EDITOR'S
Loo
Gleaming dully like old , dented pewter, the East River made a magic corridor through the city, turning as it swept around under the Brooklyn Bridge on its way to join the Hudson in the Upper Bay . I looked down on it from across Lower Manhattan , from high in the World Trade Center on the Hudson shore. I thought about this SEA HISTORY on the rivers of America. The old buildings of South Street, the moored ships and even the mighty bridge looked like models , as perhaps they are-models of how a great city came of age . Next day I happened to be in Essex , a pretty Connecticut River town that lost its grip on oceanic trade a century and a half ago (see SH36) . The River Museum at Steamboat Dock was having its annual classic boat regatta , and the river was alive with swooping sail, a center of attention again as it had been when the river traffic nearly equalled New York 's. The day after that I went on to join an outdoor conclave called ''A Sense of Place,' ' held across from the Hudson River Maritime Center in Kingston, New York. How the river ran like a binding thread through all the talk! Once the avenue that supplied the Hudson towns , it was still what held them together. A few weeks later I flew halfway across the continent to attend the National Trust' s conference in Kansas City. "Everything's up to date in Kansas City ,'' the song says; but I quit the upland blocks of office buildings and sleek hotels to go seek out the Missouri, a fast-running stream buried between steep, leafy banks. The unreconstructed waterfront abounded in brick buildings that had once served river traffics . New pioneers had moved in , and an open-air market was doing a thriving business. Down on the river, the paddlewheeler William S. Mitchell served as a center of river lore and river revival. We are interested in new development from old roots, and when Tex McCrary invited me to go by helicopter to look at Port Liberte , the new community rising from the New York Harbor's edge on the Jersey shore, I went. It was a cold January day and, as it happened, my sixtieth birthday . Tex took a photograph showing, beyond Lady Liberty , the towers of the World Trade Center and at right the Brooklyn Bridge and the East River, from where tall ships sallied forth to take on the ocean connecting our riverpenetrated country to the wider worldand where tall ships are being restored at South Street Seaport Museum today to encourage the next generation of dreamers. PETER STANFORD
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LETTERS Honored Shipmates Please be so kind as to enroll me in the National Maritime Historical Society. I went to sea with the United States Merchant Marine in 1937 and stayed in until 1958. I was Chief Steward in the SS Charles A . McAllister, Captain William A. Sleek, Master. I also performed the duties of first aid man and chaplain at no extra pay . During World War II, we in the merchant marine were the unsung, unmourned and underpaid volunteers who put their lives on the line for this country. Among other citations, I received the Merchant Marine Combat Bar on the Murmansk run , Convoy PQ 19 . I know I will receive SEA HISTORY with pleasure to myself and honor to my lost shipmates. JOSEPH DlMATTlNA Arlington , Virginia A Grand Old Lady We went on a 3 1/2-hour excursion on this grand old lady , the Earns/aw, on Lake Wakatipu on the South Island of New Zealand. She is still coal fired by hand-
two stokers-and has the same engine and boilers she was built With in 1912. She is smooth and steady as a rock. One can watch the whole plant operating and it is really like watching a symphony-a work of art! It reminds one of Kipling , Stevenson and Conrad. The poor old Nobska deserves a better fate . THOMAS HALE Mr. Hale.former Trustee ofthe Society is a mainstay of the Friends of the Nobska, who worked long and hard to get the old steamer back on the Woods HoleMartha' s Vineyard run . Now laid up in Baltimore, her future looks regrettably bleak.-Eo.
Never Give Up the Ship! Thank you for noting our project with the Mary D. Hume. The news you ran was up-to-date . We wish it were not so and that we could report some definite progress , but at the moment everything is quite as you report it in your article . We have not, however, given up , and
we feel that if we could really spur the people of the Hume's home port into action, we would make her a viable and on-going marine artifact in our own area. As it is, the people that should be most concerned with her preservation are the most apathetic. I, for one, as a member of the Curry County Historical Society, hope we never give up the ship! I promise that if there is some drastic change for the better in the fortunes of the Mary D. Hume we will let you know . JOEL P. BUFFINGTON, Chairman Mary D. Hume Committee Curry County Historical Society Brookings, Oregon
Sounding and Stately Names I was very interested in your comment in the latest issue of SEA HISTORY on John Masefield 's poem , "Ships " (see SH42, p29). I have been an admirer of Masefield 's for over sixty years. There is another writer of ships and those who sailed them whom I also hold in high esteem . She is Cynthia Fox Smith . I understand that her father was a square-rigger captain and took her with him on some of his voyages. From her book Sea Songs and Ballads 1917-1922, published in 1924, comes her poem "Devine's Hotel ," with these lines: "From London to the Heads and to and fro/went speech of ships that vanished long ago--/Mermerus, Sabraon, John O'Gaunt, Loch Soy,/ Salamis, Cimba , Torrens, Yalleroi-1 Sounding and stately names of clippers-land roaring mates and hardcase skippers. " I am now ninety-one years old. I went to sea out of Liverpool 1915-1925 . They were hard years-watch on watch , supplied your own eating utensils, slept on a burlap-wrapped straw bed known as a donkey 's breakfast. But the memories are still vivid! HUGH J . O'DONNELL Salem, Massachusetts The work of C. Fox Smith is well known to us . Among her other titles-all to be recommended-are Full Sail: Tales of the Clipper Ships, Return of the Cutty Sark , Ocean Racers, and A Book of Famous Ships.-Eo. Take Another Look Concerning the picture of the unidentified Liberty ship that the retoucher changed from an anchored vessel to one under way (see SH41, p13) , may I call your attention to the anchor ball-the black spot ahead of the foremast-which the artist left in the picture. A friend with whom I discussed this picture said that SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1987