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Historical:

The Albatross was built as Albatros a schooner at the state shipyard (Rijkswerf) in Amsterdam, Netherlands, in 1920, to serve as a pilot boat (named Alk) in the North Sea. The ship spent two decades working the North Sea before being purchased by the German government in 1937. She served as a radio-station ship for submarines during the Second World War. In 1949, Royal Rotterdam Lloyd bought her for use as a training ship for future officers of their company (Dutch merchant marine). The fact that she was small made her ideal for this kind of work, and the dozen trainees could receive personal attention from the six or so professional crew. While under Dutch ownership she sailed the North Sea extensively, with occasional voyages as far as Spain and Portugal.

Under Ernest K. Gann Stewardship

The American aviator, filmmaker and novelist Ernest K. Gann purchased the Albatros in 1954, re-rigged her as a brigantine, and she cruised the Pacific for three years. According to Charles Gieg (The Last Voyage of the Albatros), the Albatros survived a tsunami in Hawaii during this time. She was also used in the 1958 film Twilight for the Gods (starring Rock Hudson and Arthur Kennedy), whose script and the underlying novel by the same title were written by the Albatros’ owner Gann.

Twilight for the Gods

is a 1958 American Eastman color adventure film directed by Joseph Pevney and starring Rock Hudson and Cyd Charisse. The story is based on the novel Twilight for the Gods by Ernest K. Gann. Plot After being court-martialed and discharged from the Navy, Captain Bell (Rock Hudson) turns to drink. Reduced to skippering a rundown brigantine in the South Seas. Bell comes into contact with a group of passengers and crew members who are almost as mixed up as he is: Charlotte (Cyd Charisse), a Honolulu prostitute on the lam from the authorities; Hutton (Leif Erickson), a third-rate show biz entrepreneur, Wiggins (Richard Haydn), an erudite beachcomber; Feodor and Ida Morris (Vladimir Sokoloff, Celia Lovsky) a refugee couple; ineffectual missionary Butterfield (Ernest Truex); washed-up opera star Ethel Peacock (Judith Evelyn); and second mate Ramsay (Arthur Kennedy), an all-around rotter. In other words, it’s “Grand Hotel” at sea. During a treacherous, life-threatening storm at sea, the true characters of the passengers and crewmen are revealed — for better or worse.

Ocean Academy and loss

In 1959, Christopher B. Sheldon’s Ocean Academy, Ltd., of Darien, Connecticut, acquired her to use her for trips combining preparatory college classes and sail training. Over the next three years, Christopher B. Sheldon Ph.D. and his wife, Alice Strahan Sheldon M.D., ran programs for up to fourteen students in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean.

From fall 1960 to spring 1961, a crew of four instructors (including the Sheldons), a cook and 13 students sailed the Albatross from the Bahamas through the Caribbean to the Galápagos Islands and back to the Caribbean; a fourteenth student had been on the ship for the first part of the voyage, but had left in Balboa, Panama. At the beginning of May, the Albatross was en route from Progreso, Mexico, to Nassau, the Bahamas. On 1 May, skipper Sheldon decided that they would make a stop at one of the Florida keys to refuel.

Shortly after 8:30 am on 2 May 1961 the Albatross was hit by a sudden squall about 125 miles (200 km) west of the Dry Tortugas. She heeled over suddenly and sank almost instantly, taking with her Alice Sheldon, the ship’s cook George Ptacnik, and students Chris Coristine, John Goodlett, Rick Marsellus, and Robin Wetherill (John Goodlett was on deck in the last minutes, but probably became entangled in some of the lines or a sail of the sinking ship while freeing a lifeboat, and Christopher Coristine reportedly went below deck in an attempt to save someone else). As there had not been time to send out a radio distress signal before she was lost, the remaining crew used her two lifeboats to make way towards Florida. Around 7:30 a.m. on 3 May, the two boats were found by the Dutch freighter Gran Rio, which took the survivors to Tampa, Florida.

According to Sheldon, the squall hitting the Albatross was a white squall, i.e. an unpredictably sudden, very strong squall. His opinion was that the Albatross was essentially a stable, “safe” ship, and that the crew of teenagers—who had already spent about eight months on board—were sufficiently trained, but that this rare weather phenomenon left the ship no chance. Critics of this view, however, have argued that refittings of the Albatross over the years by her various owners had made her top heavy, which affected her secondary stability, that is, her ability to remain stable or even right herself after tilting to the side, as opposed to capsizing. In her times as North Sea pilot schooner, the ship had a far smaller and lower sail area, which means that the force of the wind did not have as much power and as powerful an angle as it did the day she sank. Almost 40 years after the loss of the Albatross, Daniel S. Parrott reanalyzed some of the documents about the ship and comparable ships in his book, Tall Ships Down. He suggested that due to the ship’s impaired stability, even a “normal” squall could have sunk her; according to him, only the expert handling of the ship and the habitual prudence of the ship’s captain(s) to reduce sail area early had prevented the refitted Albatross from capsizing in previous strong wind conditions.

In 1932, the German sail training ship Niobe suffered a similar fate, killing 69. Parrott draws parallels to the sudden losses of the Marques (1984) and the original Pride of Baltimore (1986), which were similarly affected by large sail areas; in the case of the Marques, this was likewise the result of refittings over the years of her existence.

Aftermath and narrations of the ship’s loss

The loss of the Albatross prompted the United States Coast Guard to undertake a thorough review of the instantaneous stability—i.e. the ability of ships to remain upright—and design requirements for sailing school ships. The new rules were codified in the Sailing School Vessels Act of 1982.

Narrations of the last voyage of the Albatross were published by two of the survivors; Charles Gieg, who had been one of the students on board the ship, and Richard Langford, who had been the English instructor.

The 1996 film White Squall, starring Jeff Bridges and directed by Ridley Scott, presents a fictionalized version of the ship’s loss. The film suggests that the Albatross was sunk by a white squall, although it does not mention the concerns about the seaworthiness of the ship.

After the loss of the Albatross, Sheldon worked for the Peace Corps and briefly started another sailing school. He died on October 5, 2002, of pancreatic cancer, in Stamford, Connecticut. He was 76.

Provenance (The Wall of Remembrance – The Owners, Notable Guest, and Reunion Information):

Owner: (1920-1937) – North Sea Pilot Boat
Owner: (1937-1949) – The German government
Owner: (1949-1954) – Royal Rotterdam Lloyd, training ship
Owner: (1954-1959) – Ernest K. Gann, aviator, filmmaker and novelist
Owner: (1959-1961) – Christopher B. Sheldon’s Ocean Academy, Ltd.

References

• Gieg, Charles F.; Sutton, Felix (1962). The Last Voyage of the Albatross. Duell, Sloan and Pearce.
• Langford, Richard E. (1 November 2001). White Squall: The Last Voyage of Albatross. Bristol Fashion Publications. ISBN 978-1-892216-36-6.
• Parrott, Daniel S. (26 January 2004). Tall Ships Down: The Last Voyages of the Pamir, Albatross, Marques, Pride of Baltimore, and Maria Asumpta. McGraw-Hill Professional. p. 56. ISBN 978-0-07-143545-1. Retrieved 20 June 2019.

Historical:

Sail Yacht Society comments (SYS) sailyachtsociety.se – Skrov och botten är i furu, däcket är av Oregon pine medan sittbrunn, durkar och ruff är utförda i mahogny. Riggen är tillverkad av Benns. Dimensioner: LOA 17 meter Bredd 2,73 meter Deplacement. 7900 kg (exkl rigg).
Vi som äger henne idag har med några få undantag för kappsegling mest nöjesseglat båten längs ostkusten, som längst till Åland och Öland.
Vintern 2015/16 byggdes sittbrunnen om av Thomas Larsson och Jonas Lorensson. ”Lådorna” från 70-talet som stod på däck ersattes av en lösning som är mer tidstypisk.

Provenance (The Wall of Remembrance – The Owners, Crew & Notable Guest):

Owner: (2019) – Karl Sundholm, Stajic Lennart, Martin Luthander, Karl Orton och Kalle Pettersson

Archipelago Cruise Rule

The rule was created in 1908 by engineer Karl Ljungberg and was an attempt to produce new good boats, which would not be too extreme and thus expensive. Despite this, the first version of the rule led to the boats becoming too long, narrow and too weak which is why the rule was revised in 1916, 1920 and 1925. The rule has the following nine classes: 15, 22, 30, 40, 55, 75, 95, 120 and 150 m². These numbers indicate the maximum measured sail area and the basic idea is that the sail area should be limited, but that the hull size with certain restrictions should be free.

The hull rules specify four dimensions that affect the speed of a boat: displacement, queue length, average width and freeboard height. These dimensions are in relation to the waterline length, which is measured a few centimeters above the actual waterline. The maximum speed of a displacing boat is proportional to the square root of its waterline length . If you want to increase the maximum speed of the boat by increasing the waterline length, you must, according to the regulations, compensate this with an increase in the dimensions of the four speed inhibiting factors above.

The rule gives the designer great freedom and most boats are unique in their kind. Today’s archipelago cruise rule is based on the 1925 rule with additions to make it possible to use modern materials such as fiberglass-reinforced plastics in the hull and aluminum in the rig and thus not outperform the boats built with classic materials. However, most are long, narrow, with low freeboard and a high rig. The boats were originally built in honduras mahogany or pine . The archipelago cruisers that are being built today are largely exclusively made of fiberglass reinforced plastic.

Originally, the archipelago cruiser was a boat that sailed only in the Baltic Sea, but today many boats have been moved to the US and Central Europe where they are appreciated for their beauty and speed. Among legendary and famous archipelago cruisers are August Plyms SK 150, “EBE”, now ” Beatrice Aurore “, Gustaf Estlanders SK 150 “Singoalla”, Erik Salanders SK 95, “Gerdny”, now “Kerma”, and SK 75: “Gun “and” Kajsa “and Tore Holms SK 95 Britt-Marie, which after rebuilding today, however, can not be classified as an archipelago cruiser.

The golden age of the archipelago cruisers occurred during the period 1910-1930 and this development was brought forward especially by Erik Salander, who with designs such as the SK 55s “Britty”, “Gun”, “Eva” and “Nerida” got a respected name. His extremely long SK 75 “Ila”, built in 1917, with a length of 15.35 meters and with efficient lines, easily defeated all previously built boats in the class. After Salander stopped drawing archipelago cruisers in 1920, it was mainly Gustaf Estlander and Tore Holm who led the development further.

Other prominent designers of large archipelago cruisers were Knut Holm, with SK 75: “Blanka” and “Fylgia” and Zaké Westin with SK 120 “Ingun”. Despite the rule changes, the boats in all classes became narrower and longer. Estonia’s SK 150 “Singoalla” was with LOA 24 meters, not only the longest but also the fastest of all archipelago cruisers.

Resources

Sail Yacht Society
Sail and Sea

Historical:

Adventuress is a 133-foot (40.53m) gaff-rigged schooner launched in 1913 in East Boothbay, Maine. She has since been restored, and is listed as a National Historic Landmark. She is one of two surviving San Francisco bar pilot schooners.

Adventuress was built for John Borden, the founder of Chicago’s Yellow Cab Co. at the Rice Brothers’ Boatyard in East Boothbay, Maine, and was designed by B.B. Crowninshield. Borden intended to sail to Alaska to catch a bowhead whale for the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Aboard this maiden voyage sailed the famed naturalist Roy Chapman Andrews. During the voyage, Chapman stopped on the Pribilof Islands and captured film of fur seals, which led to efforts to protect their colonies. Borden’s efforts to catch a whale failed and he sold Adventuress to the San Francisco Bar Pilots Association, which marked the beginning of her career as a workboat. For 35 years, she transferred pilots to and from cargo vessels near the Farallon Islands. During World War II, she was a United States Coast Guard vessel, guarding San Francisco Bay.

Around 1952, Adventuress was brought to Seattle, where she went through several owners. Eventually, she wound up in the care of Monty Morton and Ernestine Bennett, who managed a non-profit sail training organization called Youth Adventure. Under their ownership, the boat was restored to most of her original lines, which had been altered during her years as a working vessel. In 1988, Sound Experience began conducting educational programs on the vessel, and the following year she was listed as a National Historic Landmark.

Adventuress 1913

The bronze bell, that reads “Adventuress 1913,” has been in the possession of Alfred R. “Nick” Lemos since he received it as a boy in 1936. He has kept the bell ever since, until this spring when Lemos asked his adult children to help him find out the fate of the ship named on his bell. Their internet search quickly found that the ship, which was built in 1913 in Maine for an Arctic mission for the American Museum of Natural History, was not lost or wrecked. In fact, the ship had a decades-long career with the San Francisco Bar Pilots and was still sailing in the Seattle region. It was then that Lemos picked up the phone to call Sound Experience, the nonprofit that sails Adventuress as a youth environmental education ship, to say, “I think I have your bell.” Sound Experience’s Executive Director, Catherine Collins, was stunned when she received the call. “Not in our wildest imaginations did we think that her original bell still existed,” said Collins.

Indeed, such a find is a rare opportunity, according to San Francisco-based National Trust for Historic Preservation Field Director Anthony Veerkamp. “Reuniting an artifact with its original home is always exciting,” says Veerkamp. “Together, Adventuress and her bell are greater than the sum of their parts, prompting us to look at the stories that they hold with fresh eyes.”

According to Lemos, the bell was given to him when he was ten years old by a police boat captain who patrolled San Francisco’s waterfront during Prohibition. The captain was dating Lemos’ grandmother. Laughing, Lemos recalls, “I think he gave me the bell to keep me quiet.”

How the police boat captain found the bell remains a mystery. However, it may have been lost in June 1915 when Adventuress caught fire at the dock just a year after entering the service of the San Francisco Bar Pilots. Following extensive repairs, the ship went back into service in October 1915. Adventuress’ current ship’s bell reads “Bar Pilots 1915,” likely commemorating her return to service following the fire.

“The San Francisco Bar Pilots Association used sailing schooners such as Adventuress from the Gold Rush up until the early 1970s to board ships and navigate them safely into San Francisco Bay,” says Captain Dan Larwood of the San Francisco Bar Pilots. “The Bar Pilots have been keeping station 10 miles west of the Golden Gate to serve inbound and outbound ships since the California State Legislature first created the Association in 1850. Adventuress served the San Francisco Bar Pilots faithfully day and night, in good and bad weather, for 35 years.”

As much as the bell means to him, Lemos wants to restore the bronze artifact to where it belongs, aboard Adventuress. For their part, the San Francisco Bar Pilots are pleased that their former schooner has found a new life in Puget Sound. Says Captain Larwood, “We are especially glad that her original bell – without which no pilot boat is complete – is being returned to her.”

Collins, and documentary film maker John Leben, sat down with Lemos at his Belmont home to hear his story about the bell. Once their interviews are complete, the bell will be taken to the National Park Service’s San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park where curators will inspect the bell to verify its identity as the bell that was aboard Adventuress when she was launched 101 years ago in East Boothbay, Maine.

“This is an exciting discovery,” says Stephen Canright, Curator of Maritime History at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. “Bells were an important part of traditional sailing vessels’ outfit. They would be rung in fog or reduced visibility situations, and were used to keep time, marking the passage of the four-hour watches, or duty periods. But as an artifact, Adventuress’ bell is important for another reason,” Canright emphasizes, “It clearly marks, for future generations, the fact that pilot schooners served on the San Francisco Bar every day, 24/7, for over 120 years.”

The timing of this find is extraordinary, coming just after the completion of a successful multi-year, $1.2 million hull restoration for the historic ship. As all work was done to the 50-year standard set by the Secretary of the Interior for historic vessel preservation, Adventuress will literally sail for generations to come. Adventuress is one of only two National Historic Landmark sailing ships, along with the 1891 scow schooner Alma, that are still in active service on the West Coast. Remarks Collins, “Finding the bell is the icing on the cake.”

Provenance (The Wall of Remembrance – The Owners, Crew & Notable Guest):

• Owner: (1913-1914) – John Borden II
• Owner: (1914) – San Francisco Bar Pilots
• War service – U.S. Coast Guard
• Owner: San Francisco Bar Pilots
• Owner: (1952) – O.H. “Doc” Freeman
• Owner: (early 1960’s) – Monty Morton, and Ernestine Bennett (Youth Adventure)
• Owner: (1988) Sound Experience, Sound Experience, a platform for environmental education about Puget Sound. She sails from March into October, on trips ranging from 3 hours to 7 days. Paid employees and volunteers perform office, crew, and maintenance work

Resources:

• Sound Experience, a nonprofit founded by Barbara Wyatt and Morley Horder
• Wikipedia
• San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park
• National Park Service

Historical:

Designed by Thomas F. McManus of Boston and built at the John F. James & Son Yard in Essex, Massachusetts, for Captain Jeff Thomas of Gloucester, Adventure was one of the last wooden sailing vessels of her kind built for the dory-fishing industry.

Adventure, named for one of the fantasy fleet of ships drawn by Captain Thomas’s young son, is a knockabout (spoonbow) schooner, designed without a bowsprit for the safety of the crew. The McManus knockabout design was regarded by maritime historian, Howard I. Chapelle, as “the acme in the long evolution of the New England fishing schooner.” Launched on 16 September 1926, Adventure measured 122 feet (37 m) from bow to stern, sported a gaff rig and carried a 120 horsepower (89 kW) diesel engine, and a crew of twenty-seven. She fished the once bountiful Grand Banks of the North Atlantic from her home port of Gloucester from 1926 to 1953 under Captain Jeff Thomas and later, Captain Leo Hynes. Adventure was the biggest money-maker of the time, landing nearly $4 million worth of cod and halibut in her fishing career. Her retirement marked the end of the American dory-fishing schooner in the North Atlantic.

In 1954, Adventure was sold to Donald Hurd, Dayton Newton, and Herbert Beizer and refitted for the windjammer tourist trade, carrying vacationing passengers up and down the Maine coast. The fish pens were converted into cabins and the engine removed to make room for sleeping quarters. Adventure’s prowess in the Gulf of Maine earned her the nickname “Queen of the Windjammers.”

In 1964 she was sold to Captain Jim Sharp of Camden, Maine, who continued her career in the tourist trade for nearly twenty-four years.[citation needed] In 1988, Captain Sharp donated Adventure to the people of Gloucester to be preserved as Gloucester’s historic tall ship, to be used to educate the public about the role of fishing in American history.

In 1988, the non-profit group, Gloucester Adventure, Inc., was formed to preserve the schooner as a monument to the history of Gloucester. Through the efforts of the Gloucester Adventure, Inc. and dedicated volunteers, Adventure is now a destination site on the Essex National Heritage Area Maritime Trail, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and is a designated National Historic Landmark. In 1999, Adventure was selected as an Official Project of Save America’s Treasures by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Provenance (The Wall of Remembrance – The Owners, Crew & Notable Guest):

Owner: Captain Jeff Thomas (1926–1954)
Owner: Donald Hurd, Dayton Newton, and Herbert Beizer (1954-1964)
Owner: Captain Jim Sharp (1964-1988)
Owner: The people of Gloucester (1988-1988)
Owner: Gloucester Adventure, Inc (1988–)

Historical:

The John G. Alden designed Cutter Zaida was the third vessel of the same name for George Ratsey of Ratsey & Lapthorn. Mr. Ratsey was the great-grandfather of Greenport residents Jane Ratsey Williams and her brother Colin Ratsey.

Due to the cruising and racing success of Mr. Ratsey’s previous boat, Zaida has practically the same underbody. Her draft slightly deeper, waterline, overhangs carried out, and her freeboard increased.

“Her construction is heavy and to the highest standards. Her backbone is of selected white oak, frames and beams of oak, planking is single mahogany and the deck of Port Orford cedar fastenings are of Everdur, as are chainplates and diagonal hull straps.”

Originally rigged as a Marconi main and gaff fore schooner, until 1935 as a Marconi rugged cutter; her speed increased notably. During her war years she served her country proud as a yawl.

WWII service

WWII Wartime designation: USCG 1941 – CGR 3070 – Picket Patrol — (nine-man crew) A part of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary made up of motor boats, yachts and other small craft.

Zaida, became legendary in December 1942 as it was ending its week-long patrol, the 58-foot yawl with her crew of nine nearly rolled on its beam in gale force winds that snapped the mizzen mast and caused other damage. Skipper Curtis Arnall, one of the radio voices of comic book hero, Buck Rogers, was able to send a distress message. Then he headed the boat southwest, running sometimes with winds so strong that they sailed barepoled. Over the course of the next twenty days, more than twenty-five planes and ships of the U.S. Army and Canadian Air Forces, the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. and British navies searched for the sturdy craft. During this time, all the while experiencing a number of wrenching failed rescue attempts, Zaida sailed 3,100 miles from off Nantucket Shoals to Ocracoke Inlet, North Carolina. Finally the boat was sighted fifteen miles from shore by a blimp and was taken in tow by a Coast Guard cutter. The hunt for Zaida constituted the largest search and rescue operation in the Atlantic by Allied Forces during World War II.

Provenance (The Wall of Remembrance – The Owners, Crew & Notable Guest):

• Owner: (1937) – George Ratsey, Ratsey & Lapthorn sailmakers.
• Owner: (1942) – U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary
• Owner: (1978 – current) – David Lish
• Commander: Curtis Arnall

Resources

• Bravo Zero: The Coast Guard Auxiliary in World War II
  By C. Kay Larson
  National Historian
  United States Coast Guard Auxiliary
• Old Time Radio DVD
• Motorboating 1937