Press Release for the Barque of Saviors Published by Houghton

Press Release

The Barque of Saviors by Russell Drumm

• Introduction • Reviews of In the Slick of the Cricket: A Shark Odyssey by Russell Drumm • About the Author

"Russell Drumm has given us not only a stirring story of the redemption of the Eagle but a wonderful reminder as well of the Coast Guard's role in our maritime history." — Walter Cronkite

Introduction

America has a long history of heroism in both peace and war. There are few better examples than the protection that the United States Coast Guard provides to those in peril at sea. One need only look to the past weeks to see the role it has played in patrolling our harbors and shoreline. But dig deeper and one finds a trove of lesser-known stories that exemplify the Coast Guard's everyday heroism. The tale of the tall ship Eagle provides the perfect way of sharing the story of our Coast Guard fleet. From its wartime capture as a Nazi training ship (and the rescue of its German crew, who were starving when captured) to its modern-day role in tragedies large and small, the Eagle is emblematic of the life-saving role of the Coast Guard and our other armed services.

The Barque of Saviors is the biography of a beautiful, tall-masted sailing ship that once trained U-boat sailors in Hitler's Third Reich and is now a school ship for Coast Guard officers. Once called the Horst Wessel, rechristened the Eagle after World War II, it is an inspiring emblem of moral redemption. I am

The barque of saviors was christened in Hamburg in 1936, in the presence of Adolf Hitler, and named for a man the Nazis considered a martyr. The training ship's logs, now in the possession of Russell Drumm, contain never- before-published accounts of wartime life at sea. Hitler had ordered that all naval vessels be fitted with suicide charges and scuttled if the war was lost. But after Hitler's death, Admiral Karl Dönitz rescinded the order, and the Horst Wessel was towed to Bremerhaven. Boarding it, the Coast Guard's advance team found the crew terrified and half-starved. The Americans had found their first rescue mission. They brought the German crew back to life; the Germans, in return, taught them the ways of a square-rigged ship. Crossing the Atlantic to New London, the newly rechristened Eagle encountered a fierce storm and almost sank with all hands, a terrifying journey memorably described by its captain, himself a vivid writer.

At the center of Drumm's tale is Coast Guardsman Karl Dillmann, the Eagle's most skilled and knowledgeable sailor, whose forebears fought in the American Revolution and the Civil War. Dillmann has an uncanny spiritual connection to the barque: he feels that his spirit is inhabited by the soul of a German sailor who trained on Horst Wessel and who drowned in a U-boat off the coast of Rhode Island in the last naval battle of World War II. He speaks fluent German, which he has never studied; knowledge of the language came to him mysteriously in childhood.

Russell Drumm, a senior writer at the East Hampton Star, where he has covered the waterfront for fourteen years, has sailed on Eagle and knows the ship intimately. His love for it, and for the sea, enriches every page. The work of the men and women of the Coast Guard — an organization of saviors — is set down with affection, admiration, and humor. Both the American years — including a riveting account of the fatal plunge of TWA Flight 800 — and the German sections are full of fascinating and moving human detail.

Reviews of In the Slick of the Cricket: A Shark Odyssey by Russell Drumm

"An eloquently caustic, faintly apocalyptic account, which not only describes the passing of an age but also foresees the destruction of an environment." — Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times

"Terrific prose . . . a very entertaining first book." — Booklist

"A compelling mix of fish stories and Hemingwayesque celebration of rugged individualism . . . carries the wallop of a fine novel." — Booklist Top 10 Sports Books; A 1997 Booklist Editors' Choice

"An intelligent and original account of the last man of his kind." — Dava Sobel, author of Longitude

"A superb portrait of a white-shark fishing guide — deft and sparingly, beautifully written . . . A first-rate story of a person and place out of time." — Kirkus Reviews (starred)

About the Author

Russell Drumm is a senior writer at the East Hampton Star, where he has covered the waterfront for fourteen years. He has received numerous awards, from the National Newspaper Association, the New York Press Association, the Long Island Press Association, and the Suburban Newspapers of America, for stories on the waterfront, the environment, and for editorial writing.