The 2014 National Maritime Historical Sociery Annual Awards Dinner A Truly Glorious Evening for our Maritime Heritage by Burchenal Green, N MHS President f, on a beautiful October evening, you bring together the recent former commandant of the US Coast Guard (Admiral Robert J. Papp Jr.) with the foundin g director of the North American M arine Environment Protection Association (C lay M aitland), half of the team that broke the sailing record from Hong Kong to New York (Richard T. du Moulin), the chairman of the National Coast Guard Museum Association (James J. Coleman Jr. ), o ne of the driving forces behind the OpSail tradition (Howard Slotnick), the National O ceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of National M arine Sanctuaries di rector (Daniel J. Bas ta), the long-standing ch airm an of the New York Yacht Club's America's Cup C ommittee (George W Carmany III), the vice commodore of the club (Rives Po tts), a great maritime artist (Oswald Brett), the chairman, president and leading staff of Mys tic Seaport (Barclay Collins, Steve White, Quentin Snediker and M aureen H ennessey) , the presidents of South Street Seaport Museum (Captain Jonathan Boulware), the Steamship Historical Society of America (Matthew Schulte), and the American Friends of the N ational Museum of the Royal N avy ( Frik Olstein), th e chairm an of the Coast Guard Foundation (Robert Flynn), the president and CEO of one of America's great family-own ed tugboat companies (Captain Brian McAllister), the N obel prize winner for discovering the structure ofDNA (Dr. James Watson) , the Regional Vice President of the American Bureau of Shipping (Stephen Gumpel) , the found er, president, and program devel opment director of the lighthouse tender l ilac (Gerry Weinstein, M ary Habstritt and D aniella Romano) and the president of the Working H arbor Committee (Captain John Doswell) , you will get a magical evening yo u will not soon forget. And these dignitaries were joined by so many others that we wo uld run out of ink on this page. A recurring theme during the course of remarks, from the podium and amongst
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(front row, l-r) James ] Coleman J r.; Rives Potts; George W Carmany!!!. (back row, l- r) Clay M aitland; Ronald L. Oswald; D aniel]. Basta; H oward Slotnick; A dmiral Robert J Papp J r., USCG (Ret.); and Richard du M oulin.
friends old and new, was the importance of focusing on the sea, and on the waters on which we sail, on our common experiences and background and the necessity of connecting together, of sharing our stories and knowledge. Dinner Chairman Clay Maitland praised the wo rk of the Society for our focus on wha t ti es us together and our leadership promoting the larger story. H e stated that we share with th ose who went before us common experiences; we are a people who migrated here from across the seas and still today sail the same seas and rivers to carry our trade and culture. Pirates, terrorism, migration, d ro ught, and religion we re issues faced by our fo refathers and we are helped to navigate those challenges today by looking to our heri tage and realizing its rel evance. D an Basta discussed the 38'h voyage of Mys tic Seaport's whaler Charles W Mo rgan as an example of an international icon to connect the world, and advocated an internatio nal year to celebrate m aritime heritage. H oward Slo tnick remembered joining the South Street Seaport Museum as a dollar member, an act that changed his life as he got involved, traveling the world
as an O pSail ambassador to invite tall ships to America. George Carmany asked us to think in our own life what it is that m akes us love the sea as we do, imagining that for most of us it was getting out on the water as a child, or perhaps with a team racing, but som e wonderful experience . As he put it: "Why do we love the sea so? What fo rms the attachment that we feel? The exhilaratio n we feel when we go our on it? Its beauty? The hidden dangers? Its fury and peacefulness? Our impressions, the things that tie us to it emotionally, are grounded in personal experiences, from childhood in most cases .. . This is the stuff of love and passion , the sort of things that collectively bind us to the sea." In honor of James C olem an , his son Jamie Coleman, artist Paul Ga rnett, and the N ational M aritime Histo rical Society do nated USCG Bounty Rescue-October 2 012 to M r. Colem an for the new National Coast G uard Museum . Captain of C oast G uard Sector New York, Captain Gordon A. Loeb!, is displaying the painting in his office until the construction of the New London, Connecticut museum is completed.
Paul Garnett on USCG Bounty Rescue-October 2012: "When H urricane Sandy hit the eastern seaboard ofthe United States resulting in the sinking ofthe square rigger Bounty, all of us that were former crew members, as I was during her M. G.M. years, felt a terrible sense ofloss. As a marine artist I struggled with the thought of putting this tragedy onto canvas but in the end decided against it. Instead I would do a painting from the perspective of the Coast Guard and their heroic decision to head out into harm's way in the teeth of this sup er storm. The p ainting shows, far off to the left, the masts ofthe ship above the mountainous waves that were washing over her hull. Upper left is the Coast Guard p lane that circled over the area during the operation. The helicopters are about a half mile apart, hovering over the life rafts . A swimmer can be seen in the water holding on to the raft in the foregro und as the chopper lowers one of the rescue baskets to the p eople in their survival suits in that raft. "
SEA HISTORY 149, WINTER 2014