Modern Sail Training
In what was conceived to be last great gathering of square-riggers under sail, Bernard Morgan and Greville Howard persuaded a number of ship owners to join together in a sort of farewell salute in 1956, organizing a race from Torbay on the South Coast of England to race informally across the Bay of Biscay to Lisbon in Portugal. Five square rigged school ships entered the race, Denmark's Danmark, Norway's Christian Radich and Sorlandet, Belgium's Mercator and Portugal's first Sagres (ship). The vessels would meet again the following year and every year since in an annual series that would astonish its original organizers today. Old vessels were saved or repaired and new purpose built sail training vessels were commissioned. With renewed interest in the age of sail, national sail training associations affiliated to Sail Training International (STI) (formerly "Sail Training Association") were organized and large summer events find upwards of 100 ships racing across the oceans.
Crew exchanges allow young people from one country to sail with those from another. Long before the end of the Cold War, ships from Russia and Poland (which in some cases had been built in Germany) joined the International Fleet in 1974. A limited exchange between the East and West was initiated and they put their respective backgrounds behind them, common sailors joined together by the brotherhood of the sea.
One of the largest of the affiliate organizations of the STI is the American Sail Training Association (ASTA). Founded in 1973 with a handful of vessels, it has since grown to encompass an international organization with more than 250 tall ships representing 25 different countries.
Most maritime nations have government, private and charitably funded ships preserving the ways of seamen from a time gone by, helping the youth and the "young at heart" find themselves and working somewhere off their coasts on short trips year round.
Square rigged seamanship was in danger of becoming a lost art. As the 1997 restoration of the USS Constitution neared completion, the United States Navy called on the crew of HMS Bounty to train her sailors to sail the vessel as originally intended.
Many boats are historical vessels and replicas which require coordinated manual labor to sail, operating in the original tradition proposed by Alan Villiers and Irving Johnson such as the Picton Castle while others are purpose built educational platforms carrying out scientific research under sail such as the Robert C. Seamans and the Corwith Cramer of the Sea Education Association.
As the crew of the Irving Johnson and the award winning program at the Los Angeles Maritime Institute like to say "We do not train youth for a life at sea...we use the sea to educate youth for life".
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