DECK LOG As the Maritime Education Initiative, launched last spring at Walter Cronkite's urging, swings into its second year, there 's so much to report that it would overfill these pages, so we plan to issue a special report later this year. Our second-year focus is on ships: the ship in a museum , like the C. A. Thayer , featured in the Spring Sea History, and the sail training ship at sea, whose purposes are inci sively set forth by Captain David Wood in this iss ue. Captain Wood commanded the USCG Eagle when we put two students and their teachers aboard last year. It makes good reading when you get a practitioner who truly know s what he is doing-and why he is doing it! Forward Intrepid! The aircraft carrier Intrepid in New York City s upports a magnificent educational program , bringing many New Yorkers to understand , often for the first time, how deeply the is land city's fortunes depend on seaborne traffics. World War II dramatically underscored the point, and we are proud to present the Intrepid Museum 's pictorial overview of what they ri ghtly term the pivotal battle of that war, in thi s issue of Sea History. Continuing our mission of opening the treasury of the past to today 's inquiring minds, we're glad to present a critical development in navigation, the ability to determine longitude , or east-west position , accurately at sea. This development came at least a millennium after the effective determination of latitude, or north-south position, by the Norse in the Atlantic and Polynesians in the Pacific. It was another of the hard-won human accompli shments opening immense future gains, which didn 't just naturally happen, but had to be grasped at, fumbled , kicked away and finally gotten hold of in a process to which we give the name- hi story . In this slender Summer iss ue of Sea History we had to skip our us ual marine art section. But don ' t mi ss " Marine Art News" (page 24) with its good news about a great show fea tured in an earlier Sea History-and do get onto the important new book on the harbor artist John Noble, reviewed on page 29. PS
LETTERS Thanks to Bus Mosbacher As chairman of Operation Sail since its inception in 1964 through the latest Op Sail in 1992, Ambassador Mosbacher has earned richly deserved admiration and grati tude for hi s outstanding leadership of these great international events in New York Harbor. Operation Sail 's achievements in focusing attention on vital maritime activities and on preserving our rich maritime hi story for the future are testimony to Ambassador Mosbacher's innov ative stewardship. The American Ship Trust Award appropriately highlights hi s distinguished service to the community and the cause of international goodw ill and cooperation. MARIO CUOMO
Governor, New York State Albany, New York
A Great Port Well Remembered A " well done" is due Joseph Meany for his article "New York : Sally Port to Victory." Mr. Meany wrote not only a very entertaining piece, but in the doing, he has produced what I believe will come to be recognized as a singularly va luable contribution to the logistical history of the Second World War. CHARLES DANA GIBSON
Camden, Maine I was born, and grew up, on Staten Island. I could look from my bedroom window and see a speck on the horizon of lower New York harbor, between Sand y Hook and Coney Island . Suddenly, the speck became a long low rectangle with brightly painted funnelsa familiar ship as she turned near Swinburne Island . We knew the house colors of all the shipping lines and which vessel was "the largest" or "the fastest." We went down to "Quarantine," and waved with a sheet to passi ng vessels on which friends were arriving or departing. And then , the exc itement of watching the huge ships, and the little tugs nudging them into a North River pier. It was all so exciting and colorful. Airports have never known such grandeur or dignity . JANE HARTER
Nantucket, Massachusetts
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Please tell the "cartographer" of the map on page 13 of Sea History 65 that Sandy Hook Bay is the name for the water immediately inside the Hook. Beyond that, the body of water bounded by Sandy Hook , New Jersey and Staten Island has
another name-Raritan Bay! A num berof mates and skippers count their experiences in Sea Scout Ship 248 in Raritan Bay as the foundation of their seagoing careers. Our hori zons have stretched since then , but for us kids sailing in the schooner Tanager under Skipper Howard Goesle, Raritan Bay was our Mare Mundi . THOMAS F. DORSEY Falmouth, Massachusetts
We Should Have Saved Her! Dr. Jerome Wohlstein's letter about the schooner Emory Rice struck home. As the Nantucket, the vessel served for fifty years as the Massachusetts Nautical School (now the Massachusetts Maritime Academy) from which I grad uated in 1929. It would have been appropriate to preserve the Nantucket both as a tourist attraction and to teach students the rigging of a sailing vessel. While a cadet, I became intimately acquainted with the vessel from masthead to bilge. In two years I climbed the rigging, furled sai ls, rowed in the cutters, swabbed the decks, shined brightwork , passed coal, fired the boilers and tended the needs of the main engine. Our chief engineer, Lt. Com. E. L. Kelley, described the engine as a "horizontal , twocylinder compound, back-acting steam engine, eq uipped with Stevenson link , riding cut-off, valve gear." It was described as back-acting because the cy linders were on the starboard side while the crossheads and connecting rods were on the port side of the crankshaft. This was to keep the engine below the waterline, protected from enemy gunfire. Under the gentle urging of my wife I gathered up my memories of the Nantucket and put them into a book, Nantucket, Sailing Through School. If you will permit a little commercialism , I will add that the book is available at $12.50. ROBERT F. REDMA YNE 30 I Merritt Street South Boston, Virginia 24592
A Vanished "Grandness" I thoroughly enjoyed Ralph Freeman's article "Memories of the Liner Era" in Sea History 65. However, the Reina def Pacifico, I believe, was a PSNC (Pacific Steam Navigation Company) ratherthan a Royal Mail ship. She was restored to her prewar glory at Harland and Wolff, Belfast, in 1947. During her pre-delivery sea trials, a crankcase exp losion in one of her SEA HISTORY 66, SUMMER 1993