And They Have MOTORS Now!
Basically all of these have large motors now. It's sort of a shame but I can understand. Most of these "tall ships" sail with a small crew and take on passengers to raise money. The Lady Washington, for example, on the way down to Tacoma stopped at Port Townsend to take on supplies PLUS passengers (paying, I assume), for the leg down. In spite of all the technology like carbide tipped cutting tools, electric drills, etc., it takes a lot of money to keep one of these ships afloat so raising money is a necessary evil. The other part of fund raising is keeping a schedule. The tall ships were in Tacoma for the 4th of July but were scheduled to be in Vancouver on the 6th of July. Given the fluky and often non-existent summer winds here they basically motored north. We were going up Covos Passage just as the Russian tall ship, the 356ft three masted brig "Pallada" (steel hull) in the background, had passed us under power and a short time later the Mexican 290’ barque "Cuauhtemoc" (steel hull, not in the picture) also passed us while playing music over the loud speaker and with the regular crew were mustered on the fordeck. The other boats in the picture are the "Lady Washington" (replica) in the middle with white bottom paint, a 112ft brig and in front of her (to the left with the raked back masts) is, I think, the Lynx, a 94’ square topsail schooner. Today we tend to take for granted the safety afforded us by such things as GPS, electronic depth sounder (no lead lines), satelite weather, charts, instant radio and phone communication, and even ready access to spare parts, fresh food and clean supplies, and medical professionals. The poor sailors back then took real risks and if they needed something fixed they had to work with what was on hand or improvise and if medical attention was needed, well.. a sore tooth caused by a cavity... dring some grog and pull it! Life was definitely tough then and today we take so much for granted. Steping on board one of the old replicas with the heavy timbers, low overheads, ratlines, etc. one can help but think back to those olden times (as my daughter calls them) and think how it must have been.
