The morning of Saturday, 30 April 2016 had not yet dawned on Annapolis when signs of activity could be seen at the seawall at the U.S. Naval Academy. Guests and instructors chatted by their cars as midshipmen trickled over from their rooms in Bancroft Hall. All the while the crews of the replica War of 1812 Chesapeake privateers Lynx and Pride of Baltimore II made ready to get under way.
Lieutenant Commander Claude Berube, USNR, director of the U.S. Naval Academy Museum, paraphrased Captain Marko Ramius in The Hunt for Red October as he addressed the group before embarkation, saying, “Today we sail into history.” And indeed the group did just that in more than one sense, for this voyage was the inaugural cruise of the Schoolhouse at Sea.
In short order, the schooners made their way down the Severn River to the Chesapeake Bay. As the Lynx motored past the radio towers at Greenbury Point, Midshipman Max Goldwasser’s small camera drone buzzed overhead to record the scene. The whirring of its fans blended with the sound of another type of drone filtering over from the Pride as Midshipman Samuel Brad played a fine rendition of “Scotland the Brave.”
The Schoolhouse at Sea was Berube’s brainchild, and the culmination of more than three years of planning and coordination among the U.S. Naval Academy Museum, the nonprofit Pride of Baltimore Inc., the Tall Ship Lynx educational organization (based in Newmarket, New Hampshire), and the Naval Academy Foundation, whose support enabled the course to come to fruition. Ten select midshipmen—with diverse backgrounds and majors—participated in the multidisciplinary pilot program, studying operations, tactics, battlefield intelligence, economics, and English, all focusing on the War of 1812.
And what better place to study the War of 1812 than on the Chesapeake Bay, the scene of much fighting during the conflict. “It’s [the midshipmen’s] own back yard,” remarked retired Marine General Carlton W. Fulford Jr., a guest on board the Pride of Baltimore II. He described sailing as a “fundamental factor of leadership,” teaching the necessity of working together to achieve a common goal. The tall ships offers midshipmen “a perspective on naval warfare that they cannot get in a classroom,” he noted.
In addition to planned course modules including “Celestial Navigation,” “Intelligence During the Age of Sail,” and “United States and United Kingdom Economies during the War of 1812” taught by Naval Academy and guest instructors, midshipmen work hands-on with the Lynx crew and observed the leadership required to keep a ship running. The Naval Academy had not owned a comparable sailing ship for decades prior to the arrival of the 100-foot schooner Summerwind last October. This “live classroom” gave midshipmen a taste of what it was like to look upon another tall ship sailing just 50 to 100 yards away.
One of the highlights of the first day’s cruise was a mock battle between the two privateer schooners. The 122-foot Lynx, with her six-pounder carronade, engaged the 157-foot Pride, and the two schooners traded blank charges in the rain. Acrid smoke quickly obscured much of the action.
At the end of the day, the group disembarked near the site of the June 1814 Battle of St. Leonard’s Creek, where they received a hands-on demonstration of weaponry, clothing, and tactics by members of the Marine Corps Historical Company.
The next day’s courses focused largely on the role of history in the modern era, and the life and career lessons it offers. One fascinating aspect of the Schoolhouse at Sea was the blending of modern technology and history. Course materials including scanned typewritten transcripts of British fleet logs from the Naval History Society at the New York Historical Society were loaded onto 20 Surface Pro tablets loaned by Microsoft’s U.S. Navy Marine Services Team and prepared by the U.S. Naval Institute.
Participants and observers came away from the trip with unforgettable memories. As Captain Jan Miles of the Pride remarked, when sailing on these living-history vessels “there’s never a bad experience. . . . No matter what happens, you’ll always remember what happened on your voyage.”
Berube aims to repeat and expand the Schoolhouse at Sea so other midshipmen can experience the power and utility of history and apply those lessons in their own careers.