This week, Frank O.Braynard, the founder and CEO of Operation Sail passed away at the age of 91. The guy was a giant in maritime history. With Operation Sail, he oversaw multiple Tall Ships paraded is NY Harbor, founded South Street Seaport, wrote many books on great ships and gathered a vast collection of ship memorabilia.
Here is an except from his obituary about the Tall Ships Parade to celebrate the bi-centennial in 1976:
One by one, on July 4, 1976, towering ships glided below the
Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, then unfurled their sails. There were nearly
300 large ships from more than 50 countries in the 18-mile-long caravan
up the Hudson, including 16 of the approximately 25 masted “tall ships”
remaining in the world at the time.Among them were the United States square-rigger Eagle; the British schooner Sir Winston Churchill, with an all-female crew; the Romanian bark Mircea; and the Russian four-masted Kruzenshtern, out of Murmansk.
Mr.
Braynard and Mr. Slotnick had traveled to Europe, Asia and the Soviet
Union to persuade governments and private owners to send their tall
ships to New York. They had sailed on the Kruzenshtern for three days
in their lobbying effort. “Russian cadets who were in Op Sail ’76 told
us that this was their first real contact with the United States and
their first understanding that Americans were not devils, not the
enemy,” Mr. Stanford said.An estimated five million people lined
the New York and New Jersey shores that day, and more than 10,000 small
private boats bearing spectators were kept out of the parade route by
150 Coast Guard vessels. Millions around the world watched the event
all day on television.
The quotation in the headline was in relation to his efforts to use this bicentennial event as a way to thaw the relations between the USA and USSR. He was very worried about the Arms Race and saw this event as a way to create some unity.
The line seems very relevant today as we face a threat with the environment as bad as the Cold War. As the US Government continues to slow movement forward on global collaboration on the Environment, Frank’s words ring especially true:
“We are all seamen on the ship Earth.”