[This text is machine generated and may contain errors.]

(Tape 4 Side 2)
David E. Perkins [0:03]
The second incident concerns the Glory from Columbia. And she came into this country and stopped in Charleston, South Carolina first while it was carrying drugs. I say that because they actually removed a very small quantity of drugs from one group after. She was a naval vessel in a [inaudible] to search. And therefore we could do nothing about it but accept the word of the commanding officer. This situation was also blown all out of proportion by the newspaper. There is no incident evidence that it was any more involvement and then this one crew member. There was of course a minor collision between some of the ships at the start of the race in Bermuda.

Labor Tide and Esmerelda brushed the Labor Tide was traveling much faster than Esmerelda and passed to windward over of course, cutting off her wind and then slid down across her bow and forced a pull the four top mass down. By the time Esmerelda reached Newport four days later, all of the dimensions were damaged and parts had been sent to the Mystic Mariners Museum, and they had fabricated new Spars and had them on the dock waiting for and she was rerigged and ready to go. And she left for New York two days later.

Speaker 2 [1:57]
Did that to her completely out of compensation for the race, did it not?

David E. Perkins [2:01]
Well, she's still raced. This is one of the official catalogs which is basically just a brief discussion of the vessels because the picture the eagle does not show or with with the name on her and because it hadn't been added at that point. I also have some magazines here that I saved because they had some some article in New York and everything. We weren't going to have to have time to go over this book. We took a complete briefing team of naval personnel for the international naval review of Coast Guard and offsail personnel for offsail, customs inspectors, immigration authorities, everything and flown to Bermuda. And we gave all of the ship's masters all of the briefings and instructions and everything gave him books to charge, clear him for customs everything in Bermuda before they ever arrived in this country. So all of that was behind. This book was put together under my direction. Most of the actual writing was done by Lieutenant JG by the name of Duncan, the third Coast Guard District Staff and this lays out the entire operation it also has enough the notice to mariners the customs handbook that was put out so on and has a fly leaf cover sheet signed by Gerald Ford.

Barges in the harbor, was moving those barges through the harbor. Getting in position that night and with all these 1000s of small craft in the channel and then clearing them out of the way so they could set this thing off. Because it It was basically a semi circular display. It was six sites focused towards Manhattan Island so the people in Manhattan would get the best view of it in the center of this semicircle was the Statue of Liberty. We had one side on Ellis Island one on a barge between Ellis and Liberty, one on Liberty to between Liberty and Governors and one site on Governors Island. The whole thing, it was tied to a musical score, which we got two AM and one FM station to broadcast. So wherever you were in New York, if you had a portable radio, you could turn it on and the sequence of the firing was actually timed to the music. You could watch this thing and listen to the music at the same time.

That's an item has got nothing to do with this. And I don't know where I got it. But if you want it, you can have it that's a first day cover from the International Naval Review of the Jamestown Festival in 1957.

Speaker 2 [5:44]
We really don't have any use for.

David E. Perkins [6:05]
One of the unfortunate after effects of our sales, the fact that the film that we had produced was a total failure. The they had hired an IBM had paid $80,000 to an organization called Drew Associates to make a film in 1972 to promote Operation Sail. It is a beautiful film, he did an outstanding job. The Op Sail board was so pleased with him that they hired him again and gave him carte blanche to photograph the actual event and then after the fact produce another film. The second film was a total failure. He had the footage, I've seen all of his footage and he's got it. It is absolutely beautiful. But he would not take the pains to write a musical score and a narrative to go with it to explain what you were looking at

Speaker 2 [7:06]
Why?

David E. Perkins [7:10]
I guess he felt it was over with and it wasn't worth the effort. And it is rather unfortunate because it is the official film The official film record of the Op Sail and it is a very poor film. I don't believe it was ever distributed. The first one received very wide distribution. The second one I've seen him but I don't think it's ever been distributed.

This was my final memo. I retired on the first of August following Op Sail I got called back to active duty a couple of times to wind up affairs. And this was my final report on the Coast Guard's participation in sails and that if you want.

Speaker 2 [8:06]
I didn't know you're advertising for Op Sail materials.

David E. Perkins [8:11]
Yeah, that was Danbury mint. You asked about the Danbury mint. These are the little decals that were passed out.

Speaker 2 [8:20]
You gave us some of those last time.

David E. Perkins [8:24]
Okay, I guess that's about it.

Speaker 2 [8:27]
Were there any incidents that little anecdotes, things? Do you think you remember?

David E. Perkins [8:34]
The only one I heard has a slight ethnic background. So if nobody won't be offended, I will tell it. We use the British destroyer at Bermuda to mark one end of the finish of the starting line. Starting line was not long enough, that was the problem. Everybody was crowded into two smaller space they didn't realize that they were not starting a group of yachts. They were starting 3000 tonne ships. There was an Italian yacht about a 70 footer named Polara. It was manned by a crew of Italian naval officers 11 young naval officers who had come across to Bermuda, join the fleet, was traveling with a very nice group. In the start, she got pressed down against the destroyer did not get his boom rigged in quick enough and he put the end of his boom through the side of the destroyer. Just popped a little hole, wasn't anything serious. He kept on going and I guess the Britishers welded a plate over forgot because it was not a major incident. But he nonetheless was involved in minor collision. Well after the ships arrived in Newport the press gentlemen were very interested in talking to the masters of the two vessels that had been involved in the collision and we had a little conference for them. And in the course of it, somebody mentioned that the young Navy lieutenant from Italy had also had a minor scrape with the destroyer. And so one of the press people turned to him and said, well, Lieutenant, what was your reaction to that situation? Lieutenant threw himself up to his full height and with a great beaming expression on his face said magnificent, superb. He says I did what no Italian naval officer has done in 100 years I put a hole in the British warship.

Speaker 2 [10:51]
What about the spectacular view with the tall ships anchored out side of New York Harbor?

David E. Perkins [10:58]
Well, that was yeah, that was right the night before the third. By the end, things were fairly well organized. All of the ships were anchored. Walter Cronkite came over to Governors Island, he and his wife and his daughter with him and wanted to take a look at what was going on. I had to go down to the cruising stern to talk to them about their problem. So we jumped in the 42 footer and we ran on down a bay well from Governors Island. It's almost an hour's run to Sandy Hook. You get out through the through the Narrows, and then down to Chapel Hill channel. So by the time we arrived at Sandy Hook, it was almost the end of twilight. And all of the pleasure boats that had been there all day long circling around and viewing the ships and going home and in light of Sandy Hook. In the twilight, there was nothing but the 16 tall ships anchored there and and it just made me think so much of the pictures you've seen taken 100 years ago of the sailing ships anchored in the marine ports in Australia or perhaps in San Francisco Bay, the ships that were abandoned after the Gold Rush. And it was absolutely still there wasn't a breath of air. There wasn't a sound anything we just shut off the engines and drifted for a few minutes to watch it. It was so beautiful. And of course very shortly it was dark and that was it.

No, there were no no serious, serious problems other than the one I have mentioned I was located in a command post we had a complete command post setup on Governors Island. With the Capitol Report, who was Captain James Fishel we had set up televisions because we knew Mr. Cronkite had told us how much time what networks were going to monitor this thing. So we set up three televisions. And I found that extremely useful because most of the time between one of the three networks we could actually see what was going on. I don't take this on myself as credit but primarily on the people who have done to me that is the Coast Guard people in the Capitol Courts Office, Mr. Duncan his work in preparing this operation plan and some of the others during that entire day although I was an operational control, I never issued an order. I never had to because everything went exactly as it was supposed to. And I said Eagle was three minutes late in return but she picked that three minutes three or four minutes up coming back down the river and with no no problem whatsoever.

Speaker 2 [13:49]
Some beautiful watch of the tunnel vision and

David E. Perkins [13:53]
I don't think anything like it will ever be attempted again. The Russians are talking about doing a much smaller version of it in Tallinn in 1980. In connection with the sailing Olympics, of course there were six of the ships that come from the Baltic so they guaranteed of those six right often possibly the Eagle will go to Russia but to have 224 of them and you don't realize there are that many you know you don't realize until you get involved in this how many there are in this country.

Speaker 2 [14:31]
Are most of them in regular use are they primarily for a museum?

David E. Perkins [14:38]
Most of them are in regular use. She was on a premarital was a museum piece. She was the Portuguese Grand Bank Salt Fisher that had sailed the Grand Banks for 90 something years had been sold and bought by the Philadelphia Museum and was used as museum piece and for the bicentennial. They reoutfitted or re equipped her in center to sea. There were a lot of problems because of course, she had to get a Coast Guard Certificate. And 100 year old Portuguese bark is rather hard to certificate in accordance with modern American law. But we finally were able to and but what is interesting is that what she was back in operation, she now continues as a sail training ship. She was here in Norfolk, not too many weeks ago.

Speaker 2 [15:28]
I would think it'd be quite a demand for sailing vessels as tourist tour.

David E. Perkins [15:37]
Well, you have to remember that that our definition sail training ship is a ship that is used to train people in the handling of sail. It isn't just a yacht, it isn't anybody's yacht. It actually has to be a sail training ship and as I say we found 224 of them. And there were many that did not come that couldn't come. So probably on a worldwide basis, there may be as many as 300 of these ships.

So that about concludes my career in the Coast Guard. As I said, I retired in August of 1976. And I've been back a couple of times on short projects just to wrap up offsail. That's about it.

Speaker 2 [16:36]
I was looking to see if there were any questions that I had jotted down from last time that we had not commented on them. One that I had more knew that I knew I didn't come back to at all. You commented on the safety requirements for shipping and what have you. Do you have any thoughts or any background on when are the beginnings of these requirements? For shipping safety, did you understand what I'm saying? There's a certain point with which there's a certain point before which really, there was no regulation of safety aboard ship.

David E. Perkins [17:38]
Yeah, this is very, very easy to fix. This is the occasion of the loss of the excursion steamer General Slocum in New York's East River with more than 2000 lives in I think it was 1854.

Speaker 2 [17:57]
So they have had safety requirements, fairly stringent safety requirements since then?

David E. Perkins [18:02]
Well, I was the first time that the federal government got into regulating the manning and the material of a steam vessel.

Speaker 2 [18:10]
Well, what about I know in recent years of pleasure craft, they have become much more stringent and what they require aboard small pleasure craft and what have you.

David E. Perkins [18:24]
There have been very minimal requirements in the in the recreational boating field. For decades, much of this was consolidated into a document called the Motorboat Act of 1940, which first prescribed lights, fog signals, life jackets, things of this nature. That gets amplified through public law and also through code of federal regulations from time to time. And has seen quite a a burgeoning or an expansion beginning with the beginning of the sudden growth of recreational boating after the Korean War.

Speaker 2 [19:07]
I think that's how we really got into that question rather than commercial shipping safety, recreational vehicles was such a tremendous number of them being produced now and the waters becoming so crowded with recreation. There'll be something that we that you commented on. The last time I didn't I wanted to ask if you had any further comments concerning the women in the Coast Guard, your Spars.

David E. Perkins [19:39]
Well, the Coast Guard started out with women at the beginning of World War Two. The organization was known then as the Spars and Dorothy Stratten was the head of it. She was the president of one of the so called big seven women colleges and I can't remember which one. As far as had both enlisted in commission ranks, the Spars commission were trained at the Coast Guard Academy throughly through World War Two. In the same facility that the regular cadets were trained.

Speaker 2 [20:19]
And they went to sea as with just as any other.

David E. Perkins [20:24]
No at that point, they only went to see for indoctrination purposes. They were primarily into personnel work, administrative duties, communications was a field that a lot of them used after the war. Our programs ceased to acquire any new personnel. Most of them had been separated. At the end of the war, the few that were remained or left. All through the 50s and 60s, this number kept getting smaller and smaller. And I do remember a second class spar woman in Honolulu. In the early 70s, there was a war officer named Buddy Plaine that's P L A I N E, was in Washington in the early 70s. She now is retired and works for the Department of Transportation. It was a commander named Laura Daly, who was a lawyer up in New York and she's retired. And that was to be the end when those three or four people retired. That was to be the end of women in the Coast Guard. In 1971, I guess it was I finally woke up to the fact that this was not the way to run a railroad that the women did have a tremendous amount to offer the Coast Guard and they reopened the service to women, both in the commission and the enlisted ranks. I don't know the numbers now. But there are a good many. Now, of course, the problem they had now is that there isn't a woman in Coast Guard aid commission ranks above the rank of Lieutenant because there is no one has been here more than six years. There isn't an enlisted person above E6 for the same reason. So it is going to take a year high to move these people on up but they are accepting women in the regular code.

Speaker 2 [22:25]
I thought you told me previously that they went to sea just like

David E. Perkins [22:30]
They do. We have the Coast Guard has historically carried women on ships, not necessarily Coast Guard women, but any women who could contribute to the operation. And where I have primarily run into them is in our oceanographic and scientific work. If you had a professor who was an expert in the field, the fact that she was woman made no difference. She went on the trip.

Speaker 2 [22:53]
The reason I ask is so it's been such a controversy in the past months over the Navy, allowing women to board their ships or at all.

David E. Perkins [23:05]
Well, they're again the press that the Navy for 100 since the Civil War has had women on their ships, in the nurses on the naval hospital ships, and they've been right in the middle of it along with everybody else. Now when you're in combat, does it make any difference whether you were in a nurse's uniform or line officers uniform? I don't think so.

Speaker 2 [23:27]
I think you're you're appointed with controversy.

David E. Perkins [23:29]
Yeah. And I think it's completely taken out of context. I think it's it's the press trying to stir something up more than anything else. We have in the Coast Guard today we have women who are coxswains on the rescue boats, we have women who are aircraft commanders of our helicopters. Let's see probably. The one problem is a practical thing that you have to face is the fact that many of our older facilities are not equipped. And until you can make the alterations. You got problems. We have cases of one of the early cases, headquarters assigned a woman to the search and rescue station in Cape May, New Jersey. The officer in charge of the station in the spirit of everything did the best he could. And the only place he could provide her facility was to give her the crew's rec room. And the crew's rec room was closed off to make a separate bedroom for her. And the crew had no right. Because nobody had thought if you're gonna start putting women on this old station, you got to make a few changes to give her a little privacy. But our newer ships are all built so that this is no problem at all.

Speaker 2 [24:44]
One last question when you were on search and rescue in Alaska, I don't believe I asked this, when crossed the Bering Strait from the Soviet Union? Did you have any contact at all with or any problems with any incidents and involving the Soviet Union?

David E. Perkins [25:01]
Yes, we had no problems, no incidents which when we visited Diomede we were only right across the street. There's only two miles wide, Big Diomede, Russian little Diomede, US. And although we did not meet any of the Russians there apparently at that period of time wasn't exchanged back and forth when there was no US government representative around they felt free to visit their friends across the way. I remember we bumped in at sea we bumped into a Russian submarine one day, he was going about his business and we continued ours it was in international waters. Other than that, I don't believe there was any involvement

Speaker 2 [25:45]
Harassment?

David E. Perkins [25:46]
No.