THE CAPE HORN ROAD , PART XXI
''Here. • . All Men Mattered'' A Revival ofthe Cape Horn Road Takes Shape for Purposes that Live on Today-to Keep a li>yaging Spirit Alive for Our Tomorrows by Peter Stanford
remember the strained but radiant grin of the dark-clad figure standing in seaboo ts on the gray dining room rug of our house in Brooklyn H eights, New York. H e must have been there for supper as that cold January day wo und down. We had come from a visit with this seafaring man late that afternoon, exploring the battered hull of the little square rigger he'd brought to New York, only to be wrecked in the harbor. She was the 202-ton former D anish sail training ship Georg Stage, which our visitor, Alan Villiers, had renamed Joseph Conrad and brought across the Atlantic with a young crew, on the first oceanic leg of a round-the-wo rld cruise. The cruise was a venture taken, as he later put it, "in defense of my poor ideals." A savage northwest gale had struck New York as the first day of the new year 1935 The sorely wounded Joseph Conrad on the rocks at Bay Ridge, 2 January 1935. Villiers, in drew to a chilly close, and somewhere pea jacket and seaboots, directs operations ftom the fore rigging, doing everything to save his ship around 3AM on Wednesday, 2 January under a threatening sky, before the winter gale lashes in again- as it did. (From Villiers, C ruise heavy gusts and mounting seas had snapped of the Conrad) the chain of the anchor the ship was lying to, and smashed her into the rocky escarpment of the Bay Ridge he did not see how they could stay afl oat. Amid the boarding seas sea wall in South Brooklyn. H er people had scrambled ashore and howling wind, Villiers noticed the lights in the skyscrapers of safely, but the ship was not so well off. T he rocks had to rn holes Manhattan , where night personnel and cleaners were at work. in her iron plating. Villiers had been as hore that evening and was "An d here we were, staging a sea tragedy beneath their very lights, unable to get a boat back to the ship because, as people patiently trying desperately to save a fo undering ship right in the 'safety' of explained to him, it was a holiday, New Year's D ay, and nobody a harbor. " was working. Rising betimes next morning, he fo und his ship had T he Joseph Conrad survived, and was beached in the lee of been driven off her mooring, and finally saw her on the rocks. Staten Island in 16 feet of water. Normally she drew 12 feet, so she The receding tide threatened to capsize the Conrad, so Villiers had settled fo ur fee t deeper, losing all that free board, practically all got three trucks to drag her upright, using ashes fro m the galley she had. Next day after further patching, she was pumped out and stove to help the trucks get traction on the icy roadway ashore. towed across and put in the d rydock at Tebo's yard, where my Tugs were brought to pull the Conrad off and get her to T ebo's fa ther Al Stanford and I visited her and talked with Villiers, who shipyard up Gowanus Creek two miles away-but as strain cam e was poking with his seaboot at various wooden crates bobbing on the hawsers there was a sound of tearing iron, and Villiers about in the icy water which still fill ed the lower hold. I was seven, stopped the attempt before the ship's bottom was torn out. T he but I can't remember anything that was said. The silent film of my next day, makeshift patches were put in by a diver and in high memory just shows me Villiers's defi ant stance and the relief that winds and seas the vessel was pumped out enough to float off the even I could feel, that his ship, with her people, was saved. rocks. Then a violent squall came screaming down on them to "To Sail This Lovely Ship" drive the ship against the 69th Street Pier, where she did further damage to herself. At las t, with more tugs summoned to join the O n 3 1 January a tug pulled the little full-rigger out into the fray, the Conrad was towed across, battered and dented, half full harbor, and in open water by the Statue of Liberty she made sail of water, toward sheltered water in the lee of Staten Island. Villiers and stood out to sea before a light fair wi nd. T he sto ry of the later described the scene, with the emergency crew aboard all set ensuing voyage is told in Villiers' s Cruise ofthe Conrad. She stood to jump overboard clear of the rigging if-o r when- the ship to the eastward to meet the G ulf Stream , whose warm waters soon went down . Villiers describes how "we flew along settling ever melted the ice fro zen into her scuppers-and perhaps softened the deeply and more deeply in the water. " T he main deck was awash; harsh experience the vessel and her people had passed through,
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SEA HISTORY 91 , WINTER 1999-2000
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