NMHS MISSION: Eagle, Sail Training, and the Maritime Education Initiative
FOLLOW YOUR STAR • • • • • • • • •
by Captain David V. V. Wood, USCG (ret.)
We were delighted when we learned NMHS could send two high school students to sea in USCG Eagle last summer with their teachers and with Walter Cronkite, Chairman of the Maritime Education Initiative. l magine our pleasure in presenting this fine account by the Eagle's master for the voyage.
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At exactly 1630 hours on 7 July last year--one bell of the First Dog Watch and (more to the point) Hi gh Water Slack in New York 's East River- the Coast Guard 's training bark Eag le cast off her moorings at Pi er 17 , South Street Seaport, and set sail fo r Boston. It was the seventh week of Eagle's regu lar summer program of sail tra ining fo r cadets of the Coast Guard Academy. And it was also to be a passage lin king two of the greatest gatherings of the world 's sail training vessels in hi story-Operation Sa il 1992, and Sai l Boston 1992. Eagle was carrying severa l spec ial passengers: New York hi gh sc hoo l stu dents Nicole Scott of Chestnut Ridge and Jonath an Pappas of Seaford, and teachers Leonard London of Tappan and Arlene Rhodes of Galway. The two students and teachers had been selected by the New York State Imag inati on Ce lebrations with the NMHS ; and the passenger li st also included Walter Cronkite, chairman of the NMHS Maritime Education Initi ati ve, and hi s wife, Betsy. Nicole and Jonathan had been winners in a writing contest with the theme "Seeking New Horizons," and there were to be many new hori zons for them as Eagle sailed past Ambrose Tower and made her way eastward along the south shore of Long Island , through Vineyard and Nantucket Sounds, and out into the Gulf of Maine for an ex hil arating day of hard sailing on a fresh southeasterl y breeze before leading the grand Parade of Sail intoBostonH arboron l IJuly. lt wou ldbe hard to imag ine a more apt illustration of an encounter with "the real thing," as Walter Cronkite put it in Sea History 61. In the case of Eagle, of course, the"real thing" is not a hi storical artifact but a modern sail training ship. Built at Hamburg in 1936 as a training ship fo r the Navy of the Third Reich, Eagle incorporates sailing technology of the last commercial square-ri ggers built as the age of sail died out. In her 46-year career in the Coast Guard, she has been maintained in top condition, with habitability, safety, nav igation systems, and machinery upgraded to modern standards. Her ri g and
the way she is handled have remained virtually unchanged. Hi stori cal awareness is not a major factor in the Coast Guard's rationale for continuin g to support a program of deepwater sail training for its future offi cers; but it could be argued that the service's strong commitment to sustaining the Eagle program refl ects an awareness that the fund amentals of seafaring have changed relatively little over the centuri es, while the hostility of the marine environment to human endeavor has not changed at alI, and that the foundations of good seamanship (on which the Coast Guard 's ability to carry out its mi ss ion s, and therefore its reputation , depends) are best laid in a ship that demands a recogniti on of those realiti es. Coast Guard cadets spend at least six weeks on board Eagle during their fouryear program, and may spend as many as eighteen. The program in vo lves them in virtua ll y every aspect of the ship 's operation, from sa il handling to scullery work, from celestial nav igation to bi lge cleaning in theengine room. The grounding in bas ic seaman ship provided by thi s intense program is superb. But it is the less tangibl e benefits of the Eagle ex peri ence th at are the most important-and the longest-lasting. For it is the essence of any sa il training ex peri ence that trainees are thrust into a situation in whi ch they must work together to make the ship go; they learn qui ck ly that they cannot shrink from seem ingly dangerous tasks or shirk obviously dirty or heavy work , beca use the safety and we ll -being of all depend on eac h doing hi s or her part; and they come to know the sati sfacti on of participating in the work ings of a complex and magnifi cent machine-the sa iling shipdoing what it was des igned to do: carry a cargo of goods or peopl e safe ly from port to port by harness ing the natural power of the wind to human purposes. In an age when more and more of the world' s work is accompli shed by forces that appear to be beyond understanding and sometimes beyond control, sail training puts things in perspective. On a sailing ship, nothing is hidden from view; the workings of the machine are all "above board," and the relationship of cause and effect is always apparent. Sail training offers an unpara lleled way to develop qualities of courage, alertness, self-confidence, and a sense both of what can be accompli shed through skill and teamwork and of the limits of human technology. SEA HISTORY 66, SUMMER 1993