Sea History & the Cause We Serve: A Personal Account of Some Journeys in Pursuit of our Oceanic Mission by Peter Stanford
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ur founder Karl Kortum was a person with a sure eye for the things that matter in life. H e also was the ringleader in that special company of peop le who care about the arts and traditions of the seafarer and the learning of voyages befo re our time. Ka rl once said: "Sea History is how we all stay in to uch." Indeed , where else but in the pages of Sea History can yo u find a skipper of th e present day mentionin g the people he'd co me to know from the likes of the famous old bark Lawhil! and the still surviving Passat-as D an Moreland does in this issue-and in the same issue find a definitive acco unt of the career of G ustaf Erikso n, who kept those great ships sailing, long after their allotted span? And what joy it is to see Alix T horne, who keeps two replica schooners busy educating young students in the ways of the sea, pay tribute to the old workaday vessels, li ke the Victory Chimes, which first drew her into th e oceanic field! If Sea History is the most important thing we do, it is because here is th e meeting place where, in Karl's memorable phrase, "we all stay in touch," and because, in the most direct ways possible, without spin or bragadoccio, sea history is what we do . That is, we publish Sea History, the magazine, and we strive to serve the cause of seafarin g as a giant experience in the service of mankind. We have said Sea H istory is the journal of a cause in motion, and in these pages I thought I'd give some perso nal acco unt of how yo ur president spent the past few mo nths, in odd moments from the continuing battle to see Sea History fi rmly established fin ancially for th e long voyage ahead-a voyage we hope and intend will extend beyo nd th e horizon of our lifetimes .
Revisiting Frank Carr in England T his pas t M arch I went to England fo r th e meeting of the W orld Ship T rust Co uncil, an organization we worked to fo und with the late Frank G. G. Carr in 1979. I had a particular mission: to review Frank's long, extrao rdinarily productive life in and about ships, and particularly just h ow he cam e to fo und the Wo rld Ship T rusr. Institutions are often the lengthened shadow of one
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perso n, and the Wo rld Ship T rust is the survi ving institution of the shade of Frank Carr, whose book about sailing in the Bristol pi lot cutter Cariad begui led my reading hours as a yo ungster in the 1930s. England is a co untry I first visited as mate of the traditional English cutter Iolaire, coming transAtlantic in 1949, Jamaica to Bermuda to England-vastly di ffe rent islands in the ocean wo rld! It was a dusty passage made largely under sto rm canvas, and while we were neve r in any tro uble
Iolaire and me back together after half a century, thinking long thoughts about seafaring, in the quiet waters ofLimehouse Reach. (Photo: Mowbray Jackson) (trouble aboard any boat skippered by Bobby Somerset was a ve ry rare phenomenon), it was wo nd erfu l to slip under England's shore, smelling the green fields of midsummer (the sense of smell is cleansed by weeks at sea!), sailing over sheltered wa ter under a smiling sky. That first visit to England lasted three years, and I spent weekend hours at the N ational M aririme M useum in G reenwich, which Frank then headed up . I did not meet him then (I wo uldn't have dreamt of disturbing so august a perso nage!) though I did meet his sometimes quire rebellious disciples who mer to exchange thoughts with perfect freedom at the Plume ofF earh-
ers pub just outside the m useum gates-a place that should be remembered as the Areopagus in G reece is remembered, a refuge where no th ought was censored and expansive ges wres not commonly used in Albion we re tolerated provided not too much beer was sp il led . W hen I next went to England, it was in 1972 , to attend the first meeting of the International Congress ofMaritime M useums. Sometime I must tell you about that conference, whi ch was interesting but not all peaches and cream. Karl Ko rtumwho was not there-was threatened with being jailed "instanter" if he ever set foo t in England again, leaving it to me, in m y second yea r as president of NMH S, to rise in Ka rl's defense-with res ults that still amaze me. Among the more rewarding results of that co nvocation was my meeting Fran k Carr. Two years later we scraped up funds to brin g Frank with his gracious wife Ruth to the US, where we held meetings to promote the World Ship T rust and its autonomous chapter, the American Ship T rusr. Several of the English fo unders were on hand this pas t March when I gave my lecture at the National Maritime M useum, as was Nancie Villiers, wh ose late husband Ala n was a mainstay of the historic ships move menr. Alan's wo rk lives on in the pages of Sea History, even in this ve ry issue (see "Letters," p . 3). Ir was good th ey were there, both fo r th e joy of the occasion and to help get a settl ed record of events slipping in to the te nebro us murk of the unrecorded pasr.
lolaire, An Ocean D enizen During my most recent visit to England I boarded Bobby Somerset's hardy long-lived cutter Iolaire-whose name and story have figured in my "Cape Horn Road " in th ese pages-in Limehouse Reach of the T hames River, where her devoted owner D on Street has her up fo r sale. Built in 1905, she has sailed across the Atlantic many rimes, and her rig has gradually transformed itself from the original lofty topmas t rig, first to the snugger rig she had in 1949. She acwally was more weatherly and was able to stand up to her canvas better without the heavy, solid topmas t, though she must
SEA HISTORY 93, SUMMER 2000