male narrator: This is the saga of a ship.

It is a tale of black knights under sail, of sun rises and sunsets, cyclones in the Indian Ocean.

Howling gales in the South Pacific, and the freezing grip of Arctic ice.

It is a story of indifference and neglect, hard work, and unfaltering devotion.

It is her story alone.

A tribute to the oldest iron-hulled merchantman still afloat, the bark Star of India, the Iron Lady of the seas.

♪♪♪ ♪ The anchor is weighed and the sails they are set, ♪ ♪ and away, Rio!

♪ ♪ The girls back home will never forget ♪ ♪ and we're bound for the Rio Grande ♪ ♪ in the weight of the waves, away, Rio!

♪ ♪ So fare thee well, my pretty young girl ♪ ♪ and we’re bound for the Rio Grande.

♪♪ narrator: Ramsey, on the Isle of Man, a tiny island midway between Ireland and England was her birthplace.

On a cold Saturday afternoon in November 1863, she lurched down the greased ways of Gibson, McDonald, and Arnold Shipyard.

At her bow was the Greek goddess of music and poetry, Euterpe, her Christen name.

Many seas would pass beneath her thick wrought iron hull before she would be renamed the Star of India.

On her maiden voyage, the Euterpe's life was threatened when she collided with the Spanish brig losing portions of her rigging.

Her dismayed crew refused to proceed with the battered ship and were set ashore under arrest.

But an even greater test of her metal came less than two years later when she battled the punishing cyclone in the Indian Ocean, losing her masts and spars in the process.

Wrote, William Storry, her captain.

male: "This day we slipped from Madras to avoid an approaching cyclone which unfortunately overtook us on the 26th.

And to save the ship from foundering, we was obliged to cut away the masts, after which the sea broke over the ship in terrible fury, severely injuring a great portion of the crew."

narrator: Before the year was out, Captain Storry succumbed to a tropical fever and was one of the first to be slipped from her heaving deck in a weighted canvas shroud.

In the years that followed, Euterpe would make her way around the world many times in search of profitable cargo.

She was chartered for the immigrant trade, bringing gold miners and adventurers, farmers and tradesmen to Australia and New Zealand in the 1870s.

She loaded and discharged cargoes of whiskey, lumber, coal and wood, hides, sugar, tallow and gunpowder.

She sailed in and out of the ports of the world: Rangoon, Bombay, Dunedin and Port Chalmers.

To Hawaii's Kaanapali and Iquique on South America's West Coast.

To London, Liverpool, Colombo, and Calcutta.

Each knew her.

Relentlessly, the natural stresses of wind and weather at sea would challenge her.

She would battle for life in punishing Cape Horn Gales, scraped by icebergs twice her height.

Roll her heart out when the wind fades.

But she would endure, and did.

Conditions aboard were adequate but not luxurious.

A lady passenger in 1874 described.

female: "The food at times was quite poor, and once when a complaint was made regarding the soup, an investigation revealed a man's sock in the stock pot."

narrator: But food was not the only discomfort.

There were further collisions, a smoldering cargo in her hull.

Mountainous seas putting her nearly on her beam ends.

And weeks of stifling calms when she lays sails slack all but dead in the water.

Damaged by shifting cargo with rigging swept away by murderous scales, her log entries were vivid.

Vessel rolling and laboring in a frightful manner.

Seas mountain high, shipping great quantities of water fore and aft.

Yet she sailed on, towards a new century and a new life.

In San Francisco, the Alaska Packers Association was assembling a fleet of sailing ships to carry salmon fishermen north to the summer fishing grounds and canneries of Alaska.

They purchased the Euterpe in 1901 from her recent Hawaiian owners, who had acquired her only two years before.

Now, under American registry, her thick iron hull still sound, being impervious to the dry rot and boring worms which have always plagued wooden chips.

The Euterpe was re-rigged for economy, cut down to a bark.

Rebuilt on deck and below for her new work, loaded with men and supplies.

She was sent north in April 1902 to tackle the frigid waters of Unimak Pass in Bristol Bay.

The ice-clogged rivers of Nushagak and Kvichak in Alaska.

She would be the first of 19 iron or steel-hulled square riggers to join the Packers Star fleet.

Among them, the Star of Alaska, the Star of France, the star of Bengal, and of course, the Euterpe, renamed in 1906, Star of India.

♪♪♪ narrator: Loading canned salmon in Alaskan waters during the early part of this century was treacherous work.

Only the hardiest could stand the weather, cold and foul that swept down from the Bering Sea.

Freezing the hands and the hearts of the stoutest fishermen.

Men with North Sea ice in their blood.

Scandinavian ship masters with names like Christensen, Swanson, and Johnson.

Tough sea dogs provided the leadership that was needed.

And of course, the hardworking hands--the rugged, wiry immigrants who needed the work to feed their families.

Mexicans, Italians, Filipinos, Chinese, and Japanese sailed north on the starships, huddled like prisoners of war.

It was always a tough trip.

Beset by biting cold, blinding sleet, and unseen perils.

For some, it ended abruptly--an icy death.

But somehow Most of the men in the ships that carried them survived, the Star of India among them.

Life in the Alaskan fishing camps was far from comfortable.

The work was endless, going on as long as there were nets to haul or fish to can.

The weather was dependably poor, and the men relied on each other for homemade entertainment, for none was provided in the lonely villages and smoking canneries.

For the Star of India, there was her mortal enemy, ice.

Ice that carried away her chains and more than once locked her in cold embrace.

The spring thaw was always a blessing.

Most of the season, the ship would swing at anchor idle, except for a skeleton crew.

Then, in late summer or early fall, her hold full of salmon, the decks packed with fishermen and cannery workers, she would be towed out to work her way through Bristol Bay to the Bering Sea.

In company with other packer ships, she would then sail south through the unpredictable waters of the Unimak Pass to sunny California.

Twenty two years in succession, this was her work--this and the months spent as a floating warehouse in the Alameda yard, awaiting the next year's voyage.

Finally, after the 1923 season, it ended suddenly and completely.

It was just as well for the Star of India.

She was 60 years old and had sailed around the world 21 times.

Your ships need to rest as humans do.

The Star was more than ready.

Alameda was a traditional resting place of ships no longer needed.

Vessels expected to fall apart in obscurity, for that is the way many ships die.

Less fortunate were those torn apart by wreckers for scrap metal, a common fate for sailing ships fallen on hard times.

More than one of the Alaska Packers's fleet sailed to Japan to be fed piece by piece into that country's steel mills.

It could have been the fate of the Star of India.

But it was decided to let her lay a while longer at Alameda.

She thought she would ever sail again.

San Diego, California has long been an important Pacific Coast seaport.

Discovered by Juan Cabrillo in 1542, it has been host to vessels ranging from tall ships to giant aircraft carriers.

Here in 1925, in the warm glow of a late summer evening, one of the strangest and longest running love affairs ever to develop between men and ships, and there have been many, began.

In a local yacht club, Jerry McMullen, later to become a renowned Pacific Coast maritime historian, and four friends were discussing the plight of the old ships.

The feasibility of saving at least one for future generations was discussed.

There were no public funds available, yet as the new ideal grew, these enthusiasts became determined to save one of the rusting ships of the Packers's Star fleet.

Soon, with a little coaxing from McMullen's father, a personal check for $9000, the total sum needed to buy the Star of India, was received from Sonny Jim Kafra, a flamboyant racetrack operator and fight promoter.

And one of San Diego's most colorful philanthropists.

It was her last chance for a new life.

And this life would be as hazardous in trying, as any she had faced.

As the Star of India was towed out under the Golden Gate for the last time in July of 1927, her small crew was filled with hope and expectation of her rebirth.

But in San Diego, the money needed to carry on the work of restoration came in slowly.

Perhaps it was just as well, as the tasks were endless.

The lack of money slowed the work, and it often dragged.

It seemed to the hard-worked volunteers that more was lost in neglect than was gained in intermittent work.

She wasted away bit by bit for more than 30 years.

Through a depression, a World War, and well into the 1950s.

Devotion and love--and there was plenty of that, we're not enough to restore the star.

She barely escaped the threat of being sold for scrap to the wreckers or towed out to sea for the Navy's target practice.

As the years went by, her condition became at first, bad, then worse, and soon, dreadful.

She was badly mutilated when the navy cut away her top mast, a hazard to low flying aircraft.

It was said she was a pitiful saint.

Her paint peeling, the seams in her deck cracked and gaping.

Feeble attempts at patchwork were everywhere about her decks and aloft.

Few things functioned anymore.

Not her wheel, her pumps, nor her cap stand.

She had suffered greater damage lying in repose than the seas had inflicted upon her.

And it seemed that her end was very near.

Criticism of her condition started to be heard, but it was not enough to capture wide concern.

Then, in 1957, Captain Alan Villiers, an Australian seafarer and noted authority on sailing ships who was visiting in San Diego, saw the Star of India at her worst and protested publicly, vehemently in print.

Outraged by her shabbiness, he called upon the city's conscience by reminding her citizens of San Diego's maritime heritage and their obligation to preserve some vestige of it.

He reminded them that they had the Star of India in their own backyard, dying of neglect.

His call to arms found supporters and new resolve grew to replace yesterday's civic indifference.

San Diego would try once more to properly restore and preserve the Star of India.

It seems she had weathered yet another storm.

But first, the vessel would have to be hauled into a dry dock and inspected to see that there was something left of her hull worth saving.

After chipping away a thick layer of sea life and corrosion, the heavy iron belts forged by Manxman over 96 years before tested strong and sound.

She would endure.

Now, restoration could be finished, but it would take work--thousands and thousands of man hours, and it would take money.

No one really knew how much.

The estimates appeared astronomical, but money started coming in: from doctors and lawyers, from businessmen, from Navy personnel, restaurant owners, from many corners of the community.

Contractors and carpenters donated time and materials.

Those few who worked alongside the bedraggled vessel steadfastly begged, borrowed, wheeled, and cajoled, even contributing their own meager funds.

The money was scarce.

The work had to go on.

Not a day's work was lost.

It was a tiny crew tackling an immense job.

Captain Ken Reynard, an experienced sailorman, sailmaker, and ardent marine historian, led his men into the job step by step, turning to whatever needed doing in the necessary order of priority.

It was amazing to see order emerge from apparent chaos.

The multitude of tasks seemed impossible.

There was so much to get done and made shipshape.

Still, there were many in San Diego who doubted it could be done.

Could she?

Would she ever really be restored properly?

The Star of India is 202 feet long, 35 feet wide, and 23.5 feet deep.

With mass towering over 140 feet above the water.

Every inch of her would have to be sanded, scraped, brushed, rubbed, rebuilt, or in many cases, as with her topmast gear and her rigging, replaced.

The task would be more difficult and more time consuming than even her original construction.

Certainly it would be more expensive.

Yet the work moved forward.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ narrator: Old masts and yards were removed.

Trees from Oregon's forests were cut and shaped into new masts.

Miles and miles of rope were required to fashion new rigging.

Old fashioned skills were needed and surviving craftsmen were found and pressed into service.

Some of the last of the old time ships's carpenters generously donated their time to the rebuilding and repairing of the star's fine woodwork.

Work went on day and night.

Decks were repaired, fittings were replaced.

From stem to stern, the star's original beauty, the cunning grace fashioned by British shipwrights a century ago on the Isle of Man was recreated.

By her a hundredth birthday on November 14, 1963, she was ready for her long overdue ceremonial re-christening as the Star of India.

Mrs. C.C.

Woodward, president of the Ladies Auxiliary, was awarded this honor--to mark this re-emergence into new life.

The star was officially designated a National Historical Landmark.

Though the work of restoration was far from completed, an exciting new thought came to certain admirers of the star.

It was an impossible thought, of course.

"What if?"

Some began to ask boldly.

"What if her restoration were brought to the point that she could actually sail again?

Could it be done?

Would it ever be done?"

Such questions haunted the minds of many museum association members and occupied the agendas of endless executive committee meetings.

She would need sails and a trained crew, of course.

And the restoration budget already strained to the breaking point.

Could not begin to pay for the thousand needed details involved in her sailing.

Well, certainly it was impossible.

The star was being restored as a museum, and museums simply do not head out to sea on a soft morning breeze.

The income from the admissions paid by the thousands who visited her barely covered her day-to-day maintenance costs.

Much more money was needed.

Once more, the citizens of San Diego were asked to bear the cost.

If the ship--their ship was to sail out of San Diego Bay, the decision was theirs.

Talk in the town turned hopeful.

No longer was the idle question, "Can she sail again?"

But "When will she sail again?"

In 1976, the United States would celebrate her 200th birthday.

Tall ships from all over the world were coming to New York to celebrate the event.

If ever the Star of India were to sail again, 1976 must be the year.

The challenge from New York was inescapable.

It was daring, yes.

The whole idea of restoring the star had been daring from the beginning.

Some people said she was too valuable to risk at sea.

Others said it was a crazy pipe dream.

There were even those who believed that a ship over 100 years old could not possibly be seaworthy.

Although many shared these views, the association committed itself to seeing the star under sale on that special July 4.

It would take enormous effort.

First, she would have to be hauled out in a dry dock where again hundreds of pounds of sea life would be scraped from her hull.

She would have to be sandblasted, tested, and painted.

Her rudder needed work.

A crew to sail her had to be trained and quickly.

The expenses of preparation were staggering.

Once more her friends reached for their checkbooks, and for the first time, a public fundraising drive was mounted.

Yet in the back of many minds was the nagging thought, "Will she make it?"

July 4 dawned and the Star lay ready at the wharf.

Her lines singled up, ready to be cast off.

Over 1000 vessels, large and small, waited to accompany her out of the bay.

It was alive with well-wishers.

Aboard the Star, last minute preparations were made for casting off as soon as the tugs arrived to tow her clear.

An eager crew of volunteers trained for this day gathered on the deck for their picture.

After a sendoff from the mayor and other dignitaries, the tugs came alongside.

Mooring lines were cast off.

Slowly, she swung out from the wharf, trembling as the water quickened under her keel.

She was bound for Point Loma and the open Pacific beyond.

First, a murmur, then a roar of enthusiasm came from the thousands of spectators lining the nearby piers and ships.

Ships's whistles, including that of the museum's steam yacht media, roared in salute.

The hopes and dreams of thousands who had given their time and money were about to be realized.

Already the bay was alive with the small craft forming the welcoming fleet.

Loaded with sightseers, they were a floating hazard at the same time.

Picking a fair way through this cheering flotilla of onlookers could be impossible without help.

But the coastguard led the way, clearing a path, discouraging boatloads of enthusiastic friends who were getting in her way as she was towed down the bay.

In command, from his station on the poop, was Captain Carl Bowman, former skipper of the Coast Guard's famous, Mark Eagle, which at that very moment was leading the Bicentennial parade of tall ships into New York's harbor.

Slowly the decks of the Star came alive under the orders from this experienced master in steam and sail.

A forward was her devoted restorer, Captain Ken Renard, who knew she was safe and ready for the sea.

At the wheel stood two old sailormen, each with years of service in sailing ships even larger than the Star.

And now her sailors scrambled aloft to unfurl the heavy sails, as sailor men had done aboard her a century ago.

Above, photography planes and helicopters buzzed like hornets, and on the surface, high-speed motorboats laced through the fleet shooting thousands of feet of film.

A record of this day was a necessity for the thousands of contributors who had supported the sailing.

As the crew loosed more and more of her canvas, the word was passed quietly to cast off the tugs.

The moment was at hand.

And then, like some great sea bird, ungainly at rest but awe-inspiring in flight, the bark Star of India came to grace for life, afloat and under sail again at long last.

For the first time in more than half a century, she stood out to sea powered only by the sea wind in her sails.

Amid the flotilla of small craft, each crowded with expectant faces beaming with shared pride, the old ship moved slowly away from the attending tugs.

Her staunch iron hull lifting to the gentle Pacific ground swells.

Point Loma dropped a stern.

She was on her own, free.

♪ Oh, once I was in Ireland ♪ ♪ a'digging turf and taties, ♪ ♪ way haul away, we'll haul away Joe, ♪ ♪ but you now I'm on the Yankee ship ♪ ♪ a'hauling sheets and braces, ♪ ♪ we'll haul away, we'll haul away Joe, ♪ ♪ well, the cook is in the galley ♪ ♪ making up some honey, ♪ ♪ we'll haul away, we'll haul away Joe, ♪ ♪ and the captain's his cabin drinking ♪ ♪ wine and brandy, ♪ ♪ we'll haul away, we'll haul away Joe, ♪ ♪ oh, we'll haul away, ♪ ♪ we'll haul for better weather, ♪ ♪ we'll haul away, we'll haul away Joe, ♪ ♪ and this way haul away, we'll all haul together, ♪ ♪ we'll haul away, we'll haul away Joe.

♪♪ narrator: To a casual observer, unfamiliar with the ways of the sea, the sailing was little more than an interesting event.

But for the nearly one half million cheering onlookers, it was a dream come true.

Only they suspected what it had cost in devotion, lost leisure hours, organization, and money to bring the Star of India to this incredible day in her long charmed life.

The oldest of the iron-hulled sailing ships still afloat, well over a hundred years after her launching, was at sea again under sail.

A surviving symbol of all the tall ships now gone that were her sisters.

A monument to a city determined to recover its maritime heritage.

An endangered species, a vision of seagoing beauty, a reminder of another time.

♪♪♪ narrator: The Star of India lives on, her future, now joined with San Diego's.

She has proved to be a fortunate ship.

She did the work she was built for, withstood the stresses natural to her hard life, and found friends to help her when she needed them most.

She survived when survival seemed impossible.

She endured where others could not.

Long life to this iron lady of the seas.

[boats honking horns] [boats honking horns] [boats honking horns] [boats honking horns] [boats honking horns] [boats honking horns] [boats honking horns] [metal clanging] [whistling] [boats honking horns] [seagulls calling]