LETTERS
DECK LOG We're taking our Society to sea these days. We've always said Sea History is the journal of a cause in motion-and how better to get our cause into motion than with young people scrambling up the rigging of a tall ship? This summer inner-city Boston youngsters will sail from New York to Boston for an intensive week's training aboard the tall ship "HMS" Rose. And young New Yorkers will sail from Boston to New York. We'll also be bringing students from Philadelphia to New York aboard the historic barkentine Gazela ofPhiladelphia. And we'll be filling the Hudson River that runs outside our headquarters with sail again, to get a crowd of New Yorkers, young and old, afloat for a day's vigorous drill, and to open the ships to the people of the river towns-each ship with her story to tell. All this is prologue to what we are working to achieve in next year's Operation Sail 2000, involving eight US cities, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Portland, Maine. We aspire also next year to open a youth adventure center in New York to focus on these activities, and to provide continuing support to the young people involved. And after New York, San Francisco and we hope, other cities. This whole effort depends, as does everything we do, on you as member of NMHS. Members provide the funds needed for this work.
The Yachting Heritage This Sea History is devoted to the lively heritage of American yachting. Pleasure boating is how most Americans experience seafaring, with its splendors, its frustrations and endless challenge and beauty. We appeal to all who go out on the waters, particularly, to support our seafaring ventures. For they know better than anyone how much oflasting value can be gained by sailing to the wind's song on open water. We also salute existing operations like Sail Martha's Vineyard, which gets young citizens of a sea-girt isle out on the seas around them. That venture was launched aboard Bob Douglas's famous schooner Shenandoah. Shenandoah is shown at work below-a scene of pure, disciplined joy! - PETER STANFORD
President
The Picton Castle Reports In Here's news from the other Cape and notes from you r prod igal Hon orary Trustee .... We' re 30,000 mi les aro und the world in our bark Picton Castle now, and I could not be more pleased with her. My message is twofold. I wa nt to let yo u know I'm out here, but not forgetting you and yo ur ongoing efforts. We have a pretty popul ar web site (www. picron-cas rle. co m), crea ted and managed by Angelo Cerchione-check it out so metim e! After all, more people have walked on the moon in the last 50 years than have sai led a cargo-carrying bark arou nd the world. The trip started out with a rough-andtumb le winter in the North Atlantic with about a week of cold westerly gales . Then we sail ed into the tropics and amazing passages, coral reef passes inro ato lls, islands, great tradewinds, violent squalls, long interludes ashore, 35 days across the Indian Ocean, Zanzibar with its sailing dhows, and cyclon e seaso n along East Africa, fo llowed by a fin e five-day rounding of the Cape of Good Hope- 1,000 miles from Durban to Cape Town with southerly gales off the Cape with blas ts to hurricane force under lower tops' ls. And now we're in Cape Town. As I write we' re about to have a gathering of old salts aboard the Picton Castle. T here is a goodl y contingent of Cape Homers here. Capt. Phil Nankin, formerly Chief Mate of the Lawhill, is here with a lot of Lawhill hands, as are Cape Homers from the Passat, Pamir, Grossherzogin Elisabeth, Greif, Padua and Parma. This parry was an idea starred in the Romance under Capt. Kimberly, who was an OS in th e four-masted Swedish bark Abraham Rydberg for about a year. We're homeward bound now, only 7,000 mi les to go in fair South Atlantic trades to Sr. Helena and Barbados, a couple of other isles of the bles t, Bermuda and Lunenburg followed by some small trips celebrating 2000 before we're outward bound around the world again. CAPT. D ANIELS. MORELAND
Bark Picton Castle, March 1999 Cape Town, South Africa
The topsail schooner Shenandoah hits her
stride in Vineyard Sound. 2
Griffiths's Genius All the wonderful things about American clipper ships in Sea History 88 's in stall-
SEA HISTORY 89, SUMMER 1999