stories. Furthermore, after having been sold overseas, she returned to the United States in 1976 as a bicentennial gift from the people of the Cape Verde Islands. Subsequently, under the leadership of Captain Dan Moreland, she was restored and repaired to achieve certification as a sailing school vessel. Unfortunately, this magnificent schooner fell on hard times (short-hand for a sad tale best told elsewhere)-but far from being a lost cause by any means, she could still be restored to sailing condition. The real experience can still be taught directly from this vessel, and experience is a most rare and precious part of historic preservation. Yet Ernestina's continued survival is uncertain. Her stories are internationally significant and, on the national scale, each of her careers were based in Massachusetts.
Charles W. Morgan At a Glance: 1841 Whaling Ship. This is the last wooden whaling ship, built in Massachusens, and while the details of equipment are particular to whaling, the overall form and construction are very representative of merchant ships of that era. Fewer than one percent of surviving wooden ships on the planet are as old as the Morgan.
Whaling was once a major maritime industry in terms of numbers of men employed and value of product to the economy. Just as significant was the role of American whalers in exploring remote areas of the Pacific-which then prompted the US government to send naval charting expeditions to the far reaches of the planet. In many parts of the wo rld, American whale hunters were the native people's first sight of the Stars and Stripes, and the artifacts and narratives brought home were the first glimpses of other cultures for many of our citizens.
ex-USS Texas At a Glance: 1914 Super-dreadnought Battleship. Texas is the only surviving US Navy vessel to have served in both World Wars and is the sole surviving WWI battleship anywhere. A strong contributing cause to WWI was the intense AngloGerman naval arms race in the decade preceding 1914 (with the United States hard on the heels of both). ex-USS Texas
Charles W. Morgan, 2014 When commissioned, Texas's 14inch guns threw the most powerful broadside in the world. This distinction lasted less than a year before Great Britain's Q ueen Elizabeth class upped the ante again with 15-inch guns. That naval arms race was chiefly defined by the then-new dreadnought type of battleship. The rest of the twentieth century and on into this one can be summed up as the unfinished business of World War I. The Texas is an important link to that story. The changing technology from WWI to WWII can be read in the modifications to the ship of torpedo bulges, anti-aircraft armament, radar, and Combat Information Center (CIC). Texas served at both Normandy and Okinawa, and in 1948 became the first naval vessel since USS Constitution to become a monument and museum.
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C.A. Thayer At a Glance: 1895 Lumber Schooner. The last of a fleet of more than 400 West Coast lumber schooners, the C. A. Thayer is also a representative of the American coasting schooner, which for well over a century was the primary vehicle of American coastwise commerce.
Thayer is nearly identical in general design and build to the thousands of cargo schooners once seen throughout our coastal waters. While a few of the smaller ones survive as extensively altered passenger vessels, Thayer is alone in size and closeness to original configuration. For a nation t hat prides itself on the power of its commerce and ingenuity, it seems absurd that we permit some of the greatest links to our economic history to be lost.
World War II Vessels This subject is so vast and the Beet of surviving participants so numerous, that it is impossible to single out one vessel, especially since each vessel h as its own fiercely loyal crew of supporters. The approach taken below is more of a recommendation to the effect that "if you want to study this war, make sure yo u visit each of these." Battleships (and one Heavy Cruiser). There are eight surviving, seven designed during the late 1930s, and Texas as previously described. USS Missouri is the ship aboard which the Japanese surrender was signed and an example of the Iowa class as being the ultimate in evolution of the type. A very strong case could be made for some of the others as having a longer war record in WWII, and the Iowas have served in wars since, particularly USS New jersey. There is also one surviving heavy cruiser, ex-USS Salem, which is the only representative in the world of what was
SEA HISTORY 148, AUTUMN 2014