USCGC Eagle (WIX-327)

The USCGC|Eagle|WIX-327 (ex-"Horst Wessel") is a convert|295|ft|m|sing=on barque used as a training cutter for future officers of the United States Coast Guard. She is the only active commissioned sailing vessel in American government service. She is the seventh U.S. Navy or Coast Guard ship to bear the name in a line dating back to 1792. Each summer, "Eagle" conducts cruises with cadets from the United States Coast Guard Academy and candidates from the Officer Candidate School for periods ranging from a week to two months. These cruises fulfill multiple roles; the primary mission is training the cadets and officer candidates, but the ship also performs a public relations role. Often, "Eagle" makes calls at foreign ports as a goodwill ambassador.

Segelschulschiff "Horst Wessel"

The ship was built in 1936 as the second of three similar vessels ("Gorch Fock" class) at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany and used to train recruits for service in the Kriegsmarine. (At a later date, two further copies of this design were completed.) She was launched on 13 June 1936 and named for the well-known member of the Nazi Party, Horst Wessel. Commissioned by Adolf Hitler himself as a school ship for the German Navy (Reichsmarine) on 17 September 1936, she was homeported in Kiel on the Baltic Sea.

Under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany could not be militarized. Hitler ordered the creation of this sailing ship and her sister ships to train Navy cadets, but the ships were constructed with identical engine room setup and frame as U-boats. By the time World War II began, the Navy had already trained many of its U-boat machinists and officers.

In the three years before World War II, she undertook numerous training cruises in European waters, but also visited the Caribbean. In 1941 she was converted to a cargo ship, transporting men and supplies throughout the Baltic Sea, but continued to perform training missions as well. Equipped with two antiaircraft guns on the bridge wings, "Horst Wessel" is said to have downed three Soviet aircraft and one "friendly" German aircraft in combat. The crew had realized the German aircraft they had shot down was "friendly" while it was spiraling into the sea, and set about rescuing the pilot. When he set foot on the ship, he was furious and demanded an explanation. Upon review of the logs and radio personnel, it was determined that the pilot had been using the wrong codes for the battle group, showing the now embarrassed pilot that it was actually his fault.

At the end of World War II, the four vessels then extant were distributed to various nations as war reparations ("Gorch Fock I" went to the USSR as the "Tovarishch", "Albert Leo Schlageter" went to Portugal as "Sagres III", and the "Mircea" was completed and sold to Romania). Later, West Germany constructed a fifth vessel of the class, "Gorch Fock II" for its own use.

"Horst Wessel" was taken as a war prize by the United States. She was first sent to Wilhelmshaven, Germany, for repairs and modification, and was commissioned into the United States Coast Guard as the Coast Guard Cutter "Eagle" on 15 May 1946. In June 1946 a U.S. Coast Guard crew, assisted by the German captain and crew still aboard, sailed her from Bremerhaven, through a hurricane, to her new home port of New London, Connecticut.

"America's Tall Ship"

The "Eagle" has a standing crew of six officers and 56 enlisted; on training missions, she carries on the average a complement of 12 officers, 68 crew, and up to 150 cadets. Each year, she takes one long training cruise to the Caribbean, the Pacific Coast, or Europe, and two shorter cruises along the U.S. East Coast.

During her many years of service, "Eagle" has traveled to ports throughout the United States and overseas. Among her various cruises, "Eagle" has participated in various Tall Ship races and events including the various incarnations of Operation Sail, most notably the American Bicentennial OpSail '76.

In September 1987, she undertook a yearlong cruise to Australia from her home at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. During this cruise Academy instructors were embarked to conduct the cadets' courses while underway. In 2005, as part of the Trafalgar 200 International Fleet Review in the Solent off Southern England, "Eagle" was one of a number of tall ships from several nations to be reviewed by Queen Elizabeth II, along with the U.S. Navy warship USS|Saipan|LHA-2. Later that Summer, "Eagle" returned to Bremerhaven for the first time since World War II, to an enthusiastic welcome.

Specifications & Miscellany

The design and construction of "Eagle" embodies centuries of development in the shipbuilder's art. The "Eagle" is slightly larger than her sister ship "Gorch Fock". Overall "Eagle" displaces 1,824 tons. The hull is steel four-tenths of an inch (10 mm) thick. There are two full-length steel decks with a platform deck below. The raised forecastle and quarterdeck are made of steel overlaid with three inches (76 mm) of teak, as are the weather decks. Her auxiliary diesel engine, at convert|1000|HP|kW, is also somewhat more powerful than that of the "Gorch Fock". There are two convert|320|kW|HP|abbr=on Caterpillar generators that can be run single or paralleled. "Eagle" has a range of convert|5450|nmi|km|-3 at her cruise speed of convert|7.5|kn|km/h|0 under diesel power. In the summer of 1974, during the kick-off race for OpSail '76 (from Newport, RI to Boston, MA), the participating ships encountered heavy weather and a number of participants other than "Eagle" dropped out. Off Cape Cod, the ship maintained a speed of convert|19|kn|km/h on a broad reach under sail alone for a number of hours.

"Eagle" has over convert|6|mi|km of running rigging and approximately convert|22300|sqft|m2|3 of sail area. To protect sails from chafing, the ship uses baggywrinkle extensively. People who see the baggywrinkle for the first time are usually very intrigued.

"Eagle"'s propeller shaft can be disconnected from the engine and its reduction gears so the propeller can freewheel, thus lessening drag while the under sail.

In 1976, the Coast Guard added the "racing stripe" to her otherwise unadorned white hull.

The ship has undergone numerous refits since she was acquired in 1946. On July 1, 1972, the ship was returning to her berth at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, CT at the mid-point of her annual summer cadet training cruises when she was involved in a serious accident. Despite extensive precautions, as the ship passed below the Gold Star Memorial Bridge and a twin bridge being built parallel to it, her foremast and mainmast caught the safety netting slung below the new bridge. Both masts were snapped off above the topgallant crosstrees (about seven-eighths of the way up each mast), the upper parts left hanging dangerously from the remaining upright parts of the masts. As a result, the ship had to undergo emergency repairs."New London Day", July 1, 1972.] The height of the mainmast was eventually reduced by three feet "convert|3|ft|m" so as to be the same height as the foremast.

In 1982, the ship underwent an extensive refit in the Coast Guard Yard at Curtis Bay (near Baltimore, MD). During this yard availability her original 1936 M.A.N. diesel engine (along with its generators and evaporators) were replaced by modern equipment. This made the engine room more spacious and less noisy and hot. The new engine could be controlled directly from the quarterdeck and responded instantly, rather than after a 30-or-more-second delay common with the original engine. Additional watertight compartmentalization was also added (previously, there had been only three (supposedly) watertight bulkheads). This compartmentalization included closing in cadet berthing areas, eliminating separate upper-class (fixed three-tier bunks) and lower-class (hammock) berthing and making the ship better able to accommodate male and female cadets. An enclosed pilothouse was built around the exhaust funnel on the quarterdeck. Electronic equipment (e.g., radar, navigation, and radio equipment) was updated as well.

Trivia

"Eagle" has a significant presence in the Nantucket series of books by S. M. Stirling, in which she is visiting the island of Nantucket when a mysterious "Event" transports the entire island, including "Eagle" and her crew, back to the year 1250 BC. Sent across the Atlantic Ocean to barter for the grain and stock the time-lost Nantucketers need to survive through their first winter, her arrival off the south coast of Bronze Age England leads the natives to name her crew (and, by extension, the rest of the Island's population) as 'The Eagle People'. Although the "Eagle" described in the books is based on the real-world ship, all of her crew is fictional.

See also

*See Sagres III, Gorch Fock I and "Mircea" for her sister ships.
*See Gorch Fock (1958) for training ship of the German Navy
*See List of large sailing vessels

References

External links

* [http://www.uscga.edu/display.aspx?id=2558 The home page of the USCGC "Eagle"] at the United States Coast Guard Academy
* [http://www.uscg.mil/hq/g-cp/history/WEBCUTTERS/Eagle_1946.html uscg.mil: USCGC "Eagle"]
* [http://www.janmaat.de/wessel.htm JanMaat] page on the "Horst Wessel" (in German)