Sea History 163 - Summer 2018

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY

SEA HISTORY No. 163

SUMMER 2018

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THE ART, LITERATURE, ADVENTURE, LORE & LEARNING OF THE SEA

Recreating Fulton’s Steamboat on Canvas

Schooner Roseway at Work in the 21st Century Guano Trade on the Old Charts Harriet Lane’s Cutters

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SEA HISTORY

No. 163

SUMMER 2018

CONTENTS

p.d. image, courtesy wikipedia

16 First Lady Harriet Rebecca Lane and the Cutters That Have Borne Her Name,

by William H. Thiesen Harriet Lane was known and admired for the ease and grace with which she served as hostess at the White House during the presidency of her bachelor uncle, James Buchanan, earning her the nickname “First Lady.” A Revenue Cutter Service cutter and two Coast Guard cutters have borne her name, serving with distinction.

22 Historic Ships on a Lee Shore: Schooner Roseway—Sailing a New Course in

the 21st Century, by Eden Leonard

Like so many historic vessels still afloat, the Essex-built schooner Roseway has had many careers: fishing yacht, harbor pilot, educational platform. When Hurricanes Maria and Irma devastated much of Roseway’s winter port of Christiansted, St. Croix—including many of their schools—the schooner served the community as a floating classroom.

16

world ocean school

28 TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE® Gulf Coast Series 2018: A Young Seaman’s

Report from the Fleet, by James Rogers

James Rogers interned with Tall Ships America during this year’s events on America’s Gulf Coast. He shares his report from the deck—and from aloft—of the ships and ports, and the sailing passages in between.

30 Fulton’s Steamboat at Clermont, 1807: A Glimpse into the Artist’s Process,

by Len Tantillo

Painting historic scenes presents many challenges—shore landscapes may have changed, the ship subjects are often no longer afloat. The artist must be part historian, part detective. Artist Len Tantillo offers us a glimpse of the process, to capture the famous maiden voyage of the steamer “Clermont.”

22

royal museums greenwich

34 HM Schooner Pickle: a Little Vessel of Colossal Importance, by RADM Joseph Callo The little schooner Pickle was too small to fight in the line of battle at Trafalgar, but her assignment after the smoke had cleared ensured her place in the history books.

36 The Smithsonian, the US Navy, and Aquatic Avian Excrement, by Paul F. Johnston

The acquisition of a nearly 200-year-old rare marine atlas inspired Smithsonian staff to learn more about the curious connections between their museum and the intensely competitive nitrate trade in the nineteenth century.

34

Cover: Fulton’s Steamboat at Clermont, 1807, by Len Tantillo (See pages 30–32)

4 Deck Log 6 Letters 10 NMHS: a Cause in Motion 33 Marine Art News 42 Sea History for Kids

46 Ship Notes, Seaport & Museum News 55 Calendar 56 Maritime History on the Internet 57 Reviews 64 Patrons

Sea History and the National Maritime Historical Society Sea History e-mail: seahistory@gmail.com; NMHS e-mail: nmhs@seahistory.org; Website: www.seahistory.org. Ph: 914 737-7878; 800 221-NMHS MEMBERSHIP is invited. Afterguard $10,000; Benefactor $5,000; Plankowner $2,500; Sponsor $1,000; Donor $500; Patron $250; Friend $100; Contributor $75; Family $50; Regular $35.

alexander gardner, p.d.

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36 SEA HISTORY (issn 0146-9312) is published quarterly by the National Maritime Historical Society, 5 John Walsh Blvd., POB 68, Peek­skill NY 10566 USA. Periodicals postage paid at Peeks­kill NY 10566 and add’l mailing offices.

COPYRIGHT © 2018 by the National Maritime Historical Society. Tel: 914 737-7878.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Sea History, PO Box 68, Peekskill NY 10566.

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Deck Log NMHS Launches New Website and Online Index I couldn’t begin to calculate the hundreds of hours we have pawed through past issues of Sea History looking for information that we were “pretty sure” was in this issue—well, maybe that issue. I am over the moon to announce that we have launched our new completely updated website, www.seahistory.org, including online access to full issues of Sea History magazine, a new kids’ section, and a hyperlinked index to over 35,000 terms found in all issues dating back to 1972 and Sea History #1!

Funded in part by a National Maritime Heritage Grant, this project makes accessible an extraordinary resource, encouraging students, professionals, and enthusiasts alike to study and promote our maritime heritage.

SEA HISTORY No. 124

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY

AUTUMN 2008

$3.75

THE ART, LITERATURE, ADVENTURE, LORE & LEARNING OF THE SEA

photo by joseph rudinec

Romance UndeR Sail A Tale of Two Shipwrecks John Falkinburg: at Sea in USS Iroquois, 1867 Lancing, a Ship for the Record Sea History for Kids

Each issue of the magazine has been digitized and all back issues of Sea History are accessible and searchable online; current NMHS members will be provided access to the most recent eight issues, while the entire collection beyond those is available to anyone who visits the website. Interested in learning more about the subjects featured in this issue, for example? We’ve been covering Roseway (“Historic Ships on a Lee Shore,” p. 22) since Sea History 40 in 1986! In this issue, one of our favorite marine artists, Len Tantillo, takes readers through the process of how he researches and produces a painting of a historic vessel at a specific location and time; you can view more of Len’s work in Sea History 87 (on the sloop Experiment) or more recently in Sea History 155. We are so excited about making this treasure trove of maritime information and images public and hope you will visit our website and give it a test drive.

Young people can access research tools, a section on maritime careers, and interactive games in the new Sea History for Kids section. Interested in a sailing experience at a maritime museum in your region? You can now sort our museum map to find just the place you’re looking for. In “News & Events,” you can register for NMHS events; here, other maritime organizations and professionals can post their events so that readers across the country and internationally can see what’s happening in the maritime world at museums and events near them. The guide to additional online resources includes links to sites where you can research a vessel (and stay informed on historic ships and preservation efforts), explore genealogy, and view online archives and collections. We’ve made it easier than ever to join, renew, donate, register for an event, and shop our Ship’s Store for marine art, books, apparel, nautical gifts, and more.

We are enormously grateful to our development director, Jessica MacFarlane, for finally bringing this project to fruition—not only getting the grant to fund it, but also meticulously supervising the whole project.

We encourage you to sign up for events and news at www.seahistory.org/signup, and we’ll notify you as we add features and content to the website that enrich NMHS Development Director your NMHS and Sea History experience!

Jessica MacFarlane —Burchenal Green, NMHS President 4

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY PUBLISHER’S CIRCLE: Peter Aron, Guy E. C. Maitland, Ronald L. Oswald OFFICERS & TRUSTEES: Chairman, Ronald L. Oswald; Vice Chairman, Richardo R. Lopes; President, Burchenal Green; Vice Presidents: Deirdre O’Regan, Wendy Paggiotta, Nancy Schnaars; Treasurer, Howard Slotnick; Secretary, Jean Wort; Trustees: Charles B. Anderson; Walter R. Brown; Christopher J. Culver; William S. Dudley; David S. Fowler; William Jackson Green; Karen Helmerson; Richard M. Larrabee; Guy E. C. Maitland; Capt. Brian McAllister; CAPT Sally Chin McElwreath, USN (Ret.); Michael W. Morrow; CAPT James A. Noone, USN (Ret.); Richard Patrick O’Leary; Erik K. Olstein; ADM Robert J. Papp Jr., USCG (Ret.); Timothy J. Runyan; Richard Scarano; Philip J. Shapiro; Capt. Cesare Sorio; William H. White; Chairmen Emeriti: Walter R. Brown, Alan G. Choate, Guy E. C. Maitland, Howard Slotnick FOUNDER: Karl Kortum (1917–1996) PRESIDENT EMERITUS: Peter Stanford (1927–2016) OVERSEERS: Chairman, RADM David C. Brown, USMS (Ret.); RADM Joseph F. Callo, USN (Ret.); George W. Carmany III; James J. Coleman Jr.; Clive Cussler; Richard du Moulin; Alan D. Hutchison; Jakob Isbrandtsen; Gary Jobson; Sir Robin Knox-Johnston; John Lehman; Capt. James J. McNamara; H. C. Bowen Smith; John Stobart; Philip J. Webster; Roberta Weisbrod NMHS ADVISORS: George Bass, Francis Duffy, John Ewald, Timothy Foote, Steven A. Hyman, J. Russell Jinishian, Gunnar Lundeberg, Conrad Milster, William G. Muller, Stuart Parnes, Nancy Hughes Richardson, Bert Rogers, Joyce Huber SEA HISTORY EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD: Chairman, Timothy Runyan; Norman Brouwer, Robert Browning, William Dudley, Daniel Finamore, Kevin Foster, John Jensen, Joseph Meany, Lisa Norling, Carla Rahn Phillips, Walter Rybka, Quentin Snediker, William H. White NMHS STAFF: Executive Director, Burchenal Green; Membership Director, Nancy Schnaars; Membership Coordinator, Jean Marie Trick; Marketing Director, Steve Lovass-Nagy; Comptroller, Anjoeline Osuyah; Staff Writer, Shelley Reid; Director of Development, Jessica MacFarlane; Membership Assistant, Irene Eisenfeld SEA HISTORY: Editor, Deirdre O’Regan; Advertising, Wendy Paggiotta Sea History is printed by The Lane Press, South Burlington, Vermont, USA.

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

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Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed news, events, seminars SEA HISTORY 163, 2018 5 2017 Historic NavalSUMMER Ships Association Annual Conference in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies ofand the Department of the Interior. programs.

September 26-29

“My, she was yar.... It means, uh...easy to handle, quick to the helm, fast, right. Everything a boat should be, until she develops dry rot.” —Katherine Hepburn as Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story, a play written by Philip Barry (1939) and adapted for film (1940) by David Ogden Stewart and Waldo Salt (uncredited).

Salvage Chief Jim Mockford wrote an absolutely riveting article chronicling the saga of the Salvage Chief. Having spent nearly 35 years sailing as a crewmember, then captain, of West Coast tugboats, I well remember some of the epic salvage jobs that the Salvage Chief undertook. We always kept our eyes peeled after crossing the Columbia River bar and loved seeing the Salvage Chief at her berth in Astoria. I was also captain of the Arctic Salvor during the Exxon Valdez disaster.

The Salvage Chief did excellent work during that time.

I did note that there is one mistake in the story of the Kiska salvage of the Nozima Maru. I visited Kiska in July of 2008 while assisting some friends to bring a yacht 6

seahistory@gmail.com or Editor, Sea History, 7 Timberknoll Rd., Pocasset, MA 02559

John Emmel with the remains of Nozima Maru, on the beach at Kiska Island in 2008. from Kushiro, Hokkaido, Japan, to Seattle.

While there, we explored the area and found the wreck of the forward half of the Nozima Maru about halfway down the beach in Kiska Harbor. As you can see in the accompanying photograph, there is no mistaking the welded, raised lettering “Nozima Maru”.

Keep up the good work. You generate a wonderful magazine.

John Emmel Bellevue, Washington

to a recent US Fish & Wildlife assessment on the marine environment at Kiska Island, only the bow section of the Japanese ship remains in that location. Salvage Chief ’s log from that event notes that the ship was “cut in two between the #2 and #3 hold, patched and re-floated.” It was only the stern section that was being towed to Japan and subsequently lost at sea. The remains of the bow section are still visible from the beach at Kiska.

Also regarding the Nozima Maru, we heard from William Veigele of Santa Barbara, California, who sent us some of his photos from when he visited the Japanese ship, then still intact on the beach during World War II. Dr. Veigele writes: “I visited the Nozima Maru in 1944 while serving aboard the Patrol Craft USS PC-793 in the Aleutians. Here is a photo of the ship taken during that time that may be of interest to your readers. Anyone interested in other aspects and photos of WWII in the Aleutians may wish to visit www.astral publishing.com.

Nozima Maru, 1944

From the editor: It appears that both are correct, in part. In Jim Mockford’s article, he wrote that “Salvage Chief was hired to refloat the ship and tow it to Japan for scrapping.... The Nozima Maru was in tow when a heavy storm sank it off the coast of Japan and it was lost at sea....” According

photo courtesy william veigele

wikimedia.com, p.d.

Say Again? Nautical Jargon and the Landlubber.

Bravo Zulu to Dick Elam and Deirdre O’Regan for their salty feature on nautical language in film and fiction. (Sea History 162). My personal favorite comes from The Philadelphia Story (1940), when Tracy Lord, played by Katherine Hepburn, refers to the schooner yacht True Love, designed and built by her ex-husband C. K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant). “My, she was yar,” then she must explain “yar” to her lubberly fiancé. You knew then he didn’t stand a chance. I’m sure other readers have favorites as well. I’d love to read some of them.

J. F. Meany Albany, New York

We Welcome Your Letters! Please send correspondence to:

courtesy john emmel

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USS Ward’s First Commander I enjoyed reading James Bruns’s “Rediscovering USS Ward’s Namesake: James Harmon Ward, USN” in the last issue, but there is more to the story of USS Ward and Lt. William Outerbridge that your readers may enjoy.

While on patrol around 6:00am on 7 December 1941, USS Ward’s helmsman, as well as the duty officer, spotted a small conning tower following USS Antares into Pearl Harbor. Once on the bridge, Lt. Outerbridge concluded that it was an unescorted submarine operating in the restricted area and called for General Quarters. A patrolling PBY Catalina aircraft had also seen the conning tower and dropped smoke markers to mark its location. Lt. Outerbridge ordered the destroyer’s guns to commence firing as the ship charged toward the submarine. Gun No. 1 fired and overshot its mark. Gun No. 3 fired and its 4-inch shell hit the midget submarine on the starboard side right at the waterline, at the base of the conning tower. The sub began to founder. USS Ward cruised over the site where the submarine had been and dropped depth charges for good measure.

The PBY patrol plane then dropped its depth charges as well.

The submarine fired upon and sunk by the Ward was one of five mini-subs used by the Japanese in the attack on Pearl Harbor. The day after the attack, one of these submarines was found damaged and washed ashore. Designated HA-19, this 78-foot two-man midget submarine, designed to carry two torpedoes, is on display at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas.

On 28 August 2002, a research team from the University of Hawaii discovered a midget submarine on the seafloor in the area off the entrance to Pearl Harbor where USS Ward reported its encounter on 7 December 1941. Its two torpedoes were still in place. A hole was discovered at the base of the conning tower, exactly as reported by the Ward’s crew. The researchers’ report states that it is most likely that “the projectile went through the base of the conning tower and pressure hull and into the command compartment at the position of the periscope station.”

Being a WWI-era vessel, the Ward’s weapons and electronics were outdated by

Japanese mini sub on the seafloor with a hole at the base of the conning tower. this time, so in 1942 the vessel was sent to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard near Seattle, Washington, for refitting and conversion to a troop transport and supply ship.

She was then returned to duty in the South Pacific. During the refitting process, gun No. 3 was removed and stored. On 10 May 1958, the Navy presented the gun to the State of Minnesota as part of the state’s centennial celebration to recognize those persons from the state who served in the defense of their country. Most of the crew of USS Ward on 7 December 1941 were Navy reservists from Minnesota. The No. 3 gun currently sits on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul.

Ward’s first commander, William Woodward Outerbridge, followed in the footsteps of his father, Arthur William Outerbridge, another man of the sea. Born and raised in Bermuda, Arthur Outerbridge grew up and left the island, venturing to Hong Kong, where he became a merchant captain with the China Navigation Company (a company that still exists—its headquarters is now in Singapore). Arthur ultimately met and married Jessie Halliday Woodward, a US Army nurse stationed on Corregidor, in the Philippines. He was killed in a typhoon in 1912 and is buried in Iloilo, on the island of Panay in the Philippines. His widow, left back in Hong Kong with three small children, subsequently traveled with the children overland from China and across Europe to England, where she embarked on a ship that would get them back to the US, back to her hometown of Middleport, Ohio, a small town on the banks of the Ohio River.

She raised her children in Middleport; son William left for the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. Following graduation in 1927, he served in a variety of positions on ships and ashore, working his way up the chain of command. USS Ward was his first SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

us navy

command. Following that assignment, he was promoted to Lt. Commander and awarded the Navy Cross by Admiral Chester Nimitz. He was then assigned to the office of the Chief of Naval Transportation in Washington, DC. In June 1944, now Commander Outerbridge, he was assigned command of USS O’Brien, a brand-new destroyer commissioned earlier that year.

Following escort and patrol duty near England, the O’Brien participated in the D-Day invasion of Normandy, using her guns to

Lt. Commander William W. Outerbridge, USN; photo taken circa 1942. pound German positions near the landing zones. She then moved on to bombard German positions at Cape Levi near Cherbourg. There she received a direct hit from an enemy shore battery, killing thirteen and wounding nineteen sailors. The destroyer sought temporary repairs in England before returning to Boston for extensive repair work. By the end of 1944, Commander Outerbridge and the O’Brien were in the Western Pacific as part of the assault forces at Ormoc Bay, in the Philippines.

After World War II, Captain Outerbridge served in various staff positions in Washington. His last command at sea was the heavy cruiser USS Los Angeles (1953– 55). He retired from the US Navy in 1957 with the rank of Rear Admiral. He spent his retirement years in Tifton, Georgia, where he died on 19 September 1986. He is buried in the Oakridge Cemetery in Tifton. His naval and genealogical papers are on file at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, in Abilene, Kansas.

J. Robert Outerbridge Southport, North Carolina

Stobart at Noble An exhibition of oil paintings and drawings by the preeminent marine artist, John Stobart, friend and inspiration to John A. Noble

On view now through December 2018

Noble Maritime Collection

at the 1000 Richmond Terrace, Building D, Staten Island, NY 10301 (718) 447-6490 2 www.noblemaritime.org John Stobart, San Pedro: e Bark Vidette Towing into Port at Sunrise in 1890, oil on canvas, 1983; courtesy of Kensington Galleries

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 9

NMHS:

A CAUSE IN MOTION

The 2018 National Maritime Awards Dinner Mayflower Hotel • Washington, DC • 25 April 2018

photo by andrew snow

photo by andrew snow

With the 8th National Maritime Awards Dinner we brought together America’s maritime community in our nation’s capital, to advocate in strength for preserving our maritime heritage. The leaders of many of the country’s greatest maritime heritage institutions spearheaded this effort to unite behind the cause of increasing federal funding for our maritime heritage, in an evening dedicated to honoring very worthy individuals and their organizations, affirming the positive strides made in the maritime field, highlighting examples of excellence.

Dinner co-chairs Dr. Timothy Runyan and Denise Krepp and founding chairman Philip Webster expressed their gratitude to those who generously supported it: Fleet Sponsors J. W. Marriott Jr. and Boysie Bollinger, and Underwriter Howard Slotnick. These leadership gifts are indispensable to the success of the event.

John Warner, former senator of Virginia and a past NMHS Distinguished Service Award recipient, joined us to help welcome several colleagues from the Capitol: Rep. Joseph Courtney of Connecticut; Wisconsin’s Rep. Mike Gallagher; Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware; and, from Louisiana, Senators Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy, and Representatives Garret Graves, Clay Higgins, Steve Scalise, and former senator David Vitter. Joining the esteemed group of national legislators past and present was former Connecticut state senator Cathy Cook. Chief Warrant Officer W. Scott Epperson, USCG (Ret.), represented our partner in hosting the dinner, the US Coast Guard Chief Warrant and Warrant Officers Association.

What we can never predict is the excitement and fun of the gala as our most distinguished and gifted speakers take the podium and tell their stories. Our first presenter was former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge. Although his military service was with the US Army, he explained that it was through his work as the first Secretary of Homeland Security that he became involved with the Coast Guard and came to understand its vital role; he has since become an outspoken advocate for establishing the National Coast Guard Museum. Ridge was honored to be presenting the Alexander Hamilton Award to Boysie Bollinger for his support for the new National Coast Guard Museum being built in New London, Connecticut. The award is named in honor of the nation’s first treasury secretary who in 1790 established the US Revenue Cutter Service, a precursor of the US Coast Guard.

Boysie Bollinger spoke of the important role a museum plays in the community in which it is located. As a major supporter of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, he has witnessed how that institution has contributed to his city by keeping alive the stories of our “greatest generation,” while providing a boost to the local economy; he envisions a similar scenario in New London when the new museum is com(l-r) Dick Grahn, Tom Ridge, Boysie pleted. The museum will celebrate 228 years of Coast Guard service, but will also enBollinger, and Admiral Robert Papp. liven a formidable, historic American port town where whalers, chandlers, merchants, and maritime artisans conducted their business and where cadets come to be educated as future officers at the Coast Guard Academy.

In his remarks, Bollinger, who grew up around the family shipyard before taking over as its CEO, recounted what a huge impact the Coast Guard has on everyday life, from law enforcement to search and rescue, from pollution control to fisheries patrol, and much more. Its contribution to our success as a nation needs to be memorialized and interpreted for current and future generations of Americans. Admiral Robert J. Papp, 24th Commandant of the Coast Guard, noted the courage of J. D. Power, James Coleman, and Boysie Bollinger for their unrelenting dedication to this effort, at times through some difficult days. Guests in the crowded ballroom of the historic Mayflower Hotel listened to Bollinger in appreciation and admiration for his indispensable involvement in making this museum a reality.

The NMHS Distinguished Service Award was presented by Maryland’s Senator Benjamin Cardin to William Baker, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, for his and the organization’s unremitting work to keep the Bay alive. Baker’s legacy at the helm of the foundation is impressive: today, the city of Baltimore enjoys water quality it never thought possible, seagrasses have been restored with the largest growth in thirty years, and oysters are slowly coming back with the help of conservation programs. Will Baker succeeds by bringing stakeholders from a wide range of interests to the table to support the program: farmers, developers, and government officials—national, state, and local. He recounted that he remembers well the day his father was driving him to school when saw a “Save the Bay!” bumper sticker on the car ahead of them. He asked his dad if the Bay could actually die, and his father thoughtfully answered that indeed it might, unless somebody helps it. And helping it has been Will Baker’s life’s work. The Chesapeake Bay’s environmental turnaround is a global model for improving the health of a major ecosystem.

Ben Cardin and William Baker 10

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

photo by joseph rudinec

Admiral Jonathan Greenert, USN (Ret.), former Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), gave the final tribute of the evening in presenting the NMHS Distinguished Service Award to J. W. Marriott Jr. A career Navy man, Greenert explained how gratifying it is for the US Navy to have those who have served acknowledge the lifelong lessons they gleaned from their experience. He was especially pleased to hear Mr. Marriott include the lessons of character, teamwork, and integrity among those he took away from his military service and was impressed with how closely the tenets Mr. Marriott empowered the personnel on his staff to follow align with the Navy’s creed: put people first, pursue excellence, act with dignity, embrace change, and serve our world.

Mr. Marriott replied with a generous grin how much he was enjoying having a Lieutenant JG be introduced by a CNO. He recounted his carrier days when he ran the soda fountain and the laundry—he recalled his great relief when he wasn’t court marshalled after having starched the admiral’s pajamas. He was grateful to have had the Navy experience. As Boysie Bollinger had remarked and Marriott reiterated: “Service is the key.”

In addition to the awards presentation and the musical performance by the USMMA Glee Club, this year’s event also featured the Washington Invitational Marine Art Exhibition, a one-night-only exhibition of works by a select group of contemporary masters from the American Society of Marine Artists, organized by acclaimed artist Patrick O’Brien.

Jonathan Greenert with J. W. Marriott Jr. Highlights of the evening were the incredible video introductions by award winningdocumentarian and NMHS vice chairman Richardo Lopes and photographer/editor Alessandro Lopes, and, of course, the incomparable wit and grace of Master of Ceremonies Gary Jobson. As so many in the room would concur, the maritime world is a small one. Also joining us for the evening was US Maritime Administrator RADM Mark Buzby, USN (Ret.), who—it turns out—had been coached by Gary Jobson when he was a midshipman at King’s Point.

When Jobson introduced him, Admiral Buzby told us that his old sailing coach gave him some of the most useful advice he ever received and which he followed time and time again in his many years at sea—“If you can’t tie a knot, tie a lot.”

All in all, it proved a spectacular evening, with the movers and shakers in the maritime world enjoying meeting with the guests in attendance who represent the myriad organizations and interests related to ships, seafaring, and the sea. —Burchenal Green, president US Maritime Administrator RADM Mark H. Buzby, USN (Ret.) introduces the US Merchant Marine Academy Kings Point Glee Club.

photo by andrew snow

photo by andrew snow

Executive directors, curators, and trustees of the following organizations were included on the dinner committee gathered here, or attended as guests: the American Merchant Marine Museum, the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Conservation International, Historic Ships of Baltimore, Independence Seaport Museum, the Sultana Education Foundation, the Naval History & Heritage Command, the Naval Historical Foundation, the Historic Naval Ships Association, Mystic Seaport Museum, South Street Seaport Museum, North Carolina Maritime Museums, Upstream Alliance, the US Navy Memorial, the Navy League of the United States, the Naval Submarine League, the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, Maine Maritime Museum, the Shipbuilders Council of America, the Association of Maryland Pilots, the Mariners’ Museum and Park, the USCG Chief Warrant and Warrant Officers Association, as well as the National Coast Guard Museum Association and the National Maritime Historical Society.

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Take advantage of this unique opportunity to own an original oil painting by renowned marine artist John Stobart

Aucoot Cove: The View to Converse Point by John Stobart Framed in an intricately carved gold frame 28 ½” long x 21 ¼” high Image size 19 ½” long x 12” high      In the late 1980s Stobart began to focus on his first love of on-site painting, creating a body of work recognizable for its fresh and spontaneous response to the moods and characteristics of nature. His paintings are featured in prestigious museums, galleries, and collections all over the world. He has donated this exquisite painting to the National Maritime Historical Society in memory of his dear friend, colleague, and shipmate, Peter Stanford (1927–2016), long-time president of the Society and editor of Sea History. Now this magnificent original painting can be yours for $70,000.

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To order, call 1-800-221-NMHS (6647), ext. 0., or e-mail merchandise@seahistory.org. NYS residents add applicable sales tax.

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

NMHS: A CAUSE IN MOTION Council of American Maritime Museums 2018 Annual Conference – Bermuda

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National Museum of Bermuda

courtesy nmb

deirdre o’regan

courtesy nmb

aritime museums serve as the frontline in preserving the material culture of our seafaring past and interpreting it to audiences young and old, landlubbers and old salts alike. These museums vary from publicly funded large institutions to small seasonal facilities, some operating on shoestring budgets. What they share in common is the mission to keep our maritime heritage alive by engaging the public. Each spring, directors, curators, and educators gather at a host museum for the Council of American Maritime Museums annual conference. This year, panel topics included how to best attract and engage younger generations, and how maritime museums can prepare for—and recover from—disasters, both natural and man-made. In 2014 back-to-back hurricanes in less than a week’s time severely damaged the National Museum of Bermuda (formerly the Bermuda Maritime Museum), housed at the historic Royal Naval Dockyard, including considerable injury to historic structures, facilities, and artifacts. The museum’s director, Elena Strong, and her staff shared lessons learned from the experience, and a considerable portion of the conference addressed disaster planning. As most maritime museums are situated in waterfront locations, this is a pressing concern for all in the field.

I attended this year’s conference to address the topic of how to more effectively reach young people and gave a presentation encouraging museum leaders to get involved with an already dedicated group of young scholars through National History Day, with which the National Maritime Historical Society is actively involved. More than 600,000 middle and high school students participate in National History Day events each year, and these young people should be further encouraged by their local maritime museums, to keep their interest going and expose them to maritime topics for their research projects.

Out at the National Museum of Bermuda grounds, we were excited to tour the recently completed renovations and get an opportunity to visit both with Burchenal Green discusses National History Day during Dr. Edward Harris, who just retired after decades at the helm, and Elena Strong, her presentation at the 2018 CAMM conference. who takes over as the museum’s executive director.

I was particularly impressed with how many museums are trying to attract new audiences, and to re-inspire longtime members, through innovative exhibits and programs. Duncan MacLeod from the Vancouver Maritime Museum discussed that institution’s recent efforts to engage the Japanese community of Vancouver by producing an exhibit on the local fishing community, whose fleet of boats was destroyed during World War II when Japanese-Canadians in the region were interned. Nantucket Historical Association’s Michael Harrison described how his organization is reconnecting to the local community by looking beyond the classic Nantucket whaling history and inviting Nantucketers to share their contemporary relationships with watercraft of all kinds. Jane Downing of our host museum, the National Museum of Bermuda, gave a fascinating presentation on 400 years of piloting in Bermuda, describing how for many years in its early history, Bermuda Dr. Edward Harris gave CAMM conferees a hugely pilots were nearly all slaves, and the nature of how that played out in maritime informative tour of the museum, covering the island’s commerce and society ashore. history and the recent recovery from two devastating Bermuda is famous for its shipwrecks, and the museum has long been active hurricanes that tore the roof off the museum and dam- in conducting maritime archaeological fieldwork and research. There were several aged the facilities and artifacts. presentations examining shipwreck archaeology. Jim Delgado gave a presentation showing how new technologies can not only advance underwater archaeological research, but how the latest communication technology allows live fieldwork to be shared with museums far removed from the site through cyberspace.

There were, of course, many other presentations covering what’s going on in maritime museums across the country. The best way to learn about them is to stop by your local museum or visit those near where you are on vacation this summer and see what they have to offer. You can find a directory and location map of maritime museums on our website, www.seahistory.org, or at the CAMM website at www.councilofamericanmaritimemuseums.org.

Next year CAMM will meet at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum, in Manitowoc, home of the World War II submarine USS Cobia (SS-245). —Burchenal Green, NMHS President

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NMHS: A CAUSE IN MOTION

Sails Over Ice and Seas

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The Life and Times of the Schooner Ernestina-Morrissey

by Burchenal Green, NMHS President

Alessandro Lopes and Rick Lopes filming at the shipyard.

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photo by robert mitchell photography

courtesy voyage digital media

courtesy ernestina-morrissey

ore than three decades ago, NMHS vice chairman Rick Lopes first laid eyes on the schooner Ernestina when his uncle asked him if he could film her arrival in Newport and New Bedford, after she was gifted to the people of the United States by the government of Cabo Verde. Subsequently, he was introduced to then-NMHS president, Peter Stanford, who was instrumental in saving the vessel, along with the Friends of the Ernestina and other devotees. These initial moments were the beginnings of a remarkable quest to document the life and times of the historic Ernestina-Morrissey.

Launched in 1894 as the Effie M. Morrissey, the wooden Fredonia-class schooner was one of the thousands of hardy Gloucester fishing schooners built and launched from shipyards in the hamlet of Essex, Massachusetts, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In her long career working the North Atlantic, she fished and carried cargo out of Cape Ann, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland (1894–1925); explored the Arctic with Captain Bob Bartlett (1926–1945); was renamed Ernestina and crisscrossed the Atlantic as a Cape Verde packet, bringing immigrants and cargo to and from the United States and conducting inter-island trade (1948–1968); and advanced educational programming and sail training for people of all ages (1982–present). And in her wake, the Ernestina-Morrissey has left an indelible mark on America’s history and her future. Today she serves as a connection to our maritime, exploration, cultural, and economic past.

After many years of stops and starts, and a great deal of research and filming, Sails Over Ice and Seas—The Life and Times of the Schooner Ernestina-Morrissey, the multi-part documentary series produced by the National Maritime Historical Society and our vice chair, Richardo R. Lopes, executive producer/director of Voyage Digital Media, and co-producer/cameraman/editor Alessandro Lopes, is well on its way.

The series has been made possible by the generous support of several institutions and individuals, particularly Gerry and Marguerite Lenfest.

When Captain Bob Bartlett took young men to the Arctic on his expeditions aboard the Morrissey in the 1940s, Gerry Lenfest was scheduled to join them on the next voyage, but the outbreak of WWII changed everybody’s plans. Mr. Lenfest nevertheless remained intimately acquainted with the ship over the years, and it is his and Mrs. Lenfest’s Ernestina-Morrissey is in the middle of a complete rebuild generosity that is enabling us to tell this story, as well as supporting the at the Shipyard at Boothbay Harbor in Maine. current restoration of the ship itself at a Maine shipyard.

This documentary project far surpasses the story of an individual ship. Rather, the series serves to unfold and weave a multitude of maritime themes, reaching back to ancient voyaging, the Vikings, and the colonial empires of Europe. It examines our nation’s economic and independent development, spurred on by shipbuilding, fishing, the sea, exploration and immigration, and marine and environmental sciences. These rich connections come alive through the history of this vessel and the eras in which she sailed and flourished. We think of Ernestina–Morrissey’s story as the story of America.

Rick Lopes explains, “The documentary series would not be possible without the incredible amount of support and participation of organizations, institutions, and individuals across the United States, Canada, and Cabo Verde. This schooner is truly a remarkable vessel with a compelling story, and we are traveling far and wide to interview sailors, professors, authors, shipwrights, artisans, scientists, Cape Verdeans and the like, as well as conducting re-enactments, to unfurl the life and times of the Ernestina-Morrissey.” The documentary is still a work in progress, and Rick encourages anyone who has photographs, archival film, or a personal connection to the schooner to contact either NMHS or Voyage Digital Media, and stay apprised of the ship’s restoration via the Schooner Ernestina-Morrissey Association website (www.ernestina.org; www.voyagedigitalmedia.com; www.seahistory.org)

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

Tell them you saw their ad in

Sea History!

MAINE MARITIME MUSEUM This is Maine. The rest is history.

This summer, Maine Maritime Museum invites you to come aboard

Mary E

Anne T. Converse Photography

Neith, 1996, Cover photograph

Wood, Wind and Water

A Story of the Opera House Cup Race of Nantucket Photographs by Anne T. Converse Text by Carolyn M. Ford Live vicariously through the pictures and tales of classic wooden yacht owners who lovingly restore and race these gems of the sea.

“An outstanding presentation deserves ongoing recommendation for both art and nautical collections.”

10”x12” Hardbound book; 132 pages, 85 full page color photographs; Price $45.00 For more information contact: Anne T. Converse Phone: 508-728-6210 anne@annetconverse.com www.annetconverse.com

Celebrate the launch of the newly restored 1906 schooner Mary E – the oldest Maine-built fishing vessel still afloat.

www.MaineMaritimeMuseum.org

243 Washington Street • Bath, Maine • 207-443-1316

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 15

First Lady Harriet Rebecca Lane

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and the Cutters That Have Borne Her Name before her fifth birthday; two more would pass away when she was still a young woman. Her mother passed away in 1839 when Harriet was only nine, and her father died two years later.

Harriet Lane’s maternal uncle, Pennsylvania’s Democratic senator James Buchanan, adopted her after her father’s death.

Nicknamed “Nunc” by his niece, Buchanan found himself the guardian of a lively 11-year-old girl he nicknamed “Hal.” Senator Buchanan felt that his ward would

library of congress

ust over 160 years ago, at a time when women remained relatively invisible in public life, Harriet Rebecca Lane was the nation’s most politically powerful and celebrated woman. She was the first to receive the title of “First Lady” during her time in the White House, and she was the first female namesake of a United States revenue cutter.

Born in 1830, Harriet Lane was the sixth of seven siblings; ultimately she would survive them all, with four siblings dying

by William H. Thiesen

Pennsylvania Senator James Buchanan adopted his eleven-year-old niece, Harriet Lane, after she was orphaned in 1841. He was elected 15th president of the United States in 1856.

p.d. image, courtesy wikipedia

be spoiled by over-exposure to Washington society, so he sent her to the Merritt Boarding School in Charleston, Virginia (now West Virginia), for three years. Lane was widely read and well educated for her day, completing an additional two years at the Visitation Convent School in Georgetown.

Lane and Buchanan grew very close, and he relied on her judgment and political wisdom, even in her youth.

In 1854, after living a few years in Washington with her uncle, Harriet Lane traveled to London when Buchanan became ambassador to the Court of St. James.

There, she dined with Queen Victoria, danced with Prince Albert, and received the title of “Ambassador’s Wife” from the Queen. In less than two years in London Lane won over the hearts of English society including a number of unsuccessful British suitors.

Harriet Rebecca Lane (1830–1903).

When her uncle and guardian was elected president, Lane moved to Washington, DC, with him and became America’s first “First Lady.”

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SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

us coast guard collection

When Buchanan was elected president of the United States two years later, Harriet Lane moved with him to the White House and took on the role of hostess. The new bachelor president charged his niece with the responsibility for redecorating the White House staterooms and arranging all events on his social calendar. As the nation’s first to be called “First Lady,” she hosted White House dinner parties every week that included leaders from both the North and South during a time of deep political divisions. Lane possessed a combination of tact, poise, discretion, and political instinct that won her national popularity and the moniker “Democratic Queen.”

Profile line drawing of the original US Revenue Cutter Harriet Lane, showing her sail rig, side paddlewheels, and coppered bottom.

Illustration by John Tilley.

eastman house

than fifteen years and had served as a captain for three. Faunce won national acclaim for the cutter’s essential role in supporting the Punitive Expedition as it steamed up the Paraná River to Paraguay. The expedition’s Navy commodore, William Shubrick, reported:

Very rare photograph showing James Buchanan and Harriet Lane on the far left, with President James Polk and his wife Sarah in the center, and Dolley Madison to the right.

In 1857, Buchanan’s close friend and treasury secretary, Howell Cobb, recommended that Lane serve as the namesake for a newly built ship in the US Revenue Cutter Service fleet. The 180-foot cutter Harriet Lane was commissioned in 1858 and would become the Revenue Cutter Service’s first successful side paddlewheel steamer. Built during the transition between sail and steam, the steam-powered cutter was rigged as a two-masted brigantine as a backup in case her steam powerplant malfunctioned. Built with iron strapping in her wooden hull for structural strength, Harriet Lane’s top speed of 12 knots under steam made her one of the

day’s swiftest Federal ships. She carried a powerful 8-inch rifled gun, four 32-pound cannons, and one 12-pound boat howitzer, making her not only the fastest, but also the largest and most heavily armed cutter in the revenue cutter fleet. After the vessel’s commissioning, Lane sent a portrait of herself to the cutter, which she affectionately called “my boat,” and she developed a close relationship with the crew.

Revenue Cutter Harriet Lane’s operational fame began in her first year as part of the 1858 South American Punitive Expedition against Paraguay. The cutter’s first captain, John Faunce, had been an officer in the Revenue Cutter Service for more

…it is proper that I express my sense of appreciation of the skill and zeal with which Captain Faunce has used this very efficient vessel in extricating us from our difficulties. USS Fulton would have been lost altogether, if not for the assistance afforded by the Harriet Lane.

The cutter returned to New York in 1860, and for the next year performed her usual duties as part of the Revenue Cutter Service. During this period, Miss Lane requested her namesake cutter to host visitors and dignitaries in Washington, DC. These dignitaries included the Prince of Wales—later King Edward VII—with whom Lane had established a relationship while living in London. During the prince’s 1860 visit to the US, the revenue cutter carried him, Lane, and President Buchanan on a cruise from the capital to George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate. Forty years later, the prince extended a personal invitation to Lane to attend his coronation, which she accepted.

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 17

ordered a 32-pound cannon shot fired across the bow of the steamer, which eventually hoisted an American flag; Faunce allowed her to pass into the harbor. The steamer turned out to be the South Carolina steamship Nashville, which later became an infamous blockade-runner and Confederate cruiser. Regarding the shot fired across the Nashville’s bow, Faunce later stated that it “had the desired effect.”

Historians consider it the first naval shot of the Civil War. With shellfire raining down on Fort Sumter, and no protection for the Federal troop ships, further relief efforts were futile.

The fort’s commanding officer finally ordered the white flag raised and the relief expedition evacuated the troops from Sumter. Harriet Lane then escorted the troop ships back to New York.

Harriet Lane continued to serve a vital role in Union naval operations. In the spring of 1861, she served as a guard ship in Hampton Roads, where she shelled Confederate strongholds behind enemy lines.

In August, the Lane participated in the Battle of Hatteras Inlet on the North Carolina coast. This campaign was one of the first amphibious operations of the war, and it resulted in a major Union victory. Of the cutter’s performance, Harper’s Weekly reported, “Harriet Lane opened fire. With her rifled guns she did good execution.

library of congress

Cutter Harriet Lane also played a vital role in the Civil War’s first combat operation. With the April 1861 standoff between Federal troops at Fort Sumter and Secessionist forces in Charleston, South Carolina, President Abraham Lincoln authorized an expedition to relieve the fort. The expedition included ships carrying 500 troops and an armed escort that included Harriet Lane. During the voyage south from New York, a severe storm separated the cutter and her convoy, so she arrived off Charleston on Thursday, 11 April, in advance of the rest of the ships. On shore, news spread quickly of the Federal ship’s arrival. Early the next morning, Confederate guns at Fort Moultrie opened fire on Sumter to prevent Federal troops from landing. These were the first artillery shots of the Civil War. Later that morning, transports for the expedition found Harriet Lane at a prearranged rendezvous point and the revenue cutter tried to escort them to beleaguered Fort Sumter. By the time the ships neared the fort, the artillery fire grew so intense that they had to turn back. Harriet Lane returned to her station guarding the harbor entrance and later that day the cutter observed the approach of a steamer flying no flag. The Lane ordered the unidentified vessel to heave to and show her colors. The ship ignored these signals and continued toward Charleston Harbor. Captain Faunce

Captain John Faunce, commanding officer of the US Revenue Cutter Harriet Lane at the onset of the Civil War. He ordered the cutter’s gun crews to fire the first naval shot of the Civil War outside Charleston Harbor.

us coast guard collection

The Cutter Harriet Lane Fires Across the Bow of Nashville by Howard Koslow.

USRC Harriet Lane forces the merchant steamer Nashville to show her colors during the attack on Fort Sumter, 12 April 1861.

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SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

library of congress

Drawing of the capture of the forts at Cape Hatteras in the Civil War, 1861, by Alfred R. Waud. Harriet Lane is at left, between the beach and the steam frigates Minnesota, Wabash, and Susquehannah, and the sailing frigate USS Cumberland.

Several projectiles going into the [Confederate] battery and one going directly through the ramparts. The fire was so hot that the enemy went into a bombproof… and soon the white flag rose.” With the fall of Forts Hatteras and Clark on either side of Hatteras Inlet, Union forces captured 25 heavy cannon and 1,000 Confederate troops. The cutter’s fusillade had such a demoralizing effect on the troops at Fort Clark that Confederate forces later coined the term to be “Harriet Lane’d,” meaning to suffer or be demoralized.

The Lane had proven so useful to the war effort that the US Navy assumed official control over her by the end of that first summer. In September 1861, Navy commander Richard Wainwright relieved Captain Faunce of command, and the Harriet Lane was turned over to the US Navy.

USS Harriet Lane served in a number of notable assignments as flagship of the Potomac River Flotilla and later as flagship for Admiral David Porter. She participated in the captures of New Orleans and Pensacola; initial attacks on Confederate stronghold Vicksburg, Mississippi; and the first Union capture of Galveston, Texas. In January 1863, the Confederates launched a surprise attack on Union forces in Galveston, retaking the town and capturing USS Harriet Lane. During the attack, Captain Wainwright died in hand-to-hand combat, and, in a unique and tragic twist of fate, Harriet Lane’s executive officer, Lieutenant

Commander Edward Lea, died in the arms of his father, Major Albert Lea, a Confederate officer engaged in the attack.

Under the Confederate flag, the former US Revenue cutter became a blockade runner and slipped through the Union blockade of Galveston, only to sit out the war’s final days in Havana, Cuba. There she remained until 1867, when Captain Faunce and a crew traveled to Cuba and returned Harriet Lane to New York. The Federal Government later sold the Lane to the merchant Elliott Ritchie, who renamed the former cutter for himself.

Ritchie removed her engines and re-rigged her as a barque for the lumber trade to South America. In May of 1884, the Elliott Ritchie set sail from Georgia with a load of lumber destined for Buenos Aires. She would never return. Hit by a series of storms on her southbound voyage, the old cutter’s seams opened up and she began taking on water. Her crew abandoned ship as she foundered off the coast of South America.

In 1860, before the Civil War had erupted, President Buchanan had declined to run for a second term. After Abraham Lincoln assumed the presidency, Buchanan and his niece moved to Wheatland, the outgoing president’s country estate near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Free from the pressures of the White House, Harriet Lane began a long-term relationship with wealthy Baltimore banker Henry Johnston; they

married in 1865. The couple had two children, boys separated in age by two years.

A happy ending would elude her still.

In the years following the war, she suffered the loss of everyone that she held dear. In 1868, her beloved Uncle Nunc passed away at the age of 77. Within a few years, misfortune struck again with the loss of both her young boys to rheumatic fever. Not long after her sons died, her husband Henry passed away as well. She never remarried.

After these personal blows, Lane returned to Washington, DC, and transformed her adversity into a life of service and philanthropy. In memory of her children, she used her inherited fortune to endow a home for invalid children at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, with the stipulation that the facility treat patients of all races, creeds, and nationalities. The facility evolved into a pediatric medical center with a national reputation, and it continues to serve thousands of children and their families each year. Lane also left a bequest for the establishment of St. Albans School in Washington, DC, which will soon celebrate its 110th anniversary. In addition, her interest in art resulted in an endowment to the Smithsonian Institution with the donation of her personal art collection, forming some of the original artwork held by the National Art Gallery.

A second cutter named for Lane was built in 1926, more than twenty years after the death of her namesake. Harriet Lane II

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us coast guard

The modern 270-foot medium-endurance cutter Harriet Lane (WMEC-903).

Haitian and Cuban migrants flowing across the Windward Pass and Florida Straits toward the United States. During this mass migration, she rescued more than 2,400 migrants, with operational oversight of fifteen cutters and numerous aircraft. In 1996, Harriet Lane III served as on-scene commander for the initial search and recovery of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island, New York. In the summer of 2000, she served as command ship for the task unit supporting the highly successful Operation Sail 2000. For a time, she steamed under the command of Paul Zukunft, former commandant of the Coast Guard.

Harriet Lane III continues to perform her multi-faceted role of search and rescue, maritime safety and security, counter-drug

us coast guard collection

was a 125-foot patrol boat, commonly known as a “buck-and-a-quarter,” designed to interdict smugglers during Prohibition.

She was homeported first in Boston, and later in Provincetown and Gloucester, Massachusetts. For a few years during the Rum War, she steamed under the command of Maurice Jester, who became the first Coast Guard skipper to sink a U-boat in World War II and the service’s first Navy Cross Medal recipient of the war. In 1941, Harriet Lane II was outfitted for buoy tending and conducted East Coast convoy escort duty during the war. After the war, she served as an air-sea rescue vessel for the Fifth Coast Guard District and was homeported in Norfolk, Virginia. She was finally de-commissioned and sold in 1946 after a distinguished twenty-year career.

The current cutter named for Harriet Lane was commissioned in May 1984 in Washington, DC. She was the first federal ship commissioned in that city since the late 1800s. USCGC Harriet Lane III (WMEC-903), is the third of thirteen “Famous”-class 270-foot medium endurance cutters; she carries a crew of 100 officers and enlisted personnel. She can steam at nearly twenty knots and carries a helicopter and rigid-hulled inflatable over-thehorizon boats for maritime interdiction and rescue missions.

In 1994, as the on-scene commander for Operation Able Manner, Harriet Lane III directed the rescue of thousands of

Prohibition-era photo of a 125-foot cutter of the same class as the Harriet Lane II. 20

and migrant operations, regulating living marine resources and national defense missions. The year 2003 saw history come full circle to her 1858 ancestor, when Harriet Lane III served as maritime security sentry for Charleston Harbor during the Operation Iraqi Freedom load-out. During the same cruise, she patrolled the Caribbean, seizing two tons of cocaine headed for the United States, and then rescued scores of Cuban migrants attempting to reach American shores in unseaworthy boats. In 2005, Harriet Lane III played a vital role in the Coast Guard response to Hurricane Katrina, and in 2010, she participated in the response to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Last year, Harriet Lane III helped seize a cocaine shipment with a street value of more than $32 million.

Today, the story of Harriet Lane is largely unknown to the American public.

Ms. Lane was devoted to her nation, her family, and the cutter named in her honor.

Few First Ladies have achieved the political success in such troubled political times as Harriet Lane. In 1903, she died of cancer in Rhode Island at the age of 73. The record of her life and legacy remain with us through the institutions she helped found and the line of distinguished Coast Guard Cutters that have borne her name.

William H. Thiesen, PhD, is the Atlantic Area Historian for the United States Coast Guard. A regular contributor to Sea History, Dr. Thiesen was awarded the 2017 Rodney N. Houghton Award for the best feature article in Sea History. For more information on USCG history, visit www.uscg.mil/history.

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

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SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 21

Historic Ships on a Lee Shore

Schooner Roseway,

by Eden Leonard

images for this article courtesy world ocean school

Sailing a New Course in the 21st Century

W

photo by a. c. church, courtesy nps.gov

hen the big schooner with late November of 1925. The schooner was the tan-bark sails rounded overly built in comparison to other vessels up and dropped anchor late of her time: drifts between the ceiling last fall off St. Croix, the planking, slightly larger scantlings on the locals cheered in a way the crew had not frames and beam-shelf, for example. Her experienced before. Schooner Roseway has owner, Harold Hathaway of Taunton, Masspent the last dozen winters running sail sachusetts, maintained a reputation as the training and educational programs out of proverbial sailor with a woman in every St. Croix. When back-to-back hurricanes port. Some speculate that Roseway’s name devastated the Virgin Islands in fall of 2017, came from one of his mistresses, but the Roseway’s crewmembers were not sure what vessel is just as likely to be named after they would find when they made their way Roseway Bank—an offshore shoal south south for the winter, or even if they should of Roseway Head, Nova Scotia. go. But, Roseway’s story is one of ambition, resilience, and hope. Her history reaches back to the era of Grand Banks fishing schooners of the 1920s and can be traced through a number of careers in her working life, but her current mission and the experience that students gain under her sail is unparalleled.

While Roseway’s history is colorful and varied, the details have proved difficult to verify. It is known that she was designed

by John James of the J. F. James shipyard in Essex, Massachusetts, and launched in Roseway as a newly built fishing yacht, 1926.

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The schooner’s early days were gentle compared to her sisters.’ As Hathaway’s personal fishing yacht, she spent her summers fishing for swordfish and her winters in port, covered and tended by a boatkeeper whose diligence went as far as washing the coal before it came aboard. According to legend, Roseway caught a recordsetting seventy-eight swordfish in a single day in 1934, an incredible feat considering that they were being harpooned from the bowsprit.

It is unclear as to how long Hathaway owned Roseway. It is believed that before she was purchased by the Boston Harbor Pilot Association in December of 1941, she had been sold to a fisherman and fished commercially for a time.

The sixteen-year-old schooner was put into service as one of two pilot boats working in Boston Harbor at the time. The other schooner, named Pilot, also had been built at James shipyard. The two pilot schooners alternated weeks of service, yearround, no matter the weather on station, doing long tacks to and from Graves Light SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

Station outside the harbor, waiting for inbound and outbound shipping. Shortly after the United States entered World War II, Roseway and Pilot where both taken into service by the Coast Guard; their pilots were made temporary reserve officers.

Roseway as Boston Pilot Schooner #2.

Painted gray and carrying a 50-caliber machine gun on deck, Roseway guided ships to safety inside the protected harbor through waters devoid of lights and navigational aids, and defended with antisubmarine netting and minefields. For her service as a Coast Guard Reserve vessel assigned to the First Naval District (New England), Roseway, designated as CGR-812, was formally recognized by the USCG for outstanding wartime service. After the war, she continued her work as a harbor pilot and served in this capacity until 1972. Roseway was the last sailing vessel serving as a pilot boat in the United States when she retired from this duty after more than three decades of service.

Roseway was sold by the Boston Harbor Pilot Association when it finally committed to faster, more efficient powerboats. Her new owner was a Boston syndicate that wanted to return her to swordfishing work.

After an extensive refit where steel bulkheads, a galley house, and a pulpit on the end of the bowsprit were installed, Roseway headed out from Boston, bound for the fishing grounds in the North Atlantic. Unfortunately for the owners, Roseway’s luck at fishing did not pan out. After a few years of losses, the syndicate sold the schooner to Captains Orvil Young and Jim Sharp of the Yankee Schooner Company in February of 1975. They motored her home to Camden, Maine, engines deafening, on a

freezing February day to get started on converting her to a windjammer. Sharp and Young added cabins and bunks for thirtysix passengers, built a new galley, installed modern heads, and cleaned her up to make her comfortable and appealing for the passenger trade.

In 1985, Roseway was sold to another seafaring entrepreneur who was seeking a life on the sea. He expanded the ship’s range, and Roseway began sailing to the

Caribbean for the winter months and returning to New England for the summer season. After almost fifteen years of this satisfying but relentless year-round work without any major maintenance periods, the Coast Guard deemed Roseway unfit to sail with passengers and pulled the vessel’s COI (Certificate of Inspection). Unable to make her way, Roseway was ultimately repossessed in the late 1990s by the bank that held her mortgage.

Roseway painted off-white for her work in the windjammer trade. Roseway sailed for the Yankee Schooner Company out of Camden, Maine, between 1975 and 1985 before being sold to another owner, who expanded her passenger cruises to the Caribbean in winter and back to New England waters for the summer season. After fifteen years of this year-round work, Roseway was looking tired; the Coast Guard inspectors agreed and pulled her COI, the kiss of death for many a commercial sailing vessel.

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 23

Roseway abandoned at the dock in Maine.

For many months, Roseway sat in disrepair waiting for redemption. After a failed auction, Roseway was moved from her berth in Camden, Maine, to an old beat-up pier in Rockland Harbor, where she was left to sink at the dock. Although the old schooner sat in the mud and filled with water, she was not forgotten entirely.

While the schooner was languishing at the dock in Rockland, two New England mariners, Dwight Deckelmann and Abby Kidder, had been dreaming of an organization that would engage young people in academics and community building through the challenges of voyaging. Feeling called to action after 9/11, Deckelmann and Kidder founded World Ocean School in 2002 and began their search for a suitable vessel worthy of their mission. They had seen Roseway sailing along midcoast Maine in earlier years and learned she might be available. They both had fond memories of seeing her under sail in a stiff breeze, always a breathtaking sight. As only the ignorance of youth will allow, the two wrote a letter asking the bank to donate Roseway to World

Ocean School. A few days later, the two were in a meeting with the bank president, and he agreed rather easily to sell Roseway, if the two could arrange to move the boat by the end of the month. For a formal $10 bank transaction, Roseway became the heart of World Ocean School.

Alongside friends and Roseway admirers, Dwight and Abby set to work. With six sump pumps and extension cords, they were able to get her floating in 24 hours— just in time for the tow out to a borrowed mooring. After a thorough inspection and survey, they gutted the interior spaces and brought in shipwrights to help make a plan for the vessel’s future. Shipwright Dave Short of North Atlantic Shipbuilding and Repair came up with an estimate of $1.5 million for the restoration. Conveniently, just down the coast in Boothbay Harbor, Samples Shipyard had just had a large project cancel and suddenly their 500-ton railway was available. After many meetings, an agreement was finally reached, and Roseway’s future looked bright for the first time in many years. One dark night in October 2002, Roseway was towed to Boothbay with only two crewmembers onboard; on the next high tide, she was hauled.

Once she was out of the water, the work began. With the shipyard crew working four ten-hour days a week, and the World Ocean School team working six to seven days a week, things happened fast.

All of the topside planking needed replac-

ing, as did a majority of her amid-ship framing, keel bolts, sections of the keelson, deck, deck beams, and galley house. Once the structural work was completed, her interior was refitted to accommodate thirty-six crew: heads, bunks, two cabins, galley, and a new engine and engineering room. Just before sliding down the rails, the yard crew stepped a new foremast. After eighteen months of hard work, Roseway

The 2002 restoration effort included gutting the ship’s interior and replacing much of the frames amidships and planks fore and aft. was ready. The project came in six months early and under-budget at $1.2 million.

After sea trials and Coast Guard inspections, her COI was reissued and Roseway set sail for the Great Lakes and her first voyage with World Ocean School.

Returned to a seaworthy condition after an 18-month restoration period, in 2004 Roseway was re-issued her COI by the USCG and got underway for her first voyage under the World Ocean School flag.

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SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

The following season, Roseway made her way to Boston. Roseway had served Boston well in the past, and she returned to Boston Harbor, this time as a floating classroom to offer programs for the city’s underserved youth. Day programs and sleep-aboard residential programs gave students the opportunity to set Roseway’s tan-bark sails, become part of a unique and authentic sailing community, and engage in World Ocean School’s curriculum and community values—teamwork, communication, trust, and self-worth.

As the summer sailing season came to an end, Roseway set a course for warmer waters, south to St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, to carry out her mission in the Caribbean. World Ocean School offered programs to St. Croix’s public school students, many of whom had never seen their island from seaward. Roseway quickly became a local celebrity for the impact and perspectives she afforded underserved island students, and Christiansted became her official winter port.

World Ocean School programs aboard Roseway start with an opening circle to discuss values, like trust and teamwork. Once onboard, students raise sail, and rotate through a variety of lessons bringing academics to life through seamanship and hands-on applications of math and science. Here, students practice coastal piloting and navigation; check out the worm gear in the wheel box, connecting the ship’s helm to the rudder; and conquer fears in a climb up the rig.

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 25

Onboard, learning through hands-on work is key to a successful experience. Students are empowered through opportunities to steer, haul on lines, and handle sails aboard Roseway, all under the watchful eye of a professional crew.

2018 brings World Ocean School into its thirteenth year, and the transformative experiences that this vessel, its leadership, and its crew have afforded to its students over the years has been tremendous. Roseway has welcomed thousands of passengers aboard in both Boston and St. Croix.

With the help of these public sails, education grants, and generous donors, she has welcomed more than 20,000 students onboard for both daysails and residential programs.

Flagship programs include the Summer Ambassador Program, an open enrollment voyage for students from around the globe to come together, learn to sail, and serve communities they visit along the way.

Roseway is also the vessel used for New Hampshire-based Proctor Academy’s Ocean Classroom, a nine-week semesterat-sea program. Students disembark having 26

learned lessons in leadership, teamwork, and perseverance, as well as formal studies in maritime history, literature, science, and navigation.

Back in New England waters during the summer, World Ocean School strives to develop seagoing opportunities for students in the Boston Public School system.

In 2017, fifteen high school students from Boston Day and Evening Academy (BDEA) sailed from Boston to Canada as part of the International Summer Learning Voyage. Students who enroll in BDEA have attended other schools where they have struggled academically, been held back one or more times, or felt lost, unsafe, or unengaged. These students credit this experience with empowering them to think more creatively and critically about their individual futures, while relying on the strong bonds they developed with each other to

support them in their lives back ashore.

Last fall, as the summer sailing season drew to a close, hurricane season roared across the Caribbean and ravaged the island communities in its path, including Roseway’s winter home island—St. Croix. While the programs the ship has been running in St. Croix during the winter months were certainly beneficial to the communities she served, this year they became invaluable.

Hurricanes Irma and Maria, both category five storms, left towns and cities without power, homes without roofs, and communities without hope. Eight of the island’s public schools were condemned after Maria, and, as a result, the school system was forced to rotate kids through the surviving buildings for half-day schedules. When Roseway arrived at St. Croix in November, she brought a sense of hope and relief to the local community.

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

In addition to Roseway’s typical island programming, World Ocean School made a commitment to provide the island with extended educational opportunities for its youth. The World Ocean School office worked tirelessly to create meaningful yet productive six-week-long programs to keep these students actively learning when they had no classroom to go to.

This winter, middle school students spent two mornings per week aboard Roseway for a three-hour program and then went to their schools in the afternoon. High school students came down to the ship after mornings at school, spending two afternoons a week aboard the schooner, where they participated in junior crew training. They joined Roseway’s professional crew for maintenance days, assisted in St. Croix’s public sails, and earned a sea-time letter at the end of the program to officially document their work and maritime vocational training.

Throughout her long working life, Roseway has served in a variety of roles, from yacht racing to fishing, to piloting and passenger trades, and finally as a school ship. As the platform for World Ocean School, she has impacted the lives of the students and crew who have sailed with her. Thanks to her, students who had nev-

Schooner Roseway hauled out April 2018 at Gloucester Marine Railway in Massachusetts for scheduled maintenance work on the rudder trunk and replacing the original horntimber. er left the city of Boston can now say they have traveled internationally. Thanks to her, Crucian elementary school students who had never dipped a toe in the warm seas around their island home developed a

perspective and pride in the beauty and resourcefulness of their communities.

Thanks to her, Ocean Classroom students can deftly hand, reef, and steer in the middle of a squall because they feel empowered and confident enough to do it on their own. Roseway is resilient in her own right, and she passes these traits on to the students who get to know her—the breadth of her influence is invaluable.

World Ocean School looks forward to welcoming the next 20,000 students aboard, but first Roseway must undergo the next phase of her restoration. Her aft cabin house was rebuilt last year; this spring, an eight-week rebuild of her original rudder trunk and 1960s windlass has begun.

With these restoration projects completed, she will continue to inspire and serve her students and friends in Boston and St. Croix and bring hope to the diverse individuals who haul her lines, steer her course, and gain an appreciation for our oceans, our heritage, and their future.

Eden Leonard is executive director for World Ocean School. You can learn more about Schooner Roseway and World Ocean School programs at www.worldoceanschool.org.

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 27

TALL SHIPS CHALLENGE® Gulf Coast Series 2018

A Young Seaman’s Report from the Fleet

A

photo by patrick quigley, courtesy neworleanscbv

s an 18-year-old fresh out of high school, I was pretty thrilled to work as an intern for Tall Ships America this spring. I was part of the crew that coordinated the 2018 Tall Ships Challenge series in the Gulf of Mexico. It was great to be working with ships and crews from around the world, including the historic barque Elissa (Galveston, Texas), the tops’l schooner Oosterschelde (Netherlands), the full-rigged ship Oliver Hazard Perry (Newport, Rhode Island), the tops’l schooner Lynx (Nantucket, Masssachusetts, and St. Petersburg, Florida), the schooner When and If (Key West, Florida), and especially the barque Picton Castle (Lunenburg, Nova Scotia)—magnificent vessels all, and operated by some of the best tall-ship mariners in the world.

by James Rogers

courtesy tall ships america

This was the first Tall Ships Challenge series ever held in the Gulf of Mexico, with port events in Galveston (5–8 April) and Pensacola (12–15 April), before coming to New Orleans (19–22 April) to celebrate that city’s 300th anniversary. Locally sponsored by port organizers, each event was truly a resounding success, both from the viewpoint of the ships that participated and the tens of thousands of visitors who made the trip down to the waterfront to take part in the events. The crowds came to tour the ships, meet the crews—some even sailed aboard. Along the way, they were introduced to and learned about the rich history of seafaring that these ships represent.

Tall Ships Galveston was the first event in the series and it kicked off with a parade of sail off Galveston Island. It was a crisp,

sunny day with a spanking southeasterly breeze, and I got to witness some superb seamanship from the deck of Galveston’s own historic 1877 barque Elissa. Back in port, the ships were open for public tours over the next three days, with ships’ crews engaging with visitors to promote sail training and maritime heritage. As Tall Ships Galveston came to a close, the anticipation to get underway was palpable. Tall-ship seafarers are eager to share their ships and experiences in port, but ultimately they sign aboard for the passages at sea, and they were eager to set sail—myself included! I moved into my rack in Picton Castle’s fo’c’sle, ready to make the transit to Pensacola, the next port of call in the 2018 Tall Ships Challenge series.

Sailing with us in Picton Castle were ten cadets from New Orleans Military and Maritime Academy (NOMMA). These high school students signed onboard to further their maritime training in the best way possible: under sail in a proper ship.

New Orleans hosted an international fleet of sailing ships during the Tall Ships Challenge port visit as part of the city’s Tricentennial celebrations. Left to right along the waterfront are: Elissa, Picton Castle, Oliver Hazard Perry, and Oosterschelde. (top) Galveston’s Elissa leads the pack during the Tall Ships Challenge races in the Gulf of Mexico. Astern to leeward is When and If, with Lynx at right.

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SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

courtesy tall ships america

Before we cast off, cadet Anthony Scaffidi said: “I wanted to join this trip because I’ve never spent much time on the water, and I wanted to get my sea legs before I join the Navy.” It was a long three-day passage from Galveston to Pensacola with rain, headwinds, and rough seas. Those on board learned firsthand that going to sea isn’t always what you see in the brochures; most of the time Picton Castle’s deck was soaked from sea spray, and nearly half the ship’s company spent time at the leeward rail battling seasickness. Thankfully, the weather cleared up as we approached Pensacola and left us with perfect sailing conditions for the grand parade of sail.

The parade at Pensacola proceeded handsomely, with Picton Castle leading. By my count, the parade was joined by hundreds of local boats and even a pod of dolphins. Everyone aboard, especially our NOMMA cadets, was eager to make landfall. We were tired from hard work in the rain and sun, so hot showers were a definite priority for all.

Reflecting on the passage from Galveston, NOMMA cadet Brendan Andrews remarked, “I’ve learned how far I can push myself. At first I thought this voyage was going to be a laid-back thing. But now I’m doing all this work and it’s like—Wow— this is really hitting me hard! After that initial shock, I’ve pretty much enjoyed every single bit of it.” Fellow cadet Paul Duplessis commented, “I like doing this because you never get bored; there’s always something to do or something new to learn.” Though the weather was rough to begin with, it helped to break in their sealegs. Going to sea aboard any vessel is a valuable experience, but only on a sailing ship can you work aloft. Climbing the rig and performing tasks high above the deck is totally exhilarating, and this particular aspect of the three-day passage sparked great excitement among the cadets.

Pensacola put on a great festival over the next three days; the ships then cast off, bound for the next port—the multicultural and historic New Orleans.

The passage to New Orleans was marked with fine sailing and minimal seasickness compared to the previous leg.

Oosterschelde overtook us late on the first afternoon, despite having cast off the dock

James Rogers in Picton Castle’s rig, about to embark on a voyage around the world. much later. The real exciting part didn’t come until we hit the Mississippi Delta the next day. The pilot came on board, and we hitched up with the tug. It was so quiet, I wasn’t even roused from my afternoon offwatch nap, which was surprising because I was asleep in the fo’c’sle up in the bow, where the towline was hooked up.

Navigating the river with the tug that night was harder than we had anticipated; it took two hands at the helm to keep the ship on course. Sometime before dawn the next day, the tow hawser parted, and Picton Castle continued under her own steam for the final few miles to the anchorage. After a day at anchor, we motored to the dock where we were greeted by cheering crowds.

The NOMMA cadets were excited to be home. Brendan noted that watching the tugs at work in the river gave him some perspective on the active and important role they play in the river and port. “Many of my friends want to work on tugs, so it was great to see how important they are to the shipping industry on the river.” Another cadet plans on joining the Navy after high school and appreciated the firsthand look at what life is like at sea.

The New Orleans Tall Ships Tricentennial event was the most spectacular of all. The Tall Ships Challenge event coincided with the city’s 300th anniversary celebrations and New Orleans

Navy Week. Positioning modern high-tech warships next to sailing ships representing the great Age of Sail in one massive maritime presentation gave everyone a sense of the long and varied maritime history of our country. Fireworks, music, and festivities greeted the crowds of sailors and landsmen in what must go down in history as one of the best celebrations ever in a city that knows how to do it.

With New Orleans astern, the ships set sail on separate courses, though several will meet again for the next Tall Ships Challenge port event, Sail Philadelphia at the end of May. As for me, my adventures are just beginning. From New Orleans, I will stay with Picton Castle, joining her crew for a 14-month voyage around the world.

I feel pretty ready for the challenges ahead, but I don’t take anything for granted. I’m just happy to be setting out in a great ship, with a strong crew, and for the chance to do my best whatever comes.

Tall Ships America is the national organization for sail training and tall ships. For more information about the Tall Ships Challenge series, or to learn how you can sail aboard a tall ship for your own adventure under sail, go to www.tallshipsamerica.org. You can follow James’s voyage around the world in Picton Castle by following the ship’s website at www.picton-castle.com and on social media.

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 29

Fulton’s Steamboat at Clermont, 1807 A Glimpse into the Artist’s Process by Len F. Tantillo

While we are used to enjoying some incredible works by masters of marine art, we don’t usually learn about the process by which they create it: the research, tools, techniques. How they come up with the details with a degree of accuracy when records don’t always reveal them. Acclaimed artist Len Tantillo recently completed a commissioned painting of Robert Fulton’s famous steamboat underway on the Hudson River, off the Clermont estate from which it was identified. Here, he shares with us his process, and, of course, the final product. —Deirdre O’Regan, editor, Sea History

images courtesy of len tantillo

Inaugural Run Up the Hudson

On Monday, 17 August 1807, at one o’clock in the afternoon, a strange vessel, the likes of which had never been seen before in the United States, departed Manhattan bound for Albany. Originally called simply, “The Steamboat,” Robert Fulton’s invention was about to change maritime history. As in most expensive enterprises involving new technology, the project would never have come to fruition without the financial backing of a sponsor or investor. In Fulton’s case, he relied on the support of Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, one of the nation’s founding fathers and a framer of the New York State Constitution; he is believed to be a contributor to the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. Together, Fulton and Livingston revolutionized water transit and made a fundamental contribution to America’s Industrial Revolution.

After leaving its berth in lower Manhattan to the jeers and ridicule of dubious onlookers, “Fulton’s Folly,” as they called it, traveled 105 miles up the Hudson River to Livingston’s estate, Clermont. The first Fulton’s Steamboat at Clermont, 1807 by L. F. Tantillo, oil on canvas, 17 x 24 inches leg of the journey took twenty-four hours to complete. While the vessel struggled against substantial headwinds, slowing her progress up the river, the force—more importantly, the direction—of the wind prevented sailing vessels from making any progress whatsoever northbound, reinforcing Fulton’s premise that steam power represented the future.

The passengers, undeterred by doubters ashore and imbued with a spirit of adventure, spent the afternoon and evening at Clermont.

The next morning, they departed on the final leg of the journey to Albany. Upon its arrival, “The Steamboat” had completed the maiden voyage of the world’s first commercially successful steam-powered vessel. The total travel time was a little over thirty-two hours. Detractors were stunned. Investors were interested. The rest is history.

Research

Detail from the 1796 sketchbook of Alexander Robertson showing “New Clermont,” later renamed Arryl House.

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Painting this historical subject required a well-researched understanding of Fulton’s steamboat. Additionally, since I would be painting the beginning of the second leg of travel from Livingston’s estate, I needed to know what that property might have looked like in 1807. The answers to these questions came from an esteemed associate and published author on the subject, Travis Bowman, who heads up the history department of the Bureau of Historic Sites at New York State’s Department of Parks and Recreation. Travis was formerly the curator of the Clermont State Historic Site, which is SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

These are the plans I created for my 3D digital model of Fulton’s steamboat. They were derived from a number of historical documents and photographs taken of the 1909 replica of the vessel. The rigging, boiler arrangement, and cabin locations were based on historical documents and Fulton’s original drawings. The ship’s boat suspended from davits at the stern is speculative but a common feature of river craft at that time.

1909 replica, Clermont

library of congress

owned and administered by NYS Parks and Recreation. His knowledge provided me with detailed information that significantly affected my work.

In all the years that I have known of Fulton’s steamboat, I never had a clear idea of its size and mechanical attributes. When I was growing up along the banks of the Hudson River, this vessel was always referred to as the “Clermont.” In subsequent years, historians corrected this misconception and informed us that in its day it was called “The North River Steamboat” and that Fulton himself called it “The Steamboat.”

The original steamboat design was quite simple. The hull incorporated a lot of straight lines, lacking the distinctive curves of a sailing ship. It was long and narrow, 150 in length with an eighteen-foot beam and a draft of only twentyeight inches. The deck was flat with little camber; the sides were straight with no tumblehome (bowing out from the top of the deck and curving back in to the waterline). The engine was a simple network of gears and counterweights, driven by a single piston. Steam was generated by burning wood in a furnace attached to a large boiler. These early steam engines were dangerous, and many of these first steam-powered boats suffered the consequences of horrendous boiler explosions. As with most technologies, designs improved over time and led to greater public confidence, and ultimately to the Golden Age of Steamboating.

As I always do at the beginning of a project of this nature, I start by constructing reference models of my subjects. Before computers and graphic design software, this was done in the traditional manner: drawing plans and building scale models from various materials. Over the last fifteen years, however, I have mastered the technique (and associated software) for creating digital models with a computer. This was a long and grueling process with an almost impossible learning curve, but in the end the technique has evolved into an unbelievably versatile tool. I use it all the time for everything from buildings and ships to people, even to create their clothing and hairstyles. I’ve built whole cities from the seventeenth century in which I can visually experience the physical space and determine points of view to come up with great settings for paintings.

Using a variety of historical records, I was able to build a computer model of Fulton’s vessel with credible details in an accurate scale. This process provided insights into the design nuances and mechanical features of the vessel I never understood before. Although much of what I learned cannot be expressed in a single painting, the knowledge

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 31

I gained was invaluable. Speculation is uncertain and puts the marine artist worth his or her salt in an uncomfortable position, despite being able to claim “artistic license.” With enough research, however, assumptions can be made that carry more weight. For me, this translates into confidence that what I’m representing on canvas has documentary merit.

Detail from the computer models. Three-dimensional graphics software allows me to rotate and zoom in on sections of the boat or house, providing me with views from multiple angles.

The Manor House

Livingston’s residence along the shores of the Hudson River was a revelation. Here is where Travis Bowman’s input was particularly helpful. The historic house that currently exists at the Clermont Historic Site was not the structure occupied by the Chancellor in 1807. His house, at that time, was a classic federal-style building with symmetrical wings. The remains of this house can be seen near the entrance of the present-day parking area. Travis introduced me to numerous photos of Arryl House, as it was called, and also provided me with the plans for the building. With his help and these resources, I was able to build a credible reference model of the structure.

A Moment in Time

In the final painting (see page 30), we view the steamboat and manor house from a slightly elevated point of view on the morning of 18 August as the boat is departing Livingston’s estate, bound for Albany to the north. The passengers are rested and ambling about the deck. Captain Andrew Brink is at the tiller, as Robert Fulton makes last-minute adjustments at the steam controls. The paddlewheel blades rhythmically splash through the placid surface of the Hudson River, and a late summer mist hangs in the air as the steamboat makes its way up the river and into the history books.

Livingston’s original house, just over 100 miles north of Lower Manhattan, was burned by the British during the Revolutionary War in 1777.

The second house was completed in the 1780s. Called New Clermont, it was later renamed Arryl House. It was destroyed by fire in 1909.

Len Tantillo is a licensed architect who left the field of architecture in 1986 to pursue a career in the fine art of historical and marine painting. Since that time, his work has appeared internationally in exhibitions, publications, and film documentaries. Born and raised along the banks of the Hudson River, he has produced more than 300 paintings and drawings of New York State history. He is the author of four books, and the recipient of two honorary degrees. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Marine Artists. In 2016 he was elected a Fellow of the New York Academy of History. You can learn more about his work on his website, www.lftantillo.com. The new painting is featured here courtesy of the collection of Howard Cox, a descendant of Robert Livingston.

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SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

Marine Art News American Society of Marine Artists 40th Anniversary Retreat

asma

The American Society of Marine Artists will gather in Charleston, South Carolina, next November for the organization’s 40th Anniversary Retreat. Among the organized activities planned are artist demonstrations, including a plein air presentation downtown by Charleston artist and ASMA Signature Member Dee Beard Dean. Known for her plein air landscapes and portraits, Dean’s life and work are the subject of Michelle Morton’s book, Painter by Providence.

In commemoration of the 300th anniversary of that infamous pirate Blackbeard’s blockade and terrorizing of Charleston Harbor, the second artist Shem Creek #2, by Dee Beard Dean demonstration will be given by Signature Member oil, 16 x 20 inches Don Maitz of Sarasota, Florida. Maitz is an awardwinning illustrator who has produced more than 200 book covers and worked as a concept artist for Paramount and Warner Brothers Studios animated films. Rum drinkers will recognize his famous depiction of Captain Morgan and many other pirate characters, ships, and scenes.

ASMA Fellow and Signature members will participate in the retreat’s plein air sessions.

Charleston’s Principle Gallery will host a four-week “for sale” exhibition, featuring works by ASMA members during November 2018. The retreat is open to all ASMA and NMHS members.

Additional events and details are available on the ASMA website, www.americansocietyofmar ineartists.com.

asma

Charleston, South Carolina, 1–4 November 2018

Sinbad to Windward, 20 x 16 inches, by Don Maitz

New Book and Paintings by Austin Dwyer

courtesy austin dwyer

Acclaimed marine painter and illustrator Austin Dwyer has a new book coming out featuring stories and illustrations of remarkable feats of iconic tugs in history, An Illustrated Collection of Tugboats to Remember. One of the book’s featured paintings, Clermont on the Hudson, is currently on exhibit at the Icon Galeria in Alexandria, Virginia until the end of September. The painting is one of dozens of images the artist has been working on to document the tugs throughout history that have gone above and beyond their regular call of duty.

Dwyer has been particularly prolific in the last couple of Clermont on the Hudson by Austin Dwyer years, producing paintings and descriptions for three books. Ships to Remember: 1400 Years of Historic Ships, written by Rorke Bryan with illustrations by Dwyer, came out in 2016. An Illustrated Collection of Revenue Cutters: the First 100 Years of USCG Vessels, written by Tim Dring and illustrated by Austin Dwyer, and the tugboat book, written and illustrated by the artist, will be released in 2018. (More on the artist is available at www.austindwyer.com. Books can be purchased at www.amazon.com. The Icon Galeria is located at 101 N. Union St., Alexandria, VA; www.icongaleria.com.)

Coos Art Museum 25th Annual Maritime Art Exhibition Mr. Dwyer will also serve as juror this summer for the Coos Art Museum’s 25th Annual Maritime Art Exhibition, along with artists Louis Stephen Gadal and Harold W. Johnson. The exhibition’s featured artist this year is watercolorist Jeffrey Hull out of Cannon Beach, Oregon. The exhibition kicks off on 14 July with a plein air paint out, dinner and awards ceremony, and art auction. The exhibition runs through 29 September. Awards are given in several categories including Best of Show, Oregon International Port of Coos Bay Award, Coos Art Museum Board of Directors Choice, a People’s Choice award, and honorable mentions.

(Coos Art Museum, 235 Anderson, Coos Bay, OR; Ph. 541 267-3901; www.coosart.org) For other upcoming marine art exhibitions, check out the Sea History calendar on page 55 or online at www.seahistory.org.

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 33

HM Schooner Pickle: a Little Vessel of Colossal Importance

by Rear Admiral Joseph Callo, USN (Ret.)

courtesy gordon frickers

A

adapted from a james leakey miniature, gfdl cc-by-sa via wikipedia, user geni

Pickle was built in Bermuda and named Sting before being taken into the Royal Navy in 1800. The mini-warship was seventy-three feet in length, with a beam of a little less than twenty-one feet. Her main armament was eight 12-pound carronades, and she carried a crew of about forty. Pickle’s copper bottom kept the small ship’s below-the-waterline surface clear of barnacles and other marine growth, significantly adding to her speed.

Notwithstanding her speed, Pickle was exceptionally seaworthy. The latter

“I Have Urgent Dispatches”

by Gordon Frickers.

Nevertheless, the schooner’s special moment in history came shortly after the smoke of the Battle of Trafalgar dispersed and it became clear that Admiral Horatio Nelson had achieved a history-making victory. At that point Pickle, under the command of the undistinguished Lieutenant John Lapenotière, was designated to bring the news of one of the greatest sea battles in history back to England.

This painting, taken from a James Leakey miniature, is believed to be a portrait of Royal Navy Lieutenant John Lapenotière.

courtesy royal museums greenwich, p.d.

s a two-masted, topsail vessel, HM Schooner Pickle was so small that it could not serve in the line of battle at Cape Trafalgar, on the fateful 21st of October 1805. In fact, a single broadside from any ship of the line in that violent struggle between the Royal Navy and the combined fleets of France and Spain could have destroyed Pickle. As a result, during the Battle of Trafalgar, Pickle served as a utility vessel, carrying out such lowly duties as picking up survivors from ships sunk during the violent action.

The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805: Beginning of the Action by Nicholas Pocock (1740–1821) 34

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

courtesy national maritime museum, uk, p.d.

feature was of particular importance for this mission transiting the 1,000 miles of storm-laced ocean that Lapenotière and his crew faced in the race to get the news of the crucial Trafalgar victory to London.

The momentous message from Admiral Sir Cuthbert Collingwood, who had followed Nelson in command of the British fleet after Nelson’s death, began, “The ever to be lamented death of Vice Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson, who, in the late conflict with the enemy, fell in the hour of victory….” Collingwood then went on to describe Nelson’s stunning triumph over the combined French-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar.

It was Collingwood’s dispatch that was entrusted to Captain Lapenotière and the little schooner for delivery to the British leaders at Whitehall, and indeed the entire British nation.

After an unusually stormy nine-day passage, Pickle and Lapenotière arrived at Falmouth on 4 November 1805. From Falmouth, the captain raced by horse-drawn coach to London, where he delivered his history-shaping news in the early morning hours of 6 November. At the crucial moment, he burst into the Admiralty Board Room with his dispatch from Collingwood and proclaimed to First Secretary of the Admiralty Sir William Marsden, who was holding a candle aloft and on his way to bed: “Sir, we have gained a great victory, but we have lost Lord Nelson.”

In 1974 a group of warrant officers and chief petty officers in the Royal Navy, mindful of the wardroom’s annual “Trafalgar Night” Dinners, decided that the officers “should not have all the fun.”

The result was the establishment of a “Pickle Night” event in early November, approximately a week after the traditional October 21st Trafalgar Night dinners.

Rear-Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson, 1758–1805 by Lemuel Francis Abbott (1760–1802)

Then in 2004, an ad hoc group in New York decided to have a Pickle Night Dinner in the United States. The initiators of the New York City Pickle Night Dinner had two objectives in mind: to explore the relevance of Admiral Nelson’s career to present times, and to reinforce the importance of the special relationship between the US Navy and the Royal Navy. The venue each year—for what has become a

Save the Date!

tradition in its own right—has been the unique New York Yacht Club in mid-town Manhattan.

Joe Callo is an award-winning author and network television producer/writer who has written extensively on Great Britain’s Admiral Lord Nelson. He served for 32 years in the US Navy Reserve and is an overseer of the National Maritime Historical Society.

New York City Pickle Night Dinner

9 November 2018 at the New York Yacht Club This year marks the 213th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, and the 14th New York City Pickle Night Dinner will mark this history-shaping event on Friday, 9 November 2018. Those who appreciate the historical significance of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson and the lore associated with his life are invited to attend this special event. The dinner is named for HM Schooner Pickle, which participated in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and which brought the news to Britain of Nelson’s victory and death in the battle. This event has been a perennial success, with guests from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Switzerland, and elsewhere. This year’s keynote speaker is Vice Admiral Tony Radakin, Royal Navy, Second Sea Lord. Space is limited. For reservations contact Sally McElwreath Callo, SallyMC79@verizon.net; Ph. 212 972-8667.

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 35

The Smithsonian, the US Navy, and Aquatic Avian Excrement

A

by Paul F. Johnston, Curator, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

marine atlas images courtesy smithsonian’s dibner library of the history of science and technology

few years ago, an enormous package arrived at my office via the regular US Mail.

Loosely wrapped in brown paper, it had no return address. Opening one end revealed a huge, musty leather-covered book, reminding me of a conversation a year or two before with the staff at the US Coast Guard Academy library. That repository had an enormous double elephant folio1 atlas of forty early nineteenth-century sea charts, bound into a single volume dating to 1826. The charts were out of date and of little interest to the Academy library.

Would we be interested in a transfer?

The Coast Guard had an old appraisal from the original 1979 gift, detailing the individual charts. The volume appeared to be complete, so I checked downstairs with the Dibner Library, the Smithsonian’s rare book library specializing in pre-1840 scientific publications. They were interested, so I asked the Coast Guard to send it to us at their convenience. Nothing happened for some time, and I forgot about the transaction.

Its arrival reminded me of the earlier correspondence, so I took the book down to the Dibner, where we opened it more fully. A strong musty odor emerged, and the Dibner librarian was concerned that adding the volume to its stacks might transfer the mold to its other holdings. Next it went to our paper conservator, who determined that the mold was not active and could be removed. The volume spent the next year in her lab, with two volunteers carefully rubbing ground-up pink eraser crumble over front and back surfaces of each blueback chart to clean it of the encrusted salt, stains, grime and inactive mold. It’s comforting to know that the things we used and skills we learned in kindergarten are still relevant in today’s world!

The last two charts in the book had the heaviest usage and wear, with fragments missing in the folds and gutters of the enormous pages. With some cleaning, handwriting was revealed on those same two charts, which detailed the coasts of Peru and Brazil. The handwritten notes specified a few ship names, some longitudes and latitudes, and ownership of some islands by specific guano companies.

Figuring that tracking down the ships and the guano companies might lead to information about the original owner(s) of the Atlas, we started trying to decipher the handwriting. Immediately some ambiguities appeared, frustratingly in the ship names. Our conservator, meanwhile, had tracked down the bookbinder’s ticket in The Marine Atlas’s last two charts contain handwritten notes relating to the Peruvian and Pacific Island guano trade. Ship names and locations, along with other notes about activities and guano island ownership, suggest that the atlas belonged to a guano shipper. (inset) Title page of the 1826 (seventh) edition of the Norie Marine Atlas. This is the world’s only known copy in a public institution.

1 Double

36

elephant folio refers to book size: elephant folio books are up to 23 inches tall; double elephant folio books are 50 inches or greater.

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

John William Norie Starting in the late eighteenth century, John William Norie (1772–1843) worked in a London shop selling navigation books, supplies, nautical charts, and instruments. A hydrographer—or scientist of waterways— he taught navigation as early as 1797. In that same year his employer, William Heather, published the first Marine Atlas, a large bound volume of charts covering the world. Norie also published books on shipbuilding and practical navigation.

When Heather died in 1812, Norie and a partner bought his business, renaming it J. W. Norie & Co. Among his prestigious clients were the British Admiralty and the East India Company, but his best custom-

John Norie taught navigation and sold navigation instruments in his shop. This octant is inscribed “NORIE LONDON” and is made of ebony, ivory and brass. ers were commercial sailors. Norie placed his own imprint on Heather’s Marine Atlas chart plates and continued to update and publish them. Although Norie died in 1843, his influential book Norie’s Nautical Tables remained in print as recently as 2007.

Chincha Islands Next we studied what had been written on the charts by hand by those who were using them. The part of the charts where the notes had been written focused on a group of islands off the coast of Peru. Beginning in the early 1840s, the three tiny Chincha Islands off the southern coast of Peru began international sales of their remarkable seabird guano as an almost miraculous fertilizer. What made the Chincha guano so valuable was its nitrate content, higher than any other natural substance known to mankind. The high concentration was caused by the islands’ offshore location in the middle of the cool Humboldt Current bathing them from the north. This chilly, nutrient-rich current kept the Chinchas completely dry. It also filled the local waters with limitless quantities of sardine-like fish, which in turn fed the islands’ pelicans, boobies and guanay cormorants. With the offshore isolation, absence of natural predators, and plenty of rich seafood, millennia of millions of seabirds had pooped on the

islands, and their guano had accumulated to a depth of up to 200 feet in places. The dry air had desiccated the guano and prevented the washing out of the nitrates that made the fertilizer so highly prized. Other tropical islands situated around the Equator in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans also had lots of guano, but rains had washed out the nitrates.

division of medicine and science, smithsonian national museum of american history

smithsonian national museum of american history

New York and dated it to ca. 1856 from the way the company name was specified.

She also had tracked down the chart paper watermark, and ascertained that it was the same high-quality British paper used in the printing of Audobon’s famous bird series.

At the same time, the Dibner librarian had conducted some research and discovered that this turned out to be the world’s only known copy of hydrographer John Norie’s Marine Atlas in a public institution!

Single copies of Norie’s charts in several editions were extant in various private repositories, but this seventh edition, dating to 1828, was the only known bound copy in public hands. Not only was the volume unique, its charts were absolutely gorgeous, representing the pinnacle of the chartmakers’ craft in the early nineteenth century.

As the Atlas work under the paper lab’s fume hood progressed, staff who’d seen it and the cleaning work in progress occasionally came by my office and commented on the beauty of the charts. Were we going to exhibit it? Many of the charts were stained and torn, and I didn’t pay much attention to the sporadic interest. Then one day our senior designer stopped by after a visit to the paper lab and added his favorable review to the growing chorus. When an overworked designer appears and volunteers to design an exhibit around an object, it was clearly time for the next step. Who was John Norie? Why were his charts so fantastically and elaborately delineated, and was there enough background information and material for a dedicated exhibit?

Guano’s properties were so respected that it was made into a homeopathic medicine for human consumption. It was suggested for use in 1854 for “violent headache as from a band around head. Itching of nostrils, back, thighs, genitals. Symptoms like hay-fever.”

German, French, British, and American ships began visiting the Chinchas for cargoes of guano from the early 1840s, and they also sought other guano islands in the remote Pacific and Atlantic islands that they could claim for their own. So valuable was the stuff, that in 1856 the United States passed the Guano Islands Act (48 US Code Chapter 8). In effect, this law stated that a US citizen could claim any guano island in the world as long as it wasn’t claimed or occupied by anyone else. Any guano found thereon had to be sold at a low price to American citizens, and US land and naval

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 37

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naval history and heritage command

USS St. Mary’s

In August 1857, the twenty-two-gun warship USS St. Mary’s, under Commander Charles Davis, visited New Nantucket and Jarvis islands in the remote Pacific Ocean. The ship collected guano samples that were sent back to the Smithsonian for analysis. cliffs. At the height of the trade, ships waiting offshore would have boxing matches, rowing races, and other diversions to pass the time until their turn. One American ship captain died while awaiting his cargo, and his body was packed in a barrel of guano to preserve it until his ship sailed home to New England.

Chinese miners pickaxed the acrid stuff from “The Great Heap” and used carts

on tracks to get it to the water’s edge. There it went down a “shoot” (sic) to a lighter below, which rowed it out to the anchorage where a ship had offloaded its ballast. Suicide among the impressed Chinese miners was not uncommon, accomplished by throwing themselves over the high cliffs to the sea-whipped rocks below; some 90,000 Chinese were said to have mined the Chincha Islands. published in rays of sunlight from south america by alexander gardner (1865)

forces would protect their citizens’ rights in this matter. In effect, our nation’s first imperialistic claims to lands outside our continent were for bird poop. Or, as any properly erudite and credentialed authority might say, “aquatic avian excrement.”

Claims began to pour in to the State Department, and suddenly the US Navy’s Pacific Squadron had a new and quite impossible task: defending American citizens’ claims to remote, tiny Pacific guano islands.

Many of these claims were conflicting and were—or appeared to be—for the same islands. While defending US citizens’ rights in August 1857, the 22-gun warship USS St. Mary’s visited New Nantucket and Jarvis Islands in the remote Pacific. Her commander, Charles Davis, collected seventeen guano samples that were sent back to Washington, DC, for analysis.

And this is how the Smithsonian first became involved in the guano business, for the Navy contracted with the Smithsonian’s first secretary, chemist Joseph Henry, to analyze the samples for fertilizer suitability. In late May 1857, Henry sent his analysis under a cover letter to Navy Secretary Isaac Toucey, together with the Smithsonian’s invoice for $350 for services rendered.

Henry’s letter synthesized his findings: “… the deposits submitted to examination do not possess the peculiar characteristics of Peruvian guano…and are not equal to it in value…they might be considered as valuable as bone dust, but not generally. They differ from the latter in being almost entirely deficient in nitrogeneous matter, and therefore their importance for agricultural purposes depends upon their mineral ingredients…being the same as the inorganic matter of bones.” In more modern language, as fertilizer the poop from these islands was crap, because the nitrates had dissolved out due to the regional rain.

By the late 1850s, foreign ships visiting the Chincha islands were waiting up to eight months for their turn to load the precious guano. Some of the most famous American clipper ships, including Great Republic, Challenger, King Philip, Red Jacket, and their ilk, made guano trips to the Chinchas to avoid deadheading back to the East Coast after dropping off California Gold Rush prospectors.

Once a ship arrived at the Chinchas, she’d anchor offshore to stay off the steep

Ships waited as long as eight months at the Chincha Islands for a cargo of the world’s richest guano fertilizer. Boat races and other athletic contests passed the long idle days. Once their turn arrived, crews sealed off their ship’s living quarters with sailcloth and climbed aloft to avoid the noxious dust arising from the filling holds.

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

published in rays of sunlight from south america by alexander gardner (washington, dc, philp & solomons, 1865), courtesy library of congress

a beautiful example of the genre, commemorating a Chincha Island visit by the Searsport ship Henrietta in 1880. It was such an incongruous artifact of the grisly trade that the question arose as to how they knew it was guano and not sand art. It turned out that the ship’s logbook recorded the 1880 Chincha Islands visit and the family of Henrietta’s captain had kept the bottle ever since! How many other museums have examples of this unique art form lacking strong provenance, and thus probably identified as sand art? There’s an almost identical example at the Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The Smithsonian’s second secretary, Spencer Baird, also was involved with the guano trade, but from a different side. As a naturalist and commissioner of the US Fish Commission working out of the port of Woods Hole, Massachusetts, Baird became acquainted with the Pacific Guano Company in the same town. With diminishing and very remote quantities of seabird guano available by the 1870s, the PGC had come up with the idea of eliminating the middleman in the production of fertilizer.

After all, what was guano, but anchovies

Indentured Chinese workers pickaxed the guano from the “Great Heap,” put it in wheeled carts, rolled the carts to the cliff edge and dumped the guano down a “shoot” (chute) to the lighters waiting below. guano art they produced and sold to the foreign seamen as souvenirs. In this rare art form resembling sand art, different colored ground-up guano grains were poured into bottles with remarkably intricate and detailed scenes and designs. The Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, has (right) Believed to have been made by Chinese miners from different-colored seabird guano, this intricate example of guano art in a bottle commemorates an early 1880s visit by the Searsport, Maine, ship Henrietta for a cargo of Chincha Islands guano. By the time of its single voyage to Peru, the islands were almost mined out.

courtesy penobscot marine museum

The shifts for offloading the lighters into the ship holds were limited to 20-minutes to avoid poisoning and/or asphyxiation, and the loaders could emerge from the ship holds bleeding from every orifice in their heads. The off-duty crew would use sailcloth to cover the ship’s living quarters and any other cargoes, and then climb the masts to their highest points to avoid breathing in the billowing clouds of ammoniac guano entering the holds. Often the loading crews competed to see which could load their ship the fastest.

Despite the dirty work and polluted air, the miners found ways to create beauty in the task, as seen by the bottles of

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 39

40

smithsonian’s dibner library of the history of science and technology courtesy woods hole historical museum

processed by seabirds? Bypass the birds and the Pacific Ocean distances, catch the abundant East Coast menhaden, and grind it into fertilizer meal, maybe blend in a little guano for authenticity. Once the PGC figured out how to remove the oil from the menhaden meal, its fertilizer was deemed pretty good. In 1875, Secretary Baird recommended that they display their wares at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial. The only known sample of nineteenth-century guano is a fist-sized chunk at the Woods Hole Historical Museum from Swan Island, a possession of the PGC. By 1880, the known stock of rich, natural seabird guano had been mined out pretty much worldwide. Around the same time, however, large nitrate and phosphate deposits were discovered on the mainland, and some of the earliest were in Peru and Chile, which already had the infrastructure for mining and distributing guano fertilizer. Moreover, these terrestrial mines could blend their stocks to match different soils, yielding the first synthetic fertilizers. Soon, more deposits were found all over; some, like those in the vicinity of Charlestown, South Carolina, remain active today. Thus, the transition from natural to synthetic fertilizers was relatively seamless, which is why we don’t learn about it today. Although “guano wars” were fought in South America between Chile and Peru, they didn’t interrupt the flow of nitrate-rich fertilizer; that’s why guano isn’t found in our history books.

Over the course of time, some 200 islands in the Atlantic and Pacific were claimed for their seabird guano by various interests, but of course they were impossible to track when claims might take six months or longer to get back to Washington, DC. Claim jumping was common, and some claimants would simply discard any evidence of prior claims on a remote island, load a cargo of guano, and plant their own claims. Who was out there to stop them?

Navigational precision was lacking in the nineteenth century, and many of the small bird-inhabited islands in the remote regions of the globe’s waters were hard to pinpoint by longitude and latitude. The US Navy lacked the resources to verify, track, and maintain dozens of American claims, and the Civil War and other priorities drew

them away from the task. Many distant isles were claimed, some by multiple owners, and corporations were formed to mine the extract. Some had elaborate bylaws, fancy printed prospectuses, and annual reports. But the smart operators sold their guano island rights before ever even mining the remote island stuff, in an early sort of get-rich-quick Ponzi scheme. Most just vanished without extracting or shipping much—if any—actual guano.

By the late nineteenth century, the world had ample supplies of synthetic fertilizer, so the whole messy industry died a quick, quiet, and agriculturally painless death. But, before this time, every level of American society had been involved—from Congress, the Smithsonian, and the US Navy, to the fast clipper ship captains and the farmers fertilizing their tobacco fields.

(above) The Smithsonian’s Spencer Baird convinced the Pacific Guano Company of Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to erect a pavilion at the Centennial Exposition in 1876. (left) This rare sample of unprocessed 19th century guano is from the Pacific Guano Company’s Swan Island, in the northwest Caribbean off Honduras. Guano islands were discovered worldwide, but Chincha Islands guano had the highest nitrate content.

The United States still retains nine of the old guano islands, and the Fish & Wildlife Service maintains our sovereignty through occasional visits. And so ended our nation’s earliest efforts at imperialism in the purest sense—in a cloud of countless squawking seabirds whose habitats once again are empty of any natural enemies or predators. Today, the government of Peru practices crop rotation around the three Chincha Islands to sustain the guano industry on a very small scale. Today, you can buy Peruvian seabird guano on Amazon.com, and it still has a very high nitrate content.

Paul F. Johnston is Curator of Maritime History at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, and Secretary of the Council of American Maritime Museums.

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

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SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 41

SEA HISTORY for kids Careers in the Marine and Maritime Field

Wes Heerssen TO

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courtesy of wes heerssen

Deck Officer, US Merchant Marine

es Heerssen is a deck officer in the United States Merchant Marine. He currently serves aboard a transAtlantic commercial roll-on/roll-off car carrier, or “Ro-Ro.” Ro-Ros are huge cargo ships that carry wheeled vehicles of all kinds that can be loaded via ramps, as opposed to shipping containers that have to be loaded with a crane. Both the military and commercial shipping companies own and operate Ro-Ros.

sail professionally. I spent 25 years working in sailing vessels, working my way up from deckhand to captain.

Those years were full of adventure, sailing to ports all over the world. I knew I wanted to one day work on big commercial oceangoing ships, but I was having so much fun on sailing ships that it took me a while to decide to make the shift.

I work on ships for about six months per year. I stand the 8-to-12 watch at sea, which means I am on duty from 8am to noon navigating the vessel, and am back on watch on the ship’s bridge from 8 pm until midnight. I also serve as the ship’s safety officer and medical officer. During the afternoons, I spend most of my time conducting monthly safety inspections of the vessel’s lifesaving and firefighting equipment, watertight doors, etc. Occasionally, I’ll spend the afternoon working in the ship’s hospital making sure it’s ready for use. It is my responsibility to treat crewmembers’ wounds or illnesses, and carefully document everything, just in case I need to call a doctor ashore for advice. Accurate record keeping is a big part of my job.

A lot of deck officers start their training at maritime academies where they can graduate with both a college degree and license to serve as a deck officer or ship’s engineer. Wes, however, is what they call a “hawsepiper,” someone who starts at the bottom and spends many years working up through the ranks. “A captain is fortunate to have both hawsepipers AND academy graduates comprising his officers, as both career paths bring different strengths to the job.”

Wes says that the most important qualification he has is a willing attitude. In addition to on-the-job training at sea, he has kept up with formal training, taking USCG-approved classes in marine firefighting, medical training, navigation and radar certification, plus a few vessel-handling simulator courses. He estimates his formal training exceeds 2,000 hours.

To qualify to sit for your merchant marine license, you need sea time—documented working days underway. By the time a maritime professional is a senior officer or captain, he or she has put in years underway. “At sea, you can’t fake knowledge and experience, so you need to approach the job and the lifestyle with humility and demonstrate a genuine interest in learning.”

Spending a lot of time out at sea in a confined space with a small group of people also requires an agreeable attitude: sailors refer to this as being a good shipmate. “The sea is not a forgiving place for fools: be smart, pay attention to your surroundings, and don’t sit on the rails! After pulling your weight, you also need to look after the needs of others by being courteous and respectful. It is essential to learn when to speak and when to listen, no matter your rank. The good news is that nearly every mariner is willing to ‘show you the ropes,’ if you are courteous enough to appear worthy of their effort.”

In port, Wes’s duties are a little different because the ship doesn’t need a navigation watch. Instead, he stands cargo watch from 6am to noon, and again from 6pm to midnight. He keeps track of all the vehicles that are moved on and off, and, importantly, makes sure the ship remains level while loading and discharging cargo by shifting ballast water. Once all the vehicles are onboard, he makes sure that all the cargo is properly lashed for sea before departure.

Wes grew up on St. Croix, in the US Virgin Islands, and has been on the water his whole life.

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Growing up on an island in the Caribbean, I learned to row and sail small boats and yachts, to scuba dive, and to love travel and adventure. It wasn’t until I left home at age 18 to work on tall ships that I knew I wanted to

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

United States Merchant Marine

T

In 2018, more than 90% of the world’s goods are carried by ships, but few people think about that when they are shopping for everyday goods like groceries, clothing, appliances and cars, as well as gas and heating oil. At any one time right now, there are more than 20 million shipping containers crossing the oceans and pulling into ports, such as Houston, Newark, Norfolk, Long Beach, Tampa, and New Orleans.

There are all kinds of ships in the US Merchant Marine fleet. Most are purpose-built for a specific job. Wes Heerssen, we learned, works mostly aboard Ro-Ros. These are enormous ships that look like giant boxes, Wes Heerssen’s ship, MV Honor, is a 625 foot-long Ro-Ro. designed to fit hundreds of cars in their cargo holds. The world’s largest Ro-Ro is the MV Celine, which was launched last year from a shipyard in South Korea for a shipping company based in Luxembourg. MV Celine is 768 feet long by 125 feet wide and will be put into service between Ireland, England, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Ro-Ros are not the biggest ships plying the seas in the 21st century; some passenger cruise ships and tankers are even bigger. The fleet of vessels serving in the merchant marine is as varied as the cargoes they carry and the people who operate them. There are cargo ships (bulk cargo, container, refrigerated cargo, multi-purpose), tankers (oil, chemical, gas), passenger vessels (ferries, cruise ships, water taxis, and combination passenger-cargo ships). These are just a few examples.

A maritime career can be an exciting and well-paid profession.

Depending on what type of ship you work on, you may sail the world’s oceans, or you may work in local waters and be able to go home to your family each night. The International Maritime Organization recently announced that the industry is facing a shortage of trained and licensed maritime professionals, and the maritime academies confirm this, reporting high employment rates for their students as soon as they graduate.

To become a ship’s officer, engineer, or captain, you can do what Wes did and “come up through the hawsepipe,” or you can attend a maritime academy and start out working as a licensed officer or engineer after you graduate. There are seven publicly funded maritime academies in the United States. The US Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point in Long Island, The 1,302-foot-long Emma Maersk is a 170,794 gross New York, is a federal service academy; the others are state ton container ship operated by a crew of 13. schools: California Maritime Academy, Maine Maritime Academy, Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Great Lakes Maritime Academy, Texas A & M Maritime Academy, and the State University of New York (SUNY) Maritime College.

If you are interested in learning more about them, visit the schools’ websites: www.usmma.edu (Kings Point); www.csum. edu (California); www.mainemaritime.edu (Maine); www.maritime.edu (Massachusetts); www.nmc.edu/maritime/ (Great Lakes); www.tamug.edu/corps/ (Texas); and www.sunymaritime.edu (New York).

courtesy maersk line

photo by marco schoone

he United States Merchant Marine is a civilian maritime service made up of professional mariners and the vessels they operate. Merchant ships carry cargoes (container ships and tankers, for example) and passengers (ferries, cruise ships, and excursion vessels) in both inland waters and across the oceans. Although merchant mariners are civilians—meaning, not in the armed services—they sometimes work in support of the military or aboard ships owned by the federal government. In wartime, merchant mariners have been called in to service to transport troops and military supplies to war zones in other parts of the world.

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SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 43 43

Animals in Sea History

by Richard King

arly in the novel Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab leans over the side of his ship. The captain is navigating across the Atlantic Ocean and has just come upon another whaleship sailing in the other direction. Ishmael, the narrator, tells what happened: “Shoals of small harmless fish that for some days before had been placidly swimming by our side, darted away with what seemed shuddering fins, and arranged themselves fore and aft with the stranger’s flanks.” The small fish, which had been swimming under the hull, leave to choose the other vessel, as if they were rats fleeing a

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on fire. Ahab murmurs, sadly, looking over the rail at the fish: “Swim away from me, do ye?” Ahab sees this as a dark omen for his voyage to hunt the white whale.

Would a school of fish hang out under a ship and then move to another? If so, why, and what kind of fish would these be?

When writing this scene in Moby-Dick, Herman Melville was almost certainly imagining these as pilot fish, a silvery blue-striped species well known to whalemen at the time. Melville would have observed these fish during his years sailing around both the tropical Pacific and Atlantic. He also learned about the legendary habits of pilot fish in two books that we know he read as he was completing his literary masterpiece in 1851.

To do research for Moby-Dick, Melville read the account by the naturalist Frederick Bennett, who sailed as a ship’s doctor on a British whaleship in the South Pacific in the 1830s. Dr. Bennett, a careful observer in the mold of Charles Darwin, described the pilot fish’s average size, eye color, number of stripes, and number of spines. Bennett reported that sailors knew them to accompany ships sailing the open ocean, but that they commonly were found around sharks. He looked into the nature of this relationship: was it parasitic, or did sharks somehow benefit from their presence? Bennett observed that the pilot fish could catch and eat food by themselves, so they did not need sharks.

He also very much doubted the earlier stories that sharks needed the pilot fish to guide them, along the lines of human pilots who guide ships into port. Then again, Bennett had witnessed something in 1832 on a passage from India, in which he personally watched a lethargic shark pass by bait that the sailors had placed on a hook. The shark SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

© berndneeser – dreamstime.com

did not go after the bait until one of his two pilot fish had zipped out first to examine it. After the crew killed the shark, the two pilot fish remained with the vessel for weeks, even attending a small boat of theirs that went to and from another ship at sea. Modern scientists remain dubious of this relationship, however, believing that sharks don’t get much out of the partnership, except perhaps fewer parasites on their skin. The pilot fish get food scraps and protection from predators.

As he was writing Moby-Dick, Melville also read descriptions of the pilot fish in a published narrative by another naturalist named Francis Allyn Olmsted, who returned in 1841 from a whaling voyage to the Pacific after his graduation from Yale. Olmsted explained that pilot fish commonly seek shelter and food by living in the close vicinity of a large shark—“side by side with his ferocious mate”—as well as for days sometimes beneath the hull of a slow-moving ship. Pilot fish are known to align themselves with dozens of species of sharks, as well as large rays and sea turtles. Like several other species of fish, they also collect under large mats of sargassum or drift-wood to feed off the invertebrates growing underneath these floating ecosystems.

Most significant to our reading of this scene in MobyDick, Olmsted shared in his narrative, that it’s “a trick sometimes practiced by a brother whaler” to sail beside another’s hull to get a school of fish to leave and join their ship. Olmsted’s shipmates must have been bored or looking for some new fish to hook.

Perhaps this is where Mel­ville got the idea and turned it into an omen, the first hint that sharkish Ahab’s attempt to find and kill the white whale is not going to end well—pilot fish are known to leave a host as it dies.

For more “Animals in Sea History” go to www.seahistory.org or educators.mysticseaport.org.

“Sea History for K ids” is sponsored by the Henry L. & Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation

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SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 45

The remains of HMS Erebus on the seafloor. and lost sometime in 1846. Erebus was located off the coast of King William Island in Nunavut by Parks Canada archaeologists guided by Inuit experts in 2014, and Terror was found in waters near a different part of the island two years later. As commissioned ships of the Royal Navy, the wrecks were still property of the United Kingdom, but as early as 1997 the UK

had agreed that it would give ownership of the vessels to Canada. As part of the negotiated agreement, the United Kingdom will retain ownership of 65 artifacts related to the expedition found on land and aboard Erebus when it was first discovered. The signing ceremony commemorating the assignment of ownership paid tribute to Louie Kamookak, who died in March. Mr. Kamookak was credited with sorting through the Inuit oral histories related to the wrecks to identify their locations. A team from Parks Canada will be returning to the site this summer for further study. (Parks Canada: www.pc. gc.ca/en/culture/franklin; Inuit Heritage Trust: www.ihti.ca/eng/projectsn.html) …

The 112-year old Maine-built schooner Mary E was relaunched in May, after spending a good part of the last year out of the water at the Derecktor Robinhood shipyard in Georgetown, Maine. Mary E, a 73-foot wooden Mary E

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fishing vessel built in Bath in 1906, was acquired by the Maine Maritime Museum in spring 2017 and was immediately sent for a major overhaul. A crew led by master shipwright Andros Kypragoras replaced her frames and re-planked the hull above the waterline and the deck. When the vessel is ready for sea trials, she will be powered by a new 6B-210HP Cummins diesel that was donated by Cummins Northeast in Portland. Mary E is thought to be the oldest Bath-built wooden sailing ship still afloat. She spent her early years working in the fisheries out of Block Island off the coast of Rhode Island. She later spent a number of years as a passenger vessel in the Maine Windjammer fleet

and running tours and trips out of various ports before coming back to Bath. Maine Maritime Museum will re-rig her at the museum’s grounds. After a recommissioning ceremony scheduled for 9 June, Mary E will be based at the museum campus along the Kennebec River and will sail during the summer months, conducting educational programming and representing the museum and Bath—the “City of Ships.” (243 Washington St., Bath, ME; Ph. 207 443-1316; www.mainemaritimemuseum.org) … The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland, and Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut, are partnering on a new initiative to eliminate single-use plastic on both museum campuses. Single-use plastics are designed to be used only one time before being thrown away or recycled, and are a major source of marine debris.

As both organizations make the shift towards environmentally-friendly alternatives, the CBMM and Mystic teams are also developing resources to help other institutions eliminate singleuse plastic, based on the best practices established through the partnership.

(CBMM, 213 N. Talbot Street, St. Michaels, MD; Ph. 410 745-4951; www. cbmm.org. Mystic, 47 Greenmanville Ave., Mystic, CT; Ph. 860 572-0711; www.mysticseaport.org) ... In April, the retired ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 opened as a luxury hotel in Dubai.

Launched in 1967 in Clydebank, Scotland, the ship made her maiden voyage for the Cunard line in May of 1969; she served as Cunard’s flagship until ceding that title to Queen Mary 2 in 1984. QE2 was requisitioned by the British governQE2 Hotel in Dubai

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After almost two years of negotiations, the British government has turned over ownership of the wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror to Canada and the Inuit Heritage Trust. The two ships, which carried explorer Sir John Franklin and his team on a scientific expedition to the Arctic in 1844, were trapped in ice

(continued on page 48) SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

NMHS Advisors Committee Chairman, Naval Architect, Artist, Mariner, Shipbuilder

Melbourne Smith (1930–2018)

photo by eliot hudson, c/o tall ships america

We were saddened to hear from our friend Lilith Arenas that on 2 February her husband and our good friend and advisor, Melbourne Smith, had died in West Palm Beach, Florida. Melbourne’s passion was the design and building of sailing vessels based on historic ships and traditional sailing craft. He was the driving force in the building of the Baltimore clipper Pride of Baltimore and went on to research and design the topsail schooner Californian in San Diego, brig Niagara in Erie, Pennsylvania, and the 1812 privateer Lynx at Rockport Marine in Maine. He had plans to build the Hudson River sloop Experiment here near NMHS headquarters in the Hudson Valley, and the sloops of war USS Hornet and John Paul Jones’s Ranger in Palm Beach, Florida, where he lived in his later years. And for decades he held fast to the dream that he might one day build a replica of the famous record-setting clipper ship Sea Witch.

courtesy melbourne smith

NMHS trustee and author Bill White said of his colleague and friend, “Californian, Lynx, Pride of Baltimore, Niagara, and others, recreated as only a true sailor could, represent the resurgence of the ‘Age of Educational Sail,’ and there is only one man we can credit with this remarkable revival: Melbourne Smith. He designs with the love of a fine line, and he instills each of his creations with grace, speed, and impressive Two Melbourne Smith designs cross tacks off seaworthiness. ...His legacy is his ships. In that world his memory will live as the California coast. Californian, designed long as his ships sail.” NMHS Chairman Ronald Oswald and NMHS Secretary along the lines of an early revenue cutter, and Jean Wort spent many an evening in Palm Beach with Melbourne and Lilith, Lynx, representing a War of 1812 privateer. and never tired of his wit and storytelling. He credited much of what he knew to the naval architect John Griffiths, and it was at his instigation, and through the perseverance of his friends Matt Carmel and Ron Oswald, that Griffiths’s unmarked gravesite was located and a headstone—designed by Melbourne—erected there.

courtesy melbourne smith

On a chilly Tuesday afternoon in late March of this year, a group of graying men and women gathered in Eastport, Maryland, at Dick Franyo’s Boat Yard Brig Niagara Bar and Grill to celebrate the life of Melbourne Smith. Melbourne was a Canadian boy who reinvented himself as a venerable sailor, artist, marine architect, and boatbuilder, whom we all admired for his seafaring skills and devotion to the re-creation of historic vessels that once graced the waters surrounding and within the North American continent. His longtime friend Fred Hecklinger had brought some reminders of Melbourne’s work—architectural drawings of Chesapeake Bay craft, photographs of Melbourne in earlier days—mingled among plates of raw oysters, pizza, and beer on a sidetable in a tap room draped with sailing memorabilia from half the world over. The group circled around Fred as he recounted tales of Melbourne’s remarkable life, including sagas of building the lovely reproduction Sea Witch vessels for which he is well known and revered. And we spoke of others that he might have built, such as the Hawaiian trader Fair American, sloops of war Ranger and Hornet, and the clipper Sea Witch, if he had but world enough and time. Others, like shipbuilder Peter Boudreau, told of working alongside Melbourne in both the shipyard and on the deck of sailing ships.

But on one thing all could agree, that Melbourne Smith single-handedly energized the trend of building historically accurate reproductions of sailing ships of yesteryear, several of which grace our maritime museums today.

courtesy flagship niagara league

Naval historian and NMHS trustee Dr. William Dudley captured our grief in his remembrance:

Farewell, Melbourne Smith. You are missed. —Burchenal Green, NMHS President SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 47

spaces with period furniture and décor, artwork, and memorabilia. When the QE2 retired from ocean service, she had sailed around the world 25 times, carrying more than two million passengers, including then 89-year-old Beatrice Muller, who lived onboard the cruise ship as a permanent guest off and on since January 2000. (www.qe2.com) …

Workers at a construction site along the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia, recently unearthed the remains of three wooden ships in the Robinson Landing development area. Archaeologists under contract with developer EYA discovered two ships on the site in March, and a third ship just three weeks later. The vessel remains date to the mid-to-late 1700s, and archaeologists believe that they were buried before 1798. The remains of another vessel of similar vintage were discovered at the nearby site of the Hotel Indigo in late 2015. The Alexandria Archaeological Protection Code requires developers to have archaeologists on site to monitor all phases of ground distur-

Experience 500 years of

Art that Sails at the

Channel Islands Maritime Museum

courtesy eya

ment for three months in 1982 for use as a troop transport during the Falklands War. She was put back into passenger service in August 1982 and sailed in that capacity until she was purchased by Nakheel Properties, a company in Dubai, for $100 million in 2008. She arrived at Port Rashid in November of 2008, just as the global recession hit, leaving the new owners with too much debt to carry out their plans to convert the famous liner to a luxury hotel and entertainment center; the project was eventually taken over by the Dubai government’s Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corporation. After 2.7 million man-hours and $100 million dollars spent on the restoration and conversion, the historic vessel is open for guests.

Featuring 224 rooms and suites, 13 restaurants and bars, a movie theater, and an exhibition space dedicated to the ship’s history, Queen Elizabeth 2 began booking guests in a “soft opening” in April, with a grand opening planned for October. The ship has been outfitted with the most modern conveniences while retaining

bance. “The combination of Revolutionary War-era ships, early building foundations, and thousands of other artifacts found here makes Robinson Landing one of the most archaeologically significant sites in Virginia,” said Eleanor Breen, acting city archaeologist. With the ongoing development of the Alexandria waterfront, excavations have the potential to continue to unearth additional evidence of early wharves and piers, ships, and material culture related to early maritime commercial activity. The City of Alexandria is leading the analysis to determine how to proceed with the remains. (For more info about Alexandria archaeology, visit alexandriava.gov/Archaeology.) …

Books with sea spray between the lines A Man for All Oceans

Captain Joshua Slocum and the first solo voyage around the world

Captain Joshua Slocum and the First Solo Voyage Around the World

By Stan Grayson Fills significant gaps in our understanding of Slocum’s life and voyages

A Man for All Oceans STAN GRAYSON

“O’er the Wide and Tractless Sea” “O’er the Wide and Tractless Sea”

k original art of the yankee whale hunt

By Michael P. Dyer

Michael P. Dyer

store.whalingmuseum.org 508-997-0046 ext.127

original art of the yankee whale hunt

Rarely seen maritime paintings, drawings, and whaling artworks

“O’er the Wide and Tractless Sea”

Original Art of the Yankee Whale Hunt

By Michael P. Dyer

Old Dartmouth Historical Society / New Bedford Whaling Museum ISBN 978-0-9975161-3-5

3900 Bluefin Circle, Oxnard, CA 93035

(805) 984-6260 www.cimmvc.org 48

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

The passenger ferry Norgoma may have to leave Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, its home since 1975. The city council voted in late April to sell the historic vessel to a prospective buyer whose stated intention is to restore the ship to an operational passenger ferry and museum ship on the Great Lakes. While the Norgoma is owned and operated by the non-profit St. Mary’s River Marine Heritage Centre (SMRMHC), the contract between the city and Norgoma

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the SMRMHC does allow for the city to buy back the ship at a nominal price, as well as obligating the city to take responsibility for the ship should SMRMHC dissolve or otherwise fail to carry out its stewardship. The city maintains that the ship’s deteriorating condition renders her an eyesore, generating complaints from some citizens, including observations that paint chips from the vessel were falling into the river. As of press time, opponents to the sale were evaluating their options.

Norgoma, the last passenger vessel constructed with overnight sleeping cabins on the Great Lakes, was built in 1950 in Collingwood, Ontario, and carried passengers between Owen Sound and Sault Ste. Marie until 1963, following the completion of the TransCanada Highway.

Her steam engine was replaced with a diesel engine, and she was converted to a car ferry, operating between Tobermory and South Baymouth, until her sale to the city of Sault Ste. Marie. The city sold her to the SMRMHC in 1981. (www.norgoma. org; www.saultstemarie.ca) … The Texas Maritime Museum in Rockport, Texas, has reopened to the public after almost seven months. The museum, which suffered $600,000 in damages (continued on page 51)

Experienced ship model maker, who has been commissioned by the National Maritime Historical Society and the USS Intrepid Museum in New York City.

Lightship Overfalls Maritime Museum

One of only 17 remaining lightships in the United States, Lightship Overfalls is now celebrating her 80th Year!

Open for Guided Tours: June through mid-October, Thursday–Monday, 10am–4pm.

Group Tours also available.

Located in Historic Lewes on the Lewes & Rehoboth Canal.

www.overfalls.org

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 49

Spring Break Wreck in North Florida

by Brendan Burke, St. Augustine Lighthouse and Maritime Museum

uring the dawn hours of 28 March, high tide brought in quite a surprise for beachgoers and homeowners on Ponte Vedra Beach. A hamlet located just north of St. Augustine, Florida, Ponte Vedra is no stranger to shipwreck debris. The St. Augustine Lighthouse Archaeology Maritime Program (LAMP) has been working on a variety of historic shipwrecks and their associated maritime history along Florida’s “First Coast” since the group’s founding in 1999. When an unusually large set of shipwreck timbers washed up this spring, coastal resource managers in the region called on LAMP to respond to the scene for evaluation and study. Our team of archaeologists immediately rushed to the site, already thronged with curious visitors. By the end of that first day, a helicopter, two drones, and multiple news crews had assembled on the beach to learn about the wreck.

public outreach center, and so our next challenge was to move an estimated 10,000 pounds of delicate timbers. A careful lift transferred the shipwreck to the GTMNERR, where it resides today for public display, interpretation, and study.

photos courtesy of brendan burke, lamp

D

No, not that kind of spring break wreck.

Archaeologists dispatched to the site began documenting the ship’s remains under the watchful eye of thousands of onlookers.

A 50-foot section of a wooden ship lay on the beach at high water, glistening in the Florida sunlight. Tool marks and scribed Roman numerals on wooden surfaces could be seen as clear as the day they had been made more than a century before. After cordoning off the site, archaeologists from the museum began the process of documenting timbers, recording scantlings, taking wood samples, and recovering evidence from the site to reveal the who, what, when, where, and why. We also had to quickly determine a course of action once the initial documentation was completed. With preservation as our watch-word, we explored a number of options that would best serve to save the wreck site and its data. A local resource manager with the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve (GTMNERR) offered a home to the ship’s remains at their 50

What we have figured out so far is that this vessel was likely relatively new when she was lost; there is no evidence that the hull timbers low in the vessel (below the waterline) were ever re-coppered, no indication of repairs having been made to such a substantial portion of a wooden hull, and tool marks are still clearly visible on her ceiling timbers. Not knowing where this vessel was lost, we next sought to figure out where the ship may have been built. Wood analysis revealed an interesting composite of beech and pine futtocks, paired in composite frames. The combination of wood types appears to indicate a unique construction pattern that, when considering the second-growth nature of much of the pine, may indicate a later 19th-century construction, possibly along the southeastern mid-Atlantic. We are also investigating how this pairing of wood types may have contributed to the vessel’s loss by negatively affecting the ship’s structural viability. Clearly, there is much more to learn.

Interest remains high, but the number of curious spectators who made their way to the site during this time was remarkable.

For those who could not make the trip in person, the story was carried in the national news and on social media. The shipwreck showed up on the beach during Florida public schools’ spring break, which allowed families and students to come during the weekdays. Sheriff’s deputies from St. Johns County estimate that 1,000 cars per day brought visitors to the site.

Archaeologists from LAMP will continue to study the ship’s remains and will post updates as they become available at the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum’s Facebook page: facebook.com/staugustinelighthouse. (St. Augustine Lighthouse and Maritime Museum, 81 Lighthouse Avenue, St. Augustine, FL; Ph. 904 829-0745; www.staugustinelighthouse.org) SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

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Texas Maritime Museum from Hurricane Harvey in August of 2017, celebrated the event with a grand reopening and ribbon-cutting ceremony on 25 April, organized by the Rockport-Fulton Chamber of Commerce. The museum’s collection of artifacts had been moved off-site prior to the storm and were preserved from damage, but the building flooded during the storm and the interior was fully exposed after a skylight fell from the roof. The entire interior had to be gutted, among other structural and cosmetic repairs. The museum first opened in July 1989, with its roots in the city of Rockport’s annual Seafair Festival. It expanded with the completion of the Robert J. Hewitt/O’Connor Hewitt Foundation Maritime Collections and Education Center in 2012, which added a 1,200-square-foot educational space, as well as additional collections space. (1202 Navigation Cr., Rockport, TX; Ph. 361 729-1271; www.texasmaritimemuseum. org) … The topsail schooner Pride of Baltimore II has gotten a financial reprieve in the nick of time to keep her sailing in 2018. The State of Maryland

Sea Going to na With Cu rd

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Steamboat Bill & PowerShips: A Look Back 8 Over 75 Years Through the Lens of Byron Huart: Cruise Ships at New York 18 A Final Visit to 26 Leonardo da Vinci A Yank on the l 34 Bristol Channe When Hudsont River Towboa Companies werees Family Business

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Email info@sshsa.org or call 1-401-463-3570 and we’ll send you a FREE copy and tell you how to subscribe.

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THE FLEET IS IN. Sit in the wardroom of a mighty battleship, touch a powerful torpedo on a submarine, or walk the deck of an aircraft carrier and stand where naval aviators have flown off into history. It’s all waiting for you when you visit one of the 175 ships of the Historic Naval Ships Association fleet.

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that is needed to meet operational costs.

Without a least $530,000 in funding this spring, Pride II would have had to sit out the 2018 season at the dock. The original Pride of Baltimore, built in 1977 and lost at sea in 1986, was owned by the city of Baltimore. Pride of Baltimore II, built 30 years ago in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, was initially owned by the State of Maryland; ownership transferred to Pride of Baltimore, Inc., in 2010. Pride of Baltimore II celebrates her 30th anniversary this year. (2700 Lighthouse Point East, Suite 330, Baltimore, MD; 410 539-1151; www.pride2.org) ) … This year marks the 150th anniversary of the historic relocation of the Brooklyn Flint Glass Company to Corning, New York. The move was carried out in 1868 via New York waterways by canal barge. To commemorate the event, this summer the Corning Museum of Glass (CMoG) is retracing the voyage on an 80-foot canal barge, aptly named GlassBarge, equipped with CMoG’s patented all-electric glassmaking equipment. GlassBarge embarked 6/5/12 AM on its10:47:40 four-month journey in May from Brooklyn Bridge Park on the East River.

courtesy cmog

legislature recently allocated $500,000 to the ship’s operations in its budget bill, expected to be signed into law by Maryland Governor Larry Hogan as of press time.

Pride of Baltimore, Inc., announced on 5 February that it was facing tough economic decisions; the recession of 2008 forced the organization to reach into its endowment to keep the program running, leaving it with severely depleted funds. While the ship earns revenue from appearance fees, day sails, private charters, and guest crew experiences, that income does not fully meet the $1.2 million

Glassblowing demonstration on the Corning Museum of Glass’s GlassBarge.

From there it is traveling up the Hudson River and westward along the Erie Canal before making its way to the Finger Lakes.

Planned stops include Yonkers, Poughkeepsie, Kingston, Albany, Little Falls, Sylvan Beach, Baldwinsville, Fairport, Lockport, Buffalo, Medina, Brockport, Pittsford, Lyons, Palmyra, Seneca Falls, and Watkins Glen. Glassblowers will provide daily demonstrations from 11am– 6pm. The last leg of the journey will take place overland, culminating in a community-wide celebration in Corning, New York, on 22 September. The GlassBarge project celebrates both the story of glassmaking in Corning and the continued role of New York’s waterways in shaping the state’s industry, culture, and community. The tour coincides with the Erie Canal’s Bicentennial (2017–2025)—for which GlassBarge is a 2018 signature event—as well as the centennial of the commemoration of the Barge Canal in New York State. GlassBarge will be moved along the waterways by South Street Seaport Museum’s historic 1930 tug W. O. Decker. Also accompanying GlassBarge along the journey will be the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum’s 1964 tugboat C. L. Churchill and the Lois McClure, a replica of an 1862 sailing canal barge.

Visitors are invited aboard the Lois McClure to learn about what life was like on board a canal barge in the 19th century.

Tours are first come-first served and do not require registration. (Details on events, route, and port stops are online, www.cmog.org/GlassBarge. CMoG, One Museum Way, Corning, New York; Ph. 607 937-5371. LCMM, www.lcmm.org.

SSSM, www.southstreetseaportmuseum. org) …

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

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USS Juneau, October 1942

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Microsoft co-founder and undersea explorer Paul Allen and his team aboard R/V Petrel have discovered another historic naval vessel in the Pacific: the light cruiser USS Juneau, which was sunk by a Japanese torpedo in the Battle of Guadacanal in November 1942.

The incident was made famous for the loss of George, Madison, Albert, Francis, and Joseph “Red” Sullivan. The five brothers had insisted on serving aboard the same ship; when it was sunk, word spread in the US of the family that had lost five sons in a single enemy action. Two US Navy vessels have been named for them, and their

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The Sullivan brothers aboard USS Juneau. (l-r) Joe, Frank, Al, Matt, and George. story inspired the 1944 film The Fighting Sullivans. The remains of USS Juneau, which sank with the loss of 687 men, were located off the coast of the Solomon Islands at a depth of 2.6 miles. The discovery was made on 17 March. Allen’s team has discovered the location of the wrecks of several notable US Navy ships in the last year: USS Indianapolis in August of 2017, USS Ward in December, and just two weeks before the discovery of Juneau, they located the wreck site of the aircraft carrier USS Lexington on 4 March 2018. (www.paulallen.com) ... A visit to the Mariners’ Museum and Park in Newport News, Virginia, will only cost you a dollar this summer. The museum recently announced that it will be charging one dollar for admission from 25 May through Labor Day “to engage as many people as possible because through the world’s waters, through our shared maritime heritage, we are all mariners.” The City of Newport News and BayPort Credit Union contributed to make this program possible. Non-member ticket prices for the museum are ordinarily $13.95 for adults, $12.95 for seniors and military, and $8.95 for children aged 4–12, with children under 4 admitted free. (100 Museum Dr., Newport News, VA; Ph. 757 596-2222; www.mariners museum.org) …

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

CALENDAR Conferences & Symposiums •Music of the Sea Symposium, 8–9 June at Mystic Seaport Museum. (75 Greenmanville Ave., Mystic, CT; Ph. 860 572-5331; www.mysticseaport.org) •Canadian Nautical Research Society Annual Conference, 21–23 June in Toronto, Ontario. Conference theme is “Lower Lakes, Upper Lakes: Connecting Maritime Heritage.” (www.cnrs-scrn.org) •Society for Historical Archaeology, 9–12 January in St. Charles, MS. Callfor-Papers deadline is 30 June. Conference theme is “Making the Most of Opportunities: Education, Training, and Experiential Learning.” (www.sha.org) •American Historical Association 133rd Annual Meeting 3–6 January in Chicago, IL. (www.historians.org)

•Answering America’s Call: Newport News in World War I, now through 2018 at the Mariners’ Museum. (100 Museum Dr., Newport News, VA; Ph. 757 5962222; www.marinersmuseum.org) •Harrison Cady: View from the Headlands, 7 July–28 October at the Cape Ann Museum in MA. (27 Pleasant St., Gloucester, MA; www.capeannmuseum.org) •25th Annual Maritime Art Exhibit, 14 July–19 September at the Coos Art Museum in Coos Bay, OR. (See page 33 for details.) (235 Anderson Avenue, Coos Bay, OR; Ph. 541 267-3901; www.coosart.org) •BIW: Building America’s Navy, now through 2020 at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath. (43 Washington St., Bath, ME; Ph. 207 443-1316; www.mainemari timemuseum.org)

•Maine Windjammer Great Schooner Race, 5–6 July. Race day is 6 July; the race course goes from Islesboro to Rockland, ME. (www.greatschoonerrace.com) •23rd New Bedford Folk Festival, 7–8 July in New Bedford, MA. (www. newbedfordfolkfestival.com) •“Lines, Shapes, and Stories: Documenting the 1906 Schooner Mary E,” 18 July, a presentation by chief curator Anne Witty at the Maine Maritime Museum. (43 Washington Street, Bath, ME; Ph. 207 443-1316; www.mainemaritime museum.org) •Antique & Classic Boat Festival, 25–26 August at Brewer Hawthorne Cove Marina in Salem, MA. (10 White St., Salem, MA; Ph. 978 448-6757; www.boatfesti val.org)

Come see us at the WoodenBoat Show at Mystic Seaport, 22–24 June! You’ll find us at the NMHS / Sea History booth in Tent A on the Village Green. There will be boats on shore, boats at the dock, boats sailing past, boats in the parking lot! Plus displays and demonstrations, maritime vendors, and more. (www.woodenboatshow.com) E xhibits •“These Are My People!”—The Story of Artistides de Sousa Mendes, opens 13 June at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. (18 Johnny Cake Hill, New Bedford, MA; Ph. 508 997-0046; www.whaling museum.org) •US Coast Guard 2018 Art Collection, 8–20 July at Salmagundi Club in New York City. 28 works by 23 artists as part of the USCG Art Program, which seeks to convey the myriad missions performed by the Coast Guard. The exhibition is free and open to the public. (Salmagundi Club, 47 Fifth Avenue, NY; www.salmagundi.org; www.uscg.mil/art) •Mixing Mediums by Jack Mithun, art exhibition at the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum, now through September. (113 Harbor Way, Santa Barbara, CA; Ph. 805 962-8404; www.sbmm.org) •Stobart at Noble, through 2018 at the Noble Maritime Collection on the Sailors’ Snug Harbor campus (Bldg. D) on Staten Island. (1000 Richmond Terrace, Staten Island, NY; Ph. 718 447-6490; www.no blemaritime.org)

•Rum: Sailors, Pirates, and Prohibition, now open at the Maritime Museum of San Diego in California. (1492 N. Harbor Dr., San Diego, CA; Ph. 619 234-9153; www. sdmaritime.org) •Thomas Paquette: America’s River Re-Explored, Paintings of the Mississippi from Source to Gulf, now through 26 August at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum. (800 Riverview Dr., Winona, MN; Ph. 507 474-6626; www.mmam.org) Festivals, Events, Lectures, Etc. •Sea Music Festival, 7–10 June at Mystic Seaport Museum. (75 Greenmanville Ave., Mystic, CT; Ph. 860 572-5331; www.mysticseaport.org) •WoodenBoat Show, 22–24 June at Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut. (75 Greenmanville Ave., Mystic, CT; Ph. 860 572-5388; www.mysticseaport.org. www. woodenboatshow.com) •Thunder Bay Maritime Festival, 4 July at the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Center in Alpena, MI. (500 W. Fletcher Street, Alpena, MI; www.thunderbay. noaa.gov)

•Lake Champlain Maritime Festival, 26–29 July along the waterfront in Burlington, VT. (www.lcmfestival.com) •Harbor Beach Maritime Festival, 12–15 July at Judge James Lincoln Park on Lake Huron. (1 Trescott St., Harbor Beach, MI; www.themaritimefestival.com) •Launch! A Maritime Festival, 13–17 June in Kennebunkport and Arundel, Maine. (www.gokennebunks.com) •Festival of the Sea, 18 August at the Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco. (www. maritime.org/events) •Sea Chantey Festival, 26 August at the Maritime Museum of San Diego. (1492 N. Harbor Dr., San Diego, CA; Ph. 619 234-9153; www.sdmaritime.org) •Portland SchoonerFest and Regatta, 22–24 June along the waterfront in Portland, Maine. (www.tallshipsportland.org) •Windjammer Days Festival, 24–30 June in Boothbay Harbor, ME. (www. windjammerdays.org) •Lake Union Wooden Boat Festival, 29– 30 September at the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle. (1010 Valley Street, Seattle, WA; www.cwb.org)

SEA SEAHISTORY HISTORY163, 163,SUMMER SUMMER2018 55 2018 55

MARITIME HISTORY ON THE INTERNET

by Peter McCracken

Researching Legislative History: Bills That Became Law Much of American maritime history is bound up in federal legislation. The Jones Act (officially, The Merchant Marine Act of 1920), which aims to promote American merchant maritime trade by requiring— among other things—that seaborne trade between American ports be carried by American-built and -flagged ships, is perhaps the best known. The Act has had immeasurable impact on American maritime history in the past century, and its impacts remain a constant issue. Members of Congress continue to argue for amendment or repeal.

Tracking legislative information can be a real challenge. Though everything that the US Government publishes is available in the public domain, not all of that content is yet available online. And because tracking the ways in which a bill becomes law can be incredibly confusing, subscription databases that bring some form of order to this complexity can be quite valuable. Nevertheless, there are ways of finding relevant information online, and we’ll explore a few of these over the next few columns.

This column will focus on how one can conduct (mostly free) online research regarding bills that have become laws. The next column will look at the background information that’s available to support those laws—that is, the reports, the documents, and the hearings that provide the support for eventual legislation. Finally, the third column will investigate how we can track and research actively considered legislation.

The best source for online information about past laws is Congress itself, at https:// www.congress.gov. (Congress.gov replaces THOMAS.gov, the original Congressional information database that provided content from the mid-1990s to 2016.)

The site provides information about legislation from 1973 to present, though its fulltext content doesn’t start until 1989; for laws passed before that, the database contains just descriptions and citations about bills and legislation.

To find the text of specific public laws, you can start at https://www.congress. gov/public-laws/, where laws are listed by the Congress in which they were initially enacted. Usually, about 600 bills become 56

law per year, though partisanship in the past few years has seen that number nearly cut in half. Many of those are just a paragraph or two, and focus on naming a Post Office, a mountain peak, or another site, after someone. The Law Library of Congress provides a valuable overview— especially of more meaningful legislation— at https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes. php. The country’s laws, known as Statutes at Large, are available at the Government Printing Office site; search “statutes at large gpo” to avoid its cumbersome URL. This site holds PDFs of statutes going back to 1951, though they are not full-text searchable. The full current US Code can be found at http://uscode.house.gov/.

The Library of Congress offers digitized versions of many early documents on their pages about the first century of the country, covering US Congressional Documents and Debates from 1774 to 1875, at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/ lawhome.html. This project was completed by 2003, and its age shows. Alas, some documents only have indexes and no full text.

Unfortunately, the space between 1875 and 1973 is not well represented in free online resources. Online databases like Lexis, Westlaw, and ProQuest Congressional do provide excellent access to these resources, however, and you likely have access to at least one of these through a local public, academic, or state library. In ProQuest Congressional, a search for “life saving service,” narrowed to just “Statutes at Large” Document Type, found numerous laws relating to the Life Saving Service through its history. (Also, see http://proquest.libguides.com/pq_congressional/ for a useful guide to using the ProQuest Congressional database.)

This is a necessarily brief overview of an incredibly complex topic. In our next column, we’ll look at researching the documents that describe the development of specific laws.

Suggestions for other sites worth mentioning are welcome at peter@shipindex.org. See http://shipindex.org for a free compilation of over 150,000 ship names from indexes to dozens of books and journals.

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

Reviews

The Sea is a Continual Miracle: Sea Poems and Other Writings by Walt Whitman, edited by Jeffrey Yang (University Press of New England, Lebanon, NH, 2017, 320pp, index of titles, isbn 978-161168-922-8; $19.95pb) In the introduction to the collection The Sea is a Continual Miracle, editor Jeffrey Yang acknowledges that no single theme can be said to characterize all of Whitman’s poetry. Nevertheless, Yang argues convincingly that “The sea, though, can encompass it—puts it in its place, gives it its pace.” The volume presents an impressive and carefully curated collection of Whitman’s poems and prose from every phase of his career in order to bear out Yang’s sweeping and useful theoretical claim.

For Whitman scholars, and scholars of maritime literature more generally, Yang’s compact introduction makes two especially relevant contributions. First, he provides ample evidence that Whitman’s lifelong proximity to and relationship with the ocean animated his poetic output, both in terms of overt content and imagery, as well as at the level of form and composition—oceanic patterns of flow, circulation, rhythm, and complexity are consistently found in the structure of individual poems (even poems in which the sea is not the obvious topic), and in Whitman’s career-spanning strategies of revision and transformation. In addition to putting Whitman’s life and work into historical context, Yang also provides an engrossing account of Whitman’s far-reaching international influence up through our contemporary moment. He reminds us of Whitman’s importance to the recognizable heavy-hitters of US and British Modernism, but then reveals how he has also inspired writers and artists farther afield, in the Caribbean, Latin America, Japan, and China (just to name a few). His focus on Whitman’s global circulation is especially apt for this volume’s oceanic aspirations.

Yang’s arrangement of works is equally thoughtful and theoretically valuable.

He based his selections on three principles: First, he included poems and prose pieces— primarily from Whitman’s journal Specimen

Days—that explicitly address the sea, or the Coral Sea—the first great carrier battle. “its connected bodies of water,” such as He witnessed that battle from the bridge rivers, creeks, or lakes. Next, there are selec- aboard USS Lexington. Officially an obtions meant to highlight the influence of server, he nevertheless put his life in danger the sea on Whitman’s formal choices. Even to rescue trapped and injured seamen after if water is thematically absent, these poems the carrier was mortally wounded. Officers are “emulative of the sea’s character and who witnessed his actions recommended cadence.” Finally, the volume is arranged him for a commendation. chronologically in order to demonstrate So, how was it that only a few months how Leaves of Grass evolved over Whitman’s later, Johnston and his editor found themlifetime. It begins with selections from the selves in danger of being imprisoned for 1855 edition; each section includes poems running a story about the Battle of Midway, that were new to subsequent headlined: “NAVY HAD WORD OF JAP editions or that had been PLAN TO STRIKE AT SEA”? The newssignificantly revised up paper article asserted that the United States through the final Leaves of knew in advance of the exact Japanese orGrass published in 1892. der of battle. The American ambush of the Yang’s careful construction Midway strike force turned the tide in the The Glencannon Press is of special value to readers Pacific and, as we now know, was enabled 4 col.ininches (2.25 inches) interested seeing or teach-x 4.5 by the Americans’ cracking of Japan’s naval right hand page,code. bottom right. ing Prefer the relationship between content and poetic forms, But this feat of cryptography remained because it highlights Whit- secret for decades, unless you drew the man’s rigorous and disci- logical conclusion from Johnston’s Chicago plined ethos of revision, Tribune that the advance “word” had to which is not always immediately apparent come from somewhere. The American high in his exuberant and wide-ranging free verse command assumed that, as a result of the style.

Early in his introduction, Yang inTHE GLENCANNON cludes a quote from one of the late entries PRESS from Specimen Days. Whitman writes, contemplating the ocean, “I felt I must one Maritime Books day write a book expressing this liquid, mystic theme.” Yang’s important volume provides a definitive demonstration of how the liquid and mystic power of the sea is NEW! critical to appreciating the scope of WhitThe hisTory of The AssociAman’s prodigious innovations and accomTion of MArylAnd PiloTs plishments.

by Capt. Brian Hope Amy Parsons Vallejo, California

G P

Stanley Johnson’s Blunder: The Reporter Who Spilled the Secret Behind the US Navy’s Victory at Midway by Elliot Carlson (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2017, 352pp, illus, notes, biblio, index, isbn 978-1-59114-679-7; $29.95hc) There is no question that Stanley Johnston, a somewhat-dashing would-be war correspondent hanging on by his fingertips to a job at the Chicago Tribune, was in a terrible place at a fortuitous time. Johnston was the only reporter on any of the American ships involved in the 1942 Battle of

A veteran pilot of more than 40 years experience guiding ships through Chesapeake Bay, Capt. Hope chronicles the fascinating history of this organization from before the Revolutionary War to the present.

FREE Catalog 1-510-455-9027 Online at www.glencannon.com

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 57

ENCOUNTERS UNFORESEEN 1492 Retold

The history of Columbus’s epic voyage dramatized from a bicultural perspective, presenting Columbus’s beliefs, thoughts, and actions side by side with those of the historic Native Americans he met. Based closely on Columbus’s Journal, other primary sources, and anthropological studies.

“Rowen’s research…is nothing less than breathtaking. The sensitivity and originality of his portrayals are equally impressive, avoiding the trap of simply retelling a familiar tale from an exclusively European perspective or casting the explorers as nothing more than rapacious colonialists….remarkably new and inventive...”—Kirkus Reviews “…spellbinding…recreates the world as Columbus must have known it…exploring the reactions of local chiefs upon their encounter with Columbus and…his exploits, and his abject solitude as well.” —Readers’ Favorite Five Star Review “…a fascinating story of enmeshed lives, and the consequences of new worlds….written with scrupulous detail to historical accuracy…”—William F. Keegan, Curator of Caribbean Archaeology, Florida Museum of Natural History, Talking Taíno “…a literary masterpiece…”—Midwest Book Review

ANDREW ROWEN www.andrewrowen.com

Available in hardcover and ebook ALL PERSONS PRESS

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SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

story, the Japanese would change their codes. If they did, the extraordinary work that had gone into breaking the codes would be lost. And worse, the American window into their enemy’s planning would close. To them, it was literally a case of “loose lips” endangering not only ships, but the entire war effort.

As Elliot Carlson—a journalist himself—tells it, Johnston was a chummy but low-level reporter whose good nature and heroic actions contributed to Navy officer friends letting him know far more than he should have and far too little about how sensitive that information was. He did not intend to hand the Japanese an intelligence coup—he was no spy, after all. His story was, as this book’s title says, a “blunder,” made worse by editors who skirted—or misunderstood—military censorship to buy themselves a scoop. It was one of many missteps, oversights, and episodes of sloppy security and bad judgments that led to what could have been the greatest intelligence screw-up of the war.

Carlson’s meticulous research and supple writing leads us through the steps of how Stanley Johnston acquired his great scoop and how—against both regulations and common sense—that scoop ended up on the front pages of an American newspaper. Carlson makes it easy to understand how, in the crush of deadline pressure and journalistic competition, newspaper editors rushed to print a story that opened a window into secrets they had no idea existed.

But the biggest “what were they thinking?” blunder in the story is not the one committed by the hapless Johnston; it is in the political decision in Washington to use the newspaper’s mistake to punish the Chicago Tribune.

The publisher of the Chicago Tribune, Robert R. McCormick, was an ardent foe of Franklin Roosevelt. He had fought the Isolationist fight until it was no longer tenable. Afterwards, in the eyes of FDR’s administration, McCormick’s news coverage and editorials came as close to aiding and comforting the enemy as it was possible to get. Seizing on the Johnston blunder, Washington made a political decision to attack McCormick and his paper in the courts.

Having fought for years to gain access to the records that tell the story of the ultimately fruitless attempt to prosecute,

Carlson lays out the inside story of how this information ended up in print and how, at the last minute, the Navy’s intelligence officials took the great professional risk of stonewalling the government’s own prosecutors to protect one of the secrets that won the war.

Stanley Johnston’s Blunder is a wellwritten insight into some of the very real characters whose actions—sometimes gallant and sometimes foolish—shape the events of their times in ways they could never imagine. In Stanley Johnston’s case, it is a blessing that he did not affect the war’s outcome in any big way—the Japanese apparently did not subscribe to the Chicago Tribune. And so, the Americans kept reading their mail.

Richard O’Regan Toronto, Ontario Steam Titans: Cunard, Collins, and the Epic Battle for Commerce on the North Atlantic by William J. Fowler Jr. (Bloomsbury, New York, 2017, 368pp, illus, biblio, notes, index, isbn 978-1-6204-0908-4; $30hc) In the twentieth century, a battle raged on the high seas for the supremacy of the North Atlantic, pitting German submarines against the navies of the Allies. In the midnineteenth century, a battle for the Atlantic was also underway—not military warfare, but economic—between two companies poised on different sides of the ocean.

From Liverpool, England, steamed the ships of the British North American Royal Mail Steamship Packet Company; from New York City, the liners of the New York and Liverpool United States Mail Steamship Company. These companies, better known by their owners, Samuel Cunard and Edward Knight Collins, fought for control of the lucrative North Atlantic passenger trade. This story is not new, but in Steam Titans: Cunard, Collins, and the Epic Battle for Commerce in the North Atlantic, noted maritime historian William Fowler Jr. draws upon his decades of maritime and literary experience to weave together a narrative of technology, finance, government, and secret deals to bring to light the true scale of this endeavor.

William Fowler is known by many for his monumental tome, America and the Sea: A Maritime History and Jack Tars and

Commodores: The American Navy, 1783– 1815. A distinguished professor emeritus from Northeastern University, his interests have never ventured far from the sea. His account of this transAtlantic competition delves into the Space Race of the day, trying to deliver passengers across the North Atlantic on a regular scheduled liner service.

Previous attempts with sailing vessels, such as the Black Ball Line, were moderately successful, but dependence on the wind always impacted schedules. It was the introduction of steam propulsion, after the successful crossings by ships like Savannah, Sirius, and Great Western, that stimulated Edward Collins to venture beyond his successful Dramatic Line, a sailing packet line out of New York, to build the greatest steam liners of the day. Nearly at the same time, Samuel Cunard of Halifax sought to establish a regular steamship service to Nova Scotia. Both men shared a similar vision for their nations and embarked on the means to achieve their goals.

Their ambitions set them on similar courses. Collins worked with the US Congress to net a mail subsidy to offset the cost for his vessels, while Cunard adopted a similar arrangement with the British Admiralty. The results were two competing steam packet services. In Steam Titans, Fowler does not merely recount these tales, but discusses the different philosophies of the two shipping magnates and the challenges that they faced. The book brings to light what it was like to sail into the port of Liverpool, why it developed as a counterpoint to New York, and the difficulties that ships faced with the massive tides of the Mersey. He discusses what it was like to book passage on one of the Cunard or Collins liners and the massive difference in the passenger trade of the mid-nineteenth century to the large-scale movement of people toward the beginning of the next. Perhaps the best element in Fowler’s book is his discussion of the relationship and secret agreement worked out by the two rivals.

Today, only Cunard remains afloat with three ships—Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary 2, and Queen Victoria—identified with the line and bearing the image of Samuel Cunard on board. The name Cunard represents the pinnacle and height of luxury in terms of oceanic sailing. Collins, on the other hand, is nowhere to be seen.

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 59

Plagued by twin disasters—the collision of the Collins paddle steamer SS Arctic and the disappearance of SS Pacific less than two years later—and bearing the ire of southern Democratic politicians and President Franklin Pierce, his once great line failed. He lost his ships and eventually all his wealth and is buried in an unmarked grave. Fowler’s Steam Titans does what many previous books fail to do, and that is to capture all aspects of the story into one comprehensive, authoritative, and readable tale that is great for maritime enthusiasts, professionals, and the public.

Salvatore Mercogliano Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina

by Kurt D. Voss All proceeds from this pictorial history benefit the ELISSA preservation fund.

Published by Arcadia Publishing and Galveston Historical Foundation $21.99. 128 pages, 200 photographs Autographed copies available at (409) 763-1877, or online at:

w w w . t 1/8 s mpage - e AD lissa.org

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The Death and Life of the Great Lakes

by Dan Egan (W. W. Norton & Co., 2017, 368pp, illus, notes, biblio, index, isbn 9780-393-24643-8; $27.95hc) Award-winning journalist Dan Egan’s The Death and Life of the Great Lakes presents a compelling and dark story of how a series of human actions (and inactions) have repeatedly devastated the ecology of the world’s largest freshwater system. Based on several years of journalistic research, including interviews with current and former government officials, politicians, biologists, and amateur and professional sports fishermen, the book offers a timely and important updating of William Ashworth’s 1986 pathbreaking The Late Great Lakes: An Environmental History. Egan’s primary focus is on the effects of the unintentional (invasive) and intentional (introduced) non-native marine species in the Great Lakes. Egan lays the principal blame for these biological invasions on the dramatic re-engineering of the lakes through canals during the 19th and 20th centuries. In transforming the Great Lakes into a North American “Mediterranean Sea” and promoting international maritime commerce, engineers systematically stripped away the natural defenses that had limited the migration of species in the past. Particularly damaging was the circumventing of Niagara Falls through the construction of the various Welland Canals, the bridging of the natural divide between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River system with the opening of the Illinois and Michigan Canal in 1848, and the completion of the St. Lawrence

Seaway in the 1959. The Welland Canal and St. Lawrence Seaway provided the “front door” to biological invasions from the Atlantic Ocean, while the canals connecting the Mississippi River with Lake Michigan created a back door. The result has been more than a century of ecological and economic chaos.

Egan’s training as a journalist is evident in a crusading style that lends the book more an air of exposé than detached analysis. This is the book’s greatest strength, as the reporter’s search for truth and villains brings to light decades of economic shortsightedness and the hubris of engineers and scientists whose efforts to promote economic development and fight biological invasions generally served to worsen the impacts. Egan describes the poisoning of sea lamprey, the introduction of chinook salmon as a method for controlling alewife (river herring) populations, and the result economic boom and subsequent crash of the salmon sport fishing sector, the destructive effects of zebra and quagga mussels introduced through the ballast water of ocean-going vessels, the recent effects of phosphorous loading from fertilizer, and the emerging threat of Asian Carp. Egan does not paint a hopeful picture. If the past is any predictor of future behavior, regional leaders, policy makers, regulators, and government bureaucrats will avoid taking the drastic steps needed to close the lakes to biological invasions until it is too late.

The Death and Life of the Great Lakes provides a gripping introduction to the global problem of the transportation of invasive species through maritime commerce and does an excellent job of explaining the extraordinary ecological and cultural value and uniqueness of the Great Lakes. Written with journalistic clarity and energy, the book is a quick and enjoyable read that still packs a strong punch.

John O. Jensen Pensacola, Florida American Sanctuary: Mutiny, Martyrdom, and National Identity in the Age of Revolution by A. Roger Ekirch (Pantheon Books, New York, 2017, illus, notes, index, isbn 978-0-307-37990-0; $30hc) America wracked by dissension. Political parties vying for supremacy as outSEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

sized personalities command attention on the national political stage. Character assassination in the halls of government and in the press. Burning questions of immigration, personal liberty, and national security. No, it is not 2017–2018, it is 1799– 1800. And among the unlikely bit players in this national drama is an impressed Connecticut sailor named Jonathan Robbins; or is he actually a mutinous Irishman named Thomas Nash?

While the Robbins/Nash story is not that widely known, the backstory—impressment of American citizens by the Royal Navy—is familiar to many. The man at the center of the story was a crewman aboard the frigate HMS Hermione on the Caribbean station under the command of a strict captain, Hugh Pigot. Following months of increasingly harsh discipline, members of the crew rebelled in September 1797, resulting in the death of Pigot and all his officers in the bloodiest mutiny in Royal Navy history.

Britain pressed the search for the mutineers, slowly rounding them up over the following few years, a process combining equal measures of precise intelligence and blind luck. Jonathan Robbins, at the center of this story, was seized in Charleston, South Carolina, upon suspicion of being one of the mutineers. Robbins claimed to hail from Danbury, Connecticut, and that he had been impressed into the Royal Navy, thereby sparking Republican political support for his cause. Federalists believed him to be in fact Thomas Nash, an Irishman recruited by the Royal Navy and one of the leaders of the bloody Hermione mutiny. His ultimate extradition to British custody, under the yet untested terms of the 1794 Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation supported by President John Adams and the Federalists, prompted a firestorm of opposition by Republicans both in and outside of Congress. Charges flew that Adams had improperly influenced the federal judge in the Robbins case, leading to his being handed over to British authorities in 1799. Not surprisingly, following a court martial, Robbins was hung from the yardarm of a warship at Port Royal, Jamaica, his body then bound in chains and hung from a gibbet on the shore as a grim warning to other potential mutineers.

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The author devotes a good part of this intriguing work to the political upheaval in the wake of Robbins’s execution, in the process reminding us all of the significant place held by American mariners in the hearts and minds of their countrymen during the period of the Early Republic. Even in death this sailor played an important role in underlining the diverging worldview between Federalist and Republican. Professor Ekirch’s thoughtful examination of the growing opposition to legislation like the Alien and Sedition Acts, and with it the notion of what constitutes nationality and citizenship, provides the reader certain parallels to today’s political debates.

As for the actual identity of this doomed sailor, I encourage you to read this engaging study and make up your own mind.

Richard C. Malley Simsbury, Connecticut Quincy, Massachusetts: A Shipbuilding Tradition by Wayne G. Miller (Quincy Historical Society, Quincy, MA, 2017, 198pp, illus, notes, 978-0-578-19850-7; $21.99pb) Ask anybody in Massachusetts’ “City of Presidents” about the history of shipbuilding in the old town, and the words “Fore River” will inevitably be invoked. And that’s just fine. The Fore River yard turned out

ships large and small—battleships, submarines, lightships and more—from 1884 to 1986, under various ownership groups, started by none other than Thomas A. Watson. Before investing in shipbuilding, Watson had worked with Alexander Graham Bell on another invention. He was the man on the receiving end of the first phone call: “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.”

Yet, as author Wayne G. Miller points out, there was much more to Quincy’s shipbuilding past than just the Fore River yard.

With twenty-seven miles of coastline between two of America’s oldest settlements (Plymouth and Boston), shipbuilding arose as an early need in Quincy. The first ship built in Quincy was a ketch called Unity, that was launched in 1696; but the historical trail peters out after it slipped off to sea, both for the ketch and for any shipbuilding during the next century in Quincy. The next locally built vessel, the ship Massachusetts, launched in 1789.

Miller crossed many miles—even nautical miles—in search of the stories of the many ships built on Quincy’s shores, as well as the histories of the shipbuilders themselves, almost all of whom arrived from elsewhere to take advantage of the bustling industry in town. Quincy in the nineteenth century was also home to a thriving granite industry in need of sloops, but when the local yards proved inadequate

MARINE HISTORY from WSU PRESS On the Arctic Frontier

Ernest Leffingwell’s Polar Explorations and Legacy Janet R. Collins Geologist Ernest deKoven Leffingwell helped determine the edge of the Arctic’s continental shelf in 1906. With assistance from Inupiaq neighbors, he pioneered research in ground ice, collected wildlife specimens, and surveyed and mapped Alaska’s northeastern coast.

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Captain Cook's Final Voyage The Untold Story from the Journals of James Burney and Henry Roberts Edited by James K. Barnett Two young officers’ eyewitness accounts of Cook’s search for the elusive Northwest Passage depict the captain’s dramatic death, initial European contact, and Hawaii, Vancouver Island, and Alaska landings. Maritime historian James K. Barnett adds expert commentary.

Paperback • ISBN 978-0-87422-357-6 • $34.95

Available at bookstores, online at wsupress.wsu.edu, or by phone at 800-354-7360.

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to build the larger and larger merchant ships being called for toward the end of the nineteenth century, the shipbuilders adapted. Yacht building became the local trade of choice.

The book does end with the Fore River saga. Navy ships in the Great White Fleet, some that fought in World War I and some that were famous combatants of World War II, trace their roots to the yard.

Miller’s book puts it in perspective as just the latest step in a long journey of Quincy shipbuilding history.

John Galluzzo Hanover, Massachusetts Phoenix of the Seas: Ernestina-Morrissey, State Ship of Massachusetts by Chester Brigham (Whale’s Jaw Publishing, Gloucester, MA, 2015, 276pp, illus, notes, index; isbn 978-0974077840; $28hc) The historic schooner Ernestina-Morrissey, built in Essex, Massachusetts, in 1894 and now homeported in New Bedford, is the official sailing ship of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Next to the frigate USS Constitution and the whaling barque Charles W. Morgan, Ernestina-Morrissey holds a place among the most historically important vessels afloat today in the United States. All have survived from the Age of Sail, and all are key to teaching contemporary Americans about their proud maritime past.

Ernestina-Morrissey has had many extraordinary chapters in her seagoing life.

She has long awaited a worthy and accessible biography—one that tells her story in the full rich detail it deserves. Those who know and admire her—former crew, transAtlantic passengers from the Cape Verde Islands, students and educators—need wait no longer. With the publication in 2015 of Chester Brigham’s Phoenix of the Seas, this conspicuous need has been filled.

Chester Brigham demonstrates convincingly that Ernestina-Morrissey is a significant sailing ship on a global scale, by exploring the multiple ways that, since her launch in an era when the Age of Sail was drawing to a close, this little vessel played a role in—and became emblematic of— significant transitional events in world history during the twentieth century. This handsomely elaborated book provides a SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018

New & Noted deeply satisfying read, as it succeeds in its primary purpose: describing ErnestinaMorrissey’s impact on countless lives through more than a century of distant voyaging and diverse activities—Grand Banks fisherman, Arctic explorer, wartime supply and survey vessel during World War II, transAtlantic packet and immigration boat out of Cape Verde, and finally in her modern-day educational mission as a sailing school ship.

The vessel’s survival through multiple careers is remarkable for a wooden ship.

Her latest reincarnation is examined in the book’s final chapter, entitled “Ocean Educator.” This last section examines the mixed fortunes of the schooner during her twenty-odd years as a sailing school vessel based in New Bedford and her fits and starts in this capacity, often following the on-again off-again financial support from the state.

Brigham ends his book on a high note, however, looking forward towards a bright future of renewed sail training and seaborne education activities, following the rebuild period currently underway at Boothbay Harbor, Maine.

Phoenix of the Seas includes a detailed historical summary in the form of a chronological timeline and numerous maps to orient the reader, as well as a fine selection of black and white photographs that cover all periods of the schooner’s operations. The scholarly apparatus consists of a helpful, comprehensive subject index and documentation citations contained in an endnotes section with bibliographic commentary.

This arrangement will satisfy those readers who require additional information about the author’s historical sources, while not rendering the text too unwieldy for the casual or recreational reader.

Readers will find much in Phoenix of the Seas to enrich their understanding of Ernestina-Morrissey’s significance to several communities in Massachusetts and the broader world. Brigham’s contribution is essential as a means for enthusiasts to keep the history of this proud vessel alive, but also as a teaching text to inspire the next generation of advocates for, and stewards of, this invaluable piece of our shared maritime history.

Timothy Dale Walker New Bedford, Massachusetts

Above and Beyond: John F. Kennedy and America’s Most Dangerous Cold War Spy Mission by Casey Sherman and Michael J. Tougias (Public Affairs – Hachette Book Group, New York, 2018, 328pp, illus, notes, index; isbn 978-1-61039-804-6; $28hc)

The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies, and Blunders on Maps by Edward Brooke-Hitching (Chronicle Books, LLC, San Francisco, CA, 2017, 256pp, illus, biblio, index, isbn 978-1-4521-6840-1; $29.95hc)

American Sea Power in the Old World: The United States Navy in European and Near Eastern Waters, 1865–1917 by William N. Still Jr. (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 2017, 304pp, illus, biblio, notes, index, isbn 978-1-59114-618-6; $24.95pb)

A Tale of Three Gunboats: Lake Champlain’s Revolutionary War Heritage by Philip K. Lundeberg, Arthur B. Cohn, and Jennifer L. Jones (Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, Basin Harbor, VT, 2017, 236pp, illus, appen, biblio, index, isbn 978-0-692-89277-0; pb)

The Free Sea: The American Fight for Freedom of Navigation by James Kraska and Raul Pedrozo (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, June 2018, 432pp, illus, maps, notes, biblio, index, isbn 978-168247-116-6; $39.95hc) Incidents at Sea: American Confrontation and Cooperation with Russia and China, 1945–2016 by David F. Winkler (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2017, 36pp, illus, notes, biblio, index, isbn 9781682471975; $31.95hc) Intervention: The Americans in Haiti, 1915–1934 by Commander Richard L. Schreadley, US Navy (Ret.) (Evening Books, Charleston, SC, 2017, illus, notes, biblio, index, isbn 978-1-929647-31-6; $29.95) The Kaiser’s Lost Kreuzer: A History of U-156 and Germany’s Long-Range Submarine Campaign Against North America, 1918 by Paul N. Hodos (McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2017, 229pp, illus, tables, notes, biblio, index, isbn 978-1-4766-71628; $35pb) Mapping Naval Warfare: A Visual History of Conflict at Sea by Jeremy Black (Osprey Publishing, New York, 2017, 192pp, illus, maps, index, isbn 978-147282-786-9; $45hc) No Limits to Their Sway: Cartagena’s Privateers and the Masterless Caribbean in the Age of Revolutions by Edgardo Perez Morales (Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, 2018, 248pp, illus, biblio, notes, index, isbn 978-0-8265-2191-0; $59.95hc)

Twain at Sea: The Maritime Writings of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, edited

by Eric Paul Roorda (University Press of New England / Seafaring America Series, Hanover, NH, 2018, 263pp, illus/map, notes, biblio, index, isbn 978-1-5126-01510; $19.95pb) The Sunken Gold: A Story of World War I Espionage and the Greatest Treasure Salvage in History by Joseph A. Williams (Chicago Review Press, Chicago, 2017, 304pp, maps, illus, notes, biblio, index, isbn 978-1-61373-758-3; $26.99hc) To the Wall of Derne: William Eaton, the Tripoli Coup, and the End of the First Barbary War by Chipp Reid (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2017, 376pp, illus, biblio, notes, index, isbn 978-1-61251813-8; $29.95hc) Weather Bomb 1913: Life and Death on the Great Lakes by Bruce Kemp (Waypoint Marine Publishing, Merrickville, Ontario, Canada, 2017, 283pp, sources, isbn 978-1-38936-050-3; $24.95pb) White Fox and Icy Seas in the Western Arctic: The Fur Trade, Transportation, and Change in the Early 20th Century

by John Bockstoce (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2018, 344pp, illus, notes, index, isbn 978-0-300-22179-4; $40hc) World War II at Sea: A Global History

by Craig L. Symonds (Oxford University Press, New York, 2018, 792pp, illus, maps, notes, biblio, index, isbn 978-0-19024-3678; $34.95hc)

SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 63

NATIONAL MARITIME HISTORICAL SOCIETY AFTERGUARD J. Aron Charitable Foundation, Inc. The Artina Group Donald T. “Boysie” Bollinger CACI International George W. Carmany III James J. Coleman .

James O. Coleman Condé Nast Crawford Taylor Foundation Christopher J. Culver Edward A. Delman Brian D’Isernia & Eastern Shipbuilding Group Henry L. & Grace Doherty Charitable Foundation In Memory of Ignatius Galgan C. Duff Hughes & The Vane Brothers Company Arthur M. Kimberly Trust Dr. J. Phillip London Richardo R. Lopes Guy E. C. Maitland J. W. Marriott Foundation McAllister Towing & Transportation Company, Inc. Ronald L. Oswald Estate of Walter J. Pettit, Sr. In Memory of Capt. Joseph Ramsey, USMM Charles A. Robertson Howard Slotnick Capt. Cesare Sorio John Stobart Andrew C. Taylor Charles H. Townsend Weeks Marine Inc. William H. White BENEFACTORS Robert C. Ballard Chesapeake Bay Foundation VADM Dirk Debbink, USNR (Ret.) Richard T. du Moulin Elite Island Resorts EMR Southern Recycling David S. Fowler Green Family in Honor of Burchie Green Don & Kathy Hardy J. D. Power Family Bruce Johnson Robert F. Kamm VADM Al Konetzni Jr., USN (Ret.) Mercury Erik & Kathy Olstein ADM Robert J. Papp Jr., USCG (Ret.) David & Susan Rockefeller Scarano Boat Building, Inc. Philip J. Shapiro Marjorie Shorrock Skuld North America Inc. H. C. Bowen Smith Norma Stanford In Memory of Peter Stanford Philip & Irmy Webster Jean Wort PLANKOWNERS Alban Cat Power Systems Caddell Dry Dock & Repair Co. RADM Joseph F. Callo, USN (Ret.) Cincinnati Financial Corporation Charles Todd Creekman Jr. Dr. William S. & Donna Dudley General Dynamics William J. Green Royal Holly The Ruth R. Hoyt/Anne H. Jolley Foundation, Inc. Huntington Ingalls Industries Jakob Isbrandtsen Benjamin Katzenstein H. Kirke Lathrop Thomas & Deborah Lawrence H. F. Lenfest National Geographic National Marine Sanctuary Foundation CAPT James A. Noone, USN (Ret.) Stephen B. Phillips Dr. Timothy J. Runyan Peter A. Seligmann Star Clipper Cruises Alix Thorne US Navy Memorial Foundation Chris Walker Adam Wronowski SPONSORS American Bureau of Shipping Paul M. Aldrich Eleanor F. Bookwalter In Memory of William Burchenal Stephen & Carol Burke Dr. John & Rachel Cahill Douglas Campbell Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum Conservation International C. W. Craycroft The Edgar & Geraldine Feder Foundation, Inc. Mrs. D. L. Fleischmann D. Harry W. Garschagen Burchenal Green ADM Jonathan Greenert, USN (Ret.) Robert S. Hagge Jr. Marius Halvorsen Capt. Howard R. Hill Jr. Hornbeck Offshore Independence Seaport Museum The Interlake Steamship Company J F Lehman & Company Neil E. Jones William Kahane Cyrus C. Lauriat Hon. John Lehman Norman Liss Panaghis Lykiardopulo The MacPherson Fund, Inc. Maine Maritime Museum Marine Society of the City of New York Ann Peters Marvin Mark Mashburn Buckley McAllister David J. & Carolyn D. McBride McCarter & English, LLC CAPT Sally Chin McElwreath, USN (Ret.) Dr. Joseph F. Meany Jr. RADM John T. Mitchell Jr., USN (Ret.) Carolyn & Leonard Mizerek Robert E. Morris Jr. William G. Muller Navy League of the U.S. New York Yacht Club The Betty Sue and Art Peabody Fund Hon. S. Jay Plager Pritzker Military Foundation John Rich Rhianna Roddy George Schluderberg A. R. Schmeidler & Co., Inc. Karl A. Senner CDR William h. Skidmore Philip Stephenson Foundation Andres Duarte Vivas VSE Corporation George & Anne Walker Waterford Group Daniel Whalen DONORS Allen Insurance Financial Patricia A. Jean Barile CAPT Donald Bates, USNR James O. Burri John Caddell II RADM Nevin P. Carr Jr., USN (Ret.) Stephen Caulfield Gerald F. B. Cooper John C. Couch Draper Laboratory Dr. John Finerty Robert P. Fisher Jr. Robert Franzblau Charles Hamrick, MSC Richard Hansen CAPT Roger P. Hartgen, USCG (Ret.) Christian Havemeyer J. Russell Jinishian Gallery Mary Burrichter & Bob Kierlin Kobrand Corp. & Marco Sorio James P. Latham Paul Jay Lewis Drew McMullen Fred Meendsen Walter C. Meibaum III Richard Muller New York Container Terminal Capt. Eric Nielsen Mrs. Joanne O’Neil Philip B. Persinger Paul C. Perez Nathaniel Philbrick Mr. & Mrs. William P. Rice Charles Raskob Robinson Capt. Bert Rogers Levent Kemal Sadikoglu Lee H. Sandwen Scholarship America Shipbuilders Council of America James Edward Spurr Gerould R. Stange Philip E. Stolp Daniel R. Sukis Mr. & Mrs. William Swearingin Tall Ship Providence Alfred Tyler II USCGC Ingham Memorial Museum Roy Vander Putten Thomas Wayne Gerald Weinstein & Mary Habstritt Richard C. Wolfe PATRONS CDR Everett Alvarez Jr., USN (Ret.) John Appleton Carter S. Bacon Jr. William Baker Robert M. Baly Ernest T. Bartol Steve B. Batterman Charles R. Beaudrot Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Vincent Bellafiore Theodore Bernstein Arthur A. Birney W Frank Bohlen CAPT R. A. Bowling, USN (Ret.) James H. Brandi RADM David C. Brown, USMS (Ret.) Jerry M. Brown Robert P. Burke Judith L. Carmany James W. Cheevers Russell P. Chubb Louis Clairmont James M. Clark Jr. Dr. Gerard J. Clifford Jr. J. Barclay Collins Sean Crahan Jack Creighton Morgan Daly James M. D’Angelo Ian Danic Joan M. Davenport Dr. Jacob Deegan Anthony Delellis James P. Delgado C. Henry Depew Capt. John W. Dorozynski Steven Draper Michael F. Dugan Richard H. Dumas Reynolds duPont Jr. Egan Maritime Institute Theodore Eckberg, M. D. Ken Ewell Fairbanks Morse Donald Faloon Bruce K. Farr OBE Ben P. Fisher Jr. James J. Foley Jr. Peter P. Gerquest Capt. Dwight Gertz Mary Lee Giblon-Sheahan John F. Gradel Arthur Graham Edwin H. Grant Jr. Tom Green Ray Guinta Capt. Peter Hartsock J. Callender Heminway Dr. David Hayes William L. Henry Steven A. Hyman Andrew MacAoidh Jergens Gary Jobson RADM Eric C. Jones, USCG Jane Sundelof Jones Richard Julian John Kapteyn Ken Keeler The Kelton Foundation James L. Kerr James & Barbara Kerr Omie & Laurence Kerr Mr. & Mrs. Chester W. Kitchings Jr. R. Joyce Kodis Mr. & Mrs. Richard W. Kurts John L. Langill Chris Lautz F. W. Lee W. Peter Lind Robert Lindmark In Memory of John B. Lyon Babcock MacLean Mr. & Mrs. Alan McKie Richard S. Merrell Glenn L. Metzger Richard A. & Lois Meyer Charles H. Miller Michael G. Moore Jack & Marcia Moore CAPT R. G. Moore, USCG (Ret.) Thomas A. Moran Vance Morrison Michael Moss & Ellen Chapman James A. Neel Randy Nichols Eric A. Oesterle Roger Ottenbach William L. Palmer Jr. Col. Bruce E. Patterson, USA Paul C. Pennington Peter B. Poulsen Jennifer N. Pritzker David Prohaska Dr. G. Michael Purdy Mr. & Mrs. Andrew A. Radel Michael J. Rauworth George Raymond Demetra Reichart William E. Richardson Christopher Richmond, AAI, AINS In Memory of Richard E. Riegel Jr. RADM Donald P. Roane, USN (Ret.) Reed Robertson William M. Rosen James G. Sargent Robert W. Scott Mr. & Mrs. John R. Sherwood III RADM & Mrs. Bob Shumaker, USN (Ret.) Edmund Sommer Patricia Steele Rob Surprenant A. E. & Diana Szambecki F. Davis Terry Jr. RADM Cindy Thebaud Charles Tobin Capt. John Torjusen Russell R. Tripp Robert J. Tyd William Van Loo Carol Vinall Terry Walton Dr. John Dix Wayman Roberta E. Weisbrod, PhD Thomas S. Whiteman Jack Wiberg Capt. Eric T. Wiberg Bill Wissel James R. Williamson David Winkler

  

     

 

                  

 

    



                           

 

     

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SEA HISTORY 163, SUMMER 2018 65

“Cruise Critic’s editors were really impressed with Fred. Olsen...”

Cruise Critic’s editors were really impressed with Fred. Olsen. Cruise Lines for waiving single supplements on selected voyages, and providing cabin upgrades, as well as unique ‘Single Cruises’ on a wide selection of sailings.” From arranging solo events with like-minded fellow cruisers, to providing dance hosts and dance couples, and offering a great range of solo deals throughout the year, Fred. Olsen is the ideal choice for the discerning solo traveler!”

The relatively small size of Fred. Olsen’s four ocean ships – Balmoral, Braemar, Boudicca and Black Watch – along with new river cruise addition, Brabant – and the warm, relaxed atmosphere on board make Fred. Olsen cruises especially attractive for those traveling solo.

With 10% of all rooms in the Fred. Olsen fleet being dedicated to solo travelers, it has one of the highest proportions of dedicated accommodation for solos with-in the industry. Overall, the Fred. Olsen fleet has 190 dedicated rooms for solo guests: Braemar offers 40, Black Watch and Boudicca each have 43, and Balmoral has 64.

“Cruise Critic’s editors were really impressed with Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines’ wide variety of sailing lengths, plus no-fly cruises, departing from UK ports. Its program also features exciting European river itineraries, including 30 new sailings from 2018, so we felt it was the obvious choice for the ‘Best Itineraries’ award.

Toll Free: 877.318.6228

Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines Best for Solo Travellers

fredolsen@traveledge.com

Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines Best Itineraries