Here’s something to get your timbers shivering–and it’s not just a cooling lakefront breeze. More than 20 tall ships are coming to town for Tall Ships Chicago 2003, starting at 10 a.m. Wednesday with an offshore parade from Wilson Avenue to the Museum Campus. The ships will be scattered all around the downtown waterways through Aug. 4, from the Chicago River to Navy Pier to DuSable Harbor.
This will be the biggest gathering of large sailing ships (ranging from reproductiions of historic ships to naval sail training vessels) in Chicago since wind power gave way to steam in the early 20th Century.
“The tall ships celebrate a lot of Chicago history,” said Cheryl Hughes, director of program development for the City of Chicago, who has spent the last 18 months planning this event. “If you look at any old picture of the river, you will see it full of what we call tall ships. They were ships engaged in commerce. It built Chicago.”
And while Chicago may not have a river full of commercial schooners anymore, Chicagoans love their waterside seats. Whether it’s as functional as a water taxi ride from the train station to Michigan Avenue to beat weekday rush hour traffic or as fanciful as the sometimes surreal boats in the Venetian Night boat parade and fireworks (this year on Aug. 2, theme: “Tales From the Sea–Famous Captains and their Crews”), Chicagoans love their water. The arrival of the tall ships (they’ve been cruising the Great Lakes all summer, including port calls in Cleveland and Toledo) is another celebration of Chicago’s maritime traditions, from deep-water fishing trips to learning to sail.
“With the completion of Wacker Drive, this was a good year for us to celebrate,” Hughes said. “And Ohio is celebrating their bicentennial, so we needed collaboration among Great Lakes cities.”
After the ships leave Toledo and pass into Lake Huron, some of them will actually race through the lakes on their way to Chicago, she added.
According to Steve Baker, race director for the Tall Ships Challenge Race Series, nine to 12 vessels–about half the fleet–will race for a portion of the trip. The ships use a Tall Ships Handicap System so vessels of different sizes can compete together.
After Wednesday’s boat parade, the ships will tie up at Navy Pier, in the Chicago River and at DuSable Harbor. Many of the ships will be available for onboard tours and Chicago’s own tall ships the Windy (148 feet long, 85 feet tall) and Windy II (150 feet long, 85 feet tall) will be offering boat rides for an added fee. Tall ship visiting hours are 11 a.m.-8 p.m. July 31-Aug. 3 (the ships leave Aug. 4) and a one-day boarding pass costs $8 (visit www.tallshipschicago.com, call 312-744-0565 or pay on-site). According to organizers, there will be more tall ships in Chicago than even during the bicentennial celebration in 1976.
As for what a tall ship is, it is kind of tough to define. The words usually conjure visions of mighty square-riggers of old, such as the great ship Cutty Sark or the U.S. Navy’s USS Constitution (a.k.a. “Old Ironsides”). In actuality, the smallest tall ships can be as small as 30 feet long at the waterline, which is not all that big–for example, sailboats must have a minimum length of 27 feet overall to enter Chicago Yacht Club’s annual Race to Mackinac. The smallest of the vessels participating in Tall Ships Chicago is a Chicago native, Fame, at a length of 40 1/2 feet. The Canadian tall ship Caledonia (www.canadiansailingexpeditions.com), at 245 feet, is the largest on the docket. The farthest from home is undoubtedly the Tarangini (www.indiannavy.nic.in) from Kochi, India, a 177-foot three-masted barque on a circumnavigation journey.
Probably the best known ships coming to Tall Ships Chicago are the Nina from Columbus’ 1492 voyage to the Far East during which stumbled upon the New World (www.thenina.com), the Bounty which set forth in 1787 on a mission to collect sapling breadfruit trees and resulted in a famous mutiny (www.tallshipbounty.org) and the Amistad of the 1839 incident which resulted in one of the first human rights cases ever heard before the Supreme Court on behalf of people of African heritage (www.amistadamerica.org).
The Nina a 15th Century craft, was 92 feet long and 54 feet tall, and sailed on Columbus’ First, Second and Third Voyages, according to the Columbus Foundation. Nina’s captain on the First Voyage, Vincente Yanez, would later be the first European to find the Amazon River. The modern reproduction was built in Valenca, Brazil, by master shipbuilders from Bahia, Brazil, using only adzes, axes, hand saws and chisels–and 15th Century building techniques. Her maiden voyage was 4,000 miles, to Costa Rica, for a role in the movie “1492.”
The HMS Bounty’s famous voyage resulting in the mutiny, at least as seen in movies, usually shows Lt. William Bligh, the Bounty’s captain, as evil and cruel and his one-time friend Fletcher Christian as an avenger for the crew’s rights. According to the Tall Ship Bounty Organization, 31 of the 44 men aboard sided with Bligh and 18 went over the side with him into an open longboat. No question can be made of Bligh’s sailing ability, over 41 days the open longboat traveled 3,600 miles to safety, losing only one man (killed by native islanders) along the way.
Bounty is a three-masted ship, 169 feet long with a 115-foot tall rig. The original Bounty was torched by the mutineers after they reached Pitcairn Island in the south Pacific. The new ship was built in 1960 for the movie, “Mutiny on the Bounty,” and has appeared in other films such as “Treasure Island” and “Yellowbeard.” More recently the Bounty was used to train Navy sailors for the USS Constitution’s first sail in 100 years.
The Amistad was a coastal trade vessel, not a slave ship as many mistakenly believe, according to the DuSable Museum of African American History (www.dusablemuseum.org)–which will offer several exhibits such as the Hale Woodruff Amistad Murals depicting the Amistad Incident. According to the museum, in 1839 53 Africans were illegally sold into the transatlantic slave trade and brought to Havana, where they were fraudulently classified as native, Cuban-born slaves. They were illegally purchased, then transferred to the coastal cargo schooner, La Amistad, for transport to another part of the island. Three days into the journey, Sengbe Pieh (“Cinque” to his captors) led a revolt. After 63 days, La Amistad was towed to New London, Conn. The Africans were held in a jail in New Haven on charges of murder. The case took on historic proportions, coming before the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1841 the 35 surviving Africans were returned to Africa.
The modern reproduction of the Amistad weighs 136 tons, and is about 10 feet longer than the 1839 original to accommodate engine facilities. Fans of the Spielberg film “Amistad” will be interested to know that the Pride of Baltimore II, one of two ships to portray the Amistad in the movie, will also be visiting during Tall Ships Chicago.
The tall ships aren’t the only event at Tall Ships Chicago 2003. The American Sail Training Association (www.tallships.sailtraining.org) offers people, especially teens and young adults, the chance to crew on some of the ships. Three students and a teacher from Chicago’s Whitney Young High School will spend nine days sailing one of the ships.
“It essentially provides some of the lessons of life,” said Rob Hofmann, development director for ASTA. “Character development, leadership, team building–it’s good to play on a ball team, it teaches you things about life.”
Because some vessels are from a different era (or replicas of such vessels), access for people with disabilities may be limited to selected ships. Limited access boarding passes will be available at a discounted rate for people using wheelchairs (and one companion). For further information regarding accessible vessels or to request an accommodation, please contact 312-744-3315 or (TTY) 312-744-2964, or visit the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities tent at Navy Pier and the Chicago River during festival hours. Requests for accommodations must be received at least 72 hours prior to your visit.
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TALL SHIPS CHICAGO 2003: July 30-Aug. 4
VISIT: www.tallshipschicago.com
