THE KORTUM LEGACY
The Ships ... Fifty years ago a very young Karl Kortum helped the US Army take the masts out of the bark Kaiulani. He had sa iled in her by way of Cape Horn from the Pacific Northwest to Africa and on to Australia. World War II was then raging in the Pacific and "the old barky," as her men cal led her, was needed to support American landings in Japanese-held territory , a leapfrog, island-hoppin g effort that ended in triumph in the Philippines. There, after the war, the Kaiulani became a log-barge for local lumber interests-sti ll serving a useful role. Karl Kortum realized that hi s voyage in Kaiulani was an historic one-the last passage for a Yankee sq uare rigger around Cape Horn , where so many tall ships had gone before. Four years after the war ended he founded the San Francisco Maritime Museum to keep the proud heritage of seafaring alive for a new generation of Americans, who perhaps hardly could conceive of making a li ving at sea without hot and co ld running water, or even electric light. He reached out to save an abandoned sailing ship laid up on the
Sausalito mud flats . Where others saw a bedraggled wreck, he saw a thing of high purpose and enduring beauty, forged to contest with the screaming winds and roaring seas of the Cape Horn Trade. That ship was and is the Balclutha-a name known to every person around the world who cares for mankind 's voyaging heritage. We know Balc/utha 's name because Karl has made sure we know it. By sheer determination , backed by what I have to ca ll a kind of intell ectual brilliance, he has made the cause for hi storic ships clearto all ofus, and he has made it stick. He put that case very simp ly once, in a letter to Peter Stanford some years back: " A ship properly invested as a museum or set up as a display sends out emanations of lore, humanity, history, adventure, geography, art, literature .... " It has been Karl 's gift to catch those emanations for the public, and for museum people as well. The square riggers Polly Woodside and James Craig in Australia, the Falls of Clyde in Hawaii , the Elissa in Galveston and even our Wavertree here in New York owe their
survi va l in the first in stance to hi s advocacy and leaders hip. He has worked generously over the years to help others, swi nging in behind Jerry MacMullen 's efforts to restore the sadly deteriorated Star of India in San Diego. I have been at the helm of this noble old vesselcomp lete ly restored, she sails again. Karl has cajo led and bamboozled the British into taking on Brunel 's iron steamer, the Great Britain, abandoned in the Falklands. The letterto England 's Frank Carr, which launched that campaign, included this remark: "It stirs me to think that the subject of those lithograph s and engravings of the 1840s sti II exists upon the waters of this earth! Surely something can be done .... " Who can stand up to this kind of thing? Who would even want to? It seems there is always more to be done. And in presenting the American Ship Trust Award to Karl Kortum , we know we are going in harm's way-he is goin g to ex pect us to do more for hi s ships! Well , on behalf of our National Maritime Hi storical Society, we accept that burden. And we thank you, Karl , for being ours and the nation 's leader in this business of hi storic ships . !,
... and Their People
ing those formative years was like living in the 19th century. I became so immersed in identifying I9th-centu ry photographs and figuring out how things were done, that it was a cu lture shock to come home to the 20th century every evening." Kortum 's notebooks represent much of his life 's scholarl y work. These numerous (28-30) oversized binders bulge with illustrated firsthand accounts as told by men who sa il ed (or steamed) in commercial sea trades. He disdained the unedited pages ground out in oral history typescripts. Instead, Karl Kortum sat behind hi s desk , pounding away on the old Underwood typewriter, as men Iike Captain Fred Klebingat described voyages on ships they knew like the back of their hands, and how hard it was for a seaman to keep body and sou l together as he looked for work along the city front. Karl typed a paragraph or two, then he rolled the page out and gave it to the captain to look over. He put in the changes (sometimes by hand) , sometimes typing in an addition and crossi ng out another phrase or two. Asking questions, he li stened carefu ll y, continually trying to get it down right-again and
again, he made changes. But beyond right, he li stened for the small improvements in syntax that led to a better tell ing. He managed to tune his ear to pick up and retain individual nuances of speech and ex pression. Most of Kortum 's interviews took place in hi s office in the afternoon, stretching into early evening. For 45 years, he kept adding information to hi s notebooks and files from men who had spen t much of their working lives on turn-of-the-century vessels. He frequently showed them photographs dating back to their own experience. He would ask, "What 's that man doing?" or "What's that tool called? Did you ever see it used for anything else?" The photographs acted as a great stimulus to focus the narrative on specifics. A photocopy of the view would have arrows drawn to Kortum notes around the edges and on the back. Mary Clark learned to decipher these hieroglyphics as though they were an archaeological find. Kortum 's notes became hi s first draft meant to be edited-aga in , again, and yet again when a new nugget of information would be added , or a photograph turned up to illustrate the very point to be made. !,
An Appreciation of Karl Kortum's Work by Walter Cronkite
Excerptfrom "A t the End of Our Streets Are Spars : San Francisco's Maritime Heritage Becomes a National Park ," by Nancy Leigh Olmsted, 1995. Karl Kortum grew up observing the end of the age of commercial sail on the back-country waterfront of Petaluma, California. He made the last American windjammer rounding of Cape Horn in 1941 aboard the Bath-built bark Kaiulani, as she sailed from Gray's Harbor, Oregon, to Durban and on to Sydney, Australia, where the US Army Transport Service bought the vessel, and half the crew, including Karl, went to work for the new owners. When Karl Kortum's vision for a new maritime museum for San Francisco caught the enthusiastic response from San Francisco Chronicle feature editor Scott Newhall in 1948, there were still survivors of the 19th-century age of sai 1. Vessels survived--o ld , but afloat1ike the Pacific Queen (formerly, and once again, the Balclutha) . Furthermore, there were aging but surviving captains, mates and crew members. As Principal Librarian David Hull recalled: "Working for Karl Kortum dur-
SEA HISTORY 76, WINTER 1995-96
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