USCG Eagle 31"

The USCGC Eagle (WIX-327) (ex-Horst Wessel) is a 295' 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

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

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 September 17, 1936, she was home ported in Kiel on the Baltic Sea.

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 its bridge wings, the ship is said to have downed three Soviet aircraft and one "friendly" German aircraft in combat during this period. The crew had realized the "friendly" aircraft they had shot down was German when it was spiraling into the sea. The crew set a rescue mission and retrieved the German pilot. When he set foot on the ship, he was furious and wanted an explanation. Upon further research of the logs and radio personnel 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 existent 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.

The 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 on 15 May 1946 into the United States Coast Guard as the Coast Guard Cutter Eagle. In June 1946 a U.S. Coast Guard crew, assisted by her 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 ones 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 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, the Eagle was one of a number of tall ships from several nations to be reviewed by Queen Elizabeth II, along with the large Navy warship USS Saipan (LHA-2). Eagle returned to Bremerhaven for the first time since World War II in the summer of 2005, to an enthusiastic welcome.

Specifications & Miscellany

The design and construction of Eagle embody 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 of teak, as are the weather decks. Her auxiliary diesel engine, at 1,000hp, is also somewhat more powerful than that of the Gorch Fock. There are two 320 KW Caterpillar generators that can be run single or paralleled. The Eagle has a range of 5,450 nautical miles (10,000 km) at her cruise speed of 7.5 knots (14 km/h) 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 19 knots for a number of hours on a broad reach under sail alone.

Eagle has over 6 miles of running rigging and approximately 22,300 square feet of sail area. To protect sails from chafing, the ship uses baggywrinkle extensively. People who see it for the first time are usually very intrigued by what it is.

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

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

The ship has undergone numerous refits since it was first acquired in 1946. On July 1, 1972, the ship was returning to its berth at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, CT at the mid-point of its annual summer cadet training cruises when it 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, its 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.[1] The height of the mainmast was eventually reduced by three feet 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 the ship's original 1936 M.A.N. diesel engine (along with its generators and evaporators) were removed from the engine room and replaced by modern equipment. This made the engine room more spaceous 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 compartmentation was also added (previously, there had been only three supposedly watertight bulkheads). This compartmentation 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. And on the quarterdeck, an enclosed pilothouse was built around the exhaust funnel. Electronic equipment (e.g., radar, navigation, and radio equipment) was updated as well.