Mast, Present : Reproduction of Richard Henry Dana’s Vessel Will Retrace Pilgrim’s Progress Made off California Coast 150 Years Ago

The square-rigged Pilgrim II, a reproduction of the hide-trading brig that sailed along the California coast more than 150 years ago, will leave its mooring at Dana Point Harbor on Aug. 27 on a voyage that will retrace the course followed by author-seaman Richard Henry Dana.

Just as the original Pilgrim did, it will call at San Francisco, Monterey, Santa Barbara, San Pedro, Dana Point and San Diego, largely as a part of Orange County’s centennial celebration, but also as an effort to reawaken the traditions that tie the past to the present.

“It’s my personal feeling that what binds a country together are its roots and traditions,” said Stanley L. Cummings, executive director of the Orange County Marine Institute, which is at the west end of Dana Point Harbor and owns the Pilgrim II.

“Communities maintain their strength through their traditions and roots, and California--and especially Orange County--are going to need that kind of strength when the growing boom is over.”

Hide-Trade Voyage

The voyage late this summer will be the first of any consequence made by the black-hulled vessel since it sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Portugal in 1975. The vessel measures 93 feet on deck but 130 feet including its bowsprit.

In command will be Capt. Ray Wallace, 70, of San Pedro, the man who came up with the idea of re-creating the ship in which Dana made the hide-trading voyage to California that generated his classic sea story, “Two Years Before the Mast.” The original Pilgrim burned at sea in 1856.

Dana, a Massachusetts native, sailed in 1834 from Boston around Cape Horn, to California, arriving in January, 1835. He spent 17 months in California and then returned by sea to Boston. The Pilgrim called to pick up hides in what is now Orange County at San Juan Cove, which was later renamed Dana Point in the seaman’s honor.

Wallace said that in looking for a suitable vessel to convert to the original Pilgrim’s conformations, he found a Baltic schooner named Joal in Denmark and sailed it to Portugal for rebuilding and re-rigging.

‘Handled Beautifully’

“The hull was changed from a double-ender (pointed at both ends like a canoe), and the beautiful, Pilgrim-like transom was built,” he said.

The schooner rigging was replaced with the two masts and broad yardarms of a brig, and “that rigging is identical now to the original Pilgrim’s, along with all her deck features and practically all her hull lines,” Wallace said.

“She handled beautifully crossing the Atlantic, and she still does,” he said.

He said he anticipates some problems in rounding Point Conception west of Santa Barbara, where Dana’s ship was blown hundreds of miles off course, “but we do have an engine (a three-cylinder diesel) and Dana didn’t,” he said.

Since Pilgrim II’s hull is foreign-built, it has had some legal problems ever since its arrival in this country, springing from a complex maritime law passed in 1920 to protect American shipping interests. Cummings said, however, that state Sen. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad) is preparing a special bill, expected to be approved within a few weeks, that would clear up the vessel’s status.

He said failure of the bill’s approval would not cause the voyage to be called off but would mean that only the working crew, with no guests, could be aboard.

Wallace said the trip to San Francisco, where Pilgrim II is due Sept. 11, “will be made as quickly as possible” with use of the engine much of the time and safe shelter in coves when the weather is bad. The crew will number about 25, mostly experienced sailors, he said, contrasted with 12 on the original Pilgrim.

“The really enjoyable part of the cruise will be coming back down,” he said. “We should have fair winds, the crew will be dressed in traditional 19th-Century sailor garb, and in all the old hide-trading ports--Monterey, Santa Barbara, San Pedro, San Juan (now Dana Point) and San Diego--we’ll row hides ashore in small boats, just as Dana’s crew did. There will be all kinds of color and festivals.”

After reaching San Diego, the Pilgrim II will return to its mooring in Dana Point Harbor in early October, where, according to Cummings, it will resume its role as classroom for schoolchildren and adults, more than 50,000 of whom have been on board for short daytime or overnight experiences since it was bought by the Marine Institute six years ago.

It is that kind of contact with the past--feeling and breathing the atmosphere of what it was like to sail “before the mast” a century ago--that produces roots and the strength that goes with them, especially for children, Cummings said.

“The crust of culture is thick on most older persons but very thin on kids and can be broken through” by such programs as this, he said.

“It gets kids out of the 20th Century. Fourth- or fifth-graders can be thrown back, be made aware of the past, become part of history. Put down roots.”