Why Do We Save Ships?

Author(s): Karl Kortum

Source: APT Bulletin, Vol. 19, No. 1, Maritime Preservation (1987), pp. 30-33
Published by: Association for Preservation Technology International (APT)Association for Preservation
Technology International (APT)
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 Why Do We Save Ships?
Karl Kortum
Why do we save ships? In my case, I
like to look at them. But that is kind of
a selfishviewpoint. I think a much deeper
instinct on my part (and many others)
is the impulse described by President
Theodore Roosevelt-the mark of a
civilization is the care and thought it
devotes to the next generation, the peo-
ple that are going to come after it. I
have a strong instinct to save these ships
for people I will probably never en-
counter.
What immediately motivates me is
that I love the subject. I think that ships
are a marvelous vehicle for a host of
things. They convey, for instance, art
and literature. Or, put another way, art
and literatureattach themselves to ships
in various ways, at different times, and
to different degrees; so do geography
and history and psychology. Read that
marvelous book (I just read it again),
The Nigger of the Narcissus, if you want
to encounter a study in shipboard psy-
chology. Joseph Conrad's artistry comes
through in a sea setting that I find
incredible. It is just the way it is on a
sailing-ship voyage.
Because ships are so engrossing and
have so many ramifications,I like to tell
other people about how interesting they
are. A restored ship can tell a story.
They're a vehicle for missionary work.
And to be that, to reach out and tell the
story, they have to be interpreted. The
simple fact is that in the old-ship pro-
gram in this nation and basically world-
wide, interpretation is pretty bad. It's
seldom carried out to the extent that it
should be. It is sad that St. Paul, a noble
ship built in Maine, which was up in
Seattle in the 1930's, and Benjamin F.
Packard,which had been towed back to
Long Island Sound, the last examples of
the down-easter,the type that succeeded
Karl Kortumis Chief Curatorof the Na-
tional MaritimeMuseumin San Francisco,
California.
Associationfor PreservationTechnology
the clippers, the quintessentialAmerican
square-rigger,were both lost because of
public indifference.
I attribute that in very large part to
the fact that these ships were not inter-
preted. The level of interpretation in
those years was to tell the night watch-
man, "Charlie, get a couple pieces of
seizing wire and make a little sign saying
"Captain's Cabin, and hang it up in
there somewhere."That was the level at
which it stood pretty much across the
world until we did Balclutha in a dif-
ferent fashion.
The markof a civilization
is the care and thought it
devotes to the next genera-
tion. I have a strong in-
stinct to save shipsfor peo-
ple I will never meet.
We had a difficult time with Balclu-
tha. It was very tough to get the Board
of Trustees of the San Francisco Mari-
time Museum to buy that old wreck
laying over in the mudflats of Sausalito.
It was tough to bring her back to life
and put her into a ship-shape condi-
tion - or the appearanceof a ship-shape
condition. It was tough to raise money
for the vessel. We raised $40,000 for a
$250,000 job (if you paid for it at going
rates). I asked the Board of Trustees for
a quarter of that sum to create displays.
They were a little skeptical because the
ship was in such bad shape and in such
need of money. Displays on a ship? There
was one hole in her side big enough to
stick your head through and look around
outside. There were at least a hundred
smaller holes in that ship. The ship
herself needed our scanty funds.
30
But I insisted on the money and
designed a set of exhibits. Harry Dring
(later Manager of the Balclutha and
Marine Maintenance Foreman for the
National Park Service) worked down in
the museum basement, building these
displays for the best part of the year,
while we repairedthe ship with weekend
volunteer groups. About three weeks be-
fore the ship was to come to San Fran-
cisco, we trucked all these displays that
had been created during the year over
to Oakland and installed them in the
vessel. The lighting had been installed
in advance during the repair process. So,
when that ship came over and tied up
on the San Francisco waterfront, it was
a floating museum. There were three
decks of exhibits. The ship was exten-
sively interpretedin the fo'c'sle, in cabins
and 'tween decks, and in the lower hold.
The $10,000 had been well spent and
carefully spent.
Right from the start,when the public
went aboard, they didn't see a sign that
Charlie the night watchman had made
hanging from a piece of seizing wire
saying "Galley" or "Captain's cabin."
They saw cast-bronze dolphins holding
up elegantly lettered little panels telling
this aspect of the ship or that. In doing
it this way, we told the public that we
cared about them, respected their sen-
sibilities, and wanted to give them pleas-
ure.
Balclutha was a success right from
the start: "She's worth going to see." I
remembera couple of elderly ladies from
out of town coming down the gangplank.
I happened to be there. One of them
said, "That's the best 25 minutes in San
Francisco."The ship has taken in better
than five million dollarsfrom admissions.
Interpretation is seldom done. It's
still seldom done to this day. It's always
coming along in arrearsof the physical
repair of the ship. This is understandable
to some extent. But unless you can pro-
ject the story of that vessel out to the
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After rotting in Sausalito's mudflats, Balclutha was restored with

$40,000 and volunteer labor. Now, her restoration would cost $250,000.
A quarter of the budget went for interpretive materials onboard the
ship. (Richard Frear) 31
o1 APTBulletin Vol.IXNo. 1 1987
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Unlike the steel-hulledBalclutha,part of the beautyof

C.A. Thayeris her craftsmanship.Exhibitsin Thayer
were clusteredso that visitorscould appreciatethe wood
construction
- of the vessel.
-.F
- - - - - - - - - - -

I strongly believe in visual
material. But there is an-
other way to interpret a
ship - using docents.
public, you're not going to have the
public support that is necessary for the
ship to continue living. You'renot going
to have the constituency unless you tell
the story and make the ship come alive.
There are different philosophies on
interpretation. I favored that one for that
because she is a steel ship. When
ship
you are inside her 'tween decks it's not
much different from being inside a Lib-
erty ship. It's just a steel, cold interior.
So, I installed lots of stuff to look at, lots
of artifacts,lots of pictures, and material
to read. There are other ways to interpret
a vessel. A wooden ship has to be treated,
in my opinion, in a different fashion,
probably clustering the interpretive ma-
terial at one point, more or less as we
have done with the Thayer.
The construction of a wooden ship
is a story in itself. It's something to see.
It bears no resemblance to being inside
a Liberty ship at all. It's marvelous to
see the creationsof those long-gone ship-
wrights. To some degree, display mate-
rial takes away from that dignity and
interest.
I strongly believe in visual material.
You go aboard and see displays, text,
and pictures and artifacts that tell the
story of that ship's life. But there is
another method, which is to use docents.
Docents have their virtues and shortcom-
ings. One of the finest museum-ship
experiences I ever had was with Lord
Nelson's Victory. There was a skilled
docent there. He took the party through
the ship, and he told her story. It was
very well done. It was a good experience.
The disadvantageof using docents is that
the experience doesn't stick with visitors
quite the way visuals do.
Maybe the thing to do is to have a
visually developed ship with displays
somewhat like those on Balclutha. Then
have a docent who takes the visitor

Associationfor PreservationTechnology 32
 Youcan drum up publicity
for old vessels. The press
just loves them. But you
still may have no money
coming in.
around the ship and points out, at the
end of the tour, that there is infinitely
more to be found in the written material
and illustrative material: "If you have
the time, I suggest you go around again
and absorb this." That would seem to
me the best of two possible worlds.
We have just passed through what
might be called the romantic era of ship
preservation. "Let's get this old vessel.
Let's not let her perish." You can drum
up public support for that. Old ships, as
most of you have found, easily garner
publicity - it's incredible the way you
can get into the papers with them. The
press just loves old vessels, and television
seems to get a kick out of them, too.
Roughly speaking, it's about as easy to
get publicity for old ships as it is hard
to get money.
There is no real relationshipbetween
the two. It's a very disturbingthing when
you come up against that fact, but sooner
or later most of us face it. There you've
got a big buzz going for the ship in the
newspaperand on television, and you've
got practically no dollars coming in.
There is very, very little correlation.
There is an awful lot of kidding one's
self (I have been guilty of it more than
once): "Gee, we're getting a lot of at-
tention for this old girl, and things are
going fine." Well, they are not going fine
until the money part is addressed.
We have ridden on this wave (which
I call the romanticperiod) with the press;
but, with dedicated individuals and, by
some formulation,frequently not involv-
ing too much money, the ship is saved.
After Balclutha'srestoration,largeportionsof the deck
had to be replaceddue to rot. (KarlKortum,NMM)
"Ah, we have saved the ship." The
romantic thing has been done. And it
has. A very solid thing has been done.
But then we move into a different phase
altogether, a different era - it's the one
we are in now - which is an economic
one. Inescapably economic. It's the op-
posite of romantic,because raisingmoney
to keep a ship going is not a very
romanticendeavor.It doesn't have much
public appeal. "Weneed money to scrape
the bottom." Or, "We need money to
replace five planks starting with the
garboard strake." These are not heart-
wrenching cries. And so this money
comes very hard indeed. I don't know
what the solution is going to be in the
case of many vessels now extant.
I admire the spirit of that man who
brought up the schooner Alvin Clark
from the bottom of the Great Lakes. I
can sympathize with his great distress. I
have heard lately that he wanted to sink
it again because there was no mechanism
33
to carry the ship once he had it up. He
was up against the unremitting deteri-
oration of a wooden vessel, an inexorable
thing for one man to cope with.
I want to conclude with a word of
hope. If you can restrain dry rot, and
that is the big killer of wooden ships,
and to some degree keep out marine
borers,which is considerablyeasier,there
is a cheery note: the older the ship gets,
the more valuable it gets. That is the
opposite of most other aspects of the
human experience. So, if the ship can
survive, - even if, like Wawona, she is
at a very low ebb and is about gone, if
she can hang on- she will be more
valuable because she has lived another
ten years. In this country there has set
in, during recent decades, a passionate
nostalgia,an immense welling of interest
in the past, and maritime nostalgia rides
the crest. The whole subject is on a
sharp, upward curve. Can funding be
far behind?
APTBulletin Vol.IXNo. 1 1987