USCG Barque Eagle
Anchor Bay 117

"On the fore! On the Main! On the Mizzen! -- Ready about!"

The commands are the same as might have been heard from the quarterdecks of ships commanded by John Paul Jones and Lord Nelson. Today, the orders are given by a young cadet tacking a square-rigger for the first time aboard the majestic USCG Eagle, a 295-foot, 1800 ton, steel hull, three-masted sailing vessel that is the only active tall ship in the US Maritime Services.

The history of the US Coast Guard Barque Eagle is as colorful as the vision she makes gliding through the waters off Connecticut, powered only by the breeze coursing through the network of sails on her 148-foot tall masts. The magnificent ship was built as a training vessel for the German Navy in 1936, and was awarded to the United States as reparations following World War II. On May 15, 1946, she was commissioned into the US Coast Guard service as Eagle and sailed from Bremerhaven, Germany to New London.

Today’s Eagle is the seventh in a long line of USCG cutters to bear the name and is one of only five such training barques in the world. Her sister sailing vessels are in Romania, Russia, Germany and Portugal. Eagle is a training vessel for cadets at the USCG Academy in New London, Connecticut. Learning to master more than 20,000 square feet of sail and five miles of rigging is a vital element in the Academy’s program and its belief that training under sail produces officers who are true mariners.

For more than a half century, the Eagle has been a floating classroom for approximately 175 cadets and instructors from the Academy. It is on her decks and rigging that the young men and women attending the Academy get their first taste of salt air and life at sea. During five-week training cruises, cadets -- along with some 75 professional mariners -- learn hands-on seamanship and develop the leadership skills essential to command a modern day cutter.

Though outwardly true to its clipper heritage, Eagle does enjoy modern technology when it makes sense. For example, it is equipped with a state-of-the-art GPS system; modern radar system, and laptop computers replaced paper and pencil for reducing celestial sights, though cadets also learn to use the sextant to take measurements of the sun and stars. Since safety is paramount to the Coast Guard, trainees wear belt clips when climbing aloft, and the Eagle is equipped with the same damage control system as fleet cutters.

When in port, visitors to the Academy are invited to take self-guided tours of her main deck, and when in other ports of call, local media publicize tour information in that city. For more information, contact the Commanding Officer of the USCG Eagle at (860) 444-8595.