lost-at-sea-memorials.com

One of the most iconic sculptures found in the United States is The Lone Sailor, a tribute to those of all the sea services. The sculpture was originally created by Stanley Bleifeld for the United States Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C. It was first erected there in 1987. There are at least eleven other other copies located around the United States.

While not a lost at sea memorial per se, it most certainly represents a scene witnessed tens of thousands of times around the world – a mariner silently waiting for his ship. In all too many cases this scene would be the mariner’s last time spent on solid ground, as he would eventually become another soul lost at sea.

The design of statue always reminds me of the opening scene in the movie “The Sand Pebbles”, as Jake Holman mutters “Hello ship” to his new vessel the San Pablo.

The beautiful photograph in this post was taken by Manuel Ortiz (Mortis24 on Panoramio). It is of the sculpture found in Long Beach, California. I love the perspective in Manuel’s photograph – the sailor looking out to sea, where an unknown fate awaits…

“Jacob’s Ladder” is often used as a biblical allusion from Genesis to Jacob’s dream of a ladder reaching to heaven. For those who have served at sea it is also a term for a rope or cable ladder, with wooden steps, that hangs off the side of a ship. Jacob’s Ladders sway, twist and slap the sides of a ship with the wind and the waves. They are not a favorite piece of equipment for any sailor, but for a sailor in peril a Jacob’s Ladder can often be the only route to survival.

The main focus of the American Merchant Marine Veterans’ Memorial in San Pedro, California is the unforgettable work of art by the late sculptor Jasper D’Ambrosi of one shipmate attempting to save another while clinging by a single hand to a Jacob’s Ladder. The concept and the design of the memorial are superb – capturing courage, strength, fear and hope in a single image. It is a moment that is universal, experienced by sailors of every nation for as long as humans have sailed the oceans. It may have happened because of a battle or a storm or an accident. It is that single moment that is the dividing point between success and failure, between life and death. It is a moment that I have personally witnessed. The D’Ambrosi work is among my favorite lost at sea memorials.

The beautiful photographs in this post were taken by Alfonso Pauwells (saxxon57 on Panoramio). I encourage everyone to seek out and view his fine photographs.

In a corner of St. Jacob’s Church (known as the seafarers church) in Lubeck, Germany is a memorial to the windjammer Pamir. The memorial is simple – a salvaged lifeboat from the stricken ship and a board listing the names of the 80 souls who were lost at sea in September 1957 off the Azones.

This website is devoted to memorials to those lost at sea, but sometimes it is difficult to ignore the history of some of the proud and beautiful ships that also rest at the bottom of the world’s oceans.

The Pamir was one of the last great windjammers. The four-masted barque was built in Hamburg and launched in July 1905. She was the fifth of ten near sister ships – with a length of 375 feet, a beam of 46 feet, with three main masts that stood 168 feet above her deck.  She was capable of deploying over 40,000 square feet of sail area. She carried grain and nitrates to and from Europe, Asia and South America until WWII. In August 1941 she was serving under the flag of Finland.

During WWII she was seized as a war prize by New Zealand, continuing to haul freight during the entire conflict. She made numerous trips from New Zealand to San Francisco, Vancouver and Sydney. In 1948 she was returned to the Erikson Line of Finland, where she resumed hauling Australian grain to Europe. In 1949 she hauled barley from Australia to England, becoming the last windjammer to carry a commercial load around Cape Horn. In the early 1950s she was sold to a German consortium. where she was used as a cargo-carrying school ship on a route primarily between Germany and Argentina.

On August 10, 1957 the Pamir left Buenos Aires for Hamburg with a crew of 86, including 52 merchant marine cadets. On September 21, 1957 she was caught in Hurricane Carrie before shortening sails. She was apparently unaware of the hurricane, being caught with open hatchways. Considerable water entered the ship, the grain cargo shifted and the ship listed severely to port. Her port side eventually went underwater, leading to her loss.

The ship was able to send three distress signals before sinking. A nine-day search for survivors was organized by the United States Coast Guard, but only four crew members and two cadets were ever found. The rest of the crew perished 600 miles west-southwest of the Azores. None of the ship’s officers survived, so there was never any testimony as to how the ship was caught so unprepared for the hurricane.

The memorial in St. Jacob’s Church displays one of the two lifeboats that were eventually found.

Two ships very similar to Pamir can still be seen – the Peking at the South Street Seaport in New York City and the Passat in Travemunde, Germany. Several fine books can also be found that describe the history and final voyage of Pamir:

The Last Time Around Cape Horn by William Stark
The Pamir under the New Zealand Ensign by Jack Churchouse
Tall Ships Down by Daniel Parrott

A second memorial on Cape Horn can be found within walking distance of the Albatross Memorial featured in a previous post. This memorial, like the Albatross, pays tribute to those who have lost their lives in the transit of Cape Horn – but it also pays tribute to those who successfully made the journey in the three-hundred years of commercial sail and exploration in the great windjammers.

Translated, the monument reads:

“To those who have crossed it and to those who have lost their lives to its demands.”

One of the most memorable lost at sea memorials anywhere is located on the west side of Battery Park in Manhattan, near the line to board the ferries to the Statute of Liberty and Ellis Island. The memorial was designed and fabricated by the artist Marisol Escobar, based on a photograph from an actual event during WWII. In that event a German submarine attacked and sank an American merchant vessel, thought to be an oiler. The submarine surfaced and took photographs of the survivors. The memorial depicts the scene in one of those photographs. The submarine did not pick up the survivors. They were all lost at sea in the vast Atlantic.

The brilliance of Marisol’s design can best be appreciated by viewing the monument over an extended period of time. At periods of high tide one can only see a hand sticking out of the water. When the tide is lower one can see the hand and the stricken seaman’s head, and at other times his entire upper torso. As ships pass by, the waves created give the memorial a sense of life and motion. The seaman’s head bobs above and below the water’s surface, as the arm of a seaman in a lifeboat strains to save his shipmate. Two others on the lifeboat are looking directly at the submarine, which will eventually submerge again and leave them for dead. There is a plaque at the memorial that reads:

Dedicated to all Merchant Mariners who have served America from the Revolutionary War through the present day. In the prosecution of war and in pursuit of peaceful commerce, unrecognized thousands have lost their lives at sea. Their sacrifices have helped secure America’s liberty and prosperity.

The sculpture was inspired by a photography of the victims of a submarine attack on an American merchant ship during World War II. Left to the perils of the sea, the survivors later perished.

This memorial serves as a marker for America’s Merchant Mariners resting in the unmarked ocean depths.

A new and well-conceived memorial to those lost at sea was recently dedicated close to my home in Northern California. The Commercial Fisherman Memorial is located at Spud Harbor in Bodega Bay, California. The statue pays tribute to the commercial fisherman lost at sea after sailing from Bodega Bay. These include those fishing for salmon, crab, abalone, and rockfish over the past two centuries. Names of lost fishermen will be added to the memorial beginning in April 2011 – and I suspect for many years to come.

The fishing industry is in dire straits around the world. The reasons are well known – overfishing, man-made and natural disasters, global climate change, and pollution. Fishermen work harder, longer, and take more risks for a continuing reduced reward. One can only hope that their fortunes change in the coming decades. Memorials such as the Bodega Bay Memorial and others around the world serve to remind us all of the sacrifices made for centuries by commercial fishermen.

If you’re near Bodega Bay, I encourage you to take the hike around Bodega Head. Placed on a cliff looking west towards the Pacific is another small memorial to the fishermen of Bodega Bay. Gazing at the Pacific from the memorial site is always a reminder of the risks taken every day by commercial fishermen. Walk down to the water’s edge from the memorial on a less than perfect day and the reality of what commercial fisherman face daily can begin to be appreciated.

On the night of June 3, 1969 the U.S.S. Frank E. Evans (DD-754) was involved in a collision with the Royal Australian Navy aircraft carrier Melbourne in the South China Sea – an accident eerily similar to the U.S.S Hobson/U.S.S Wasp collision 17 years before. Flight operations were in progress on the Melbourne and the Evans was maneuvering into its correct position reference to the carrier. As in the Hobson incident, an error in judgement was made on the bridge of the Evans. The Melbourne struck Evans amidships, cutting her in half. The bow section of the Evans sank almost immediately, taking 74 of her crew to their deaths. One body was recovered, 73 were lost at sea. The photos at the top left show the Evans before and after the accident.

The whole story of the Evans can be found at the superb website of the U.S.S. Frank E. Evans (DD-754) Association: http://ussfrankeevansassociationdd754.org

Spend some serious time on this website. It is the finest website devoted to a single ship that I have ever seen, lovingly maintained by former members of the Evans crew during her long and proud history. She served in three wars with distinction. Her entire history is contained within the website. There are several memorials to the Evans’ lost souls in the United States, including one in Arlington National Cemetery. There is also a beautiful memorial in Australia.

There is one memorial to the Evans in the United States that personalizes the tragedy beyond all the others, however. It is not large in size. I doubt if it was designed by a professional artist or cost as much as the other Evans memorials. It is not on the beaten track either – it’s located on a plaza in a very small town called Niobrara, Nebraska.

Among the dead and forever lost at sea on that awful night in 1969 were three brother from Niobrara – Gary, Kelly and Gregory Sage. It was the worst single family toll in the U.S. Navy since the five Sullivan brothers were killed in the sinking of the U.S.S Juneau in 1942 near Guadalcanal. Even today, after four decades have passed, it’s difficult to comprehend the sense of loss that must have been felt by the brothers’ parents, the widow of one of the brothers, the immediate family, and the entire small Nebraska town that they called home.

The memorial is in two parts. One is a plaque that describes the accident. In front of and below the plaque, resting on the ground, is a simple granite block. On the front of that block are five words, one date, and a single oval photograph. The power of that photograph is how it humanizes the loss of all those souls that night. It’s hard to imagine a more powerful image on any memorial anywhere.

For more information on the Sage brothers and the 1999 dedication of this memorial, please visit the U.S.S. Frank E. Evans Association website and click their ‘News’ section. Under the same section you will find photographs of all the sailors who died that night and forever rest in the deep waters of the tropical Pacific.

U.S.S Hobson Memorial Image © Brown Memorials

Through the kindness of Claudia Brown, President of Brown Memorials of Florence, South Carolina, I have obtained some fascinating additional information on the U.S.S Hobson Memorial in Charleston. Claudia provided me with a copy of the original program given out at the 1954 dedication of the monument. I have turned this document into scanned files to share with everyone. My apologies for the light quality of the scans. It’s a 56 year old document and is somewhat faded.

The program contains significant information on the history of the Hobson, the thought process on the design of the memorial, a dedication and listing of the 176 crew members lost in the accident, a listing of the surviving crew, and a discussion of the Memorial Society, whose hard work and dedication resulted in this permanent memorial. Claudia also provided some additional information, which I quote below:

“As a member of the American Institute of Commemorative Art, my father Bill Brown, of Brown Memorials, and Harold Schaller of Peacock Memorials in Valhalla, NY worked together on the project. It may interest you to know that this monolith made from Salisbury Pink granite quarried in Salisbury, NC, was at that time the largest piece of stone quarried from that site. It was so large that the names and carving had to be sandblasted into the stone before it was removed from the quarry.”

My sincere appreciation to Claudia Brown for providing the Dedication Program attached below. I’ll be highlighting other Brown designed memorials in future posts. Their web site can be visited at http://www.brownmemorials.com/index.html. Be sure to check out their Gallery Section, especially ‘Civic’ for other memorable Brown memorials.

And now the U.S.S. Hobson Memorial Dedication Program from 1954:

Cape Horn…

For almost 600 years mariners have considered this single geographic spot to be the end of the world. Talk to anyone who has ever sailed on the oceans and the words ‘Cape Horn’ contain equal measures of dread, mystery, and anticipation. Cape Horn is the ultimate challenge – Cape Horn is their deepest fear.

Books abound about the challenges of sailing around Cape Horn. Two of the very best are Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and The Last Time Around Cape Horn (The Historic 1949 Voyage of the Windjammer Pamir) by William F. Stark. Much more will be written about the ill-fated Pamir in later posts. The history of the Pamir is fascinating – fifty years under sail in war and peace under national several flags. Stark’s fine book tells the story of Pamir’s final journey around Cape Horn – which turned out to be the very last navigation around Cape Horn by any commercial sailing vessel.

A voyage around Cape Horn under sail is generally defined as a voyage of at least 3,000 nautical miles which must pass through 50 degrees South Latitude in both the Atlantic and Pacific (or Indian) Oceans. This would place the vessel only 600 nautical miles north of Antarctica. ‘Under Sail’ means that the use of any propulsion except the wind is prohibited. It is a challenge and it is dangerous, but once it was somewhat common. Today it is an extremely rare event – best said in a quotation from the web site of the International Association of Cape Horners:

“Cape Horn is sometimes called the Mount Everest of sailing. Mount Everest was first climbed on 29th May, 1953. We believe that, since that date, fewer people have qualified for full membership of the IACH than have climbed Mount Everest.”

A superb site to discover the IACH and the history of sailing Cape Horn can be found at http://www.capehorners.org/. Take the time to visit and browse their ‘Related Items’ page. It will take you to the web sites of their international chapters, links to videos of sailing Cape Horn, satellite photographs of the area – even information on visiting the area. Perhaps no other spot on earth contains as many souls lost at sea

First and foremost, the beautiful photograph and poem seen on my previous post was directly taken from a web site of the Chilean chapter of The Amicale Internationale des Capitaines au Long Cours Cap Horners – The International Association of Cape Horners. This association has chapters in several countries. Full membership in the I.A.C.H. is available only “for those who have voyaged around Cape Horn under sail”. This must be an exclusive club indeed.

Please visit http://www.caphorniers.cl/CH_monument.htm to read the fascinating details about the design and construction of this beautiful memorial at the end of the world.

My next post will discuss more about the I.A.C.H., links to their web sites worldwide, and much more about the legendary Cape Horn.