The National Maritime Alliance—Advocating for Maritime Heritage
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by Timothy J. Runyan
ew challenges are as great as the start-up of a new organization. Like many small businesses, the failure rate is high. Ignoring those realities, in 1988 a small group of people established the National Maritime Alliance as a non-profit organization to promote America’s maritime heritage. Three decades later, the National Maritime Alliance continues its mission to serve as an umbrella organization to represent the interests of all segments of the maritime heritage community. A principal goal is to bring together the community to work toward the shared objectives of increased public support for America’s maritime heritage. Gaining that public support required the coming together of the many facets of the maritime heritage community to discuss these objectives and mobilize resources to achieve them. The first National Maritime Heritage Conference was held in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1977. This was followed by conferences in Baltimore in 1981 and 1984. The meetings were supported by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a federally chartered agency with a designated maritime division and a director. The conferences pulled in people involved in a wide range of maritime heritage pursuits and offered presentations covering the many topics, projects, organizations, and research in the field, but also focused on the issue of securing federal support. This was a key driver in the establishment of a new organization to marshal and direct efforts to achieve that goal—the National Maritime Alliance. Three years later, the Alliance and the National Trust for Historic Preservation organized the fourth conference; they were joined by the National Park Service as hosts for a subsequent conference (the fifth) held in Boston in 1993. What emerged from these conferences was an initiative to secure federal support for America’s maritime heritage through an act of Congress, an effort led by the National Maritime Alliance. Federal Support for America’s Maritime Heritage After a six-year concerted effort by the maritime heritage community, the National Maritime Heritage Act became Public Law 103-451 (16 U.S.C. 5401) in November 1994. The preamble declares: “The United States is a nation with a rich maritime history, and it is desirable to foster in the American public a greater awareness and appreciation of the role of maritime endeavors in our Nation’s history and culture.” It goes on to state that the maritime historical and cultural foundation of the nation should be preserved as part of our community life and development; that national, state and local groups have been working independently to preserve the maritime heritage of the United States; that those historic resources are being lost; that the preservation of this irreplaceable maritime heritage is in the public interest so that its vital legacy will be maintained and enriched for future generations of Americans; that current government and nongovernmental historic preservation programs are inadequate to ensure appreciation of this heritage; “a coordinated national program is needed immediately to redress the adverse consequences of a period of indifference during which the maritime heritage of the United States has become endangered and to ensure the future preservation of the Nation’s maritime heritage,” and calls for the creation of a national maritime heritage policy. 16
The legislation was the first of its kind in the United States, and it provided public funding for America’s maritime heritage projects and initiatives through a grants program. Funding for the program is derived from a percentage of the sale or scrapping of obsolete vessels of the National Defense Reserve Fleet (NDRF), or “mothball” fleet. Fifty percent of the profit is retained by the Maritime Administration (MARAD), part of the Department of Transportation, 25% is to be used by MARAD to support the federal and state maritime academies, and 25% funds the National Maritime Heritage Grants Program. With millions of dollars for funding generated annually by ship scrapping and sales, supporters of the Act were elated that a solid stream of funding was identified and agreed upon. After a lengthy process of establishing the regulations for the Act, the first distribution was made in 1998 to non-profit organizations and state, local and tribal governments. The total available was about $652,000, and the response to a call-for-proposals was overwhelming—342 proposals requesting over $10 million were submitted. Clearly there was great need and interest. The twenty-one-member federal Grants Advisory Committee to review the proposals and make recommendations was appointed by the Secretary of the Interior and included seven federal members representing the US Navy, US Coast Guard, NOAA, MARAD, and other agencies, and fourteen members representing various areas of maritime heritage, such as historic ships, lighthouses, nautical archaeology, and museums. The grants support education and preservation projects designed to preserve historic maritime resources and increase public awareness and appreciation for the maritime heritage of the United States. Our committee worked hard to be balanced in its recommendations, which were all accepted by the Secretary of the Interior. Unfortunately, this opportunity for public participation and transparency in the grant awards process disappeared when the National Park Service submitted language to eliminate the federal advisory committee. It was replaced by an advisory body of federal officials. The grant program was administered by the Department of the Interior in partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the State Historic Preservation Officers (SHPOs). Subsequently, the Trust withdrew from participation because staff expenses exceeded the overhead allowance provided by the Act. The Trust ceded its role in the grant program to the Department of the Interior/National Park Service’s Maritime Heritage office. Later, the Trust closed its maritime heritage office and became a privately funded non-profit organization. Since 1998, the National Maritime Alliance, the major catalyst for the passage of the Act, has devoted itself to advocacy. A principal reason was an Environmental Protection Agency ruling that banned scrapping of ships abroad without first removing hazardous materials. The result was a backlog of mothballed ships and Congressional subsidies to pay for scrapping. There would be no profits from ship scrapping, no money for the grants program. The Alliance responded by reviving the Maritime Heritage Conferences, organized with partner hosts, as a means of addressing these challenges, beginning in 2001 in Wilmington, North Carolina, with the Historic Naval Ships Association and the SEA HISTORY 161, WINTER 2017–18