Two U.S.C.G. Barque Eagle cadets manned the gangway on America’s Tall Ship’s last day in Tacoma. Travis Christy, 20, of Valdosta, Ga., and Blake Morris, 19, of Durango., Colo., thanked people for coming to see the ship, but regretted they could no longer let anyone aboard.
Eagle was bound for the open sea.
Cadets had formed a hand-me-down line earlier in the day to load enough stores to last 200 people for 15 days. There had been talk for days that, instead of heading south for San Francisco, she would sail north and play in the waters off the Alaskan coast.
Eagle has the time to do it. The sail to San Francisco takes less than a week. The decision lay with Capt. Christopher Sinnett.
At 12:45 p.m., Sinnett mustered the ship’s company to the waist of the ship. He introduced and welcomed new shipmates. He noted that a week and 15 minutes earlier, Eagle had sprinted out of Victoria toward Port Angeles. He encouraged cadets to consider all they had done in that week. They had raced under sail across open water. They had spent a day of intensive cross training at the Seattle Coast Guard Station. They had spent time ashore in Tacoma’s big festival. Some of them had visited Mount Rainier.
Now, he said, it was time again to focus on their mission aboard Eagle.
And then the wind changed.
Those of us straining to hear him from the shore lost the connection. I heard him say “Alaska,” “circulating” and “rumors.” That’s all. Cadets Christy and Morris had duties elsewhere while Sinnett was speaking, but they had heard indirectly that Alaska was not in the plan for Eagle.
Behind Eagle, the Tall Ships fun kept sailing on. Lynx, Lady Washington and Amazing Grace powered into Commencement Bay for a battle sail.
Beside Eagle, the tug Henry Foss and the U.S. Army reserve tug Scholaire got into position to help turn her around.
In the gathering crowd stood Tall ships volunteer Heinz Stettinius. He was a child in Germany during World War II. He was about eight when his uncle, a ship’s captain in the navy, invited him aboard the Gorch Fock, a sister ship to the Horst Wessel. After the war, the Soviet Union claimed Gorch Fock as a war prize and named her Tovarishch. The United States took Horst Wessel and named her Eagle.
As was so often the case with festival volunteers, Stettinius was working so much he could not make time to board Eagle. So he came to bid her farewell.
On deck, cadets wriggled into the harnesses they wear when they scamper up the rigging and out on the yardarms.
One of them walked out onto the bowsprit and sat by the union jack, a blue ensign with white stars.
Belowdecks, Chief Engineering Officer Karyn Terry brought the 1000-horsepower Caterpillar D399 diesel engine to life. Cadets hauled in the mooring lines. The ship’s whistle blew one long blast and three short ones. A baby on shore wailed in reply.
Eagle moved.
The cadet lowered the union jack.
The shore crowd cheered and waved hats.
Cadets climbed the ratlines and stood at attention in mid-air to salute the crowd.
In Thea’s Park, one voice led a cheer echoed three times by the crowd: “Hip hip hurrah!”
On the stage, Tom Lewis sang “Haul away your foresheets. ‘Tis our sailing time. Haul away down channel. ‘Tis our sailing time... Fair winds, Eagle! Fair winds!”
And then she was away.

Hundreds gathered on the docks of the Thea Foss Waterway to bid farewell to the U.S. Coast Guard Eagle, the 266-foot three-masted barque that became the centerpiece attraction of Tall Ships Tacoma 2008.

As the ship pulled away, festival attendees clapped and waved good-bye. Several coasties aboard waved back.

“It was so amazing to see that ship,” Puyallup’s Lana Daniels said. “I’ll miss it. Let’s just hope it’s back next time around.”

By Kathleen Merryman
kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com

Last Wednesday, I posted this on our Tall Ships 2008 the blog. Since then, every time I looked at the Eagle’s mast, I said, I should have made it up and over.
Here’s the back story:
All my life, I’ve been afraid of heights.
It’s a legitimate fear. Lots of people have it. But I’ve come to use it as an excuse. I’ve depended on it to keep me off of steep, narrow mountain trails, driving the Going To The Sun Highway in Montana’s Glacier National Park and scampering to the tall parts of tall ships.
Reporters can do that. Photographers can’t.
Janet Jensen, who shot the glorious pictures you saw of the U.S. Coast Guard Barque Eagle, is, as she puts it, “not fond of heights.”
I had no idea. Any time she needed the advantage of height for a shot, she shimmied into a safety harness and, accompanied by a cadet, climbed up the ratlines and over into the tops.
She does it, she said, by using her professionalism to stifle her fears.
Reporters can take notes from just about anywhere, and I prefer deck level.
Lt. Chris Nolan, the Eagle’s third officer, assumed I would, and probably should, climb the rigging. To do so would give me an idea of how cadets turn a challenge into a favorite part of their duty aboard this ship.
So, on the evenings I was aboard the Eagle, about an hour before sunset, he reminded me that I should go up. Every evening, I managed to become engrossed in a compelling interview until the sun went down. Until last Tuesday.
There it was, a big red ball, sinking into the Olympics. And there he was, Lt. Nolan, smiling, telling me I could do it: I could climb the ratlines to a metal platform 60 feet above the deck.
I snapped and cinched myself into a harness under the tutelage of senior cadet Ron Vyas, 21. “You can do it,” he said.
The rules are simple, he said. Never put two feet on the same horizontal line at the same time. Never hold onto a line. Trust only the cables running from the deck to the mast. Attach the harness clip to the rigging any time you stop.
“You can do it, ma’am,” Vyas said with the kind of gentle reassurance one does not expect from a 21-year-old.
He even had me believing it.
With Seattle’s skyline coming to light behind me, I stepped onto the ship’s rail and started climbing the ratlines at about one fifth of cadet speed.
The ratlines form a tall, skinny triangle made of cable and line. Thirty feet up, I clipped on to get my bearings. Around 40 feet up, the courses narrow, which meant my ladder changed shape.
“You can do it,” said Vyas, who was helping me.
Nolan, who climbed onto the platform from the other side, looked down on us. “You can do it,” he said.
I began to believe them. Very slowly, clipping on at every advance, I went up until my head was just under the triangular platform.
Sailors call the platforms “tops.” That’s short for “fighting tops.”
In the age of war under sail, snipers of the Royal Marines would climb the ratlines, stand on the tops and shoot at sailors on the decks of enemy ships.
Back then, some tops had “lubber holes,” hatches in the deck of the tops. Landlubbers could climb the ratlines, then just pop into the top.
The Eagle’s tops have no lubber holes. The platform is the tricky part. The lines look as though they require a climber to bend backwards and climb over the edge of the platform. There’s a turn in the route, which would be no problem at all to negotiate say, 3 feet off the ground.
Sixty feet in the air, it stopped me.
“You can do it,” Nolan and Vyas told me. “You can clip on.”
I did not believe them. I made it up, but not over.
Lt. Mike Keyser of the Eagle hates heights, too. But he has made it up and over at least five times.
“Try again,” he said. “You can do it.”
Sunday, I tried again. At the festival I ran into Tacoma police Sgt. C.P. Taylor, who said, “You can do it. You know you can do it.”
Police community liaison officer Bert Hayes, whom I’ve known for several years and like, said, “And if you can’t, you’re sniveling whiner.
“Carpe diem,” said Taylor, urging me to seize the day.
Or, if you’re on the ratlines, anything that’s metal.
That’s what I did. Bos’n’s mate Ken McSherry allowed me onboard and said he’d take me up and over.
He did. We made it to the top, over the edge and onto the platform.
It and the rigging were the same. But trying to come close to the Eagle’s standards made all the difference in me.
I may be a sniveling whiner, but I made it up one set of ratlines, over the fighting top and down the ratlines on the opposite side.

Hedy Woods is no stranger to the U.S. Coast Guard Eagle.

She played on its decks as a child in New London, Conn. She traveled to Mobile, Ala., to see the ship during the city’s tricentennial celebration in 2002. And the promise of seeing the three-masted barque again drew her from her home in Nashville to Tall Ships Tacoma 2008.

“I follow the Eagle,” the 66-year-old said. “I knew there would be a festival of ships, and I wanted to see the Eagle again.”

It’s a family affair, she explained.

Woods’ father, Frederick Swanson, was on the original American crew to sail the ship from Germany to the United States.

“He had to translate between the different sets of sailors to keep the ship running straight,” she said. “It must have been fascinating.”

Swanson was still a young child when his mother died, so his father sent him to live with grandparents in Germany. He returned to the United States after completing high school and joined the Coast Guard.

Germany handed over the Eagle after its defeat in World War II, and the Coast Guard asked Swanson to sail with it because he was bilingual.

During the trip to Alabama, the officer of the day showed her photos kept in the captain’s safe. On one of the photos, she said, was a man she was certain was her father.

“She was going through things pretty quick, and I didn’t want to interrupt her,” Woods said. “But I was stunned. Just absolutely stunned.”

Swanson couldn’t make it; he spends most of his days in an assisted-living facility outside Coral Gables, Fla.

“He has Alzheimer’s,” Woods said, “but when someone mentions the Coast Guard or the Eagle, he perks right up. He won’t forget that.”

Peter Haley/The News Tribune

In case you've missed some of the links to all the great multimedia available online for Tall Ships Tacoma, here's a list of the galleries, video, audio slideshows and 360-degree QTVRs we've put together so far.

• Gallery: Tall Ships Tacoma Parade of Sail

• Gallery: Setting sail with the tall ships

• Video: Learn about cannon battling on tall ships

• Gallery: Photos from the Tall Ships festival

• Gallery: Tall ships muster in Quartermaster Harbor

• Slideshow: It's a pirate's life

• Gallery: Aboard the USCG Eagle

• Gallery: Tall ships in Victoria, BC.

• 360 VR: Meet the Lady Washington

• 360 VR: Meet the Bounty

• 360 VR: Meet the Eagle

Securely moored, Eagle took on her first visitors in Tacoma.

Connie McCloud, representing the Puyallup Tribe, presented the ship with a blanket, a hand-woven basket and a hand-carved paddle.

Capt. Christopher Sinnett returned the honor with an engraving of Eagle.

Then Peggy McCloud introduced the students of Grandview Early Learning Center, Annalicia McCloud, 3, and shy, Cynthia LaPlante, 6, Jazmine Bluehorse, 8, Sidfredo Valdez, 9, Dairon Earl-Lovejoy, 11, Daylon Nelson, 12, and Damion Laplant, 7.

The children sang a welcome song to the crew, and followed it with The Eagle Song, dancing with their arms outstretched as they sang.

“I want to declare you all honorary Eagle crew members for the week,” Capt. Sinnett told them, and gave each of them a memorial Eagle coin.

The first shots came from the direction of Ruston Way. Cannon fire from the park.

Eagle obliged with a double barrage from its guns, 12-gauge blanks louder than anything else on that end of the water.

The cadets had climbed the ratlines an hour earlier and had been standing at attention in the air.

Smoke puffs appeared on the shore, prefaces to the booms. Eagle let no shot go unanswered.

Eagle marked the end of the parade. As she passed, the no-go zone for near-shore boating dissolved. The Coast Guard had laid it down to protect everyone on the water, and to make sure photographers on shore got good shots.

“We heard there was too much photo shopping going on in 2005,” said Ens. Derek Miller.

Let’s hear a “Hip hip hurrah for Miller from every shooter who did not have to erase a Bayliner from a good shot of Bounty.

Near the grain silos, the huge American flag blowing behind Eagle became fouled in lines.

Cadet Matt Poore, 21, of Chesapeake, Va., would have none of it.

He climbed the rigging, then inched his way down the mizzen boom, clipped his safety belt onto the shrouds, and freed the flag.
Then he inched back 20 feet above the moving deck, climbed down and walked away as if he had done nothing special.

The feeling among the passengers was not shared. It was, they said, a remarkable thing to see such daring and commitment in one event. They wanted to know if he’d done it on his own, or had been ordered up.

“I saw they were having some problems flying the national ensign,” Poore said. “It wasn’t flying straight. I figured that, especially so close to the Fourth of July, we should honor the country and the national ensign. So I asked permission and went up.”

“Woohoo! Git ‘er done, baby!” Ensign Paul Junghaus, 18, said, walking by and clapping Poore on the back.

Then Junghaus, who is from Chesapeake, Va., looked out at the spectator boats around Eagle.

“That’s the most boats I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” he said. “This is amazing.”

The USCG Eagle is making its way down Ruston Way, and there’s a sense of disappointment.

This has been the ship everyone was excited to see. It has an entourage of probably 50 other ships and a helicopter following it. But most of the spectators kept asking one question: “Why aren’t its sails up?”

“I think it would have been a lot more beautiful with the sails up,” Lakewood’s Charlene Baez said.

It was a common sentiment. Motoring in is likely much more efficient, but thousands didn’t pack Ruston Way to witness efficiency. They wanted looks.

“They should have had the sails up, even if they were still motoring,” Kent’s Mel Davis said. “Maybe get some fans out on board and blow wind into them.”

But, Davis and others said, seeing America’s Tall Ship cutting through the waters of Commencement Bay is still an amazing sight.

“It seems like an anticlimax,” he said, “but, really, how cool is it to see the Eagle here?”

UPDATE: Here's the answer from an earlier blog post from Kathleen Merryman, who's been on the Eagle since Monday.

Eagle motored into Seattle, just as she will into Commencement Bay. Her sails are massive, to give her speed and power. But because she is square-rigged, and so big, she does not have the maneuverability under sail to enter a confined passage with other vessels in the area.

Eagle has joined the parade.

We bided our time, gathering a random fleet of about 300 small boats around us, and watched Tall Ships coming out of Quartermaster Harbor. They sailed past The Fir, the Coast Guard buoy tender on site to help manage the start.

The Coast Guard helicopter you see circling over the parade is an HH65 Dolphin out of Port Angeles.

Ens. Derek Miller is pleased with the number of boats waiting for Eagle.

“They’re scattered,” he said. “It’s not like we’re sailing into a wall of boats.”

Two 41-foot Coast Guard utility boats from Station Seattle are cruising next to us, gently but firmly keeping smaller boats at a safe distance.

Coming in to Commencement Bay, we’re hearing cannon fire. I’m guessing Hawaiian Chieftain is getting frisky.

Capt. J. Christopher Sinnett just announced that we will be falling in behind Hawaiian Chieftain and a restored 83-foot Coast Guard Cutter..

Once we moor, representatives of the Puyallup Tribe will board Eagle to exchange welcoming courtesies and sing “The Eagle Song.”

Capt. Sinnett pronounced “Puyallup” properly. Not bad from a Coastie from the opposite coast.

Eagle’s off Maury Island, under way but not idling. She’s been standing by, waiting for her turn in The Parade of Sail, said Ens. Derek Miller.

Miller has been working for at least six months to make sure this event goes smoothly for all ships, boaters and spectators. He’s deceptively cool, constantly in communication.

Look for Eagle at her starting point off of Quartermaster Harbor at 12:48 p.m. If all other ships are on time, that’s when she’ll bring up the rear of the Parade of Sail. Think of her as The Grand Finale.

As it stands, it’s likely cadets will salute you from the ratlines, or rigging.

The yardarms are a different matter.

Cadets climb the ratlines to yards that are as high as 140 feet off the deck. They scoot to stations at the ends of the yards, then clip on with their safety harnesses.

Given the drizzle and mist, the yards may be damp and slippery. Safety will dictate if the cadets salute you, standing at attention at the ends.

(How helpful are Eagle’s cadets? I asked cadet Bobby Carsey, 19, of Linden, Mich, the proper term for the end of the yardarm. He pulled out his copy of “Eagle Seamanship.”

We looked for, but did not find, the answer. He went off, and a minute later, came back with the word that cadets clip on to the sheet chain.

Think Cadet Carsey as your tax dollars at work in a productive way.)

With an event like this, it’s a miracle when anything goes smoothly.

Any detail that doesn’t get dropped is a bonus.

And by detail, here, I am talking about 40 cubic yards of garbage, 8,000 gallons of sewage and the hook-up to bring fresh water to 200 people.

Victoria would not let Eagle offload her gray water. They did take her sewage.

Of course, Victoria does not have a sewage treatment plant as we think of such things. Mr. Floatie, the mascot for the people’s movement to build one had to sneak onto environmentally sound Adventuress to talk about the problem.

Oh, and the magic jumbo Dumpster Victoria kept promising never materialized.

That meant that Eagle left Victoria with her trash room nearly full. Chief Michael Barnthouse had to enlist cadets to jump onto the bags. Elite service academy cadets, serving as human trash compactors.

=> Read more!

“Reveille! Reveille! Reveille!” piped through Eagle at 6 a.m.

Cadets and crew had a busy evening Wednesday, with receptions and leave in Seattle.

Seamen Travis Baker and Jesse Murphy, both 20, had been surprised by the warmth of their welcome.

Everywhere America’s Tall Ship goes, cities and the Coast Guard treat her well.

Murphy was grateful for the floating platform the Sector Seattle Coast Guard had brought to the ship. Baker was grateful for the Mariners.

“Someone at the reception last night handed me four tickets to the Mariners game last night,” he said. “They just walked up, handed them to me and said, ‘Here, just go.’”

Murphy was helping guests aboard.
The first of about 130 guests embarked at at 6:15 a.m. and would continue to do so until 8 a.m.

Baker, standing by the galley, shook hands with Tacoma Mayor Bill Baarsma as he and Carol Baarsma walked past the galley toward the foredeck

It’s drizzling in Seattle. Janet and I assured the officers over breakfast that, in the Northwest, there’s little difference between drizzle and sun.

Warrant Officer 4, Karyn Terry, Eagle’s naval engineer, has the 1,000 horsepower diesel Caterpillar D399 growling. Eagle will motor in.

Look for her to bring up the rear of the parade.

At 8:31 a whistle sounded from the bridge. The anchor is off the bottom. The last line is clear of the floating dock.

We're under way.