Over the course of a summer, nearly 300 “swabs” — new recruits at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn. — get their sea legs aboard the 295-foot three-masted square rigger Eagle.
Three groups of about 90 cadets just out of high school get a chance to crew the Eagle after about four to six weeks at the Academy. It’s a crash course in teamwork, leadership and taking responsibility for the safety of your fellow cadets.
When the Eagle pulled into Greenport Friday morning, one swab on deck knew the familiar sights and sounds of home.
Pictured Above: Captain Kristopher Ensley (left) and Ryan Harned of Cutchogue (right) aboard The Eagle Friday morning.
Ryan Harned of Cutchogue headed up for “Swab Summer,” the Coast Guard equivalent of boot camp, just days after finishing second in his class at Mattituck High School this June. He made it through the grueling first weeks of training, with the help of a pep talk from his parents, and then climbed aboard the Eagle in Newport for one week at sea that he says has changed his life.
As the Eagle rounded Bug Light just after daybreak on Aug. 7, it sunk in how much his perspective has changed since he last saw home in June.
“We’re coming back into Greenport. I’ve been telling everyone on the ship, do you guys realize that we’re in my hometown?” he said just after the Eagle docked at the East Pier at Mitchell Park. “Everyone’s asking me, people I haven’t met before on the ship, from all over the USA, ‘so where are you from?’ And I tell them, ‘you want to know something funny? I live right here. That’s crazy. Right here.’ I get to share that feeling of home with the other swabs. I didn’t really have the chance to think of home for weeks now, and it has really filled my heart. It’s a tremendous feeling of appreciation to me, knowing that I come from a great area.”
It’s no accident that the Eagle ended up in Greenport this year. The ship’s new Captain, Kristopher Ensley was a lieutenant aboard the Eagle when the ship last called in Greenport in 2012.
“This is such a beautiful town, and an awesome community,” said Captain Ensley just after the Eagle docked in Greenport. “And it’s very convenient in terms of being able to transport the swabs back and forth over the ferry. The current swabs will leave tomorrow, and a new group will come in.”
The Eagle, a steel three-masted barque, was built as a training vessel in 1936 in Hamburg, Germany and commissioned as Horst Wessel. The ship was taken by the United States as a war prize after World War II.
“The reason we have a sailing ship is because you can use the sailing rig to teach leadership, teamwork and growth as a human being. This ship is all done by hand. You see everybody working the lines, and offloading the trash. Everything is manually powered,” said Captain Ensley, who became the captain of the Eagle this season — his fourth command. “It’s a leadership practicum for them. The goal is to expose them to life at sea — to get them a little bit salty. When they come in, they’re wide-eyed. They don’t know port from starboard. They don’t know you need to keep your hand on a door or it’s going to swing as the ship moves and snap on your arm. So there’s a safety element that we need to ensure they’re understanding — that battle rhythm, and that sense of how a ship lives and breathes, is important.”
“When I first got to the academy, I was scared out of my mind. I’m not gonna lie,” said Ryan Harned, who was given permission to finish offloading trash from the ship early in order to talk with the local press. “I was very scared. They have an initial week they call ‘the shark attack,’ where they have the second year cadets, our cadre, who are taking us through swab summer. They’re training us, and they’re teaching us everything we need to know. They’re the ones who are in your face, yelling at you. There was so many times the first day I thought ‘this is not for me, this is not at all what I want to do.'”
“We had a moment at the end of the first day, where we took a class photo outside of the Academy, and then right after that, we had 15 minutes to say goodbye to our parents,” he said. “I ran to my parents and said ‘this is not for me. Please, I don’t think want to do this.’ But they gave me a few words of encouragement. I stayed, I worked my way through the weeks, and now I am on the Coast Guard Cutter, Eagle. Now I know, in my heart of hearts, that if I decided not to stay, I would have never been able to experience this magnificent ship, and make the connections with the other swabs and have had all of these experiences, which have made this summer truly unforgettable for me.”
During their brief time aboard the Eagle, the swabs become accustomed to taking four-hour watches, which are interspersed with their training schedules, which could take place in any part of the ship, from the engine room to the helm.
The swabs practice basic skills such as throwing life rings, tying knots, quickly donning a drysuit known as a “gumby” suit to survive in cold water, firefighting techniques, engine room repairs and a Square Rigger Olympics testing out all the skills they learned during their time at sea.
All the time, said Ryan, they’re on the alert for the “Three F’s” — Fire, flooding and fraternization.
And if the water is calm and all is going well, there may even be a swim call — a chance to jump off the side of the ship and swim, then scale back up on a rope rescue ladder before doing it again.
“When I got up there the first time, I was in my swim trunks and looked over and said ‘this is really high up,’” he said. “But it’s also weird because during the Swab Summer, we had to jump off an elevated platform for a swim test. We had to jump off the platform with those gumby suits at the training pool. I’ve jumped off so many high places. I thought by the third time that I jumped off the ship and and actually went into the ocean that I would get used to it.”
One of his most memorable experiences, he said, was a watch on lookout in the middle of the night.
“We would be on the bow of the ship, looking out with binoculars for any other ships that are in the area, because we need to relay that information to the bridge in order for them to know what’s in the area and what we need to avoid,” he said. “Especially at nighttime, when there’s low visibility, or when there’s fog out, like there was a couple days ago. We had to keep blaring the fog horn every two minutes or so. It’s loud.”
Captain Ensley said seeing young recruits learn these vital lessons is a primary reason he was excited to take command of the Eagle.
“I wanted to come back to this ship,” he said. “I wanted to work with the young men and women at the Coast Guard Academy and Officer Candidate School, and help these men and women grow into the officers we desperately need. This ship is amazing, because this is where they take all their classroom education, all the navigation classes, the engineering classes, the leadership classes, and put it into practice in a real life scenario where it matters, where they’re standing helm, lookout, and watch. The upper class are standing the bridge and engineering and charge watches. And if they don’t do it properly, there are a real world consequences, to the ship and to the safety of the 239 people on board.”
The Eagle’s mission as an ambassador of the United States is also one that makes him proud.
“We are a tool of soft power,” he said. “When Finland and Sweden joined NATO, the U.S. wanted to send an asset to welcome those nations to the NATO Alliance, and we sent Eagle, because Eagle is a tool of peace. We welcomed the prime minister of Finland to a reception on these decks and said, ‘welcome, friends.’ And all of our sister ships from all over the world do that as well.”
Captain Ensley was thrilled that Eagle led the parade of tall ships into New York on the Fourth of July for Sail 250, especially after riding out a gale just off of Sandy Hook, N.J. the previous evening with 25 other tall ships.
They put their skills as mariners to the test (with the help of Spanish-speaking Eagle crew members who translated communications from some of the other vessels) and were able to maneuver to keep from striking each other when 75-mile-per-hour winds dragged out their anchor lines.
“Two of our sails actually ripped, and we had to replace them later,” said Captain Ensley, “but coming into New York Harbor, saluting the Vice President and sailing past the Statue of Liberty — leading that parade was an honor I think our crew will never forget.”
By Saturday, Ryan Harned had taken a bus back to New London to finish one more week of Swab Summer, after which he will receive his first shoulder board as a 4/c cadet and enter the Coast Guard Academy for his first full year of training.
A fresh new class of about 90 swabs took their berths on Eagle mid-day Saturday. We ran into a few in Greenport who’d spent the afternoon taking in a rare treat — watching “Spiderman: Brand New Day” at the North Fork Arts Center, before eating takeout in Mitchell Park and heading back to take their first watch. They weren’t sure, yet, what to expect.
The Eagle will spend about a month in Connecticut after Swab Summer is over before heading down to Baltimore for maintenance in drydock this winter, said Captain Ensley. In the spring, she will likely be put to work for officer training before welcoming a new crew of swabs again in the summer of 2027.
“These young men and women are just starting on their career of service. Nobody’s joining the Coast Guard to get rich. Nobody’s joining the Coast Guard to go be a hedge fund manager and make a billion dollars,” said Captain Ensley. “They’re joining the Coast Guard to serve this country and our citizens. And to look back and celebrate 250 years of what we’ve done, while also looking forward and helping these young men and women start down their career path of service — that was an awesome summer.”
“I’m so fortunate, and so appreciative of this tremendous moment that I know I will carry with me for the rest of my entire life,” said Ryan Harned. “I don’t know how things can get better from this point. Who else can say they’ve been on the U.S. Coast Guard’s Eagle, and they actually get to do it in their hometown?”
The Eagle will be open for a last day of tours at the East Pier in Greenport’s Mitchell Park on Sunday, Aug. 9 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Keep Independent News on the East End
The Beacon is able to provide all of our content online free of charge thanks to support from our readers. Be a vital part of keeping our community informed!
Advertisement
