End ofan Era for West Coast Maritime History
Harold Huycke (1922-2007), An Appreciation What was Harold's pl ace as a West Coast maritim e historian and what was his place in the building of the San Francisco Maritime Museum? The short version is that he was a giant in both . W hen I began at the Museum in 1972, H arold was al ready an old hand there, in constant communication with the director, Karl Kortum, as they uncovered and documented, interviewed and recorded, collected and collected and collected our West Coast maritime history. H arold was captivated by ships and the sea in 1930 when he was a boy of seven, just out from Oklahoma. His father took him fishing on a barge anchored in Santa Monica Bay. But it was not just a fishing barge; it had been built in 1887 as the four-masted barque Kenilworth. What H arold saw and felt that day was still clear in his mind 77 years later-the cable tending down our of sight in to the water, the gulls overhead, the smells of rhe old wood fittings and decks of what was once a square-rigger. Before the 1930s were out, H arold was befri ended by Dr. John Lyman, whose thumbnail histories of West Coast ships in Marine D igest became the cornerstone of Pacific Coast maritime history. Before the next decade had passed, Harold had become acquainted with Karl Kormm, who founded the San Francisco Maritime Museum. The year before the museum opened in 1950, Karl recruited Harold- tried hard to recruit H arold-to join the museum effort. Bur H arold had graduated from California Maritime Academy in 1944 and he was going to sea, which was what he had wanted since he was seven. H e elected to co ntinue to go to sea, and to keep maritime history as an avocation. Pursued with the drive and energy of a dozen men, rhis avocation came to look like a full-blown second vocation. H e humorously referred to himself as a "boilersuit maritime historian ," which nicely captures borh his callings. His contributions to the museum mission of advancing West Coast maritime history, and to the museum itself, were enormous. H e was the museum's elder research associate, for 57 years! H e conducted hundreds of oral-history interviews of seafaring men. For decades he wrote over 700 (!) letters each year to correspondents all over rhe world-letters chock full of maritime history. In the process of writing those letters and taking those o ral histories, he located and routed to the museum many important collections, so many that he was dubbed in Seattle "a spy for San Francisco ." And there was whar he called "My best job ever"-rhe Srate of California hired him to prepare, man, and deliver to San Francisco the C.A. 1hayer, our historic 3-masted schooner at Hyde Street Pier. He put in new masts, bowsprit, stern, and a good part of her planking. H e replaced the ri gging and declined a tow; they sailed her down from Seattle, as recounted in H arlan Trott's 1he Schooner 1hat Came Ho me. Our library catalog has 15 entries under "Huycke, Harold," bur let me address only his classic West Coast history, the monumental and definitive 607-page study, To Santa Rosalia, Further and Back. It chronicles the final flowering of the last great squareriggers on the face of the earth. Published in 1970 by the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, VA, it was their only publication to sell out. Karl used to defin e a museum as a "temple of excellence," and he bemoaned the errors that, once enshrined in print, become dangero us to histo ry. H arold exemplified the care necessary to avo id
SEA HISTORY 119, SUMMER 2007
"Boilersuit maritime historian, " H arold H uycke, (right) aboard the lumber schooner C.A. Thayer as he prepared her for sea in 1957, with Karl Kortum (center) and Captain Adrian Raynaud (left). errors. How? Consider To Santa Rosalia. H arold scoured archives, libraries, and the printed sources, of course, bur he went well beyo nd that. Harold went to rhe people. In each chapter's endnotes, one sees over and over again citations to primary sources: Letter, Interview, Taped Interview. Once he had written the manuscript, he sent it to rhe co ntributors-and other experts-to read and correct. It took fifreen years to complete, but what H arold produced is a textbook example of how to "ger ir right." H arold was also a model of generosity in helping others with their writing and publishing. 1h ere were many at his memorial service whose wo rk in maritime history H arold inspired, nurtured, and informed. Som ewhere along in rhe 1940s or 50s, Harold became acquainted with Dr. John Kemble, whose 1957 San Francisco Bay; a Pictorial Maritime H istory, today is still the best account of rhe sweep of West Coast maritime history. 1here yo u have the names-John Lyman, Karl Kortum, John Kemble, Harold Huycke-the first tier of the foundin g generation of West Coast maritime histo rians. Haro ld's death marks the end of this generation, but their work has founded a new generatio n of maritime historians who follow in their footsteps. For those of us in museum work, the conventional accolade is "he was a museum person," and H aro ld certainly was a museum person. To those who have ever been to sea, perhaps another accolade means even more. After he died, one of Harold's m any fri ends said to me, "Dave, the highest accolade we can give a man is to say that he was a good shipmate, and H aro ld was a good shipmate." DA VID H ULL, Principal Librarian, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park
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