MMA Welcomes SSV Ernestina-Morrissey To Fleet
The Massachusetts Maritime Academy celebrated the homecoming of the SSV Ernestina-Morrissey to the academy last Thursday, June 15. The 129-year-old schooner has been fully refurbished over the past several months and is prepared to undertake its new commission as a sailing school vessel for the academy’s students.
The Ernestina-Morrissey returned to Massachusetts last month after participating in Tall Ships America’s 2023 Tall Ships Challenge, a series of maritime festivals that took place along the Gulf Coast. The Ernestina-Morrissey, as the commonwealth’s official ship, represented Massachusetts throughout the festival. The vessel’s journey, according to its Facebook page, lasted just more than two months and clocked in at 5,144 nautical miles.
In an interview with the Enterprise, Captain Tiffany Krihwan said that between the three ports visited—St. Petersburg and Pensacola, Florida, and Galveston, Texas—about 16,000 individuals toured the ship. It had never been to the Gulf, Capt. Krihwan said, and the crew met “a lot of really enthusiastic people” while down there.
“In every single port we were in, there was somebody whose family sailed on this boat,” Capt. Krihwan said, adding that she met a woman in St. Petersburg who said her grandmother was born on board.
“We know of one birth,” she said, “so I met the granddaughter of the woman that was born here.”
The schooner has a rich history based in Massachusetts. It was originally launched in early 1894 as Effie M. Morrissey out of the James & Tarr Shipyard in Essex and used by a fishing fleet out of Gloucester. Its career as a fishing schooner was immensely successful and, about a decade later, it began fishing primarily in northern waters off of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.
In 1940, the ship’s career as an Arctic explorer led it to sail within 600 miles of the North Pole under the command of the Newfoundland-born Captain Robert A. Bartlett. Shortly thereafter, the ship entered into the US Naval Service as a World War II survey and supply vessel. Capt. Krihwan said the vessel is formally recognized as a former Navy ship.
Following its naval service, the ship was purchased and renamed Ernestina by Cape Verdean Captain Henrique Mendes. The ship then sailed between Cape Verde and the United States for nearly two decades, carrying goods and newly independent Cape Verdean immigrants. It was one of the last sailing ships in regular service to carry immigrants across the Atlantic to the United States, carrying on into the mid-20th century.
The Ernestina-Morrissey was repatriated and presented to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a gift to the people of the United States from the Cape Verdean people in 1982. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1990 and sailed as an education vessel until the early 2000s.
The ship’s history is rich in culture, Capt. Krihwan said, which is why the ship flies both the Cape Verde flag and the Canadian flag in addition to the American Stars and Stripes.
“We have that rich history and on top of it, there is so much great literature,” Capt. Krihwan said, referencing the great American novel “Moby-Dick,” which begins in the ship’s homeport of New Bedford.
“There are also great nonfiction write-ups in nautical history, some of which involve this vessel,” she said. “It’s really impressive.”
Now that the ship has undergone a complete restoration, the academy’s focus for the Ernestina-Morrissey is on undergraduate sail training and leadership training for cadets. Additionally, the ship will be used as an educational asset for students in kindergarten through grade 12, emphasizing STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) programming.
“We’re working with partner groups throughout the entire state, such as Buzzards Bay Coalition and some other groups, where we’ll get K through 12 students on board, mostly just for day programs,” Capt. Krihwan said. Typically, students will go out on the ship for several hours and learn about nautical sciences and arts such as navigation, sailing theory and sail handling.
For these excursions, educators will be able to choose from more than a dozen different on-board “stations” to tailor the program to their class. Stations offered range from science-based concepts like oceanography, marine science and water quality to more cultural aspects like exploring the ship’s history or learning nautical arts.
“There is so much art and everything else,” Capt. Krihwan said. Nautical traditions like splicing rope are alive and well aboard vessels like the Ernestina-Morrissey—in fact, the captain pointed out crewmembers splicing rope in the main cabin during the Enterprise’s tour of the vessel.
“Those are nautical arts, old-world skills that we still do,” she said. “The materials are more modernized; they’re synthetic versus what was natural back in the day. The synthetic holds up a lot longer, easier to work with as well. We’re still teaching nautical arts.”
As the full-time captain and director of the ship, Capt. Krihwan is practically one with the vessel—where it goes, she goes. Capt. Krihwan will be with the ship as it embarks on its newest journey as an educational vessel. Its main purpose, the captain said, will be to bring the academy’s cadets on board and teach them about the various aspects of working on a vessel.
Students studying to be deck officers, for example, will get a chance to sail on the Ernestina-Morrissey and “see how things were done 100-plus years ago, but with modern abilities.” This, the captain said, provides the students with a unique experience that they would not get on other vessels in the academy’s fleet.
“It gives them a perspective that is a little bit different, and I think for anybody successful in the maritime industry, seeing different perspectives on how the same job is accomplished with your resources is really good,” Capt. Krihwan said. “It helps broaden your experiences, so when you go into a new situation you have all of those tools from your experiences.”
The public will get to experience the schooner, too, Capt. Krihwan said. Once the ship is inspected and certified by the US Coast Guard, it will be able to take passengers out for day sails, something it has not been able to do with the general public in 20 years.
Despite the modernization of the vessel and its materials, the function of the Ernestina-Morrissey remains largely the same as it once was. Much like the old-world skills of rope splicing and knot tying, the concept of sailing aboard the vessel is as traditional as ever.
“Even though the materials are modernized now, the sailing aspect is the same,” Capt. Krihwan said. “She sails the same; that doesn’t change. It’s my favorite part.”