THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 13, 1996 TAG: 9603130516
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
``Eagle under Full Sail,'' an oil painting of the 295-foot square-rigger that leads the parade of sails into Harborfest, will anchor Thursday in the Mariners' Museum in Newport News.
Daisy Dickson will present the painting in the memory of her husband, William P. Dickson Jr., at a reception in the museum from 5 to 6:30 p.m.
``Billy loved the ocean, the Navy and ships, so it is well that the painting be in the museum where visitors, including the Eagle's crew, may see it,'' she said Tuesday.
Dickson, who served four years in the Navy during World War II, was attending a meeting of the American Bar Association in Chicago in 1977 when he and his wife came upon the painting in a gallery.
``Do you like it?'' he asked.
``It's gorgeous,'' she replied.
He bought it. Its creator, North Carolinian Eldred Clark Johnson, began painting when he was in the Navy. After working as a graphic artist in Richmond, he moved to New York in 1949 and then opened an art gallery in Palm Beach, Fla.
His seascapes feature historic vessels. The Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., uses the USS Eagle, with its three tall masts, 20 miles of rigging and 20,000 square feet of sail, as a training ship.
Built in 1936 for the German Navy to train cadets, the Eagle was a cargo and troop transport in World War II. It came to our Coast Guard as a part of reparations in 1946.
Word pictures of the Eagle are a rite of passage for reporters joining The Virginian-Pilot.
To Kay McGraw it looked ``in the early morning mist to be a ghost ship, a three-masted mirage floating in the Chesapeake Bay.''
A web of 250 lines was silhouetted against the sun. As high as 100 feet in the air, cadets clad in khaki Bermudas and shirts ``were doubled over the yards and furled sails like rows of rag dolls hung out to dry.''
One told McGraw, ``I think I left my fingerprints in the steel up there the first time I went up.''
Topmost masts of the massive vessel ``rock in a wide arc as the ship rolls with the swells,'' wrote Tony Germanotta.
The skipper said, ``As our ships get more technical, it becomes more important that the sailors who man them are still sailors and that they learn what to do when the equipment breaks down.''
``You're responsible for more seaman-type abilities than you'll probably ever be again,'' a youth told Wayne Barrett. ``One hand for the ship and one hand for yourself.''
A commander told Lloyd Lewis the only tragedy on the Eagle occurred with a ``skylarking'' sailor's fall from aloft - and that was from overconfidence rather than fear.
A former captain told Jim Pate of being under way in the middle of the ocean with all sails set under a full moon and padding out on deck in his bathrobe at 3 a.m. ``I'd lie back, look at all those stars and just thank God to witness His majesty.''
All of which suggests why visitors throng the ship at Harborfest. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
The ``Eagle under Full Sail'' will anchor Thursday in the Mariners'
Museum.
by CNB