Tall Ships 2008

Muskie fishing

I had the chance to go fishing with Todd Reis from the Cascade Musky Association. It was a long cold day with lots of laughs, but not too many fish. That's fishing!

Restaging history on the HMS Bounty

Tall Ships Queen Kathleen Merryman received this fun e-mail today from Tacoma resident Michael McSweeney.

My father was the Oscar nominated film editor of Mutiny on the Bounty back in the early 60’s.

We were overjoyed when we found out that the ship, H.M.S. Bounty, was coming for the Tall Ships Festival.

The ship, and the movie, meant a great deal to my father, who died in 1999. He spent eleven months in Tahiti shooting the picture back in 1961 and we grew up hearing tales of Marlon Brando’s and Richard Harris’ antics on and off the set.

We boarded the Bounty early Sunday morning and decided it would be fun to recreate an old MGM publicity photo taken on the Bounty in 1961 of my dad with the director.

Here is a picture of my son, Patrick, and I on the ship taken on July 6, 2008.

Below is the MGM Studios publicity shot of director Lewis Milestone and my dad, Jack McSweeney, sitting on the exact spot on the ship in Tahiti in 1961.

We even got Adam, a Bounty crew member, to play along.

RIP, Harry "The Horse" Hilliard

I had the good fortune of interviewing Harry Hilliard last month for a story about the renovation of the old Balfour Dock building on Tacoma's waterfront.

Hilliard, known to most of his friends simply as Harry "The Horse," died in his sleep two weeks later at age 88.

I spoke with Harry because he once worked at the Balfour building, before it fell into disrepair. He was happy to see it's re-birth.

Standing beside his friend Ron Magden on the esplanade outside, Harry described what it was like working on the docks in the days before the "containerization" of the port.

And he gave me a brief version of his life story, which included being orphaned at age 5, and surviving the bombing of a ship he worked on during World War II. (He was in a London pub at the time of the attack.)

His obituary, published in today's paper, offers more details of his colorful life.

I was surprised and honored to read this:

On June 21, 2008 The News Tribune featured Harry on page 1. Harry was very proud of that article. In fact he considered it the summation of his life.

I wish now that I had the chance to talk more with Harry. But I'm pleased that I had the opportunity to meet him even for a brief time. He gave me a glimpse into Tacoma's history -- and the life of a remarkable man.

Bos'n sends a thank you note, and a tribute to Tall Ships

U.S.C.G. Barque Eagle Bos'n Keith Raisch had planned to work up more Bosn't School of Eagle Deck Speak lessons during Tall Ships. But we kept missing connections, and did not get it done.

Today we got this message from him to all of you.

Kits:

First, sorry I didn't get back in time to give the last blog, but you
know how it goes...

"For seven days do all you're able, and on the eighth holystone the deck
and scrape the cable." I was off checking on "Port Townsend Foundry" as
they are currently making some new blocks for us.

The event was vastly enjoyable, I met several old shipmates and made
many friends along the way, after all we're all sailors at heart.

To share a "closing" view, I think it best expressed by "Alan Villiers"
My pardon for the gender based time he wrote it, I've found women hold
all the same feelings.

"She is more than a ship to the sailor in her focs'l; she is a
personality. He knows her; he has watched her make her voyage, has seen
her come bravely through a hurricane, haul safely off a lee shore, work
miraculously through a calm. He has studied her little ways, the
eccentricities and peculiarities which each sailing ship has to herself;
he knows what she can do and what she can't; he knows when she is being
asked to do too much and when too little. He always speaks of his ship
as if she lived."

OR probably more appropriate for this time (same author being quoted)

"Should the passing of the deep-sea sailing ship be lamented? Look at a
picture of one, and think. It is regrettable to see anything that is
beautiful disappear. The sailer is not beautiful merely because she is
old; the sea holds no grander sight than the ship-of-sails seen so
rarely. Whether she is rolling in a doldrum calm, snoring through the
water by the wind with every stitch spread to bear her on, or driving
under shortened sail before the storm, she is a sight to stir the blood
of all who see her[...] There is another reason for the regretting the
going of the sailing ship, and that is because the sailer takes with her
the natural training-ground for the sea. I believe there is no sailor
with a better knowledge of his craft and better training for it than the
man who has been brought up in square rigged sail. It brings out the
best -- and the worst -- that the boy has in him; it teaches him
initiative and not to be afraid to use it.... It does a boy good, too,
to have his character shown in the light of day and the rough edges
knocked off..."

I believe EAGLE, and all sail training does this for boy and girl alike.

Thanks to the city of Tacoma, all the volunteers, performers, and others
and the other ships for making our first visit a memorable one.

Respectfully

Bosn

Eagle's Bos'n has high expectations of us

He may have left Tacoma and made it out to sea, but USCG Barque Eagle Bos’n Keith Raisch wants your brain cells to remain sharp.
He has a pop quiz for you:

Q: “What is it that is maritime in nature, that every person of driving age deals with daily?”

A: “Traffic lights. The lights that are used at sea are red to port, green to starboard. White was pretty much on the stern, or dead ahead, when power came on,” he said.

“The English Channel was the busiest waterway in the world,” he explained.

“Sailing ships at night had to figure out a way at night of determining who got to go. It started out with a white light to let you know I was there, then evolved to the red and green on the two sides. At the same time on land, we were riding horses across countrysides and open fields and did not need traffic patterns. When the technology caught on ashore, the sailors brought their rules ashore. Now you have traffic lights, in red, green and amber.”

Thanks, Prof. Bos’n!

Oh yeah, there was a race, too

Tall Ships spokesman Matthew Erlich called this morning to report the results of the American Sail Training Association race from Victoria, B.C. to Port Angeles.

Amid all the cannon fire and pirates, it was easy to forget this wasn't just an exhibition but also a competition.

For the record, the Lynx won, followed by the HMCS Oriole and Gig Harbor's own Amazing Grace, Erlich said.

The other ships that began the competition were the Hawaiian Chieftain, Lady Washington, Adventuress and Eagle. Due to tide, winds and the number of tacks it would have taken, their skippers elected not to finish.

"Fair winds, Eagle. Fair winds!"

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.

The numbers game

Tall Ships organizers did not meet their attendance goal, but are declaring the event a success.

With another 50,000 people showing up today, the preliminary total for the five day event was put at 400,000. They will have more numbers as they count up boarding pass and ticket sales. But the number will likely be short of the goal of 700,000 - the number said to have shown up in 2005.

As we've pointed out, an exact head count is impossible for a free, far flung event like this. Kathleen Merryman also suspects they are being more careful with their numbers than three years ago.

Regardless, it's likely that the spotty weather did play a role. “The rain had a big impact on attendance but those who came despite the weather had a great time and enjoyed themselves,” David Doxtater, festival executive director, said in a press release.

A reverse Parade of Sail?

Several readers have called or e-mailed to winder if there was a “reverse Parade of Sail,” when all the ships would be leaving Tacoma.

The answer is a definite maybe.

Most are scheduled to leave between 6-8 a.m. Some are leaving later. Others have already left or are staying around a while.

Here’s a breakdown of what ship is leaving and when:

About 4:45 a.m.:
● Oriole

Between 6-8 a.m.:
● Kaisei
● Bounty
● Merrie Ellen
● Nina
● Adventuress
● Mycia
● Lavengro
● Red Jacket
● Rejoice
● Lady Washington
● Mallory Todd
● Kia Ora
● Cutty Sark

Between 4-8 a.m.:
● Resolute

About 10 a.m.:
● Virginia V

Leaving tonight/already gone:
● U.S. Coast Guard Eagle
● Hawaiian Chieftain
● Zodiac
● Lynx
● Yankee Clipper
● Amazing Grace

Staying in the area:
● Charles Curtis (local boat)
● Tug Joe (local boat)
● Odyssey (for 10 days)
● Sydney Waite (for 10 days)
● USAR Tug (local boat)

A near miss

True, the cannons are firing blanks, but the danger can be real when you have 50 or 100 ton vessels out playing around in the bay.

Reporter Kris Sherman (on her day off) just phoned in from the deck of the Lynx. Apparently, the schooner almost collided with the Amazing Grace during a cannon battle. The quick thinking Lynx skipper avoided an accident by quickly reversing the engines. A similar near-miss happened between the Hawaiian Chieftain and Lynx on my sailing adventure Saturday. Yes, a collision would have been tragic - but at least in these cases, a trained journalist would have aboard to phone in the story.

Where to next?

Tacoma is just the second major port of the season for most of these ships. Next stop for much of the fleet is Port Alberni, B.C. for its Festival of Sails, Friday and Saturday. Featured ships include the HMS Bounty, Nina, Lynx, Oriole, Lady Washington and Hawaiian Chieftain.

The ASTA Pacific Coast Tall Ships Challenge race continues this summer with stops at the Festival of Sail San Francisco on July 23-27, the Tall Ships Festival in Oxnard on Aug. 7-10, the Festival of Sail Los Angeles on Aug. 13-17 and finally to San Diego for its Tall Ships festival Aug. 20-24.

The Eagle is not attending the Port Alberni event, but will be at the California stops.

The American Sail Training Association alternates its annual race between the two coasts and the Great Lakes region. It won't be back in the Pacific until 2011.

A landing under friendlier circumstances

The rocky shore of the Thea Foss Waterway isn’t exactly Omaha Beach, but that didn’t stop 47-year-old Lon Hudson from dreaming a little bit.

“I’ll admit it: I was kind of thinking it was like Normandy when we were getting off,” the DuPont resident said after departing from an LCM-8 landing craft.

But the boat, usually called a Mike Boat, has its roots in the Vietnam War, not World War II. The 175th Transportation Company was offering rides on the 74-foot landing crafts as part of a goodwill gesture, said Sgt. Randy Ichiyama.

The rides, which usually last about 30 minutes, ferry passengers past most of the tall ships on display. And to offload, it backs up to the shore in Thea’s Park, plops down its ramp and allows the passengers to just walk off.

“It’s something that’s fun and free,” Tacoma’s Linda Cooper said. “And it just looks so cool.”