Admiral Ernest j. King memorandum express ing his co ncern over shipping losses. King replied stati ng what had been done and what help was needed. T hese actions are discussed in King's autobiography Fleet Admiral King and the the biography by T hom as Buell entitled Master ofSea Power. The navy and Adm iral King may have fai led to protect Allied shipping in the Atla ntic in early 1942, bur I do not think that it was due to his preoccupation with rhe naval battles raking place in the Pacific (the Coral Sea battle did not occur until May 1942) or to King's di strust of the British. If you plan to write a more derailed book on "The American Achievement by Sea," I think a shift in emphas is on rhe reasons for the failure to stop Allied shipping losses would be in order. HENRY C. MINER III Brooklyn, New York In World War I, I was one of rhe yo ungest shipmasrers when appointed, at age 24, to command of the SS Charles Carrol/named after a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Now at the age of83 , I have lost interest in the numerous maritime publications in the marketplace. But the article on John A. Nob le and Sailors' Snug Harbor in Staten Island in Sea History 103 attracted my attentio n. My grandfather, Cap tain Christopher Marsden, died at Sailors' Snug Harbor in the 1930s fo llowing a stroke rhar rendered him speechless . A British master of sail and steam, he served as executive officer of the New York sail training ships St. Marys and Newport berween 1903 and 1909. He was my ro le model. I determined to be an shipmasrer from age fourteen. I visited him often as a teenager, raking the Staten Island
SEA HISTORY 105, AUTUMN 2003
ferry from Manhattan. I told him of my ambitio n. He talked to me with his eyes. I am an alumnus of the US Merchant Marine Cader Corps created by the US Maritime Commission in 1938, the predecessor organization to the US Merchant MarineAcademyarKings Point, New York. I am claimed as a graduate of the C lass of 1942, although the academy was not formally recognized as such until 1943. My extensive search for "lost classmates" of rhe C lass of 1942 was most revealing. There was no commencement-we graduated a day at a rime and our diplomas were mailed to us. We were a compression of classes by virtue of reduced sea and shore rime requirements to man the rapid expansion of the war rime merchant marine fleet. CAPTAJN GEORGE M. MARSHALL Castine, Maine
the trimaran, is essentially a raft supported by hydroplaning canoe-like hulls and carries only enough supplies for the crew. Moreover, the multi-hull has the enormous technological advantages ofGPS positio ning, global weather reports, and rapid rescue in case of difficulty. Until another cargo- and/or passenger-carrying commercial sai ling vessel goes from Hong Kong to New York in less than 74 days, 14 hours, the record wi ll remain Sea Witch's. The second-best time is also hers at 77 days, as well as the fastest passage (82 days) against the monsoons of the C hina Sea (the 74and 77-day passages were with a favorab le northeasterly monsoon). LARRY J. SECHREST Professor of Economics Sul Ross State University Alpine, Texas
I am associated with the Sea Witch Project to build a replica of the historic American clipper and am completing a 900-page manuscript on sai ling ship performance. I was therefore interested in the article in Sea History 104 (Spring/Summer 2003) on the attempt to march the Sea Witch's recordbreaking 74-day voyage from Hong Kong to New York on the trimaran Great American II. There can be no comparison of the two. The merchant sai ling ships of the 19th century had deep, displacement hulls and often carried cargo in excess of their registered tonnage. A multi-hull yacht, like
I read Joe Evangelista's article on the Sea Witch and clipper design (Sea History 104) with great interest. However, I would like to qualify his remark that "English clippers ... remained competitive against steam until afrer the Suez Canal opened in 1869 ." In fact, sa iling vessels we re deliverin g Australian grain to Scotland into the late 1920s. C lipp er develop men ts were still being buil r on the C lyde into rhe earl y 1900s. Ir was the development of high-quali ty steel plate, some twenty years after Suez opened, that signalled the end for clippers. Boilers were built which had an operating
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