The Fourth Arm · Episode 3 of 11 · 21 min
When School Was a Ship: The Maritime Academies
For a century American merchant officers learned the trade on the job, until the states put boys aboard schoolships. The episode follows the founding of the maritime academies, from New York's 1874 nautical school aboard the sloop St. Mary's to the freshwater Great Lakes academy, and what it meant to professionalize a working-class trade.
Who's who
- Stephen B. LuceNavy officer who pressed for lending warships to states as schoolships
- Douglas E. DismukesFirst head of Maine Maritime Academy
Where it happens
- Fort Schuyler, the Bronx, New YorkPresent home of the New York school since 1938
- Castine, MaineSite of Maine Maritime Academy, opened 1941
- Traverse City, MichiganHome of the only freshwater maritime academy, founded 1969
- Tiburon, CaliforniaSite of the California Nautical School, founded 1929
Timeline
- 1874New York Nautical School founded; USS St. Mary's becomes its schoolship
- 1889Pennsylvania Nautical School organized with the USS Saratoga
- 1891Massachusetts Nautical Training School established
- 1929California Nautical School established at Tiburon
- 1941Maine Maritime Academy created; first class begins in October
- 1969Great Lakes Maritime Academy founded in Traverse City
Still debated
Sources say little about racial access or the first non-white cadets, so that question is under-documented rather than answered. Which academy is the oldest turns on how continuous operation and name changes are counted, and Pennsylvania's 1947 closure rests on secondary accounts.