thebaud. Jn January 1946 Bluenose was damaged beyond repair when she struck a reef off Ile a Vache , Haiti .

An artist must capture sky and water first in his own mind, and then transfer them to canvas. At times they change independently, and at other times their changes run parallel. Sky and water, in their changing color and motion must be thoroughly understood and experienced by the painter."

The majority of Herb's works are commissions to paint particular ships from retired sea captains, navy personnel and art collectors with a strong interest in the sea. About the commissions he says, "Unlike many fine artists , I enjoy the commissions. If necessary I' II spend a considerable amount of time researching a ship if original photographs are not readily available . While painting the ship is straightforward, the sky and water are still basically my own interpretations. I find that painting is very demanding , yet relaxing . I get so absorbed with a painting that time slips away and all of a sudden it can be 3 o'clock in the morning and I still haven't had lunch." -t SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1986

29

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The 150th anniversary of the birth of Winslow Homer ( 1836-1910) is celebrated in an exhibition of some 100 of the artist's watercolors at the National Gallery of Art (Fourth Street & Constitution Avenue NW , Washington DC 20565; 202 737-4215) , open March 2-May 11an effort funded by IBM, involving works assembled from sixty collections. ''This exhibition will certainly confirm his own assertion that one day he would be best known for his watercolors ,'' J . Carter Brown , director of the Gallery , says-

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and examples such as " Diamond Shoal, " shown above , done eighty years ago with such sure mastery when the artist was approaching age seventy , bear this out.

From the National Gallery, the exhibit moves on to the Amon Carter Museum , Forth Worth (June 6-July 27) and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (September I I-November 2) . Catalogue available from the National Gallery .

On permanent exhibit at the Port Gallery Inn (Town Center, Kennebunkport , ME 04046; 207 967-3728) are the oils and watercolors of the English painter Lawrence Donnison. Specializing in whaling and shipbuilding scenes, Donnison is currently working on a series depicting the heyday of Kennebunkport as a shipbuilding town in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries .

A catalogue entitled John Marin Watercolors of the 1920s is available for $10.00 from the Kennedy Galleries (40 West 57th St. , NYC 10019; 212 5419600). Marin 's painting of sea- and landscapes and ships was tempered by what John T . H. Baur, Director Emeritus of the Whitney Museum describes as "a very personal, very American vision ."

THE "URGER"- The familiar landmark N.Y. State Tugboat in the Upper Hudson River/ Erie Canal area was painted by noted maritime artist TONY J. CAPONE. A limited ed ition of 500 prints s ig ned and numbered by the artist are ava ilable a t $100 . each. Prints are x o n muse um quality acid free paper. A trul y fine addition to any collec tion .

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30

A collection of art and artifacts relating to the USS Constitution will be at the San Francisco Ship Model Gallery ( 1089 Madison Ave., NYC 10028; 212 5706767) May 15 through July 15 . Among the items are tableware from the officers' mess, a nineteenth-century prayerbook, a rare portrait of &ek Hopkins by Stacy Tolman, and a model of "Old Ironsides" built under a WPA grant in the 1930s .

SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1986

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The 1986 Mystic Invitational exhibit featuring new works by Tom Hoyne (above), Keith Reynolds, Sally Fisher and Peter Vincent, among others, will run through June 9 at the Gallery (Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic , CT 06355; 207 536-9685). Subjects range from sail to steam and harbor to seascape. Catalogue: $3.00. Whale Ho! a collection of early American scenes opens June 15 and will be on view through September 21. w

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31

SAIL TRAINING

The Western Union: New Mission for a

by Mary Harper

Some troubled and delinquent youth are getting an important message by way of Western Union , a forty-six-year old schooner built originally to lay and maintain submarine cables. Today , Western Union is the mothership of a unique correctional program called OceanQuest, an offshoot of the for-profit youth rehabilitation program , VisionQuest.

The schooner was aquired by the program on April 7, 1984, forty-five years to the day after her launching in Key West Harbor. Over the next two months, her new crew and cadets cleaned, scraped , chipped , sanded , painted and outfitted Western Union for sail training .

In that time , the former cable schooner and flagship of the ''Conch Republican," known to those who sailed her as "Mama," became mother to eighteen teenagers.

Preparations complete, Western Union slipped her mooring lines and headed to her new homeport, Philadelphia. As she sailed off the dock, Captain Dick Steedman , son of her fust captain , and himself a former captain of the ship , stood dockside watching what he believed would be the schooner's last voyage from Key West. He called out to the cadets and crew, " Don 't you hurt her!"

Most of the cadets in the OceanQuest program aboard Western Union have emotional or delinquency problems and have grown up in broken families. On the average, each has had ten or more brushes with the law before entering the program. Many also have a history of having been physically abused and have an aversion to physical closeness of any kind, and they tend to be both aggressive and aloof.

VisionQuest developed a series of high-impact programs designed to break the cycle of failure which has become the norm for these youngsters. Only after completing one of VisionQuest's outdoor wilderness programs, which last from four to six months, can a youngster qualify for the OceanQuest program . The youngsters receive swimming instruction and certification , rescue and water-safety Top photo , the Western Union, built in 1940, shows a classic grace and style that would make any sailor proud. Young people learn to overcome situations that are demanding and, sometimes, risky. Teamwork and responsibility are essential parts of the demanding routine. A sense of satisfaction and cameraderie fills the last photo, as the schooner comes into safe harbor at day's end. Photos courtesy OceanQuest. Between the time of this story's writing and our going to press, the Western Union was renamed New Wayand so shall she be known henceforth . ED.

32

classes, training in the basics of sailing, line handling and principles of shipboard life. With orientation complete, the youngsters board Western Union for a six- or twelve-week program which takes them to ports of call along the east coast, the Great Lakes or in the Virgin Islands , where they often participate in harbor festivals, historic gatherings and reenactments.

It was at such an event in Norfolk that our crew last summer really showed how successful sail-training is in drawing out an individual 's ability and making them pull together as a team . There were a series of seamanship contests for cadets and crews, and in the bollard-roping competition, a fifteen-year-old girl from Western Union took second place. The only one who beat her was a tug captain in his fifties who had been at sea all his life and who is now captain of his own sail-training vessel.

There was also a tug-of-war competition in which our coed B-team beat a team of Naval ROTC sail-trainees. The ROTC then wanted a crack at our Ateam , which we said they could have if they won a rematch against the Bs. They lost again .

What makes sail training work for these kids is that they learn to master themselves in situations that would otherwise be scary or dangerous. When they see that their control has a positive effect on what is going on around them , it gives them confidence to strive even more. Another factor has less to do with the training itself, but is no less important. When Western Union puts into port for a rendezvous, cadets from other ships know our crew only as equals--or if we've won a race, as betters!

-and the people of the host port treat them like visiting dignitaries . Camaraderie and respect are new experiences for them and contribute enormously to their self-esteem.

On May 28, 1984, Western Union made her first official visit to Philadelphia, having called at Miami , Charleston and Annapolis along the way . Docked at Penn's Landing , she cut a fine figure alongside Gazela of Philadelphia, Moshulu and the former cruiser, Olympia .

After only a short layover, it was time to set sail again. This time the trip would test the seamanship of the crew and cadets and present a new challenge for the former cable schooner. After a lifetime in the waters of the Gulf Stream, she was headed north to the excitement of Quebec '84, the 450th anniversary celebration of Jacques Cartier's arrival in Canada.

From Quebec, Western Union headed to the Great Lakes as a fleet flagship for SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

Grand Lady the Lake Ontario tall ships rendezvous.

The next challenge came when the Western Union and her cadets entered their first racing competition-the American Sail Training Association races between Kingston and Hamilton . Then it was on to Lake Erie, the Detroit River, Lake St. Claire and Lake Huron .

Following this first successful season, Western Union returned to Philadelphia for long-awaited repairs which were undertaken at the Dorchester Shipyards in New Jersey. In December, with a new cadre of cadets, Western Union left the cold northern waters and headed for her old sailing grounds to the south . In Freeport, Grand Bahama, she joined Operation Raleigh, a four-year around-theworld scientific and community-service expedition for youth sponsored by HRH Prince Charles of Great Britian. For six weeks, Operation Raleigh venturers enjoyed sail-training aboard Western Union while OceanQuest cadets helped other venturers build Lucaya National Park on Grand Bahama. And then Western Union sailed "home. " Capt. Steedman was delighted at what he saw entering Key West harbor-a handsome yessel whose beauty and heritage were obviously appreciated and cared for by her crew and cadets . But the stay was short for the new working mother, and she was soon sailing north again, to participate in Norfolk, Virginia's outstanding harborfest, where she was voted the festival's best dressed ship. After visits in Washington, DC, and Alexandria the cable schooner of Key West and her cadets distinguished themselves by winning the ASTA race on Chesapeake Bay . Another honor was the cadets' winning the Joseph Conrad award in the Mystic Seaport Invitational Schooner race .

The highlight of this coming season will be sailing in the parade of ships commemorating the Statue of Liberty 's birthday in New York harbor-Operation Sail 1986. When she returns to Key West in the winter of this year, it will be as proud mother indeed: over eighty VisionQuest cadets will have served aboard her. Many of them have gone on to jobs in the marine industry, while others have used their experiences to help them successfully navigate their own lives in other ways. The Western Union has joined VisionQuest's wagon trains as a symbol of the new direction in the treatment of troubled youth. The millions of people who have seen Western Union and her cadets at work have witnessed the success of this new approach.

SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1986

EDITORIAL: Controlling Risk at Sea Early in 1983 the sail-training ship Activ was lost with all hands in heavy weather off the coast of Holland. In the years since , there have been other losses, the bark Marques in 1984, and last spring the schooner Pirata, both with lamentable loss of life.

Risk-taking is part of navigation. It is part of the discipline which we seek in seafaring, designed to instill desirable attitudes and character traits in trainees.

But we must constantly seek to control risk, and avoid catastrophe at sea.

In this regard the example of the well defined and ably handled sail-training brig Royalist springs to mind . Under the captaincy of Morin Scott, she was hit by a squall of uncontrollable fury, which came across the land and caught the ship with no time to respond . She was hove down with her yardarms in the water (according to a reliable witness-the people aboard were too busy to notice!) and lost one of the trainees overboard. Things were not pleasant or easy aboard , and not everything worked perfectly, but the ship survived , the trainee was recovered, and tragedy was averted.

Captain Scott is not a timid soul. In recent years he has been taking handicapped people to sea under sail , and the Jubilee Trust will soon be sending to sea a bark built specifically for that purpose, aboard which people normally confined to wheelchairs will be able to go aloft.

We intend to report more on this enterprise. It serves to make the point that great things can be dared , while controlling the risk inherent in seafaring .

Another example of seamanly behavior occurred last summer in Captain George Salley' s decision to break off the voyage of the Elizabethan replica ship Godspeed II at Puerto Rico in the Caribbean, rather than bring her north to Virginia in the hurricane season. The delays that forced the ship to confront the possibilities of hurricanes on the last part of the passage , and the unsuitability of the vessel to conditions of ultimate violence at sea were factors Captain Salley had to weigh carefully . In ouropinion, hereached a correct and brave decision in breaking off the voyage when he did.

It is of some interest to note that Hurricanes Bob and Claudette would in fact have hit the ship in the open ocean and then off Cape Hatteras had she continued as scheduled. And, as it happens, when Godspeed ll was brought north under another crew, they had to call the Coast Guard twice to keep them from being driven onto Diamond Shoals and Cape Hatteras during gales.

As increasing numbers of people become active in all kinds of navigation , we must continue to address ourselves to the whole question of risk-taking, which is what the US Coast Guard and the American Sail Training Association addressed in formulating the regulations for the Sail School Vessels Act. Confronting the wild ocean is not a game . The sea plays for keeps . We should look at our work in seafaring always in the light of that governing and immutable fact.

As Godspeed ll's former Captain, George Salley, has said: ''A prudent sailor doesn 't count on luck."

PETER STANFORD

Trustee, AST A

ASTA News Whether your interest is in marine biology, whale watching, naval architecture, navigation or a combination of the four, ASTA will help individuals or school and scout groups find berths on an appropriate sail-training vessel.

Trainees will receive instruction from counsellors who have participated in training seminars organized by the ASTA Sail Training and Education Committee, and they will work with the ASTA syllabus and logbook.

Scholarship monies are available for these sail-training cruises.

If you happen to be a spectator at Operation Sail 1986/Salute to Liberty in New York Harbor this Fourth of July, be sure to look for the many sail-training vessels flying the ASTA flag in the parade of ships.

Information on all AST A programs and events is readily available by writing or calling: American Sail Training Association Newport Harbor Center 365 Thames Street Newport, RI 02840 401 846-1775 33

SHIP NOTES, SEAPORT & Expo '86 in Vancouver Nestled on its own hilly peninsula on the eastern shore of the Strait of Georgia, the port of Vancouver, British Columbia, boasts one of the world's beautiful harbors. Here , on the banks of False Creek, is the setting of the World Exposition 1986: Transportation and Communication, a major part of which is dedicated to ships and man's adventure on the seas and rivers of the world .

Of very great significance is the acquisition by Expo ' 86 of more than twenty-five workboats-most of pre-industrial design-from around the world. These include a West Coast whaling canoe from the Nootka people of Vancouver Island's Pacific coast, a Brazilian jangada used for off-shore fishing , a Fu-Junk from Amoy, China, an Egyptian makary (or manzala) such as is still found on the Red Sea and an imbatche reed boat from Kenya.

The plaza on False Creek will also house two on-going building projects. The government of Indonesia has arranged for the construction of a lOOft pinisi, and the Sail and Life Training Society (SALTS) of Victoria , British Columbia, will be building a new addition to its sail-training fleet-Pacific Swift, modeled on the Baltimore Clipper Swift. SALTS already sai ls the former Grand Banks schooner Robertson II and the brigantine Spirit of Chemainus (launched last year) in its very successful sail-training program.

In mid-July , a gathering of_ diverse working, pleasure and sail-training vessels will pass in review beneath Vancouver' s Coast Mountains. The fleet will include the new four-masted Japanese sai l-training bark, Nippon Maru , the SALTS fleet , Hong Kong ceremonial dragon boats, a sail-assist freighter, a LASH, cruise ships, lumber barges (indigenous to the Pacific Northwest) , tugs and other workhorses of the harbor.

Expo '86 has already put on two major symposia about The schooner Bluenose II is currently on the West Coast to visit Expo '86 and will return East in time for OpSail '86.

34

world transportation and communication , but the third and last-to be held May 8 and 9, and entitled "Tomorrow Begins Today"-features Thor Heyerdahl as its keynote speaker. His address, "The Roots of Civilization," will draw on his own experience as an anthropologist and navigator and what impact his voyages have had on our collective understanding of man ' s progress in the world .

Information about Expo '86 is available from P.O . Box 1986, Station A, Vancouver, B.C. V6C 2X5 Canada; 604 689-1986.

Opsail '86 in New York Operation Sail 1986/Salute to Liberty , some of whose participants we have mentioned in previous issues, is moving ahead with their plans for what will be a festival of ships even more memorable than that held in 1976 for the bicentennial. As of March 17, 158 vessels representing 26 countries had accepted invitations to sail in review under the gaze of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

Among these ships and boats will be two of the five sisters from the German yard of Blohm & Voss, USCG Eagle, and Sagres II; four sisters from the Bilbao yard of Astilleros y Talleres Celaya, Gloria, Guayas, Simon Bolivar and Cuauhtemoc representing , respectively, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Mexico . It is instructive to note that the latter three have all been launched since 1976, the most recent being Cuauhtemoc in 1982.

Other recent additions to government sail-training fleets include the Shabab Oman of the Sultanate of Oman , and Capitan Miranda of Uruguay. Two vessels that sailed in the first Operation Sail , in 1964, and which return again having missed OpSail '76--some said because they were too old!-are S¢rlandet and Dewarutji. The oldest of these larger vessels to sail to New York are the Lone Star State's Elissa, built in 1877 , who first called at her new homeport of Galveston three years before the Statue of Liberty was erected in New York, the barkentine Gazela of Philadelphia (known in 1976 as Gaze/a Primeiro), and the French bark Belem built for the coc9a and sugar trade in 1896, and now used for sail-training out of Le Havre, after sixty-six years under non-French ownership.

The remaining "Class A" tall ships are all veterans of OpSail '76: Amerigo Vespucci, Bluenose II , Christian Radich, Danmark, Esmeralda, Juan Sebastian de Elcano and Libertad.

Among the smaller vessels-though size is relative-are ten ships built originally for the Baltic and North Sea trades; a Breton thonier, or tuna boat; a Galway Hooker (see SH38); a Ligurian leudo, Felice Manin , from Italy ; and three junks , the oldest having been built in the ' fifties of the last century, and the newest in the 'eighties of our own.

Of course, everyone loves a parade, especially a parade of ships, and the Coast Guard are bracing themselves for a mindboggling (and doubtless port-boggling) 40,000 spectator craft which they estimate will fill the harbor on July 4.

We will be featuring some of these vessels in the forth-coming issue of Sea History which we expect to be out in time for the festivities. People seeking information about the events should contact Operation Sail 1986, PO Box 3186, Church Street Station, New York, NY 10007 ; 212 775-1490.

Operation Sail 1986/Salute to Liberty, the official commemorative book for the parade of ships, is available from the NMHS. The 64-page guide includes descriptions of 120 participating vessels, a list of 140 maritime, nautical and naval museums in the United States, essays on the Statue of Liberty and July 4, 1886, and a calendar of events taking place the weekend of the Fourth of July. The price is $5 plus $1 postage .

SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1986

MUSEUM NEWS The Humber Keel and Sloop Preservation Society (28, Blackthorn Lane, Willerby, Hull , Eng .) may be acquiring a billy boy. These bosomy coastal traders, rigged as sloops or ketches and said to derive from Dutch antecedents , were once ubiquitous on England's east coast.

Their place was taken by flat-bottomed, more economical barges, and today no more than three survive, according to the Society . If funds can be found , they plan to augment their fleet, which now consists of the Humber sloop Amy Howson and the Humber keel Comrade (Brouwer, pp64, 69), with one of these important coastwise vessels. One problem is where to homeport the new vessel. Two places under consideration are Grimsby and Goole. The Society welcomes the views of members new or old.

The Maine Maritime Museum (963 Washington St. , Bath, ME 04530; 207 443-6311) will hold its fourteenth annual American Maritime History Symposium May 2-4. A classic fixture of the maritime historical community, this year's gathering will feature a talk by NMHS advisor and patron Thomas Wells, who will show a film he made while rounding Cape Hom in the four-masted bark Passat (Brouwer, p295) in 1939. As far as we know, this film contains the only color footage of such a voyage taken before World War II. Other topics include Maine's lobster industry, the War of 1812 and the shipyard strikes of 1866.

You can't take it with you, but if you are interested in preserving the historic Rose Island lighthouse at Newport, Rhode Island, you can buy a part of the 117-year-old landmark on Narragansett Bay. With prices from $25 for a shingle to $700 for a door and a top figure of $3,000 for the tower itself, the Rose Island Lighthouse Foundation (P.O. Box 1419 , Newport, RI 02840; 401 8474454) is raising money to open a maritime museum in the tower. When restoration is complete, a keeper will live in the tower to deter vandals, among other duties, and the Coast Guard has agreed to install an operational light.

The Mystic Seaport Museum (Mystic, CT 06355; 203 572-0711) has announced a campaign to double its membership of 16,000 over the next five years . Founded in 1929 , Mystic has long been in the vanguard of the maritime historical and preservation movement not only of this *All re ferences to "Brouwer" refer to Norman Brouwer's International Register ofHistoric Ships , Sea History Press, 1985 .

SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

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country but of the world , and it has earned the admiration and respect of historians, preservationists and museumgoers everywhere. The mixture of apprentice and sail-training programs, galleries and working exhibits, and of course their ships-including the squareriggers Charles W. Morgan and Joseph Conrad, and the schooners L . A. Dunton and Brilliant (Brouwer, pp217 , 241, 244)-has long been a magnet for people of all walks to the former Connecticut shipbuilding port.

Mystic's effort to have a membership of 32,000 will not only assure its growth and future, but it will bring their hardsought values and accomplishments to many people who do not yet share in their vital enterprise. If you are already a member, you should make a gift membership to someone else; and if you are not yet a member. .. need we ask more?

The Mariners' Museum (Newport News, VA 23606; 804 595-0368) has a major exhibition entitled ''A Century of Shipbuilding" to celebrate the first century of achievement at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company .

Founded by Collis P. Huntington as the Chesapeake Dry Dock and Construction Company, the name was changed in 1890.

Over the years, more than 700 vessels of all sizes and description have slid from the ways. Many are household names, including the battleship USS Missouri , the carriers Yorktown (Brouwer, p289) , Hornet and Enterprise, and of course , the grande dame of American liners, the United States who many hope will sail again .

The Museum, which was founded by Collis Huntington's son, Archer, will display models, molds , figureheads, paintings, photographs and other memorabilia commemorating the Company 's centennial through October 13.

Last autumn's roving tempest, Hurricane Gloria, forced the postponement of the eleventh annual Traditional Wooden Boat Show at the North Carolina Marithne Museum (315 Front St. , Beaufort, NC 28516; 919 728-7317). The museum has taken the opportunity to change the format of the show soqiewhat, and they have scheduled the first Spring Gathering of Small Wooden Boats as it is now

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SHIP NOTES, SEAPORT & MUSEUM NEWS called , for June 7-8 . This year the show 's workshops and exhibits will focus on small , shallow-draft boats.

The Center for the Great Lakes/La Centre des Grands Lacs is sponsoring a regional conference entitled "Water Works: A Great Lakes Waterfront Workshop." The conference will be held in Toledo, Ohio, June 18-20, and will focus on the planning and development of waterfront revivals for cities and towns that ring the Lakes. For information, contact the Center at 435 North Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL, 60611 ; 312 645-0901.

Brownville, Nebraska is now the home of the dry-berthed sidewheel dredge, ~

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She changed hands many times, at one point housing miners in Canada, and at another resting submerged in San Francisco Bay for fifteen months.

Two California businessmen finally secured the vessel in 1984, and they are converting her to a complex that will include a museum, restaurant, hotel and theater.

The once and future King will open this summer at her permanent berth on the waterfront at Old Sacramento, hard by that other monument to California's maritime past, the storeship Globe (SH38) .

Captain Meriwether Lewis (Brouwer, p215) . Built in 1932, she is one of four dustpan dredges built for the Anny Corps of Engineers for work on the Missouri River. Rated capable of moving 80,000 cubic yards of mud per day , she frequently exceeded that and one week averaged 125 ,00 cubic yards per day . Laid up at Omaha in 1969 , she was donated to the Nebraska State Historical Society, under whose aegis she now functions as the Museum of Missouri River History (PO Box 124, Brownville, Nebraska 68321 ; 402 825-3341) .

More than 280 riverboats plied the rivers of California between 1830and1950, but only one remains there: Delta King.

She and her sister, the celebrated Delta Queen (Brouwer, p225) were fabricated in Glasgow and shipped to Stockton, California, where they were launched in the late 1920s. Named for the delta of the Sacramento River, the sumptuously appointed , 285ft nightboats plied the river between Sacramento and San Francisco through the twilight of the Roaring Twenties.

During World War Two, the pair served as ferries around San Francisco Bay under the unceremonious names YFB 55 and YFB 56. Purchased for the Transpacific trade in 1946, the Delta King was sold almost immediately when her new owners realized that the keelless, 7ft draft riverboat could not weather the crossing even once.

Fabricated at Birkenhead , England , in 1862, the semi-diesel motorship Yavari was shipped in pieces round Cape Hom to Peru , and thence to the Andean highlands via rail and pack animals to be reassembled on Lake Titicaca. She originally served as a gunboat but soon graduated to more peaceful enterprises and spent the majority of her active days freighting passengers and cargo between Peruvian and Bolivian ports . Renamed Chucuito (Brouwer, pl67) in 1977 , and now owned by the Peruvian navy (who also own the Puno (Brouwer, pl69) of 1871), the drive for her restoration is being led by Meriel Larken , an Englishwoman whose many years of distinguished service to the Peruvian people has been recognized by the government with the bestowal of the Order of Merit. The World Ship Trust is interested in the project and may soon undertake a more active role. All inquiries regarding the Yavari Project should be addressed to the National Maritime Historical Society.

SPECIAL EXHIBITS The Mary Rose exhibition currently touring the US (see SH37), will be at the Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum (Patriots Point Road , PO Box 986 , Mount Pleasant, SC 29464; 803 844-2727) through July 1. The Smithsonian 's exhibit, ''Magnificent Voyagers: The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 18381842" (see SH38) is at the National Museum of Natural History (Constitution Ave . at 10th St. , NW, Washington, DC; 202 357-1300). <!> SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

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SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1986

37

REVIEWS A Great Book .

Forever Useful

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International Register of Historic Ships,

by Norman J . Brouwer (Naval Institute 975 Bryant Streer San Francisco, California 94103 (415) 621-7400

Edward G . Zdin >ky Chairman

Chris Manin Vice Clwirman

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38

Press, Sea History Press, in assoc. with World Ship Trust, London, New York, Annapolis, 1985 , 32lpp, illus, $28.95; by mail from NMHS , $31. 70 ppd domestic, $32.45 foreign) .

Here they all are-gathered together for the first time . An array of ghosts that never quite became ghosts; not ectoplasm but wood and iron (a few with their ribs s howing , however) .

What a directory Norman Brouwer has assembled for us--every historic ship, big and small , steam and sail, on the face of the earth! More than 700 vessels.

I shake my head in wonder. Preserving actual vessels has achieved respectability . I remember clearly when such giants in our field as Alan Villiers and Howard Chapelle (men to venerate) weren't quite sure that sav ing ships was the best way to approach the subject . To their credit, they came around.

Another scholar , a formidable name on the East Coast, said that the way to handle the cruiser Olympia was to take off a complete set of plans of the vessel and then take her out and sink her. The learned institution to which he was attached, more than admirable in every other way, continued to discourage the preservation of vessels. I have attached to it the name of a perfectly respectable mid-West philatelic organization to make a joke: '' The Universal Ship Cancellation Society. " But the wind is now blowing from a different direction . " The love that is given to ships is profoundly different from the love men feel for every other work of their hands ."

- Joseph Conrad I think we start with that. The process is akin to man responding to woman . He sees grace there (or if it isn ' t there he thinks he sees it). He sees romance-that tangled work conveying attachment, kaleidoscopic scenes of involvement, a rushing sense of history in which the race and its good works must be preserved, an instinct to aid, an instinct to venerate, an instinct to belong .

As for the female ship-savers I can only tum to Voltaire: '' All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women. '' What a force to unleash on behalf of our subject!

We need those forces . We' ll need every bit, because the truth of the matter is that saving old ships is not, on the surface, a very practical proposition . The SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

first flush of saving them is easy. There is excitement in that. But the further task of preserving them is not easy at all.

There isn't much excitement in the process called maintenance.

I wonder what will happen next.

A register that says that more than seven hundred vessels have been saved

"a rushing sense of history in which the race and its good works must be preserved.'' tells us that there has been a mighty upsurge in the last decade or so. I remember much leaner times . Can we sustain the seven hundred? Can we dredge up enough of that much duller stuff called maintenance? Dull and frighteningly expensive if we are really going to do a thorough job.

I am totally optimistic.

I think the innate romance in men and the sentiments of women are going to o'erflood the situation. There is almost enough of this now and an exponential advantage exists. The will to preserve is bound to increase , but the number of restorable ships has a limit.

But maintenance doesn't have to be dull--or even expensive. With good leadership it can be joyous and satisfying.

Witness the Australians not fitting new bulwarks and fantail to the eighty-fouryear-old tug Waratah the easy way , by welding, but doing the job to original specs, all rivetted. And all done by volunteers!* Anyway , the whole world scene is to be found in Mr. Brouwer's book. Each of the seven hundred odd craft is described by a satisfying formula the author has devised that tells us what we need to know. What was the vessel , what was her use , what was her size, her rig , her propulsion, who built her, when , who owned her originally, who owns her now , what is her condition, what is her significance, what are her prospects?

There has never been a book like this , although it is good to see Mr. Brouwer citing earlier works covering portions of the subject such as Graeme Andrews Veteran Ships of Australia and New Zealand, Otmar Schauffelen 's Great Sailing Ships, and, of course, Harold Underhill.

I, for one, never expected to see them all between covers-three seagoing monitors from the 1860s , sixty-five har*The only ship rivetters currently on tap in New York Harbor are in the Wavertree Ganga volunteer group dedicated to the restoration of another iron ship under the leadership of Honorary Trustee Jakob lsbrandtsen.

ED .

SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

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39

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REVIEWS bor tugs, the steamers still functioning on Lake Titicaca, a dredger invented by Brunel that pulls itself along by chains, all the world's square-riggers , the ephemeral Victorian steam launches running on Lake Windermere, ten sidewheelers running on the Elbe River, and of course the great standards, the Victory, Cutty Sark, Charles W . Morgan, Star of India , Great Britain, etc.

But nicely coded for the first time so that with the flip of a few pages the statistics of one can be checked against another.

The book is a statistical triumph ; we can appreciate the years of work that Mr. Brouwer put into it. But it goes beyond that-quite often he is moved to write a miniature essay on this vessel or that, catching not just the particular craft but the very spirit of ship preservation.

Finally there is satisfaction in knowing that the author did not create the I nternational Register of Historic Ships in an ivory tower. He has been at the epicenter of an international community of ship historians and preservationists for twenty-five years . He has trudged the beaches of New Zealand and explored the shores of the Straits of Magellan in pursuit of information. The book is alive with revelatory photographs by Mr. Brouwer and others .

Its shortcomings are trifling . I am surprised that the Viking ships of Roskilde in Denmark are not included in view of the better-known specimens in Norway being covered . The four-masted bark Madagascar is said to exist in Russia in some form . Does she? And what of the thrust to preserve the Elissa that came from San Francisco (along with some of the money-$9,000 of it from ticketbooth earnings of her larger sister, Balclutha) . This might have been noted in addition to the deserved tribute to the man from Maine who put together the deal that saved Elissa on the hard-bitten waterfront of Piraeus .

Minor caveats to a great book that will be forever useful.

KARL KORTUM

Mr . Kortum is Chief Curator of the National Maritime Museum, San Francisco and Chairman Emeritus of the National Maritime Historical Society.

Note: Mr . Brouwer says that the Roskilde ships are not included because they are not complete hulls; we have not been able to confirm the existence of the Madagascar in Russia; and he welcomes Kortum' s additional information on the role of the then-San Francisco Maritime Museum in the saving of the Elissa.

SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

Balancing War and Trade The Maritime History of the World, by Duncan Haws and Alex A. Hurst (Teredo Books, Brighton, 1985, 2 vols , 960pp , illus, $120hb) .

Few people would be capable of writing a maritime history of the world , and no one has written a better one than Duncan Haws and Alex Hurst. The History is an ambitious effort, and the authors succeed in manageably presenting a huge amount of information. It consists of a chronology from 5000Bc to 1985 divided into sections by commentaries. Among other topics, the first commentary discusses Atlantis and the last one UFOs. The authors cannot resist a good story .

Their speculations and anecdotes may not always conform to rigorous standards of scholarship, but they certainly succeed in making the two volumes readable and enjoyable , and in general the work rests on firm foundations of deep research and lifelong study .

The authors do have strong opinions , however, and they do not pretend to disguise them. For example, they disapprove of unionized dock workers, socialists, Argentines and Soviet fleets. On the other hand they love Vikings and they devote considerable space to them. The Vikings' maritime skill might be unmatched, but the author's bright-eyed enthusiasm has some disadvantages . The eccentric theory presented concerning Odin and the origin of the Norsemen blithely ignores most archaeological and historical evidence. Although the Vikings were brilliant navigators, their attitude that no pleasure cruise was complete without looting , burning, raping and killing did not contribute to Europe's well-being.

The Vikings were bold adventurers, but they achieved their most lasting influence when they were absorbed by sedentary peoples like the French and Russians.

Contemporaries of the Vikings, the Byzantines, arguably should have received more favorable treatment. The Byzantine Empire maintained the classical seafaring tradition in the Mediterranean .

Italy's maritime development-culminating in Columbus, Cabot, Vespucci and Verrazano--0riginated in Byzantine Venice, Genoa and Amalfi . Although the authors discuss the Byzantines' long struggle against the Saracens , they dismiss it as unimportant. However, had Byzantium not blocked the advance of Islam for centuries, thereby giving Western Europe time to build its strength, the muezzins might now be wailing from the minarets of Boston , and our fundamentalists might be advocating sterner laws , like chopping off jaywalkers' feet.

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A Eurocentric bias is common in most Western writing, but the authors make a genuine effort to be fair and include extensive sections on the Arabs and Chinese. These sections would no doubt have been more extensive if more source material were available. The History also does well in balancing war and trade.

Merchant vessels always outnumbered warships, but chroniclers almost always found a naval battle more interesting than a boatload of cargo .

The inadequacy of many sources also becomes apparent in other ways. Ancient and medieval historians , with noteworthy exceptions like Thucydides , made very imaginative use of numbers . Haws and Hurst usually weed out the dubious figures regarding , for example, the size of navies, but they should perhaps have been more sceptical at times. The spelling of names and places likewise reflects the confusion of sources and is in places plainly wrong . The History is strongest in its treatment of more recent events where the authors had reliable material to work with.

The diversity of the source material is reflected in the superb bibliography , and the excellent index gives an idea of the scope of the authors' accomplishment.

Although the maps could be better, the numerous pictures are well-chosen and reproduced . The History would have benefited from the inclusion oflengthier discussions and diagrams of certain ship-types.

A critic can always spot shortcomings in a work of such breadth . But in the final analysis, these volumes are well-organized and are equally good for browsing through or for looking up a particular event. Many readers may disagree with the authors' generously scattered opinions, but the authors ' approach helps make the History entertaining.

The following story is recounted in a footnote: The Arab general and conqueror of Egypt, ibn Al-As Amr, when asked by the Caliph Omar what the sea was like, replied , " The sea is a huge beast on which silly people ride like worms on logs." Anyone interested in the history of these people should have these volumes , and anyone interested in good stories will enjoy them.

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42

A Need for Care Tarquin's Ship: The Etruscan Wreck in Campese Bay, by Alexander McKee (Souvenir Press, Ltd., London , Eng., 1985 , 216pp, illus , £14.50) .

It was Alexander McKee who , with his team of Solent Sub-Aqua Club divers, initiated the action that led to the discovery and ultimate raising of the Mary Rose, pride of Henry VIII's navy .

In his latest book , Tarquin' s Ship, McKee relates how in 1962 he became aware of important ship remains in the Mediterranean, and in particular , one at the island of Giglio off the Italian coast north of Rome .

Although McKee was fully engaged in the Mary Rose project for twenty years, he maintained an interest in the Giglio ship and returned to it in 1982.

In his absence, a strong team had been working in the area. Despite the risksdiving to l 50ft, considered a great depth in the early years of the project-the team persevered in their exploration and in protecting the precious discoveries from looters and vandals.

As a result of their efforts, many significant archaeological discoveries have been made, not only at Campese Bay but elsewhere along the Italian coast. When McKee was again able to devote himself to the project, from 1982 to 1984, important parts of an ancient ship were found , together with amphoras and other artifacts from which it appears that the 2,500-yearold remains are those of an Etruscan ship which followed the trade routes of the Eastern mediterranean and which was , at the time of her loss, carrying a general cargo from a variety of lands and ports.

She could well be an Etruscan "tramp " engaged in a far broader range of trade than hitherto suspected of individual ancient merchant ships .

McKee has produced a book of great historical interest, first recounting what little is known of the ancient Etruscans.

Although there are abundant archaeological remains of this dynamic and artistic people of ancient Italy, virtually nothing of their history, language or culture has survived. In the closing chapter, McKee speculates on the many ships lost in the ancient Mediterranean, their hulls and cargos awaiting discovery, protection and proper evaluation. These vessels have lain undisturbed for over 2,000 years, until twentieth-century techniques rendered them accessible. But McKee stresses throughout the need for careful investigattion, recording and conservation of th1ese relics . This is truly a book for all intcerested in the ancient world , as well as tlhose who appreciate well told SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

tales of diving and modern adventure beJAMES A. FORSYTHE neath the sea.

Mr. Forsythe is Hon. Secretary of the World Ship Trust .

Long Live the Queen!

Adventure, Queen of the Windjammers, by Joseph E. Garland with Capt.

Jim Sharp (Down East Books, Camden, ME 1985, 178pp, illus, $24.95).

The 121 ft Gloucester fishing schooner Adventure, built by John F. James & Son of Essex, Mass. , in 1926 and based on the lines of the McManus schooner Oretha F. Spinney, was one of the alltime highliners out of Gloucester. Nesting 14 dories on deck, she fished the Banks under two captains, Jeff Thomas and then Leo Hynes, for 27 years, earning some $4,000,000 at "the dealers' always rock-bottom prices."

By 1953, however, dory fishing was pretty much a thing of the past. Young men weren't interested in the long hours of hard work of handlining from dories winter and summer, not when safer and easier berths could be had in the modern beam trawlers. Capt. Hynes complained that the young fishermen didn't know how to work the dories anyway, and by the early '50s most members of his crew were over fifty years old. Compounding the problem, a schooner needed twice the crew of a beam trawler-twentyseven men in Adventure's case, to fish twelve dories. The old schooner was still able, but she had been rendered technologically obsolete.

In 1952, Capt. Hynes laid plans to build a modern 65ft steel longliner. He and his partner, Phil Manta, put Adventure up for sale. There were no takers, and Hynes was finding it ever more difficult to get a crew, so Adventure was decommissioned at a pier in Boston's Chelsea Creek. Don Hurd and Newt Newton, who had been operating the eight-three-year old Chesapeake schooner Maggie as a head boat in Maine waters , found her there and bought her to replace their tired old vessel. By 1954, Adventure's second career, as a Maine coast windjammer, had begun.

Some eleven years later, Capt. Jim Sharp, who had been sailing John Alden's Malabar XI in the Bahamas charter trade, bought the schooner and set about restoring her to her original rig and glory. He succeeded brilliantly, as anyone who has sailed aboard, or even seen , her will attest. Adventure is today a living, sailing monument to the genius of the men who developed that most perfect of man's machines, the American schooner.

Garland's book, by making the ship herSEA HISTORY, SPRING 1986

self the protagonist, captures the reader's imagination in an almost novelistic way, and at the same time conveys the very essence of schooner sailing in the New England fishery. The book includes twenty-two color photographs by John M. Clayton, made during her later years as a sailing dory trawler: these are the only known photographic record in color of this fishery . There are also a great many fine black-and-white photographs

by Mr. Clayton.

Joseph Garland's collaboration with Captain Jim Sharp proves a happy one.

Sharp's love for his schooner has led him along several avenues of research, one of which uncovered John Clayton's remarkable collection of photographs.

Garland, a former newspaper reporter and editor, lives on Gloucester Harbor and has long nurtured an interest in the Gloucester fishing schooners-believing, along with many historians of sail, that they represented man's greatest achievement in working sailing vessels.

DICK RATH Mr. Rath, senior editor at Yachting magazine and honorary trustee of the NMHS, has sailed the schooner Pioneer out of South Street in New York with young people in crew.

Seamarks: Their History and Development, by John Naish (Sheridan House, Dobbs Ferry, NY, 1985, 192pp, illus, $29 .50hb).

Seamarks charts the development of fixed navigational aids from their first use by the Phoenicians to the present.

Naish draws on primary sources in many languages to illuminate the many commercial, political and technological developments that have affected-for good or ill-the development of navigational aids. Of special interest are his descriptions of such alliances and organizations as the Hanseatic League and the more altruistically motivated Trinity House.

Endowed with generous plans, charts and photographs, the presentation is a PAMELA VOSBURGH visual delight.

The Sea Peoples: Warriors of the Ancient Mediterranean, by N. K. Sandars (Thames and Hudson, NYC, 1985, 2nd ed., 224pp, illus, $10.95pb).

The demise of the empires of the Eastern Mediterranean and the coming of what Sandars summarizes as "contracted horizons" has long puzzled historians .

There is a fair amount of evidence for what happened , to be sure, but it ranges from the less than impartial pictorial and literary descriptions found in Egypt and the Levant to the archaeological finds of

preliterate tribes in the Danubian basin.

It is clear that these were times of significant shifts in populations, and the lack of more declarative evidence would indicate this: People on the march are bad record keepers. Sandars has attempted to present and explain much of the available data from Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece and Aegean islands and the Balkans, and she is well qualified to do so.

Synthesis is not her forte, though, and one closes The Sea Peoples richer in facts, but not in meaning .

LINCOLN P. PAINE

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43

Part II

A One-Trip Command That Lasted Six Years

by Capt. Fred Klebingat

Coming into the Pacific the hard way, round Cape Hom in the German bark Anna in the tempestuous year 1905 (Alan Villiers wrote The War with Cape Horn about that year), young Fred Klebingat decided he would stay in that ocean and sail in schooners. An idyllic period in his life was his command of the schooner Melrose in the 1920s. Here he remembers his time in her. Captain Klebingat died in March last year, aged 95. "He was a poet at heart," said the novelist Ernest K. Gann. "He saw things I'm sure other sailors didn't see."

Dr. Oliver was a tall , skinny man with a fair complexion and a short cropped mustache . He looked like you'd expect a doctor to look. He had had part of his stomach removed and took medicine every four hours as a result.

He was a fine owner, the best you could have . As I was about ready to start home from the islands, he would write or cable: "Do you need any sails?" I would tell him what I thought the schooner had need of and he would order them from Prior-they would be ready for me on arrival in San Francisco. Same with ship chandlery. No stinting .

But if I was out in some South Sea island port and got in trouble and there were facilities to send a cable, he never answered it. He would cover the costs, but it was up to me to bail myself and the Melrose out of whatever¡ difficulties we found ourselves in.

Dr. Oliver wasn't very happy about the loss of one of his schooners, the Prosper, shortly before. She was wrecked in the Hanapepe River (Port Allen), island of Kuaui , in 1916. A shackle worked out of the anchor cable in a Kona gale. Dr. Oliver blamed it on the skipper, one of the Murchison brothers.

The Prosper went ashore just when freight rates were going up and Oliver could have made a fortune with the schooner.

But I don ' t think it was Neil Murchison's fault. It was an exposed anchorage and sometimes things like that just happen .

But it happened at the wrong time for the owners.

Degerlund, my mate in the Chinese bark Chin Pu in 1918-19, was in the barkentine Hawaii on a voyage from the Pacific Coast to Cape Town when Neil Murchison was in command.

Murchison seemingly thought that he could make a faster passage to Africa by going south of South Georgia . He became surrounded by ice and was there for about five weeks. One of the bow ports in this steel barkentine was stove in by the ice and the forepeak filled. They thought that they might have to abandon the vessel for awhile, but they persevered and someone was able to build a box around the bow port, working in that icy water. They filled this with cement; it set fine in the water, and in due course they were able to free the forepeak of the South Atlantic and continue the voyage.

I remember the Hawaii's figurehead; it was an exceptionally beautiful carving of a hula dancer. The lady , on this voyage, was a long way from her native clime.

However, on the Melrose I was enjoying myself too much!

44

Above, the newly launched Melrose sets out down the Hoquiam River with a deck.load of lumber. A close-up of the photo, below, shows two men on the deck.load near the mizzen, and two men on the quarter deck.

SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1986

Captain Klebingat on the schooner Melrose newly arrived at Kahului on June 25, 1920. Talking about this photo in 1975, he made the following comments. This shows the height of the deckload. I am 6' tall , the rail is about 4 feet 6 inches above deck. There may be about three inches of water on deck . The row of oblong holes above the waterways is at least ten inches above deck; the holes are on top of the waterways.

The hatches were caulked with oakum after the hold was filled, and were then cemented. Three tarps were then put on each hatch and were battened down. There is no chance of water getting into the hold through the hatches.

The ship was loaded at the Puget Sound Mills & Timber Co. 's dock . The deckload was secured and I was going ashore to pay my bills and clear ship at the custom house. We did not use a gangway; generally a two-by-twelve inch plank was shoved on board from the dock. There always was some such stuff around on the mill dock.

I noticed an elderly looking gent-he looked like a retired naval officer-sizing up the ship and her load. He said to me: "How far are you going with that pile? " "We are going to Kahului on the island of Maui," says I. " Don ' t give me that stuff," the old gent snorted. "I reckon Cape Flattery is about as far as you will get before you lose it. " "I hate to disappoint you ," I replied. " Give me your address and I will send you a postal card when we arrive. " With a grunt, the old chap turned and walked away; I never saw him again.

SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1986

45

"You should get a year in the cooler for that . . . . I suggest to his honor . . . that is what should be done."

I have never been happier at sea than when I had command of that four-masted schooner. It was too good to last, and , sure enough , there came a time when Captain William " Peg Leg" Treanor decided to take her back. It was announced that this would be when the Melrose arrived in Port Angeles.

What a bitter blow this was to me after all that I had put into the vessel! But I knew there wasn't anything I could do about it. Oliver couldn 't say no to the man . Treanor's vote had made Oliver managing owner of the company and thrown out McKinnon. Treanor' s shares , whatever they were, were enough . He was sixty-nine years old , and in no shape to go to sea. Oliver knew it.

I received a letter aboard the Melrose in Hawaii telling me that I was going to be relieved of the command on arrival in the Pacific Northwest. This was about the gist of the letter: Captain Treanor has asked us for his old command , although we are reluctant to comply on account of his age and his health . His doctor has advised him to avoid excitement as he has a heart condition. But as he has asked us, we can 't refuse him as he is an old friend of the firm . Such being the case , allow us to use our efforts in your behalf to find another vessel for you .

JOSEPH A. OLIVER It may not have been put in so many words , but when I took over the schooner it was clear that if I wanted it, I could keep command . It was understood that Treanor was at long last going to retire . But now he had decided to come back.

And apparently nobody was willing to stand in his path . I brooded about the unfairness of it all on my voyage up the coast.

There were a lot of stories about Peg Leg Treanor, most of them bad . He lost his leg as the result of a shipwreck; an infection set in. It was in the Winnebago, a steel steam schooner stranded on Point Arena, that Captain Treanor got his leg in between the boat and the ship .

At one time there was a bus running from the sawmill to Port Angeles . Buses in those days were frequentl y converted touring cars with a lengthened chassis. Peg Leg takes the bus to go to town . The space between the seats was insufficient for his peg , so he sticks it out the window . When they arrive in town, his peg is missing. He can' t walk. So the bus takes him back out to the mill .

Near the mill gate there were a couple of men trimming lumber. Treanor hollers to them to come over. He instructs them to saw off a two by three to the right length , then with a hatchet he trims it to the right size for the socket. The piece of wood is inserted in the socket. Treanor rises and stomps down a few times-a perfect fit. Back to town . ... When he got off the bus, there was his real peg leg lying on the running board . (Cars had running boards in those days.)

The Port Angeles paper ran a story about all this : "Shiver My Timbers , I Lost My Peg Leg." Treanor used to make money on the side by bootlegging.

He used to smuggle a little okolehau (made in the Hawaiian Islands from the ti root) into the Pacific Northwest. Washington went dry early. His second mate by this time was a Chilean, Olegario Aguilar who was a sailor with me later in the ship. '' Here is a suitcase. You take this and bring it to this address in town ," says Captain Treanor. (The address was one of his customers .) Of course Ole knew that the suitcase was full of booze. It was two miles from the mill at Port Angeles to the town of Port Angeles. The day was hot. Ole sits down beside the road . He takes out a bottle and takes a couple of swigs.

Then another. Finally he is not sober. The sheriff arrests him .

Next morning he appears before the judge.

46

And here comes Peg Leg. He marches into the courtroom and shakes his oaken cane at Ole: " Ah , here you are! Have I not told you again and again that you are breaking the law with your bootlegging? But you won ' t listen-I am glad that the law finally caught up with you . .. . " Of course, the judge and the sheriff were taking all this in, so he went on: "You should get a year in the cooler for that.

You deserve it, and I suggest to his honor, the judge here , that is what should be done." " On the other hand, " Treanor continued, " I would be short a man in my crew. I cannot afford to have the ship lying here without enough men to man her. ... " Peg Leg turned to the judge: "I have to ask you to go a little easy with this man , your honor. You see he is a foreigner .

Seemingly he does not know the laws. I can tell you this much: I will see to it that he doesn't do it again. I don't care to have bootlegging going on in my ship. " The performance continued: "Ole, I am asking the judge to be lenient with you. For the ship ' s sake. " He paused a moment. "Perhaps he will let you off with a fine .... " The upshot was that the judge let Ole off with a fine of fifty dollars and , of course , confiscated the booze. Aguilar was released into the captain ' s custody. As soon as they were out of earshot of the judge, Peg Leg turned on Ole and threatened, raising that knobbed oak cane: "Don't you ever get caught again, you bungling son-of-a-bitch , or I'll kill you ."

But now , when we got in past Flattery and anchored at the lumber mill , I had to give up command. Peg Leg would take over the Melrose. We made the Cape with a light fair wind and were reported from Tatoosh Island to have passed in. But with the ebb tide it dropped calm. We were reported by the signal station to be drifting out again. At noon the Melrose passed Tatoosh once more when the northwest wind freshened.

All of these delays were, or course, reported to Captain Treanor who was awaiting my arrival at the Merchant's Hotel. He had come up from San Francisco to meet the schooner. He got more and more excited.

We sailed on and about ten o'clock that night anchored in Port Angeles. The next morning I went to the mill office and spoke to Bill Covert , the superintendent.

I said, " Where is Peg Leg?" " He 's dead ," Covert said . ''Dead?'' ''He dropped dead yesterday afternoon on the front steps of the hotel waiting for you to get in ." " Well , then I keep my job," I said.

It dawned on me that I should not have said that. For many years the remark was held against me; it was thought that I was a very callous individual. People didn ' t understand .

Dr. Oliver sent up orders to spare no expense. The widow may need advance money. Pay the undertaker and secure the floral offerings that were appropriate . Attend the funeral if my religious beliefs did not stand in my way.

I attended the funeral , but did not stop work on the ship while the funeral was in progress as Oliver had suggested I could if I thought it proper.

It was not for several years that Covert ceased to regard me as a hardcase . My friend Knud Svinding of the schooner Taurus put him right. I suppose they hag a bottle of booze one time and were talking. Svinding must have told him that I was not such a bad guy after all, be1r:ause I could see in Covert's attitude towards me after that that he had changed his mind .

In any case , I had my neasons . .t SEA HISTORY , SPRING 1986

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S COTT NEWHALL MORRIS W . NEWMAN N EWSDAY W. R . NIBLOCK WILLIAM L. NICHOLAS ROBERT NICHOLS JEREMIAH NIXON MILTON G . NOTTINGHAM D . G . OBER O CEAN IC NAVIGATION R ESEARCH SOCIETY CLIFFORD B . O ' H ARA T. M ORGAN O ' H ORA CDR . & MRS. J. D . O ' K ANE B. J . O ' NEILL D AVID O ESTREICH CHARLES J . OWEN R OBERTS OWEN P ACIFIC-G ULF M ARINE. I NC. A LBERT F . P ADLEY LI NCOLN & ALLISON P AINE EDWARD B ANNON P ALMER J ANE P ARFET L AIRD P ARK, J R. H ENRY A. P ARKER III S . T . P ARKS WILLIAM H . P ARKS RICHARD H . P ARSON R OBERTS . P AS KULOVICH J AMES A. P ATTEN J OHN J . PATTERSON , JR .

M ARY P EABODY J OHN N . PEARSON EARL PEDERSEN MRS. G. L. PEUSSERO A. A. PENDLETON PAUL C. P ENNINGTON. JR .

CAPT. D . E. PERK INS WILLIAM E. PERRELL TIMOTHY L. PERRY , J R. WILLIAM R . PETERS PETERSON B UILDERS, INC WILLIAM PETITT J.C. L. PETLER H ENRY P ETRONIS STEPHEN P FOUTS W ALTER PHARR MR . & MRS. N ICHOLAS PHILLIPS F. N . PIASECKI A URA-LEE P ITTENGER P ORT A NNAPOLIS M ARI NA MR . & MRS. S. W . P ORTER. JR .

GEORGE POST TH EODORE PRATT IRV ING PRESTON M ARTINE PRICE FRANK C. PRINDLE A . J. P USATERI B EN D . R AMALEY MICHAEL B . R ATCLIFF ARVIE. R ATY J AMES REDICAN CAPT. B ARTH R EED J IM H . R EED COL. ALFRED J. R EESE JOHN REILLY FREDERICK R EMINGTON P . R . J. R EYNOLDS PETER PEIRCE RICE DoUGLAS B. RICHARDSON EDWARD RITTENHOUSE C APT. JOSE RI VERA E . D. R OBB INS. MD R EED R OBERTSON CHARLES R . R OB INSON J OSEPH D . ROBINSON PETER R OBINSON R ICHARD L. R OBINSON K . KEITH R OE ALLEN R . R OGERS L AWRENCE H . R OGERS, U HUGH D . R OLF DANIEL ROSE D AV ID ROSEN A . B . R OSENBERG L ESTER ROSENBLATT PETER R oss PHILIP R oss G EORG E J . R OWE, JR . J AMES W. R OYLE, JR .

M . R UST D AV ID R . RYAN M . J. RYAN W ILLIAM R . RYA N R . D . R YDER CHARLES IRA SACHS J OHN F . S ALI SBURY J AMES M . SALTER 111 CREW OF THE SSBT S AN DIEGO S AN DIEGO YACHT CLUB A. H ERBERT SANDWEN ARTH UR J. S ANTRY J OSEPH S AWTELLE W . B . H . S AWYER CARL H . S CHAEFFER H . K . SCHAEFFER D AVID & B ARBARA S CHELL RICHARD J. SCHEUER M ADELEINE S CHULHOFF R OBERT C. SEAMANS. JR . FRED SEEBER DIELLE FLEISHMAN S EIGN IOUS C HARLES W . SHAMBAUG H M ARV IN SHAPIRO H UGH R . SHARP MIOIAEL T . SHEEHAN WILLIAM A. SHEEHAN ROBERT Y . SH EEN. JR .

K ENNETH W . SHEETS , J R. SHIPS OF THE SEA M USEUM L T. ERIC SHUTLER SIGNAL COMPANIES INC. FRANK SIMPSON G EORGE SIMPSON P AUL SIMPSON ROBERT SINCERBEAUX FRANCIS D. SK ELLEY E ASTON C. SKINNER SANFORD S LAVIN CHARLES R . SUCH . III E. K EITH SUNGSBY MR . & MRS. EDGAR F . SMITH ERIC P ARKMAN SMITH CAPT. GEORGE E. SMITH HOWARD SM ITH LEE A. SMITH LYM AN H . SM ITH MELBOURNE SMITH THOMAS SMITH WALTER A . SMITH M R. & MRS. EDWARD W . S NOWDON E . P . S NYDER M AX SOLMSSEN S ONAT M ARINE, INC. CONWAY B . S ONNE DR . J UDSON SPEER

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WILLIAM STEWART

J . T . STILLMAN

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H OUSTON H . STOKES GEORGE R . STONE LT. H OWARD L . STONE H ARLEY STOWELL WILLI AM C. STUTT FRANK S UCCOP DANIEL R. SUKIS BRUCE S ULLIVAN CAPT . J OHN 0. SVENSSON RICHARD SWAN SIADHALSWEENEY LCDR . THOMAS L SWIFT E uGENE SYDNOR J. C. SYNNOTT H ENRY T ALBERT D AVIS TAYLOR R . TAYLOR C. PETERTHEUT BARRYD. T HOMAS JOHN THOMAS CLARK THOMPSON J OHN TH URMAN L UIGI TIBALDI GERALD A . TIBBETS R OBERT TICE DouGLAS A. TILDEN CARL T IMPSON, JR . W ILLI AM E. T INNEY GEORGE F. TOLLEFSEN NOAH TOTTEN ANTHONY TRALLA J AMES D . T URNER ALFRED TYLER U ANDREW H . UNDERHILL UNIVERSAL MARITIME SERVICES C ORPORATION U.S. LINES KENNETH F. URBAN J OSEPH URBANSKI RENAUD V ALENTIN CAPT. R OBERT D . VALENTINE M ARION V ALPEY TED V ALPEY D . C. M . VAN DER KROFT JOHN D . V AN !TALLIE P ETER VANADIA EDSEL A. VENUS D ALE R . YONDERAU BLAIR V EDDER, JR .

R . W . J ACK VOIGHT D ALE Y ONDERAU F RANZ YON ZIEGESAR J OHN VREELAND J AMES W ADATZ BRIAND. WAKE GLENNIE WALL ALEXANDER J . WALLACE RAYMONDE. W ALLACE TuOMAS H. W ALSH TERRY W ALTON BRUCEE . WARE ALEXANDER W ATSON DAVID P. H . WATSON THOMAS ]. WATSON , JR . J ACKSON WEAVER W . H. W EBB MR . & MRs. TIMOTHY F. W EBER KENNETH W EEKS RAYNER W EIR THOMAS W ELLS L. H ERNDON W ERTH RANDY WESTON CRAJG W. WHITE SIR GORDON W HITE KBE JOHN ROBERT W HITE RAYMOND D. WHITE GEORGE W HITESIDE G. G . WHITNEY , JR .

FR . JAMES W HITTEMORE L AURENCE WHITTEMORE WILLIAMA. A . WICHERT J . S . WILFORD STEPHEN]. WILLIG EDWARD W ILSON PERCIVAL WILSON R OBERT W ILSON H . P AUL WINALSKI J OSEPH WINEROTH JOHN F . WING WOMEN'S PROPELLER CLUB , PORT OF BOSTON WOMEN'S PROPELLER CLUB, PORT OF NEW YORK RICK WOOD DoRAN R . WRIGHT GLENN W YATT WIWAM C. WYGANT J AMES H . YOCUM JOHN YOUELL HENRY A. YOUMANS KIRK YOUNGMAN C HARLES ZEIEN THE ZNIDER'S

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MODEL SUCCESS STORY' "The Maritime Prepositioning Ship program is a model success story, and I couldn 't be more pleased . MPS is on schedule and proving to be an extremely valuable strategic asset."

- General PX. Ke lley Commandant U.S. Marine Corps

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DISTRICT 2 MARINE ENGINEERS BENEFICIAL ASSOCIATION -ASSOCIATED MARITIME OFFICERS AFFILIATED WITH THE AFL-CIO MARITIME TRADES DEPARTMENT 650 FOURTH AVENUE BROOKLYN, N.Y. 11232 (718) 965-6700

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RAYMOND T. McKAY PRESIDENT

JOHN F. BRADY

EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

This Is MM&P Country We salute the AMERICAN NEW YORK on her maiden voyage leaving Hong Kong, with additional Ports Of Call at Pusan Korea; Kaohsiung Taiwan; Kobe and Yokohama Japan; Savannah and New York, U.S.A. The AMERICAN NEW YORK, is the first of twelve United States Lines Econo Liners manned with MM&P Officers.

The AMERICAN NEW YORK carries 2241 40-foot containers, with a cruising range of 30,000 nautical miles at 18 knots. The AMERICAN NEW YORK is 950 feet long and 106 feet wide.

The successful operation of this ship has been entrusted to MM&P deck officers, whose skills are regularly sharpened by the Maritime Advancement, Training, Education, and Safety (MATES) program. MM&P ship officers make a practice of returning to the Maritime Institute Of Technology and Graduate Studies (MITAGS) at Linthicum Heights, MD, to sharpen their skills and learn new ones with the aid of the most modem teaching equipment available.

LLOYD M. MARTIN

ROBERT J. LOWEN

International Secretary-Treasurer

International President

International Organization of

Masters, Mates & Pilots 700 Maritime Boulevard, Linthicum Heights, MD 21090 • Tel: (301) 850·8700 • Cable: BRIDGEDECK, Washington, DC • Telex: 750831