FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 18, 2009
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ELISSA VOLUNTEER FEATURE

March 18, 2009

Tall Ship Elissa To Sail Again, Thanks To Dedicated Volunteers

GALVESTON – The tall ship Elissa will return to the high seas beginning Friday March 20, thanks in large part to the tireless work of her dedicated crew of volunteers.

"We had volunteers here the first day that people could get back onto the island" after Hurricane Ike, says John Schaumburg, waterfront manager for Galveston Historical Foundation, which owns and operates Elissa.

Volunteers cleaning up after Ike.

More hurricane cleanup work.

John Schaumburg, waterfront manager.

Texas Seaport Museum staff members Kathy Richardson and Becky Jones.

Countless hours of dirty and difficult work later, the 1877 square-rigger is shipshape and will set sail on her annual spring excursion as scheduled. The outing will include a shakedown cruise, a series of day sails, an overnight sail and an extended call at the Port of Houston's Bayport Cruise Terminal, where the ship will be open to tours by school groups and the public, and will proudly stand watch over the Houston Yacht Club's 23rd annual Elissa Regatta.

Throughout, the majestic ship will be manned entirely by volunteers who have completed a rigorous training program and dedicated many hours of work to the vessel's upkeep.

"In exchange for all of the time donated by the volunteers in our training program, we teach them how to sail Elissa and they become our sailing crew during our March day sails. And that's our reward to them for all the hard work they do, the maintenance," says Schaumburg, who began volunteering in 1990 and has been on the staff for more than six years.

"Half the program is teaching seamanship and the other half is teaching maintenance and doing the maintenance. Every other Saturday we have training, and 80 to 100 volunteers are here. And we get a huge amount of stuff done."

John Moran, longtime volunteer leader, explains it this way: "Our currency down here is hours. The more you work on the ship, the more privileges you get – and that's sailing time. We've got people who've been involved with the ship for many, many years. They come from every level, from students to doctors, lawyers and professors.

"Once you get tar under your fingernails, you can't tell where you come from."

Certainly much of the work that the volunteers have performed in recent months hasn't been the easiest.

"We took a real beating down here" during Ike, Moran says. "This site after the hurricane was completely cleaned and restored by the volunteers. The second week, I had probably 100 volunteers down here, hauling and going through the mud. If you've ever cleaned up after a hurricane, you know it's the nastiest job.

"It's pretty amazing what these people come down here and do. They do work on the ship that you couldn't pay people to do.

"They come down and work for hours and hours. In a typical year, volunteers will put in 25,000 hours. We've got a number of volunteers who'll do 400 or 500 hours in a year's time. Some come down every weekend."

They range in age from college students to 80-year-old Harry Byington, a retired NASA engineer who is among the volunteers who climb into the high rigging of Elissa's three masts.

"It's a very dedicated bunch of people," Moran says.

"After a while, and it doesn't take very long, you fall under the spell of the ship. You fall in love with it."

That deep connection with the iron-hulled barque is evident in the words of everyone associated with her.

"The first day when I went out to sail and they set the sails and I'm out there as an official crew member, I got goosebumps and had to fight back the tears because I thought, 'This is the most wonderful, beautiful thing that I've ever done in my life,'" says Kathy Richardson, a third-year volunteer who now manages the gift shop at the Texas Seaport Museum of which Elissa is a part.

Becky Jones, a fifth-year volunteer, shares this story: "What really did it for me was one night when she came back from sailing and stopped at the end of the pier instead of the slip where she's usually moored. I got to go out on her and it felt so wonderful" when she was riding free on the sea.

"It was like magic being there. The lights were on under the pin rail and the harbor was alive and it just felt like you couldn't wait to get away from the dock and go sailing. There's just a really magical feeling about her and that's what really hooked me," says Jones, who now works as an administrative assistant for the historical foundation.

"I look at the sides of the ship, where you see the wrought iron from 1877, and I think, 'My God, somebody 132 years ago took their hands and made that, and it's still here for us to take care of today, and to take out sailing and to enjoy. She has a cachet all her own, and it really does keep you coming back."

Moran, whom Richardson describes as "a force of nature" when it comes to his 19 years of dedication to Elissa, puts it this way: "The ship invokes loyalty and passion and romance and love. She's just an interesting vessel."

Asked about what sparked their interest in sailing ships, particularly Elissa, Moran and other volunteers offer some fascinating tales.

"I've been around boats all my life," he says. "My family has been in the steamboat business all their lives, and I started sailing when I was in a shoebox. My dad was teaching at the University of Miami and had a sailboat down there during the war. In high school, I spent six summers on towboats up on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. I did a lot of longshoreman work when I was a kid. My dad ran the waterfront in Houston. I came down here in 1990, and I've been stuck ever since."

"My great-great-grandfather was shanghaied. He was indentured onto an English merchant ship sailing back and forth between England and Connecticut, and he jumped ship in the United States. He'd been on there for three years and had had enough. So I guess that's where it comes from," says Georgia Battista, who moved to the area three years ago to care for her elderly parents and has been volunteering ever since.

"This'll be where I retire so I can be near my girl. I've made some really good friends here. We get real close. We have each other's lives in our hands when we're hauling on those lines and climbing in that rigging," Battista says. "We've all put sweat, blood, tears and everything into that ship. You get to be real close with her. And she hasn't let us down yet. She's a good old girl."

That sense of camaraderie among Elissa's volunteers is obvious when you see them together. Clearly, their dedication to each other is as powerful as their dedication to the ship, which was rescued and restored by the historical foundation.

Volunteers "love working here, they love Elissa, they just love being in this environment. It's a great place to be," says Richardson. "The people here are just amazing."

"You come for Elissa and you stay for the people," she says. "Everybody is just like an extended family."

Jones enthusiastically agrees: "The people are incredible. They are committed to Elissa and committed to each other."

In addition to participating in sail training and ship maintenance, and of course the recent hurricane cleanup, volunteers perform a variety of other functions.

They lead tours of the ship and the Seaport Museum, and help to staff its ticket booth and gift shop. They also help to conduct a variety of other educational programs, under the direction of programs coordinator Christine Hayes.

Among these is the Youth Crew, for children ages 11 to 17. It meets from 9 to 4 every other Saturday for 14 sessions from September through March, after which participants get to be part of Elissa's crew on one of the spring day sails.

"They're learning the same things the adult crew is learning for the most part," says Schaumburg, but it's all oriented toward a younger audience. "And building leadership is a big thing that that program does."

"These kids come from all different parts and they form new friendships," says Hayes. "They don't have to pretend. They can be their own selves here because they muck out with each other, help each other. It's a good environment."

Then there's the children's program "It's a Sailor's Life," in which participants learn about the ship and have a chance to practice knot-tying and other shipboard skills. They get to camp out on Elissa's deck overnight, taking turns keeping watch and making entries in the ship's log.

"We've seen Loch Ness monsters and dragons, all kinds of things they've marked down in the log. They have a jolly good time with that," Hayes says.

The program is popular with Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts as well as school and church groups.

Volunteers also staff the ship when it is rented out for private events such as weddings or company functions.

And they help to operate the historical foundation's excursion boat Seagull II, which offers tours of Galveston harbor.

"We like to show people what the harbor looks like, what the history of it is and its activities today as a modern port. And, at the same time, give them a chance to see the dolphins, which are out in the harbor all the time," Moran says.

The Seagull also is used for marine-biology tours that cater to school groups.

To book passage on the Seagull, or for more information about volunteering with Elissa, call the Texas Seaport Museum at 409-763-1877 or e-mail elissa@galvestonhistory.org.

For more information about the many programs of the Galveston Historical Foundation, or to make a donation, visit the foundation online at www.galvestonhistory.org.