39
Brigantine Black Pearl
courtesy tall ships america
By the time Black Pearl arrived back in Newport, the elder Warburton and his colleagues had established ASTA and had hosted the organization’s first race series in the waters of southern New England. Black Pearl soon became the unofficial flagship for the American sail training fleet, and throughout the 1970s she could be seen at the various sail training races and gatherings, maritime history and preservation events, and leading the annual Sea Day parades of sail in New York. Black Pearl was occasionally made available for charter in order to financially support her sail training work. Shortly before Warburton’s death in 1983, he arranged to donate the ship that defined the last quarter-century of his life to ASTA, the organization to which he had been devoted since 1972. ASTA was illequipped to manage Black Pearl, as she needed a major refit, so the organization quickly sold her. Within months, the brigantine embarked on a significant overhaul by volunteer shipwrights under the expert eye of Jakob Isbrandtsen, whose Ship Trust of New York later operated her out of New York City. Black Pearl was still a mainstay at maritime events throughout the 1980s, including OpSail ’86, New York’s 1986 Liberty Weekend, Harbor Awareness Days, and cultural and maritime festivals. In 1993, Black Pearl was sold to the Aquaculture Foundation out of Bridgeport, Connecticut, to bolster the foundation’s maritime-themed educational offerings to high school students. The school’s restructured programming now used Black Pearl for marine science, maritime history, and ecology studies, with sail training at its core. Aquaculture Foundation sailed her out of Bridgeport when school was in session (and weather allowed) and spent some summers in Block Island, but still graced major events like Maritimes ’95: Four Centuries of Sail, America’s Sail, and the Special Olympics. By 1996, Aquaculture was looking to raise $1.5 million for another restoration; Black Pearl appears to have quickly fallen into disrepair. The foundation was able to keep her operational in the coming years but could never quite catch up with her repairs. Facing a $400,000 repair estimate in 2005, the foundation put her up for sale. The Aquaculture Foundation noted that
during their tenure, more than 2,400 students sailed onboard Black Pearl, learning about marine sciences and maritime heritage, sail training, and developing critical skills such as leadership, self-confidence, and teambuilding. The brigantine’s history gets murky in her post-Aquaculture years, but in 2006 she was on the hard in Essex, Connecticut, riddled with rot and rust. Her future was indeed looking grim, but in 2009 Captains Amanda and Nicholas Alexander purchased her and began tackling her repairs with the intention of sailing her to a new homeport in Lake Ontario. The Alexanders recruited their friends and spent their weekends over the next ten months getting Black Pearl seaworthy. Black Pearl then followed a meandering route to her Great Lakes home in Lewiston, New York, by way of the Hudson, Mohawk, Oneida, and Oswego Rivers. The Alexanders continued to work on the brigantine in New York State, where the ship survived a 2010 arson attempt that cost her a few sails and some minor onboard equipment. Black Pearl spent a few years as a charter vessel doing daysails in Lake Ontario. She was certainly an eye-catching sight gliding across the lake’s southern shoreline. For some years now, she has been on the hard in Oak Orchard, New York, with no programming planned and with minimal maintenance work going on.
Black Pearl is often remembered as one of the most recognizable of American sail training ships, despite her stints as a charter vessel and a private yacht, which is surprising in a way, as her modest size significantly limited her capacity to take trainees on the water. This perception of her place among other 20th-century American sailing ships can likely be attributed to Black Pearl having had a presence that captivated those who sailed aboard or in sight of her; however, she cemented her legacy as an icon in the American sail training fleet with her strong lines and sharp look under sail, her decades-long attendance at major maritime events in North America and Europe, and the engaging personalities of the elder and younger Barclay Warburtons, who welcomed friends and trainees onboard with open arms. The elder Warburton wrote: “Youth and the sea and the ship—a trinity which has brought us so far, which may yet unite us all,” and Black Pearl certainly performed admirably in her part of that trinity. Nicolas Hardisty is a historian specializing in African American and colonial maritime histories. The program manager and historian at Tall Ships America, he is working on building a digital archive of TSA/ASTA’s 50-year history. Tall Ships America organizes an annual race series: Tall Ships Challenge™. (www.tall shipsamerica.org) SEA HISTORY 182, SPRING 2023