MISSION
Society Co-publishes International Register of Historic Ships
arrival at the museum: "We immediately found that he had a vast store of information about historic ships of the world. It was a tremendous windfall." Brouwer was volunteereditorof SeaHistoryfrom 1973 through 1976. In various issues throughout this period, different segments of the list were published. "We got immediate responses," says Stanford . "People wrote back to say ' No, you have this wrong,' or ' this is destroyed,' etc. It was very valuable." With each piece of information the Register was slowly taking shape. It wasn ' t until 1976 that Brouwer could realize his long-held ambition of visiting the Falklands. The National Endowment for the Humanities funded his proposal to survey American wrecks in the Falklands. It would be the first of
A 40-year Enterprise of South Street's Ship Historian and Longtime NMHS Member Norman]. Brouwer by Kevin Haydon The International Register of Historic Ships, the expanded second editon of which is being released by NMHS this fall, is one of those rare works, like Web ster's Dictionary or Frederic Goudy's typeface library, that represent such a monumental investment of one person 's energy that in the end it seems quite strange to package itand put a price on it at all. There is only one book like the Register, and there is quite likely only one man with both the singular devotion to the subject and scholarly persi stence to have written it. First published in 1985 , it is the most complete survey in print of the world's historic ships, wherever they may be-in museums, in continued service as merchant vessels or saiI training ships, or as wrecks forsaken and abandoned on some distant lonely shore. It is the life work of maritime hi storian Norman Brouwer. Brouwer is the Curatorof Ship Restoration and Maritime Historian at South Street Seaport Museum in New York City, a position he has held since 1972. His office, on the second floor of the Museum Galleries is one large airy room which houses the bulk of the museum 's library. Here he spends much of his time overseeing the library and consulting on the Seaport's ship restoration program , that is , when he is not fielding innumerable telephone and written inquiries and ass isting maritime hi story researchers by appointment. By those who seek him out regul arl y, he is known for his calm , thoughtful manner and measured, wellinformed responses. But a discussion of the Register reveals more of hi s profound, soul-sustain ing interest in ships and some justifi able pride in the Register. Although Brouwer grew up in Michigan, far from the seacoast, there were ship connections in the family. His father had worked on ships in the Great Lakes and as a boy he read everything he could get hi s hands on about ships. His interest was cemented by a passage, at age 13, on the liner Washington to England. His father was an exchange teacher for a year near the port of Bristol. He returned on a US Lines cargo ship, as one of nine passengers. "From that point on," says
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Brouwer, "it was nothing but ships." The Register is a natural outgrowth of his early fascination . In its earliest form, it was a letter sent in 1962 to the English monthly Sea Breezes from the Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, where Brouwer was in his final year of studies. The letter, containing a list of historic ships being preserved around the world, was published. Responses and corrections were then received and recorded and Brouwer entered a worldwide network of ship enthusiasts concerned for historic vessels. From the beginning, Brouwer felt the need to not just research the vessels, but to also seek them out. One trip in the mid- l 950s took him to a lonely stretch of Highway 101 in Puget Sound, where a roadside tourist trap called "McNeil's I 01 Attractions" consisted solely of a beached ship, the pirate ship "Black Shield." The true identity of this ridicu- z lous caricature was the schooner C. A. ~ ¡ Thayer, now restored at San Francisco. ~"' A six-month vacation from the merchant 0 marine in 1967 led to a grand tour of ~ Europe, which turned up some 30 square- 1:J rigged ships. ~ The impetus to ship preservation and ~ museum work for Brouwer came in 1970 :i: during a stint aboard the Antarctic re- o.. Brouwer inspecting the timber skeleton of the search vessel Hero, based at Punta Arenas American downeaster St. Mary on a beach in in the Straits of Magellan. Once again he the Falklands in 1976. was keeping his eyes open. He knew that the 4-masted bark Andalucia was there, three trips . To Brouwer, whose special but on arrival he discovered three other area of interest is the period of transition sai ling ship wrecks in the harbor, and 100 from wooden hulled , deepwater sailing miles east in the Straits he found a further ships to wrought iron and finally steel, wreck, that of the tea clipper Ambassador. these distant and forbidding islands are He had hoped to get to the Falkland hallowed ground, strewn as they are with Islands, but this would have to wait until the wrecks of large, gallant vessels morafter his arrival at South Street in 1972. tally wounded and abandoned after their Work at South Street Seaport, after clash with Cape Horn. Clambering over the Falklands' graduate studies in Cooperstown, New York, provided another opportunity to wrecks of the St. Mary and the Vicar of publish his growing list of vessels. This Bray are vivid recollections for Brouwer, time, it was in the early issues of Sea as is finding the Olympian in the Straits History magazine. Peter Stanford, then of Magellan in 1978. Thwarted in 1970 president of South Street Seaport Mu- by bad roads and a dwindling supply of seum, who was also president of the spare tires for his borrowed vehicle, nascent National Maritime Historical Brouwer didn ' t pursue the Olympian Society headquartered at South Street where it lies 50 miles further out on the from 1970 to 1976, recalls Brouwer's Straits from the Ambassador wreck. But
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SEA HISTORY 67, AUTUMN 1993