Mutiny on the Gorch Fock

[Davidhoy]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

... But training ships is a different story -- a boy fell to his death from the rigging of the Royalist just a few days after I spent a couple of days rafted up to her in Weymouth Harbour. ...

I had the good fortune to sail on the TS Royalist for a week back in 1982. It was an experience I'll never forget. My father was a senior officer in the South African Navy, and was posted as Naval Attache to the SA embassy in London. He was invited as a guest officer aboard the Royalist, and was able to bring me along as one of the regular training "swabbies". My station was out on the end of the topsail yard. And yes, we all wore harnesses, which we had to attach when on station. We were not clipped in while climbing the rig.

I know that the Royalist was replaced by a new ship a few years ago. What happened to the old ship when the new one was ready?

-David

[TrentePieds]

Speaking of HMS Ganges...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v6uuyREePs

A mate of mine joined Ganges on a "Short Service Commission" in 1963 having had a bellyful of teaching secondary school in a slum area of Birmingham. Sheer delight, teaching cadets, he told me :-)

Ganges was decommissioned in 1976, I believe it was, and at HMS Raleigh there is no Manning the Mast ceremony. Many an old tar was heard to growl about "slack-ass training"

TP

[01kiwijohn]

5'2", 180 lbs? Typically, not the body type I'd expect to see up in the rig.

[coastalexplorer]

In reply to David Hoy Re the original T.S. Royalist.
I am not sure that I can provide the most definitive answer.

However I had the Mayor of Delta B.C. Canada enter into negotiations for a while with a view to buying it for sail training on the pacific North West Coast. But we could not meet their time frame for purchase. As she would have needed more time for funding approval. from what I saw of the correspondence they had more concern for protecting the reputation of the vessel and appeared to me to be more interested in scrapping it than selling it.

Sail training education is not about teaching cadets to sail, Though certainly some understanding of that is inclined to happen by the end of a voyage. The Primary education factor is more about discipline training through working the traditional watch system 24/7 usually for ten days.

Other factors can be worked into the organizations program such as living history since most of the vessels used are original ships or historic replicas.

[Davidhoy]

Originally Posted by coastalexplorer

In reply to David Hoy Re the original T.S. Royalist.
I am not sure that I can provide the most definitive answer.

I found the answer, interesting one of DockHead's posts, dating back to 2014. Seems she was scrapped :-(
http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...st-137169.html

[friz]

Originally Posted by 01kiwijohn

5'2", 180 lbs? Typically, not the body type I'd expect to see up in the rig.

Alas, no longer Victory at Sea, now possibly equal opportunity. As a Navy Chief the standard response to "what do you do in navy" was "I lead men in combat at sea". I do not know what the heck I would be leading today.

[picklesandjesse]

30 years ago I was the skipper of the brigantine Golden Plover. We had a crew of 14 and could take up to 37 passengers. The rules on board were that there was no safety gear worn aloft. All crew members had to go aloft and passengers were allowed up there once they had been up with a crew member. Every crew member had to shimmy up the mainmast top and kiss the truck whilst under sail in a sea. They had 3 months to do this.

It tended to make people very wary and we were all kind of like monkeys. The world has sure changed in a very short period.

[buzzstar]

I cannot actually join in the discussion in a specifically knowledgeable way, but I can say, with a clear conscience, that going to sea involves dangers, and all good military training has actual risks, and sometimes involves overcoming specific fears, with fear of heights very much among the most common. Still, if I were a training officer, I would be very much both impressed and concerned with the previously mentioned body configuration in a young person, and would very much wonder (as in an inquiry) about the person's motives, internal and external (peer pressure and beyond), even before such an event.

[Cormorant]

I recall (in my usual foggy manner) an interview with the captain of the Picton Castle, talking about whether to clip in. And he mentioned a Danish tall ship for training cadets, where they had educated 14,000 cadets and only had two deaths from falls while working aloft. And he seemed to imply that was a pretty good average. . . .

[MikeDofFreo]

Although I was English, at the time, I had my 17th birthday halfway across the north Atlantic on Gorch Fock, in 1964.

As Franziska says, no one was forced to go aloft but when the order was given it was a virtual race to get up there.

It was certainly not children leading children. The small permanent crew and the officers were excellent. Each mast was run by a Petty Officer.

I was on the main mast and the Petty Officer was said to be the middleweight boxing champion of the German navy. He was certainly inspiring. There were 4 English kids on board and first time up he took us to the lowest yard so that we could do some simple PT on the footropes (star jumps etc). He said that he did not want anyone working on his mast who did not have confidence.

The safety was as described by Franziska and there was a rail along the top of each yard that you could clip onto.

Twenty six years later I went up the mast on a training ship in Western Australia. I had to wear a full safety harness, the ratlines were slack and I was VERY slow and not confident!

Mike

[TrentePieds]

Quote: "... he mentioned a Danish tall ship for training cadets, where they had educated 14,000 cadets..."

If we divide by ten, the number of trainees becomes credible. The famous "København", lost in the South Atlantic with all hands, carried 45 cadets of the Danish East Asiatic Company. A later ship, "Georg Stage (I)", also carried 80. She is now the museum ship "Joseph Conrad", at Mystic Seaport. She was built as a memorial to a son, Georg, of shipowner Frederik Stage, and operated by his shipping firm through a foundation until sold to George Villiers whom she bankrupted. Idealism and economics don't play well together! Her successor "Georg Stage (ii)" also carries 80 cadets on each voyage. "Danmark", a rather bigger ship operated by the Danish Maritime Authority, also carries 80 cadets per voyage.

"Danmark" may be of particular interest to Americans. She dates from 1932 and is still in active service. She had been ordered to stay in American waters, where she was at the time, when Germany invaded Denmark on 09 April 1940. Her skipper, following Pearl Harbour, offered her services to the USCG, and she was a stationary training ship at New London until the end of the war.

USCG experience with that programme became, allegedly, the foundation of the training programme of "Eagle", and indeed the spur to the acquisition of "Eagle".

TP

[Franziska]

Btw. Eagle is another sistership to Gorch Fock (I) and became a US Coast Guard vessel after the war.

[CSY Man]

I remember a crew member fell to her death from the rigging of a Danish schooner in St. Croix sometimes in the mid 1980s.
Tried to look up the story on Google, but no hits.
The schooner took tourists out for sun-set cruises, but the accident put them out of business. R.I.P.

[nic26]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I can't find anything really factual and detailed, even in German.

This is not the first such death on this vessel. Some information about an earlier case:

https://www.tagesspiegel.de/themen/r.../14466390.html

One thing for sure, however, the captain, Norbert Schatz, was not indeed a "child leading children". Schatz is in his 50's.

For example:
4.4.2017 20:00
Hinweis auf eine Fernsehsendung:

Morgen abend kommt um 20.15 im Ersten ein Film über den „Tod einer Kadettin“ die auf unklare Weise über Bord ging. Die Berliner Zeitung schreibt dazu, dass die fragliche Kadettin unterqualifiziert gewesen und durch eine Art Frauenquote an Bord gekommen sei.

https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/kult...f-see-26662244

El

[Franziska]

Yes and it's all relating on an unfortunate and old accident. Nothing new has happened.