(right) A glorious apogee of visiting ships was achieved in Operation Sail 1976, conceived by the Seaport Museum, in which windships ofall nations came to New York. Here at the South Street piers are Britain's Sir Winston Churchill (jar left), with an all-female crew, then a flag-dressed Peking and partly rigged Wavertree. At Pier 15 are Norway's S0rlandet and the unconquerable Oanmark astern; across the pier are the US Coast Guard barque Eagle and the little red ferry General Wm. H. Hart, home ofthe Pioneer Marine School, hailed by Mayor john Lindsay as the city's most successfal youth rehabilitation program. Here is a celebration ofseafaring indeed!
turned out of its berth with the museum. These events led to a virtual abandonment of the governing idea of a center for people and for history in South Street. So years later the current management inherited a museum which had no grasp of the experience of a successful, thriving South Street Seaport. They looked at the fantastic ships at their pier as costly curiosities rather than vital, productive assets. The first step they made after the February crash was to order the three active museum ships sent away to ports outside New York. And then, all at once, a new organization, Save Our Seaport, came into play to alert the NYS Attorney General to what was afoot. He then strongly advised the museum not to pursue this disposition of its artifacts. Save Our Seaport originated among the young volunteers who worked on the active vessels and retained the founding ethos of South Street. I first met these people this March as they were preparing the museum's two historic schooners for sea. I had been working as a volunteer for the museum with two other founding members on a plan to revive the ships, but I immediately quit after the February crash, since the museum's concealment ofits fai ling
finances had led me to unwittingly make statements to prospective supporters which I now knew to be false. In a nightmare replay of the intrigue and tricky games that had led me to resign in 1976, I decided not to quit in silence as I had then, but instead to ask the president to quit. I circulated a conceptual plan which called, first, for an active, affirmative engagement with the people of New York for their participation and support and, second, an aggressive enlistment and support of volunteers, who would be given responsible positions. In April, unverified reports affirmed that NYC Mayor Bloomberg, determined that the Seaport should not fail, had worked up a complex deal including a lease buyback of $8 million, surely enough to go
ahead on a new plan-if a plan could be developed. And Save Our Seaport came out with a brief mission statement affirming the new direction we sought: To save South Street's working waterfront, beginning with the schooners Pioneer and Lettie G. Howard, from there, continuing inland to restore interest and life to the rest of the Museum. This states in plain language the strategy we'd developed 44 years before, when using the only historic schooner we then had, Norma's and my Athena, we came ashore with Cape Horn mariners in crew to open the South Street Seaport Museum from the sea. Then, we thought, people would know where the Seaport came from. Save Our Seaport has won the support of the working harbor. Eight ships carried our banner on City of Water Day in July, while ashore 5,000 people have signed a petition asking Mayor Bloomberg to lead reform in South Street and to drive for rededication to the seafaring heritage-a vital strain in our character that challenges New Yorkers to conceive great voyages, and to make them. !, -Peter Stanford, Sea History Editor-at-Large and NMHS President Emeritus
(above) The retired fireboat John J. Harvey, a well-known harbor icon crewed by volunteers, salutes Save Our Seaport volunteers signing up visitors this summer to petition Mayor Bloomberg to save the beleaguered ships of South Street. Save Our Seaport can be reached at: SOS, PO Box 7 41, Peck Slip Station, New York, NY 10272; or email at saveour ships@gmail.com; their website is www.saveourseaport.wordpress.com. (left) The Seaport occupies the same waterfront location where ships large and small brought in cargoes under sailfrom all over the worldfor 400 years-commerce that made New York the major global city that it is today.
SEA HISTORY 136,AUTUMN 2011
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