America's Tall Ship

“The biggest flag the wind will carry,” promises Capt. Kristopher Ensley, flashing a roguish smile. It’s early April, and we’re cloistered below deck in the diplomatic cabin onboard the USCGC Eagle, America’s Tall Ship. Ensley is detailing plans for Eagle and her crew as they prepare for the Parade of Sail into Boston Harbor in July for the Sail 250 America celebration, including which flag the ship will fly. “Hopefully Big Bertha, 80 feet by 40 feet, stars and stripes,” muses Ensley.

Outside, members of the crew dutifully scrub the hull clean. Their visit to Boston is a tune-up in advance of Eagle’s ceremonial duties this summer in America’s semi-quincentennial. The featured ports of call began in May and include first New Orleans, then Norfolk, Baltimore, and New York before the finale in Boston. On this early spring day, however, Eagle and her crew are in Boston for fresh paint and to reaffix the massive gold-painted eagle figurehead to the prow of the ship. Broken off by rough seas this past year, Boston has the woodworkers to mend the totem’s scars as well as the specialty machining and dock space to reattach it to its proud forward perch.

Getting Salty

From May through July, Eagle will act as lead flagship in all other ports, save for Boston, where it will follow the USS Constitution while leading more than 60 tall ships from over 25 countries into our waters. Compared to the Constitution’s 229 years afloat, Eagle’s relative youth at the spry age of 90 means it still sails both as an “outstretched hand of friendship” in national diplomacy and serves as a training vessel for cadets and officer candidates in the United States Coast Guard.

What better way to learn the ropes? Six miles of them, in fact, in the form of rigging lines to control up to 23 sails; trainees must learn their names and function. During their six weeks aboard, trainees will study traditional seafaring navigation, engineering, and leadership aboard Eagle. “We’re also helping them build courage,” Ensley remarks, “and get salty.”

Courage and salt are earned through the teamwork and physical feats required to operate the immense ship. Under sail, steering is without hydraulics, making for heaving maneuvering. 150 trainees along with eight officers and 50 professional crew must work together to trim the ship’s weighty sails and perform “up and overs”—safely ascending and descending the 147.5 feet that reach the upper yardarms, akin to a cadet balancing 15 stories above the ocean. Yardarms, the cross spars that radiate from the mast, not only hang the sails but also provide the crew with a place to stand as they “Man the yards!” This call directs sailors to their yardarm stations from where they unleash the sails in unison when they hear “Let fall!” shouted across the full 295 feet of the ship’s length. By the end of their six-week term, trainees are leading themselves in navigation as well as maneuvering the vessel on their own.

A career shaping young trainees into experienced sailors tends to be eventful, and Ensley has plenty of stories to tell. He describes a poignant moment during the summer of 2025 when, amid ripping winds and low visibility fog, it took the full crew of 200 to tack the ship towards harbor and navigate safely. He pauses to recall with pride the cheers that washed over the crew as they passed under the Golden Gate Bridge. Ensley notes that even after a few weeks aboard Eagle, it’s not hard “to catch the romance of sailing” for the rest of your life.

Diplomacy on the High Seas

Trainees aboard the Eagle are unlikely to spend their careers aboard wind sailing vessels. Most field operations of the Coast Guard from Boston are executed by the Fast Response Cutters (FRCs) seen dotting the harbor with white hulls and the orange and blue racing-stripe livery. Ensley explains that FRCs are a workhorse of the Coast Guard and assist not only in overseeing ports and waterways, but also in interdiction of drugs or migrants, search and rescue for boater safety, and other coastal law enforcement actions, including protection of commercial and environmental resources. While onboard the Eagle, Ensley explains, the crew adds to their mission an important national diplomatic function as well.

A visit from Eagle to any other country has become a highly symbolic goodwill gesture as a result of the ship’s impressive history and non-threatening nature. Tall ship diplomacy is a potent show of allyship, cooperation, and the strength of peaceful waters. Recent examples can be seen in 2023, when Eagle set sail for Finland to welcome the country on behalf of America as a new NATO member. In 2025, Eagle crossed the Panama Canal for the first time amid heightened local tensions. Eagle and her crew soar in such moments. Eagle’s crew gave tours to schoolchildren in partnership with the Panama City Mayor’s office and demonstrated shared trust, respect, and partnership by taking 20 Panamanian officers and petty officers to conduct drills together.

Similar crew exchanges are expected to mutually occur in Boston Harbor between Eagle and several other nations in attendance. This ongoing camaraderie amongst trusted partners is not only a mutual show of good faith, but also a great learning experience for all.

Five Sisters Reunited

For all its effectiveness in high diplomacy, Eagle is planning to be a fierce contender in a tall ship showdown.

For the first time in 50 years and the second time ever, explains Ensley, Eagle and her sister ships will reunite to race off the coast of Cape Cod. More than mere bragging rights, this race is the clash of international legacy and national pride five decades in the making. Each ship is a so-called “sister” of the others because they were each made with a shared design and by the same shipyard in Germany, making this a trans-Atlantic family reunion and showdown.

First, you should meet the family: The eldest sister, Gorch Fock (1933), was scuttled by the Germans who feared her capture during WWII, although she was later salvaged by the USSR, and docked in a region of what became Ukraine upon the dissolution of the soviet state, later being sold back to Germany. Home again, the ship was taken out of active service and made into a museum ship. So while she sailed and raced with her sisters in 1976 for America’s bicentennial, she is never expected to sail again.

The middle siblings who had identity crises: Eagle (1936), previously named “Horst Wessel,” and Sagres (1937), previously “Albert Leo Schlageter,” were both taken by the U.S. as war reparations. Schlageter was sold to Brazil and renamed Guanabara, where it trained naval cadets for a decade, later resold to Portugal, where it was christened as Sagres.

Mircea was bought from Germany before WWII by Romania and has remained largely in their service in the Black Sea with only very temporary seizing by the Soviets from 1944 to 1946.

The youngest was a post-war German rebuild, sometimes called Gorch Fock II (1958) later renamed Gorch Fock after the original Gorch Fock (1933) left active service to become a museum ship. After losing its other mighty tall ships, Germany built Gorch Fock (1958) as a testament to its maritime shipbuilder tradition. Like the other sisters, it became a training vessel for young officers in the country’s Navy.

The first and last time all five sisters were in one place was 1976 for America’s 200th birthday. On that occasion, they raced for the first ever time with Gorch Fock II taking the prize. Along with bragging rights, the winner takes possession of what is formally called the “International Perpetual Challenge Cup,” but is nicknamed “The Five Sisters’ Trophy.” As a result of the retirement of Gorch Fock I from sailing service, America’s bicentennial is the only time all five sisters would meet to compete in a race together. The coveted Trophy of the Five Sisters has remained elusive until now.

Ensley shows me a picture that the German Commanding Officer of the Gorch Fock had sent of the Five Sisters’ Trophy safely tucked in the German ship’s wardroom. I believe but can’t confirm that the German captain had either directly sent this picture to Ensley—an underscore of a sporting rapport between the two men with a taunting spirit befitting any good sibling rivalry.

As first reported in the German tabloid Bild in December 2025, the Gorch Fock departs its German homeport of Kiel in April to make its multiweek journey across the Atlantic to face Eagle and her sisters to defend its title. Mircea and Sagres will join from Romania and Portugal. With a competitive glint in his eye, Ensley is adamant that Eagle and her crew are going to pull out all the stops to claim the trophy on their way to Boston. Here’s to the wind in their sails! Predicted to last approximately 11 hours, a grueling focus for all crews is expected. Yet, to any challenge, be it sea or squall, in the words of the Coast Guard motto, Eagle and her crew remain Semper Paratus. Always Ready.

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A Piece of History

Built at Blohm+Voss in Nazi Germany in 1936, the initial namesake of Eagle was “Horst Wessel,” the name of a member of the Sturmabteilung (SA), or Brownshirts, of the pre-WWII Nazi Party. After his death in 1930, Horst Wessel, the man, had been fashioned into a national propaganda symbol; he was designated a martyr by Joseph Goebbels to gain sympathy for the Nazi cause. In life, Goebbels recognized the force of Wessel’s provocative rhetoric and commended him as an effective street speaker, including him as a speaker in many later events.

Wessel became a leader of an SA group local to Berlin, and the group engaged in nearly continuous street skirmishes with opposition paramilitaries, including German Communists. After a dispute over Wessel’s unpaid rent to his subletter, Wessel was killed by a German Communist—a friend of the subletter whom she had asked for help with the caustic Wessel. Goebbels magnified Wessel’s death as a spectacle. His funeral was made into a grand occasion with the elite of the Nazi party in attendance. Lyrics previously penned by Wessel were retroactively instated as a national song bearing his name. In the shipyards of Hamburg in 1936, Wessel’s mother christened the new ship to share his name with a bottle of champagne. Of note, while Hitler had not attended the funeral of Horst Wessel the man, he did attend the christening of Horst Wessel, the vessel.

A shutter snaps. A famous photograph is captured. Amidst the champagne smashing, and crowds cheering the launch of Horst Wessel by singing his namesake song in the presence of Hitler, a lone shipyard worker in the Blohm+Voss yards refuses to salute with the others. Despite its compulsory nature, and the thousands who are raising their arms around him, the worker stands arms folded and defiant. The exact identity of this man is debated, some say Gustav Wegert, who kept rigorously to his faith in refusing to praise or hail any man over God, even by salute. Others identify the worker as August Landmesser, who refused to salute in protest of his removal from the Nazi party resulting from his interfaith marriage to a Jewish woman.

Whichever man he was, his fortitude has stood the test of time. Horst Wessel, the ship, was seized from Germany after the war and recommissioned as Eagle. And the defiant worker’s noncompliance in a crowd is today a more indelible symbol than the Nazi provocateur who was foisted as a martyr.

Expect the Eagle to dock alongside the USS Constitution in the Navy Yard in Charlestown. Tours of the Eagle and other tall ships in Boston Harbor are free and first come, first serve so watch social media pages of your preferred ships for detailed hours of entry to avoid the lines. The ships will be arriving on July 11 and available for tours July 12 to 15.

Photographs courtesy of Claire Vail and the U.S. Coast Guard

Zak Kinnaird is IP counsel for Philips and an avid sailor in Boston Harbor. Earlier this year, he attained membership as a USCG Auxiliarist, making him the fourth generation in his family to join team Coast Guard.