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American Waters In this summer of 1992 a great fleet of traditional sailing ships came from the world's four corners to American shores to observe the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage across the Atlantic Ocean which opened the Americas to the world. Why do these ships still sail, and what does their sailing mean to people? These are tough but rewarding questions to consider, particularly when you look into the work done by these antiquated vessels and the very vital messages and meanings they seem to carry for our time. But why the sai ling ship? The square-rigged sailing ship opened our watery world to mankind's ken, his understanding and his multifarious traffics. Such ships still have that power in our minds and spirits that they had for the native peoples who came to the waterfront to see Francis Drake 's Golden Hind-an atom, a rigged-out and sai lequipped bit of flotsam on the vast undeveloped expanse of the Pacific shore of North America-and stand, in the words of Drake 's chronicler Chaplain Fletcher, "as men rapt in their minds." Well, God knows the ultimate purposes to which these ships sail, and we wonder. All we can see is that people learn the essential human traits-loyalty, initiative, cooperation, and yes, cheerfulness-rapidly and lastingly when learning to sail these ships that demand such hard service to make their way about the ocean world. These home truths may explain why there were thirty-five Class A ships (the big square riggers) in this OpSail '92-more than twice the number there were in the first OpSail in 1964, which was actually held as a valedictory for this fantastically outmoded mode of moving people and cargoes across oceans. Behind them some 200-odd smaller vessels-smaller in size but not in purpose--came in from the sea they had been 24
OpSail '92-Parade of Sail
SEA HISTORY 62, SUMMER 1992