Star of India Shines in Big Event at Sea

The Star of India docked at the Embarcadero late Sunday afternoon to a chorus of boat sirens--shrill whistles, deep bass blasts and warbling toots--that made the corner of San Diego Bay sound like a seagoing barnyard in full cry.

The historic, iron-hulled tall ship, launched 125 years ago at Ramsey on the Isle of Man and a veteran of 21 circumnavigations of the globe under sail, returned to the dock with 65 volunteer crewmen and 85 pooped passengers on deck, among them honorary sailing master Walter Cronkite, the anchorman emeritus of American newscasters. More than 2,000 spectators onshore waved, whooped and whistled as the passengers, many with faces reddened by a day of sun and wind, reluctantly prepared to troop down the gangway.

A smaller, quieter crowd had assembled that morning to wish the Star good speed when it embarked on its first voyage since 1986. The cruise marked only the fourth time the ship had braved the seas since it arrived in San Diego in 1927, then a rusting relic of its former glory, as the founding vessel of what would become the San Diego Maritime Museum.

At 9:30 a.m. the crew scrambled to its posts and the passengers scrambled out of the way when sailing master Capt. Carl G. Bowman, the 81-year-old former commanding officer of the U. S. Coast Guard sailing ship Eagle and a recognized master mariner, gave the order to cast off. Since its sails would remain furled until it neared open water, the Star glided along in the wake of the tugboat Palomar.

A flotilla of sailing craft and power boats of every size, the first arrivals of what would grow into a small navy of vessels, waited in the bay and escorted the Star through the calm waters like a school of devoted and respectful pilot fish. And, to reinforce the sense of nostalgia under which the ship sailed, three squadrons of antique biplanes (some piloted by members of a group that calls itself “The Glue Angels”) and World War II fighters flew over and saluted by waggling their wings against the lifting clouds.

Cronkite, nattily nautical in white ducks and blue blazer, had said before the ship embarked that his title as honorary sailing master was exactly that, and that the Star would be “in perfectly safe hands, because I’m sure they won’t let me do a darned thing aboard.” Even so, he occasionally shared duties with helmsman Arthur DeFever, the maritime museum’s board president, tugging down hard upon the giant wheel to keep the ship plowing steadily toward the exit from the bay. Squinting at a point ahead of the 255-foot Star and with a shy smile washing quickly over his lips, Cronkite said, “There’s no more wonderful way to spend a Sunday.”

County Supervisor Brian Bilbray, who heads the Sail America Task Force, renounced any latent desire to take the helm. “I only know how to handle boats with training wheels,” he said.

Prominently posted signs warned “no climbing in the rigging,” which was an unnecessary caution to most passengers and did not apply to the crew, where the few putative Billy Budds aboard could be found. The crew was drawn from many walks of life and from as far away as Alaska; it included teachers, attorneys, accountants, a police officer and a professor of marine biology. The passenger list consisted of board members and longtime friends of the maritime museum, including Director Emeritus Joseph Jessop, the first commodore of the San Diego Yacht Club, who navigated the ship’s steep ladders and occasionally pitching decks much more nimbly than most.

The passenger list also included a party of five from the Isle of Man, led by loquacious Billy (“Don’t Call Me Mister”) Kneale, present owner of the Star Shipyard from which the ship, originally known as the Euterpe, was launched. Speaking in the rough but lilting accents of the small island off the southern coast of England, Kneale praised San Diego for maintaining the Star as the dowager of the high seas.

“There are only 45,000 Manxmen (as residents of the Isle of Man are known), and we couldn’t muster the crew to sail this beautiful ship,” said Kneale. “You people are lucky to have such a capacity of talent here.” The shipyard proprietor later presented Bowman a check for $2,000 as his gift to the museum. (That times change even in quiet, traditional-seeming corners of the world was illustrated when Andrea Naylor, a member of the Kneale party, refered to herself as a “Manxperson.”)

Bowman’s order to unfurl the sails sent the crew clambering to dizzying heights above the deck. As the canvas dropped and filled with wind, the passengers received their first sense of what it must have been like to cruise aboard the Star for the seemingly endless months required for a passage to India or Australia, the ship’s main destinations in its glory days.

As it pointed toward the mists looming far off shore, the Star did seem to be sailing into the mid-19th Century, its holds laden with tea and jute--but several passengers remarked that, as romantic as the vision was, they would prefer to arrive in Calcutta via jumbo jet. Although the chop was relatively light, the ship pitched and yawed just enough to offer the imagination a hint of what blustering through a gale in the “Roaring Forties,” the stormy latitudes in the Southern Ocean, must have been like.

Breasting into the open Pacific and slicing through the swells under sail, the Star coasted first up Point Loma and then changed course for a run down Coronado and the Silver Strand. The ship mostly moseyed along at 3 knots, a snail’s pace that illustrated a drawback of sail power but allowed passengers and crew a respite in which to climb below-decks for a midday collation of tuna salad sandwiches and soft drinks.

No matter in which direction the figurehead of Euterpe (the Greek Muse of music and lyric poetry whom Homer invoked and to whom Odysseus and Leopold Bloom owe debts) pointed over the sea, it swept across a vista of millionaires’ yachts, sleek sailboats and even a few tiny, inflated rubber Zodiac boats. Coast Guard patrol boats raced to keep interlopers at a safe distance, but the Star was buzzed off Point Loma by a pair of men on jet skis who, like Hells Angels of the waves, gave the ship a competitive appraisal before streaking off through the chop. The spectators had one advantage over the Star’s passengers and crew--only they could see the proprietary, winged majesty with which it coasted through the seas off its home port.

Cronkite remained the star of the show through the rest of the sail and during the reception that followed aboard the ferryboat Berkeley, the Star’s sister ship. Modest and obliging to the last, the newsman signed autographs by the score, chatted amiably about the joys of sailing and participated in the formal ceremonies, which were emceed by Channel 10’s Bill Griffith and dedicated to the presentation of coveted sailing certificates to the red-shirted crew.

The evening ended with with a toast--drunk in rum by nautical tradition--led by crew member Dennis Hemingway, who at other times specializes in nuclear medicine. Among those drinking the health of crew, ship and passengers were Kay and Paul Black, Laurie and Dick Blackington, Councilwoman Gloria McColl, Dick Ford, Rachel and Judson Grosvenor, Vangie and Dick Burt, Norma Day, Bridget and Alan Pitcairn, Ken Rearwin, Peggy and Milt Stratford, and Jordine Von Wontoch.

CORONADO--The 17 debutantes presented at the 28th annual La Jolla Debutante Ball made their maiden voyages into high society Saturday on the stage and dance floor of the Hotel del Coronado’s Grand Ballroom.

Four hundred relatives and guests turned out to offer their smiling approval as the young women, nosegays of pink roses poised just so, curtsied to the crowd and strolled the perimeter of the floor on their beaming fathers’ or escorts’ arms.

Ball chairman Kay Allman said the purpose of the ball is not only to raise funds, which are devoted exclusively to childrens’ charities, but to educate young women in the obligation of community service.

“We organize this program for the girls to introduce them to the community responsibilities of raising funds for charities and helping the less fortunate,” said Allman.

Debutante chairman Anne Rifat said the process, which runs six months from the naming of the debs to the ball, does show results.

“The girls have very definitely grown since December,” Rifat said. “There’s a sense of maturing in them. They started out frightened, not knowing what to expect, but they became young women.”

Debutante Kate McCarty, daughter of Deputy Mayor Judy McCarty, agreed that the experience had been useful.

“I’ve learned how to handle myself in formal situations that most teen-age girls don’t get to experience these days,” she said, adding, “I’ve also made some very good friends.”

Andrea Roberts, daughter of Councilman Ron Roberts, also said she had learned. “I’d do it all over again. I met a lot of fun people, and we learned etiquette.”

The young women also learned the correct steps and etiquette of ballroom dancing under the direction of Peter Gregg Benjamin, successor to his father, dance master emeritus Donald Benjamin. There has yet to be a La Jolla Debutante Ball given without the assistance of a Benjamin.

Taking their bows Saturday were Deborah Appel, Christina Bieler, Anne Casey, Nancy Dickerson, Nichole Epp, Darcy Fontana, Victoria Harris, Julie Jacques, Lauren Keyser, Michalyn King, April Prohaska, Deanna Robbins, Stacy Steineckert, Elizabeth Suckling and Tara Lee Walsh.