SHIP NOTES, SEAPORT & MUSEUM NEWS INVENI PORT AM RICHARD L. RATH
(1928-1996) Dick Rath, longtime trustee of South Street Seaport Museum and NMHS, editor of Boating and Yachting magazines, coasting skipper, jazz trombonist and advocate of far-out causes, died on 20 November 1996. He had been in poor ~ealth , and m 1993 left New York for Deltaville, Virginia. There, with his companion Barbara Everton, he set about restoring a junk-rigged, 42-foot steel schooner. . When I first met Rath, on a trip to Puerto Rico in February 1964, he was skipper of a small inter-island freighter, MN Explorer, which carried odd c~ rgoes to the Virgin Islands. A tall, lanky, quizzical-looking man, he had a fnendly air overlaid with a cinematic tough-guy way of talking. I called him "Rath" to mock his use of this city-desk monosyllabic growl in answering his phone. I met Rath again in 1966 when he had just taken up work as associate editor of Boating magazine, under the formidable Moulton H. (Monk) Farnham. They both worked with a determined young managing editor, Terry Walton. At Rath 's memorial service last fall, Terry remembered their after-hours talks about "wordstheir idiosyncrasies, what's the best one for the sentence, or the etymology of that one." Dick Rath was, indeed, a master wordsmith, precise in his use of language and matchless in the plain purity of his style when a great cause stirred him. The South Street Seaport Museum became one of those causes. He helped build a membership of hundreds of souls, tied together by a newsletter reporting our volunteer activities. When the museum opened a small office in Dick Rath in South Street Schermerhorn Row in the spring of 1967, Rath . saw us shivering over our typewriters in the un~eated fish stall. He soon turned up with a gas radiator he had liberated, which quickly had us feeling better about life. He made many people feel better about life, always with an eye for old schooner.s, kids in hopeless situations and underdogs anywhere. In 1970 he took ove.r the Ir~n schooner Pioneer in South Street and got the ship sailing to new honzons. with form~r dr~g abusers in crew. He attracted the support of the Astor Foundat10n and, with this and other help, soon established the Pioneer Marine Sc~ool, which Mayor John V. Lindsay called the most successful youth rehabilitation program of his administration: Rath got help from many hands. He was also a notable jazz trombonist, who played for Eddie Condon and other leading lights in New York in the 1950s and '60s. I met Rath 's musician friends on the decks of the Pioneer on 8 December when a bunch of us gathered to give thanks for his life. What an extraordinary'. wonderful group of people to be with! That was perhaps Rath 's great gift a gift for friendship which bound us all together. ' -PETER STANFORD
Contributions in memory of Dick Rath are welcome. See page 4. H. Hobart Holly ( 1908-1996), a distinguished naval architect and former presi?e.nt of the Quincy Historical Society, died on 30 N~vember. A grandson of W 1lham Carn.ley of the~ la~k Ball Line, he moved from New York to Quincy, Massachusetts, m 1949. Hi s fnend Joseph Chetwynd said his fellow researchers had " lost their local Rosetta Stone."
w_ orl.d War II hero and longti me NMHS member Birger Lunde ( 1913-1996), died m September. He served in Norwegian merchant vessels in WWII three of which were sunk by U-boats. After the war he commanded US me~chant ships and was active in the Norwegian Sailors War Veterans Association and the US Merchant Marine Veterans. 38
of Trustees of the Old Dartmouth Historical Society/New Bedford Whaling Museum has developed a $10 million capital campaign entitled "Campaign for the Next Century-Lighting the Way" to take the institution into its second century of service with improved access, exhibits, programs, and state-ofthe-art collections storage and care. (NBWM, 18 Johnny Cake Hill, New Bedford MA 02740; 508 997-0046) .... The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, plans to display its collection of boats, ranging from coracles to power boats, at Falmouth where maritime interests include the Cornwall Maritime Museum and Maritime Trust, Cornwall College's Center for Maritime Studies and the Falmouth Watersports Centre. (NMM, Greenwich, London SElO 9NF UK) . UNDERWATER NEWS: US Park Service employees at South Manitou Island in Lake Michigan found the virtually intact remains of the wooden 162-foot steamer Three Brothers, which sank on 27 September 1911. ... A sonar search has begun in the Solent for Caesar's invasion fleet of 54 BC, reports the Times of London, in the same area where another team discovered what they believe to be a Roman ship . . . . In Denmark, the Research Center for Maritime Archaeology' s underwater survey of the harbor at Roskilde has revealed a variety of structures, including ferry landings and defenses .
SAIL TRAINING NEWS: The City of Osaka, Japan, has invited participation in Sail Osaka '97 . The International Sail Training Association (ISTA) is collaborating on a series of tall ship races leading up to the event. (Sail Osaka '97 Secretariat Office, 3-7-15-112 Chikko, Minato-ku, Osaka 552, Japan; Tel: 816-571-8697, FAX: 81-6-572-9382) .. .. Operation Sail 2000 has finned up plans for the transAtlantic sail training race fromAgadirto San Juan. Miami, Norfolk, Baltimore and Philadelphia are scheduled for visits en route to the OpSail Tall Ships Parade in New York on 4 July. (OpSail 2000, 1333 New Hampshire Ave., NW, Suite 700, Washington DC 20036). 1N BRIEF: Sea Education Association, Inc. has achieved a 2-for-l match to set up a $1,200,000 endowment for a visiting Iecttureship in the marine sciences. The carmpaign was sparked by a $400,000 SEA HIISTOR Y 80, WINTER 1996-97