#688-689 The USCGC Eagle

 Fun Fact #688

Foe to Friend

Christened in 1933, The Horst Wessel (Schiff 508) was the second ship in the Fock (3-mast) line, and an improvement on its predecessor. At the time, the Weimar republic had lost most of its ships in WW1 and The Horst Wessel was designed to be the flagship of the new Kriegsmarine Sail training fleet. Interestingly it  had a purpose built Chickencoup onboard to house ducks to give the crew fresh eggs and meat on long voyages. Yet, its construction was rushed to so the space it vacated could be used to lay the keel of The Battleship Bismark (Schiff 509). Despite the hurried nature of the event, the ship received speeches at its christening (unfortunately) by Ruldof Hess, and Adolf Hitler. It then proceeded to serve in its intended training role until 1942 when it was fitted with guns and the last batch of Kriegsmarine trainees were sent to war. There it made multiple voyages as part of a convoy to places like Venezuela before it was captured by the British after the war near Rugen Island (April 1945). 

Once captured, the boat was evacuated and given to the United States as part of Germany’s war reparations. Interestingly Britain, The Soviet Union and The US all wanted the ship, but got it after drawing lots (The UK and Soviets got The Wessel’s Sister ships). 

After taking command in 1946, the first thing the Captain Carl Bowman did, was order the crew to strip the ship given to the Soviets’ Ship (The class’s namesake: The Gorck Frock) of all its rigging to be used as spares on the Wessel. Deciding he did not like the fact the Ship was named after the man who wrote the Nazi National Anthem, Captain Bowman had the Ship renamed to The USCGC Eagle (WIX-327) in honor of the USRC Eagle (The 2nd ship in the United States military history and was The US flagship in The Barbary Wars). They then sailed to its new home port of New London, Connecticut.  From then on The Eagle has been used by the US Coastguard as a training ship, and to represent the Coast Guard, and US as a whole. 

Fun Fact #689

The Racing Eagle.

Since it became property of The US Coast Guard, The USCGC Eagle has trained 300 (Sail) Trainees each summer since 1946 (24,000 trained by 2026). Today it is one of only 2 sailing ships used by The US military (The Other being The USS Constitution)  and serves as the primary Sail training ship for The Coast Guard. Over these years its role has grown quite a bit, and one of the more interesting tales came in 1972.

At the time there was a request by West Germany for the Eagle to return to its birth port in Keil,Germany (for the first time since WW2) in honor of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Germany. However The Gorck Foch II was also going to be present at the celebration and it was the last of the Foch line from which The Eagle was built. The Gorck Foch II was built 25 years later with several improvements made including a claim to be faster. Some of the cadets joked they should put that to the test, and upon hearing it the Captain agreed and pitched it to West Germany. Soon it was official, there was to be a race between all 3 (3-mast) Sail ships present for the 1972 Olympics, yet 3 days into the race they hit foul weather and several sails on both The Eagle and the Gorck ripped resulting in Poland’s Training vessel Dar Pormoza winning the competition while the others dropped out. So in its first race between Germany and The US, Poland won –despited being invited purely as a courtesy. 

Despite this loss, the ships met again for a second race in 1976, in which The Eagle beat The Gorck Foch II. Later that year the ship underwent a refit, and in celebration of their victory the ship was given Red racing line with the words “US Coast Guard", while the prow received a Golden Eagle figurehead. Today, The Ship has earned a nickname as “The Racing Eagle” (though “America’s Tall Ship” is a more widely known nickname) and continues to respond to challenges by other countries to sail races –most commonly as part of Operation Sail events. To date, It has won the most Operation Sail races of any ship in the world –despite being 80 years old.

(Seen above is the Original 1976 “Racing Eagle” Figurehead. Despite being replaced since, the original is now in The National Coast Guard Museum, set to open to the public in Spring 2027.)