Ken Reynard of the Star of India, who'd flown in from San Diego to join us, listened attentively. When I told Ken that we were honored to have him aboard as the Wavertree returned to the harbor she had left 75 years earlier, I added that I only wished Karl Kortum could have been with us. Karl had told me he just couldn't make it, he'd been held up by other matters in San Francisco. Ken then surprised me by saying that Karl should spend more time taking care of the ships in his keeping in San Francisco. I thought this over for a moment, and then contented myself with saying that if he had done that, we would none of us be here, and the Wavertree would have moldered her life away in the Riachuelo . This Ken acknowledged with a smile. The tension between the two men was the classic one between pioneers and settlersthe one always pushing ahead; the other laboring to make things work where he stood. Passing ships and tugs dipped their ensigns and blew salutes on their whistles, to which our volunteer National Maritime Union signalman, Rick Miller, responded with repeated dipping of the American flag flying at the monkey gaff on which, nearly a year before, we'd first hoisted the Stars and Stripes with Ambassador Lodge presiding. There was an electric consciousness of history in the air for every soul aboard, a
consciousness that this ship, which had sailed out unnoticed 75 years earlier in a far different world, was now back and this time being hailed by her successors in the maritime trades of New York. Everyone seemed to understand that she was a last survivor of the tall ships, which had built a city from the sea. "Welcome Wavertree!" the Seamen's Bank for Savings ad had proclaimed in that morning's newspapers, and having Archie Horka and Fred Harvey aboard gave a special fillip to the occasion for all of us. Still, most New Yorkers might not note this arrival, so it was up to us to carry her message to the busy city. A good beginning was made as the big ship nosed slowly into her berth on the south side of Pier 16 amid swirling water stirred up by the pushing and pulling of our two tugs . Norma and I leaned over the poop rail to watch as the first line whistled ashore, expertly hurled by Jakob Isbrandtsen from the forecastle head. We then saw the mayor's wife, Mary Lindsay, step forward to catch it. The monkey's fist, weighted with a lead pellet, brought the light messenger line snaking after it. This would be used to haul in the heavy hawser that would hold the vessel in her berth. The drill was to pick up the line after the monkey's fist had landed-not to catch the weighted fist like a baseball. But no one had told Mary this , and catch it she did.
"Wow, you guys must have mitts of steel!" she said as she came aboard once the gangplank was rigged. The word was passed to everyone to be very gentle if she offered to shake hands-and everyone was. Coffee and champagne were broken out for all hands, but few stayed long aboard. We'd made the passage; it was time to leave the ship and go about our business. So we streamed away to our varied occasions. Each of us, I imagine, took a last look at the great bow arched against the rising towers of the city of today. Henceforth, it would be our job to carry her message to the people immured in those towers, to bring them an awareness of the great sailing ships, which had built their city. Alan Villiers stopped by in October to visit the ship he had done so much to help. He was not discouraged by the lack of response to his week's intense campaigning for the Wavertree a year and a half earlier. On the contrary, he was full of congratulations for the feat, as he called it, of bringing her to New York. On Tuesday evening, 6 October, he gave a talk on Pier 16. This was a dramatic recalling of his experiences in the Cape Horn trade, with the Wavertree's shapely stern looming over the screen on which he showed his photos of ships of her breed doing battle with the great seas that sweep around the world in the latitude of Cape Horn. This was a scene to remember-a seaman's seaman honoring his ship by telling the stories of her kind at sea, in words and images that made us feel the rushing winds and the crash of hurtling seas and giving us some sense of life as people lived it in the sailing of the great hull resting quietly at our pier. A few days later Alan presided, in his usual bluff story-telling mode, at the opening of the Seaport bookstore. This important new resource, formerly a hash joint for fish market truckers and workers, stood at the entrance to the Seaport area at Fulton and Water Streets. Its interior had been entirely renewed by Eugenia Dean, who specialized in creating spaces that looked and felt as if they'd been there for (left) Wavemee has been a fixture along the waterfront in Lower Manhattan since she was acquired by South Street Seaport Museum and brought to New York from South America in 1970.
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SEA HISTORY 152, AUTUMN 2015