Dear Shipmates,

Well, it has been a long haul amidst a wake of blisters since sail training began, but we have a vessel and crew we can all take pride in. Thank you all for your hard work and dedication – you all have my respect and admiration. Since we moved ELISSA to Pier 21, I have heard many comments about how beautiful she looks, how she graces Galveston’s waterfront, how much longer she appears than at her other berth, and many other comments. All of the comments have at their center the truth that ELISSA is a work of art in wrought iron and wood. Of all the creations made to move our spirits, fine hulled lofty ships are the noblest creatures poised on that fine line between the divine and human design. We are all helping in creating this continuing work of art…ELISSA.

Ships graceful as ELISSA have lit up and awakened the hearts and spirits of people through the ages. Our souls, our shared spirits and our humanity are buoyed with each pull upon a halyard and every awakening sail spread out upon her spars. It is not just us, a fortunate few, who look upon this beauty. Look into the eyes of visitors ashore along the pier and promenade and see the marvel of our creation, our ELISSA, in their eyes. I very much enjoy speaking to visitors awed by the beauty and spectacle of sail training and the art and grace you all create during each sail training weekend. They often ask me what it is like “up there” or how beautiful ELISSA looks amongst many other questions and comments. Those lucky people watching from ashore are being treated to a performance in which there is poetry in every buntline.

Ships companies are communities isolated from the rest of the world outside the bulwarks and topgallant rails. We have our own language and customs not found ashore. We all find common purpose in working for the ship, our ship, our ELISSA. Our fears and foibles are mixed with our shipmates and alloyed with our combined strengths, passions, and joys to form a metal as noble and stout as any bitt or bollard. With our shipmates at our side, we can reach goals and attain heights we could otherwise never accomplish. Remember your first time aloft, or any other challenge aboard ship, and the reassuring voices of your shipmates. We delight in our successes…and we have had many. Those who struggle together with respect and common vision can accomplish feats seemingly impossible under ordinary conditions. Your shipmates are a source of strength.

We are almost at the end of this year’s sail training and maybe it is time for a reminder from me about your shipmates. I have heard of several occasions where crew was not responsive to the commands and requests of mast captains and foreman. We have a hierarchy aboard for the safe and efficient operation of the ship. It can only work if we all follow requests and orders from your mast captain, work foreman and SOC.

We have our biggest event of the year outside daysails next weekend. It is vital that we all work together and remain conscious of the fact that almost everything will be different due to the relocation of ELISSA to Pier 21. We will have construction of our new berth beginning next Tuesday and I am sure it will be an added aggravation to setting up Plankowners’. I believe we have a wonderful opportunity to have a great event with ELISSA acting as more of a centerpiece. We have hired a professional auctioneer and his company to put on the live auction and assist with check-in and check-out. There will be glitches and problems, but as a crew we can work through them all. Just be patient with each other and our guests and remember that however neatly you may flake out a line for running, all it takes is one roll of the ship to cast a hockle into the works.

Let’s remember that this event and all the things we do are for ELISSA… for our ship.

Joseph Conrad writes in Mirror of the Sea:

“But of the delight of seeing a small craft run bravely amongst the great seas there can be no question to him whose soul does not dwell ashore. Thus I well remember a three days' run got out of a little barque of 400 tons somewhere between the islands of St. Paul and Amsterdam and Cape Otway on the Australian coast. It was a hard, long gale, gray clouds and green sea, heavy weather undoubtedly, but still what a sailor would call manageable. Under two lower topsails and a reefed foresail the barque seemed to race with a long, steady sea that did not becalm her in the troughs. The solemn thundering combers caught her up from astern, passed her with a fierce boiling up of foam level with the bulwarks, swept on ahead with a swish and a roar: and the little vessel, dipping her jib-boom into the tumbling froth, would go on running in a smooth, glassy hollow, a deep valley between two ridges of the sea, hiding the horizon ahead and astern. There was such fascination in her pluck, nimbleness, the continual exhibition of unfailing seaworthiness, in the semblance of courage and endurance, that I could not give up the delight of watching her run through the three unforgettable days of that gale which my mate also delighted to extol as ‘a famous shove.’”

I am working on the “draft” ELISSA Hull Preservation Plan that will be the guiding document during the upcoming shipyard. This draft repair proposal will be presented to the Coast Guard for their approval. I am sure elements of it will change. In the words of the famous Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower: “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

Fair leads,

Jamie

James L. White
Director 1877 ELISSA