The History of the Tall Ship Regina Maris
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Linfield University DigitalCommons@Linfield Linfield Alumni Book Gallery Linfield Alumni Collections 2019 Dreamers before the Mast: The History of the Tall Ship Regina Maris John Kerr Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/lca_alumni_books Part of the Cultural History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Kerr, John, "Dreamers before the Mast: The History of the Tall Ship Regina Maris" (2019). Linfield Alumni Book Gallery. 1. https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/lca_alumni_books/1 This Book is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It is brought to you for free via open access, courtesy of DigitalCommons@Linfield, with permission from the rights-holder(s). Your use of this Book must comply with the Terms of Use for material posted in DigitalCommons@Linfield, or with other stated terms (such as a Creative Commons license) indicated in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, or if you have questions about permitted uses, please contact [email protected]. Dreamers Before the Mast, The History of the Tall Ship Regina Maris By John Kerr Carol Lew Simons, Contributing Editor Cover photo by Shep Root Third Edition This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc- nd/4.0/. 1 PREFACE AND A TRIBUTE TO REGINA Steven Katona Somehow wood, steel, cable, rope, and scores of other inanimate materials and parts create a living thing when they are fastened together to make a ship. I have often wondered why ships have souls but cars, trucks, and skyscrapers don’t. I think the explanation is the intensity of bonding between people and ships, starting with the slow handwork required for their construction and continuing with the round-the-clock involvement necessary for sailing them. I think their souls grow each night. As each watch ends, people sleep the strange shipsleep, so far away, so full of dreams. And as they do, pieces of their souls slip away and stick to the ship, while fragments of accumulated shipsoul fall off and stick to the people. All this happens easily in the small, dark bunk, and the ship’s gentle rocking stirs everything together so that pretty soon peoplesoul and shipsoul are all tangled up and neither party feels complete without the other, ever. But no matter how alive and ensouled ships are, they have not yet learned to speak in words, so their stories must be told by the people they carry over the sea. Steven Katona is managing director of the Ocean Health Index for Conservation International. He wrote a Tribute to Regina Maris to introduce the summer 1988 edition of Whalewatcher, the journal of the American Cetacean Society, from which the above excerpt is reprinted with permission. That entire issue is dedicated to Regina’s years as a whale research vessel, and more excerpts from it appear in Chapters 16 through 20. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As Steve Katona says, ships … have not yet learned to speak in words, so their stories must be told by the people they carry over the sea.” I have tried to do just that, allow those involved with the ship do the speaking. This is easy to say but hard to do. I contacted hundreds of people for help and gave them the opportunity to give feedback, and at times the book was being written by committee. I have quoted very many and paraphrased many more. I hope I have done them justice. You all have my sincerest thanks for all you have given to the project. Additional thanks must go to Evan Ginsburg for starting Friends and Crew of the Regina Maris on Facebook. The page can be found at https://www.facebook.com/reginamaris1908/. Without that connection, many of the memories and much history would have been lost. Readers should view this site for many additional photos and historical information. Many thanks also go to Steve Nelson, who had the vision and fortitude to organize and develop three ways for Regina friends and crew to keep in contact. He was responsible for three reunions — two formal and one informal — that brought old shipmates together to keep connections and memories alive. He started The Jolly Boat newsletter, which can be subscribed to at http://eepurl.com/rmcQv. And he started the Regina Maris Society, the website for which can be found at: www/reginamsociety.org. To Penny Kerr, for her love, patience, and forbearing as the other woman in my life, for all the years we have been together, thank you with all my heart. Photo Quality Unfortunately, through the ravages of time and flood many of the original photos have been lost or damaged. Moreover, many were taken before the advent of digital enhancement and DPIs above 200. A coffee table book this is not. Many wonderful photos can be found in the photos section on the Facebook page, Friends and Crew of the Regina Maris, https://www.facebook.com/reginamaris1908/. 3 Table of Contents CHAPTER ONE 7 In the Beginning 1908 – 1932 CHAPTER Two 14 Trade and Fish 1932 –1963 CHAPTER THREE 22 Queen of the Sea 1963 – 1966 CHAPTER FOUR 33 Voyage of a Barkentine 1966 CHAPTER FIVE 40 The Horn 1967 CHAPTER SIX 50 Australia Bound, Plymouth England to Funchal, on the Island of Madeira 1968 – 1969 CHAPTER SEVEN 59 Dismasted October 1969 – February 1970 CHAPTER EIGHT 68 Australia Bound Once More February – August 1970 CHAPTER NINE 77 Mutiny? August 9 – September 7, 1970 CHAPTER TEN 87 End of the Glory Days Late 1970 92 CHAPTER ELEVEN Scheveningen Harbor to Long Beach, California 1970 – 1971 4 CHAPTER TWELVE 101 Long Beach to Papeete June – August 1971 CHAPTER THIRTEEN 109 One Queen vs. Two Typhoons 1971-1973 119 CHAPTER FOURTEEN New Owners and Passages September 1973 – April 1974 132 CHAPTER FIFTEEN Southampton to the Black Sea 1974 – 1976 143 CHAPTER SIXTEEN The ORES Years Begin 1976 150 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN R/V Regina Maris Heads to the Caribbean January 1977 157 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Voyages 1978 Through 1980 171 CHAPTER NINETEEN Voyages 1981 Through 1983 CHAPTER TWENTY 186 Regina’s Last ORES Years 1983 – 1986 197 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE In Marina Bay, Massachusetts 1986 – 1991 202 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO To Greenport, New York February – September 1991 212 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Fairhaven, Massachusetts September 1 – October 22, 1991 5 223 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Greenport, New York October 24, 1991 – August 25, 1998 237 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Glen Cove, New York August 1998 – February 2002 Epilogue 249 Regina Maris Lives On 250 Appendix A 254 Appendix B 255 Appendix C 256 Appendix D 258 Appendix E 268 Appendix F 275 Appendix G 280 Appendix H 282 Appendix I 286 Index 287 6 CHAPTER 1 IN THE BEGINNING 1908 – 1932 The history of any ship is difficult to separate from stories of the people who were involved with her. The story of Regina Maris begins with a dreamer, Olof Bengtsson, born in 1866 in Raa, Sweden. [1] In 1895 Olof was in the Australian Outback searching for gold with a friend and 3,000 other “panners.” From the end of the rail line they had to walk thirty miles to the gold fields. Water was at a premium and they saw many dehydrated men. Olof and his friend Olof Paulsson bought their claims, two 100-foot triangles, side by side. They came prepared to pan with water but there was none, so sifting the sand became their method. It was backbreaking work under nearly intolerable conditions. On their first day of operating, they obtained seven pounds of gold. Their “strike” made the other panners wild. All worked themselves into a feverish state. The two friends had to sleep with guns under their pillows. Much of the gold they found had to be used to purchase food and water. The food was very simple — canned fish and bread baked on the coals of a fire. Water had to be boiled for it was infected with the typhoid bacteria. The Aborigines were the only people who could drink the water, but they kept their distance from the miners. Dingoes posed a major problem, for these wild dogs were always ready to attack the unwary. One day the two Olofs sifted 30 pounds of gold, but that was a rarity in that inhospitable place. The hard work went on for 10 months until the rush was over and the two friends returned to the civilization offered by Fremantle, a port on Australia’s west coast, Olof Bengtsson stayed on in west Australia for two years, fishing for snappers and sharks, then headed east to Melbourne, where he found employment taking guests from the hotels out sailing. He decided to go home for some “vacation” as he called it and obtained passage on a ship bound for Southampton, England, and then on to Hamburg, Germany. By the summer of 1899 he was back in Raa. Being from a seafaring family, he went right to work as skipper of Blenda, a small yacht he had purchased on his return with some of his Australian gold. He sold her before the end of the year 1900. In 1901, he became first mate under Captain L. Bose on Betty, a large schooner. In 1902, Olof took over command of the schooner A.R. Rawall and sailed her until 1908. During a major storm on Christmas Day 1902, the tall ship Direkter stranded on the rocks outside Raa. Olof stood at the end of a chain of men, up to his chest in the raging sea, and rescued the passengers and crew.