Sept. 25, 2002 – The blond, blue-eyed 16-year-old gazed out at the sailboats on the bright Caribbean waters of the Charlotte Amalie harbor, but her mind was on another body of water and another type of boat, or more accurately a ship, a tall ship.
Emily Luscz had just returned home from a summer spent on the Great Lakes climbing the masts and swabbing the decks of the U.S. Brig Niagara. "It's hard getting used to being off the ship," she said. But, she added, "I don't call the toilet the 'head' anymore."
She visited her grandmother in Ohio for a couple of days before returning home to St. Thomas. "When I got to my grandma's, I had to quit saying 'head' and trying to pump the toilet," she said.
Getting used to life on land again was not as hard as getting used to life on the 198-foot wooden replica warship.
In the summer of 2001, Emily had been invited to crew on the schooner Grand Nellie for a Great Lakes race, and this served to whet her appetite for more seafaring aboard a big boat. Deciding how to do it took some time. Emily researched her options on the Internet for several months before finding the Niagara on the American Sail Training Association Web site. "I had to find a ship where I could volunteer," she explained "so I wouldn't have to pay."
The U.S. Brig Niagara is not just a tall ship; it is the pride of the Great Lakes fleet. It's a reproduction of the relief flagship that Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry used when he defeated a British squadron of six vessels in the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813, a pivotal point in the War of 1812. That's Perry of the famous line, "Don't give up the ship."
Emily almost gave up the ship before she got on it, but now that, too, is history. The adventuresome Antilles School junior was excited when set out by herself on a flight to Toronto to meet the ship, but that feeling suddenly turned to queasiness: "A friend met me at the plane in Toronto and took me over to the Niagara, but when I got there, I got scared."
Tossing her long blond hair over her shoulder, Emily reflected on her that day with an embarrassed smile. "I was really scared when I got there," she said. "I had this piece of paper to give to them, but at first I didn't want to get on, so my friend finally took my paper and went on board for me." She shook her head. "I would have just stood there for two hours with my duffle bag."
It was a far different Emily that related her adventures as she sat in a booth at the Hook, Line and Sinker restaurant in Frenchtown, owned by her parents, Becky and Ted Luscz. Looking alternately wistful and serious, she was not the shy teen-ager who almost didn't board the ship.
"I was the youngest and I was the 'newbie,'" she said. "But after two weeks, almost all the volunteer crew had left, and the new ones came on, so then I was an old hand." And she earned her stripes early.
Trial by Beaufort 7
"We'd just been out a day or so when this big storm came," she said, "It was a Beaufort Scale 7," she said, rolling her eyes. The Beaufort Scale of wind force runs from 0 (calm) to 12 (hurricane). A 7 is "moderate gale, double-reefed topsails," which was the crew's mission.
"They told me to climb the mast and to go out on the rigging to furl the sails and reef them," she recalled. A ship of the Niagara's type has to be sailed directly into the wind, unlike the Grand Nellie, where you tack back and forth, Emily said. She explained the Niagara has fore and aft rigging.
"You have on this harness which will save you if you fall; it just pays you out," she said, not looking as if she'd had a great deal of faith in the contraption. "We spent three hours up there the first time. You climb up to this platform and then out on the yards. First you furl the sails, pull them down, and then you reef them. You have to tie them into what are called reef points, with these little, tiny lines. And all they told me is to 'hang on' — you have three points of contact on a rope and nothing else, your one hand and two legs. You have to put your elbows into these things, and then you reach out to reef the sails, and all the time the ship is keeling over."
The ship "would go way, way over to the side and you'd be sure you were going to fall," she continued. "Finally, I asked, 'Are we done yet?' There were only about five of us left up there, so I got to come down. I felt so sick, I went slowly back to the platform and crawled slowly down. And I thought to myself, 'I don't ever need to go aloft again.'
"But when I got back down, they said they needed more volunteers, so I went up again. But this time was better. We were more organized." Indeed, "When you are organized, you can get anything done," Emily said, espousing her first bit of wisdom acquired on her adventure.
She said about three-quarters of the crew vomited during that storm experience. "We called it Green Monday," she said. "Everybody was throwing up over the side."
Her second bit of wisdom came with the knowledge that she didn't get seasick, at least not like the rest of the crew. "I was the only one who ate," she said with a certain pride.
Forget personal space and privacy
After her windy, watery baptism, Emily settled down to ship's routine as a crew member. "I was so much younger than everybody else," she said. Her closest friend aboard was named Necia, and she was 21. "One of the things I've liked most getting back is talking to people my own age," she said. "I really missed that."
The retelling of life at sea can sound glamorous; the living was anything but. It's a no-frills existence where you share everything and soon learn to forget privacy — there is none.
"You live in really small quarters," Emily said. "The only personal thing is your sea bag, and nothing is ever on top where you want it; you always have to turn it over and shake it out.
"There's no place else to put anything — everything goes in your bag.
"And then the showers," she added with a laugh. "Changing in front of everybody, and they wash you down with the fire hose. I was shy at first," she said, then "Whoosh," raising her arms, "and it's done."
The only time for real showers was in port, maybe once a week as the Niagara made its way through the 2002 Festival of Sail in honor of the tall ships in ports of Lake Superior — Sault Ste. Marie, Duluth, Oswego, Toronto.
Emily recalled how she felt at first. "I didn't think I would ever get to know anybody, because they change volunteer crews about every two weeks," she said. "But you get to know them because you're with them 24/7 — they say it's about four times as intense. It's like having 40 brothers and sisters, albeit older ones." The crew comprises 18 paid professionals and 25 volunteers.
And it's close living, tightly tossed together in the belly of the ship and on the deck. They slept together, on the deck when in port, or in their hammocks or sleeping bags down below on the berthing deck when at sea. They ate together meals cooked on a 19th century wood-burning stove. The ship has three toilets — heads, that is — which run on manual pumps, and in which the crew has a three-minute time limit.
"Everybody loved KP duty," Emily said, because that meant you didn't have to do any watches, just kitchen chores, and "you could sleep all night." Ordinarily crew members had four hours on duty, four hours off, and six hours to sleep. "The crew is divided up into port and starboard, and then the crews break down from there," she explained. "Wh
en a mate comes down below and yells, 'port' or 'starboard,' you go up, you move."
The decks have to be swabbed, the cannons have to be cleaned, the sails have to be stowed, the sails have to be unfurled, the sails have to be furled … "there's always something to do. When we come into port, everything has to be right, glisten," she said.
'You get used to things'
Emily didn't realize at first what an elite nautical group she was a part of. "The tall ship crews are different from others," she said. "With the Grand Nellie, the doors opened a little, but with the Niagara, they swung open."
Now, she considers a schooner such as the Grand Nellie "too yachty" for her tastes. She learned from the Niagara's seasoned hands. The Grand Nellie has showers, she explained, and that's just not what it's all about. "Some of the Niagara's crew can get very pompous" in their views of other vessels, she said. "I've heard of a mate who has never been on any other ship."
"You get used to things, like getting sick," she said. "One time, a reporter was on board interviewing one of the female volunteers, when she [the volunteer] got up and threw up over the side. She sat back down and said, 'Wow, now I feel better!' The reporter just looked at her."
She also learned how seriously superstitions are taken. "Don't eat eggs for breakfast, or that' ll be more bad weather. And don't ever whistle on a boat. And if you ring a bell, a sailor dies," she said. "Our bell didn't have a clapper."
Emily eventually met another teen-age volunteer, but they weren't fated to become friends. "A couple of days before I got off, there was actually a 16-year-old who got on, but she had these shoes with chunky heels and she had a manicure; I knew she wasn't long for that boat." She paused, displaying her newfound understanding about the behavior of other people, before adding: "Though you never can tell — one of the mates married one just like that."
She hasn't decided whether she wants to spend next summer back on the Great Lakes. For now, she's back to being an Antilles student, with friends her own age, and her passion, volleyball, at which she excels.
Reflecting on her summer, Emily said, "You have to change your thinking, like I had to learn everything for the first time." Although decades too young to qualify as an "old salt," a description she wouldn't aspire to, she will never again be a "newbie."
Publisher's note : Like the St. John Source now? Find out how you can love us twice as much — and show your support for the islands' free and independent news voice … click here.
