Category: Ships

Sometime in 1965 or 1966, when I was ten or eleven, my father brought home a small sailboat, and I fell in love with sailing. In high school, my interest in history and love of tall ships melded with a field trip to San Francisco’s Maritime Museum and the Balclutha.

At that time, the Balclutha was moored at Pier 41 East. Stepping onto the deck of a ship more than three quarters of a century old fueled my imagination. I closed my eyes and listened to the creak of lines, the groaning deck, and the screech of gulls flying overhead. As the ship rocked gently beneath me, I imagined the crew scrambling up the ratlines, the captain calling out orders. Below decks, the narrow passageways and cramped quarters conjured stories of the life of the sailors. Even the captain’s rooms, though luxurious by comparison, were tiny and dark. In some ways it reminded me of an RV, with every tiny space optimized for storage. 

The Balclutha was launched in 1886, from Glasgow, Scotland. Christened She is square-rigged with three masts and twenty-five sails, and is one of the only two such ships left in the United States. She carried cargo of coal, lumber, salmon, and other goods for over 50 years.

The Balclutha made seventeen trips around the horn in thirteen years. For most of the ship’s history, she was manned by a crew of about twenty-six men. Only the captain of such a ship could bring his wife aboard for the trip around the horn and back again. Her last captain under British registration was Captain Durkee. His wife, Alice, accompanied him on at least one voyage, and gave birth to their daughter on March 11, 1899. The ship was in the Indian Ocean, bound for San Francisco, and so they named the little girl, Inda Frances. 

That same year, the Balclutha joined the Pacific lumber trade as a Hawaiian ship. She carried lumber from the Pacific Northwest for mines in Australia. She was the last vessel to sail under the flag of the Kingdom of Hawaii. In 1901, her registry was officially transferred to the United States of America. She worked the Pacific Coast, transporting salmon from Alaskan canneries to San Francisco, and men and supplies back to Alaska. She was retired in 1930.

Even in retirement, the Balclutha had work to do. She was purchased in 1933 and sailed south to Catalina Island. There she starred along with Clark Gable in the film, Mutiny on the Bounty.

In 1954, the tired, old ship was purchased by the San Francisco Maritime Museum, and renovated. In 1978, ownership was transferred to the National Park Service and she was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

Today, the ship is moored at Hyde Street Pier, welcoming tourists aboard and sparking the imagination of writers like me.

500 years ago in 1522, the last (and only remaining) ship of Magellen’s famous circumnavigation of the earth limped into port in Sanlúcar, Spain. Magellan, a Portuguese captain, had begun the journey, which was financed by Spain, three years earlier with five ships and about 270 men. 

Ferdinand Magellan is the most famous participant in this remarkable voyage. After all, he planned the entire trip, led the five ships across the Atlantic Ocean, kept the fleet intact through two attempted mutinies, discovered the strait of Magellan at the southernmost tip of South America, and carried on across the Pacific. 

However, neither Magellan nor his flagship, the Nao Trinidad, completed the entire journey. Magellan’s first bad turn of luck was when one of his ships wrecked on the east coast of South America. Things got even worse when one of the would-be mutineers, Juan de Cartagena, deserted with another ship. That left only three ships in the fleet to cross the Pacific Ocean, arriving near Guam in March of 1521. Further troubles met the expedition as they fought with the natives of Guan and the Philippines. Magellan was killed in the battle of Mactan. (Lapu Lapu, the leader of the Philippine forces is considered a national hero in the Philippines for his resistance to Spanish colonization efforts.)

In spite of Magellan’s death, the expedition continued, though since only about 115 of the original 227 remained alive, one more ship was abandoned and burned. That left two ships, the Victoria and the Trinidad. It was decided that the Trinidad, which was in poor shape, would return home the way they had come, turning back east to cross the Pacific, while the Victoria would continue west through the Indian Ocean and around the Cape of Good Hope.

Both ships ran into trouble on their routes. The Trinidad was captured by the Portuguese and its crew held for ransom. (The Portuguese were angry at Spain’s encroachment on what they considered their spice trade.) While in Portuguese hands, the ship was wrecked in a storm.

The Victoria, captained by Juan Sebastián Elcano, carried some 26 tons of cloves and cinnamon, but not enough food for the journey. Twenty of the crew died of starvation. The ship also ran into trouble from the Portuguese, but managed to escape with their cargo and return to Spain. Only 18 of the original 270 men survived the whole journey.

As I said earlier, Magellan is widely regarded as the leader of the first successful circumnavigation of the globe. However, why he gets this honor is a bit of a mystery to me. 

After all, he didn’t make it home. Also, he was not a popular person back in Spain, nor was he held in high esteem in his native Portugal. Juan de Cartegena, the mutineer-deserter, had returned safely to Spain, where he sset about assiduously besmirching Magellan’s name (partly in an effort to keep himself and his mutineering crew out of jail).. Among other things, he accused Magellan of disloyalty to Spain. Since the Spanish Crown already had their doubts about Magellan’s motives since he was Portuguese, Cartagena’s tales were easily believed. In fact, Magellan’s wife and son were put under house arrest. 

As far as the Portuguese were concerned, Magellan was nothing more than a traitor because he sailed under Spanish auspices. (To be fair, Portugal had denied him funding, whereas Spain agreed to finance the voyage.)

In any case, with both sides against him, and his death in the Philippines, it is rather surprising that he’s the one we remember.

Elcano seems the more likely candidate for the role of hero. After all, he, along with only eighteen of the original crew, finished the journey, bringing with them a valuable cargo of spices. But Elcano was Basque, not Spanish, and the Spanish Crown feared Basque nationalist sentiment. (Yes, tensions between the Basque and the rest of Spain are at least 500 years old!). In any case, his accomplishment was not highly celebrated at the time, and he has been largely ignored since then. (However that seems to be changing a bit now as history gets ‘updated’ and more inclusive.)

In the end, the real hero of the whole expedition is Antonio Pigafetta. He started with Magellan and finished with Elcano, and kept a journal throughout the voyage. His account is the most complete story of what happened. He may be fairly unknown, but his words have outlived kings, and sailors, and explorers.  That’s power.

Teton National Park

Although many of us can swim, water is not the natural habitat for humans. But for people, like for the proverbial chicken faced with a road, the urge to cross is overwhelming. A restless bunch, we humans are forever trying to get to the other side, where the grass just might be greener.

Rivers pose a particular difficulty in the face of this insatiable desire to go on, travel forth, get to that other side (and often back again.) Instrumental for long distance transportation and as a source of water, rivers offer ideal places to settle. Soon, homes and work, food and safety can develop on opposite banks. Short of swimming, there are only a limited number of ways one can cross. If a place that is shallow and smooth bottomed can be found, the river might be forded, which means wading, riding, or driving a wagon across. Rougher rivers require a bridge or a ferry. Bridges take time, money, and skill to build. That means that from ancient times and in countless tales, the ferry is of utmost importance.

For instance, Charon of Greek mythology, ferries the dead across the River Styx. Urshanabi is the Mesopotamian equivalent, ferrying the dead across the River Huber.

Far more recent, and much less lethal, is Menor’s Ferry, built in 1894 to cross the Snake River in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. William (Bill) Menor took advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862 to ‘squat’ on 149 acres on the west side of the river. (He secured legal title in 1908.) Most settlers, including Bill Menor’s brother, Holiday Menor, settled on the east side of the river. The  Snake River had a few fords, but these became impassable whenever the water was high. Menor’s Ferry soon became the most reliable way to cross, allowing residents of Jackson Hole to hunt, forage, and cut lumber in the mountain foothills on the west side. A wagon and team cost fifty cents for the crossing, while a horse and rider cost half that. Menor didn’t charge pedestrians, as long as there was a wagon crossing. 

Menor’s Ferry is an ingenious design. The platform, large enough for a wagon and team, floats on two pontoons. The ferry is attached to a  cable overhead to prevent it being carried downstream by the strong current of the river. The ferry can be angled toward the opposite bank by means of the pilot wheel, which tightens the rope to point the pontoons in the right direction. The force of the current pushes against the pontoons, driving the ferry across the river, much like a sailboat angling the sails to take advantage of the pressure of the wind. Although Charon’s Ferry is usually depicted as being poled across the river, the type of ferry Menor built was known in ancient times and in many places.

The Snake River can be wild and erratic at times, but at other times the level of the untamed river dropped too low to operate the ferry. Menor rigged up a suspended platform from his cable system, and transported up to four passengers across in this makeshift cable car. In winter, Menor and his neighbors cooperated to build a temporary bridge for crossing. The bridge was taken down each spring.

Menor operated the ferry until 1918, when he sold it to Maude Noble. An astute business woman, she  immediately doubled the prices. By this time, cars were bringing more and more tourists into Jackson Hole. In another bid for increased revenue, she charged $1.00 for cars with Wyoming license plates, and $2.00 for out of state plates. Maude operated the ferry for almost 10 years, until 1927 when a steel truss bridge was built. Although the urge to get to cross never went away, Menor’s Ferry became obsolete with the completion of the bridge.

Bill Menor’s ferry and homestead are now a part of Grand Teton National Park, a tribute to the men and women who made it possible to get to the other side.

Chances are that if you ate a banana this week, (the most commonly eaten fruit in the world) you participated in a global economy. Though we are more aware of it than we used to be, such worldwide commerce is nothing new. Elissa, an iron-hulled, tall ship moored in Galveston, TX, is a beautiful reminder of such connections. Even her name, Elissa, calls to mind the movement of goods and people. Elissa, the heroine of Virgils’ Aeneid, fled from Tyre to Carthage and changed her name to Dido. With polished teak pin rails and bright work, tall masts for Douglas fir from Oregon, and billowing sails from Maine, Elissa, like Dido, is a testament not only to global shipping, but also to tenacity and the ability to reinvent oneself to meet the demands of the changing world.

Elissa is a barque, so called because of her rigging. Her three masts carry 19 sails. She has square and fore and aft sails on her foremast and mainmast, and fore and aft sails on her mizzenmast. She was built in 1877, just as the sailing era was gradually being taken over by steam-powered vessels. Elissa has truly been a ship of the world. Built in Aberdeen, Scotland, she worked for owners in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Greece before becoming an American vessel. During her shipping years she carried cotton, bananas, and many other cargoes, stopping in Galveston at least twice. 

Her story serves as a chronical for changes in world wide shipping. As global shipping changed, Elissa did too.Over her 90 years as a commercial shipping vessel, she was refitted several times, including the addition of an engine. But even steam-power couldn’t bring Elissa into the modern world. In the late 1960’s she was relegated to a salvage yard in Greece. It was ten years before she was rescued, and towed across the ocean to her current home in Galveston, Texas. It took another six years to repair and restore Elissa to her former sailing glory. Now, as one of the oldest sailing ships in America (The Louis R. French is the oldest), she serves as a floating museum at the Texas Seaport Museum, in Galveston, Texas. She sails in competitions and demonstrations, and offers sail training courses each year to keep sailing traditions and knowledge alive.

Remember that banana you ate? Though they are cheap and easy to find today, back in Elissa’s prime, bananas were considered an unlucky cargo. They spoiled easily, risking the chances of profit, and when they rotted, bananas gave off noxious fumes that made the crew sick. (And those huge brown spiders often found on bananas from South America are scary enough to make anyone cringe.) I admit to taking for granted the ease in which we enjoy products from all over the world today. The Elissa evokes a bygone era where even the common banana was a luxury, and I am reminded just how lucky we are.