USCGC Eagle (WIX-327), formerly Horst Wessel and also known as Barque Eagle, is a barque used as a training cutter for future officers of the United States Coast Guard. She is one of only two active commissioned sailing vessels in the United States military today, along with . She is the seventh Coast Guard cutter to bear the name in a line dating back to 1792, including the Revenue Cutter Eagle.
Each summer, Eagle deploys with cadets from the United States Coast Guard Academy and candidates from the Officer Candidate School for periods ranging from a week to two months. These voyages fulfill multiple roles. The primary mission is training the cadets and officer candidates, but the ship also performs a public relations role for the Coast Guard and the United States. Often, Eagle makes calls at foreign ports as a goodwill ambassador.
The ship was built as the German sail training ship Horst Wessel in 1936; it served to train German sailors in sail techniques until decommissioned at the start of World War II. The vessel was given anti-aircraft armament and re-commissioned in 1942. At the end of the war, Horst Wessel was taken by the U.S. as war reparations.
Origin as Horst Wessel
Eagle commenced its existence in Weimar Germany and Nazi Germany as Horst Wessel, a ship of the Gorch Fock class named after the original Gorch Fock (1933), not the current German training ship Gorch Fock (1958) which is a belated replacement for the three ships lost as war reparations. Horst Wessel was an improvement on the original 1932 design. The ship was larger in dimension and its spars were all steel, unlike Gorch Focks wooden yards. SSS Horst Wessel began life as Schiff ("ship") 508 at Blohm+Voss in Hamburg, Germany in 1936. Her keel was laid on 15 February, she was launched on 13 June, completed on 16 September, and commissioned on 17 September. She was the second ship in the class to be built, following the class namesake Gorch Fock. Rudolf Hess gave the speech at her launch in the presence of Adolf Hitler, and Horst Wessel's mother christened the new ship with a bottle of champagne. The name was given in tribute to SA leader Horst Wessel, who had been accorded martyr status by the Nazi Party. He also wrote the song which came to be known as "Horst-Wessel-Lied", which was later used as the Nazi party's anthem. Shortly after work began on Horst Wessel, the Blohm & Voss shipyard laid the keel of the , which was labeled Schiff 509.
SSS Horst Wessel served as the flagship of the Kriegsmarine sail training fleet, which consisted of Gorch Fock, , and Horst Wessel. ( was also built in 1938 for the Romanian Navy, and work began on a fifth ship called Herbert Norkus, but was stopped with the outbreak of war.) Horst Wessel was commanded by Captain August Thiele, a previous Captain of Gorch Fock, and it was homeported in Kiel. In the three years before World War II, it undertook numerous training cruises in the North Atlantic waters, sailing with trainee groups consisting of both future officers and future petty officers. On 21 August 1938, Adolf Hitler visited the ship and sailed for approximately one hour before departing. Later that year, Horst Wessel and Albert Leo Schlageter undertook a four-month voyage to the Caribbean and visited St. Thomas and Venezuela. Along the way, they caught numerous sharks and turtles at sea and kept ducks enclosed on deck to provide fresh eggs.
Horst Wessel was decommissioned in 1939 with the onset of World War II, but served as a docked training ship in Stralsund for the marine branch of the Hitler Youth until her recommissioning as an active Navy sail training vessel in 1942. Numerous weapons were installed throughout the decks, including two 20 mm anti-aircraft guns on the bridge wings, two on the foredeck, and two 20 mm Flakvierling quad mounts on the waist. From late 1942 through early 1945, she sailed on numerous training deployments in the Baltic sea with cadets fresh out of basic training. On 14 November 1944, accompanied by Albert Leo Schlageter, Horst Wessel was sailing in rough weather, when, near the island of Rügen, Albert Leo Schlageter hit a mine that caused extensive damage to its starboard bow. Horst Wessel took Albert Leo Schlageter in a stern tow to keep her from running aground until larger ships could arrive the next day to assist.
In April 1945, after the last German cadet class had departed, Horst Wessel departed Rügen with a group of German refugees on board. She sailed to Flensburg where Kapitänleutnant Barthold Schnibbe surrendered to the British, and the ship ran up the Union Jack. Horst Wessel was ordered to Bremerhaven and tied to a temporary pier, and much of its equipment was stripped. At the end of World War II, the four German sailing vessels then extant were distributed to various nations as war reparations. Horst Wessel was won by the United States in a drawing of lots with the Soviet and British navies, and requested by the United States Coast Guard Academy's Superintendent. The ship's sails, masts, and other equipment were stripped from the Russian sister ship according to Command Master Chief William Bodine, Jr. who was the senior enlisted man on the voyage and in charge of rigging the ship for sail. On 15 May 1946, she was commissioned by CDR Gordon McGowan into the United States Coast Guard as the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Eagle. In June 1946, a U.S. Coast Guard crew sailed her from Bremerhaven to Orangeburg, New York—through a hurricane—assisted by Kapitänleutnant Schnibbe and many of his crew who were still aboard. The German volunteer crew was disembarked at Camp Shanks and Eagle proceeded to her new home port of New London, Connecticut.
Early afloat training at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy Training at sea on a sailing vessel has always been a part of the Coast Guard Academy curriculum. In 1877, the first cadets to enroll in the United States Revenue Cutter Service, the predecessor to the U.S. Coast Guard, undertook their training on board the Revenue Cutter James C. Dobbin. In 1878, James C. Dobbin was replaced by the Revenue Cutter Salmon P. Chase. Cadets lived on board the ships (physical classrooms were not even established on shore until 1900), took classes on board in the winters when tied to a pier in New Bedford, Massachusetts or Arundel Cove, Maryland, and sailed on training deployments during the summers. During this time, Salmon P. Chase undertook numerous voyages to Europe. From 1890 to 1894, Salmon P. Chase suspended operations as there was a surplus of graduates from the United States Naval Academy. In 1907, Salmon P. Chase was decommissioned and transferred to the Marine Hospital Service. She was replaced by the Revenue Cutter Itasca, a former Naval Academy training vessel.
In 1922, Itasca was determined to be too small for the cadet corps, and was decommissioned and scrapped. She was then replaced by the three-masted barquentine Alexander Hamilton, a former Navy gunboat from the Spanish–American War. Alexander Hamilton was in service at the Coast Guard Academy until 1930; after her decommissioning in 1944, Alexander Hamiltons mainmast was returned to New London and served as the academy's flagpole until 1954. During the 1930s, the academy did not have a resident sailing vessel for cadet training. In 1939, the Danish Navy's sail training vessel was in New York City to take part in the 1939 World's Fair. After World War II broke out, the ship was offered to the U.S. government and transferred to the Coast Guard Academy, where she was commissioned as USCGC Danmark and served as the cadet training ship until 26 September 1945, when she was returned to the Danish government.
Sail training during these early years of the Coast Guard Academy is remarkably similar to the program on board Eagle today. An 1886 contemporary described the training experience on board Salmon P. Chase as such:
Training at sea on board Eagle
Eagles primary mission is to develop the future officers of the U.S. Coast Guard. Since 1946, she has deployed each summer with cadets on board as part of their Academy curriculum. As soon as the cadets complete their final examinations in May of each year, Eagle departs with roughly half of the third class cadets (the rising sophomores) and a small contingent of first class cadet cadre (rising seniors who lead the third class cadets). Six weeks later, the cadets on board rotate to other training locations while the second half of the third class cadets meet the ship and begin their training. After their five weeks on board, the third and first class cadets depart for their summer leave, and the fourth class cadets (the rising freshmen; also known as swabs) report aboard in two or three groups for one week of sail training each. Like the third class cadets, the fourth class cadets are led by a group of second class cadet cadre (the rising juniors). Eagle typically returns to New London at the end of the summer, returning the cadets to the Coast Guard Academy one or two weeks before the academic school year begins. All cadets at the academy will normally complete a minimum of six weeks on board Eagle during their fourth and third class years, and have the opportunity to return as cadre if they chose to do so during their second and first class years. The current schedule also includes two 2–3 week voyages in the Spring and Fall with the semiannual Coast Guard Officer Candidate School classes.
Eagle has a standing permanent crew of seven officers and 50 enlisted members; on training missions, she takes on a variety of temporary crew and sails with an average complement of 12 officers, 68 crew, and up to 150 trainees. While on board, cadets and officer candidates receive a large amount of instruction from the crew. They take classes on numerous subjects that are key to life at sea, including navigation, seamanship, ship and boat maneuvering, line handling, sailing, first aid, weather patterns, damage control, engineering, career development, and more. They also stand watches in the engine room, on the bridge, on deck, in the scullery and galley, and during port calls, they assist the public by giving tours. The trainees are expected to qualify in a variety of watchstations applicable to their level of experience; for example, third class cadets complete their 'helm and lookout' qualification while upper-class cadets work to qualify in leadership positions on the bridge and in the engine room. At the same time, trainees are given a rigorous set of nautical tasks they must complete. One common training task involves the Eagle crew covering all Global Positioning System receivers on board and requiring trainees to navigate between ports using sextants, a compass, and the tools of celestial navigation.
On a normal training day, Eagle will set 'sail stations' once or twice and all cadets and crew members will take their positions on deck to set or douse sail, or conduct a sailing maneuver such as tacking or wearing. At the beginning of a deployment with a new group of trainees, these complicated maneuvers are closely managed and led by the crew, but as the trainees become more experienced and learn how to work the sails and lines, they slowly take over leadership of these and other evolutions and begin to lead themselves. The goal of the crew is to help the trainees develop and mold into a cohesive team and a group of leaders, enabling the crew to take a step back, assist where needed, and ensure all personnel are kept safe.