The Barque of Saviors: Eagle's Passage from the Nazi Navy to the U.S. Coast Guard [Hardcover]

Russell Drumm (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 16, 2001

In 1936 in Hamburg, a splendid three-masted sailing ship was christened Horst Wessel in the presence of Adolf Hitler and thousands of cheering Nazis. It became a training vessel for naval officers during World War II. After Germany’s defeat, the U.S. Coast Guard found its young crew terrified and half starved. The Coast Guardsmen brought the Germans, so recently their mortal enemies, back to life; the Germans, in return, taught them the ways of the beautiful square-rigged ship, rechristened Eagle. In time, Eagle would become the Coast Guard’s elite school ship — the barque of saviors.
Uncannily linking Eagle’s malign past and its American present is a Coast Guardsman named Karl Dillmann, who believes that the spirit of a young German sailor drowned in a U-boat explosion inhabits his soul. The voices of Dillmann and other crew members are heard throughout the book, as are, incredibly, the voices of young sailors on the Horst Wessel. Drumm has obtained never-before-published logbooks from the war years, affording fascinating new insights into both the ship’s everyday life and its moments of high drama.
A supremely gifted journalist and a vivid, lyrical writer, Russell Drumm knows Eagle intimately. His love of the ship, and of the sea itself, enriches every page. The courage and sacrifice of the “greatest generation” are alive and well today in the dedicated members of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Drumm, senior writer at the East Hampton Star, chronicles some of the "hidden" history of the U.S. Coast Guard's three-masted sailing ship Eagle, currently serving as a training vessel and oft visited by dignitaries for photo ops. The Eagle was originally named the Horst Wessel and was launched in 1936 at a German shipyard, with Adolf Hitler and the chief Nazis of the party present. It served as a training ship for German seamen and officers, many of whom went on to careers in U-boats during WWII. The ship barely survived the war and was taken by the Coast Guard as part of America's share of the former German navy. Derelict but still served by a skeleton crew of emaciated survivors, the ship proved a fertile ground for friendship, as the Coast Guard brought the German crew to health, and a mixed crew eventually sailed across the Atlantic to U.S. port. Drumm accompanied Eagle on a 2001 voyage to the Caribbean. His book interweaves a hardcore sailing history of this stalwart vessel with a dense account of the 2001 voyage. Along the way, the reader becomes familiar with the cadets of various eras, with an obvious focus on WWII. Sea buffs are the primary audience here ("Captain Cummings ordered that Eagle's t'gallants be put `in their gear,' clewed up but not furled, and the mizen gaff topsail doused, along with several staysails"), but the book also offers a rare look at postwar military cooperation and at the integration of female cadets beginning in the 1970s.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The Eagle, a Coast Guard Academy training ship, was christened in Hamburg, Germany, in 1936 as the Horst Wessel, in a ceremony witnessed by Adolf Hitler, and it was used as a training ship for naval officers of the Third Reich during World War II. The square-rigger was taken by the Coast Guard after the war and almost sunk during a storm while crossing the Atlantic. Prominent in this remarkable story of the ship is Coast Guardsman Karl Dillmann, who believes that the soul of a German sailor who drowned in a U-boat explosion off the coast of Rhode Island in 1945 inhabits his body. Drumm, author of In the Slick of the Cricket: A Shark Odyssey (1997), obtained the ship's logbooks from the war years, and these books offer a vivid picture of daily life on the vessel. His book contains a glossary of nautical terms and a number of black-and-white photographs. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1st ptg. edition (November 16, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395981673
• ISBN-13: 978-0395983676
• ASIN: 0395983673
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #922,749 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars naval history lesson clearly told, April 24, 2009

By 

Joyce (Santa Cruz County, CA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Barque of Saviors: Eagle's Passage from the Nazi Navy to the U.S. Coast Guard (Hardcover)

In San Francisco last year, we saw this Coast Guard ship, staffed by young seamen, and purchased the book to learn of the German and American history of the craft. Writer is well informed, the story is apparently expertly researched, and it reads like fiction (which it is not). Drumm is a good author.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Bargain Great Service, January 18, 2009

By 

Richard M. Ames (Glen Burnie, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Barque of Saviors: Eagle's Passage from the Nazi Navy to the U.S. Coast Guard (Hardcover)

I received my order promptly ..In fact I'm usually surprised at how quickly Amazon's book vendors get the purchase into my hands. In this case not only was the book everything I expected ..I was pleased to open the cover and find the fly leaf had been hand signed by the author Russell Drumm! Loved the book "Barque of Saviors" very well researched and written! I'm second generation Coast Guard so the history was near and dear.