In Bristol Fashion

The author has compiled an adventure memoir in photo essay form, recalling when he worked as volunteer 1975-1980 aboard historic ships of the San Francisco Maritime Museum. He learned from the crew of the Cape Horn square-rigger Balclutha (1886), now moored permanently at the end of the Hyde Street Pier. He later went on to become president of the Friends of the Eppleton Hall Society, which operated the steam side-paddle estuary tug, Eppleton Hall (1914). She had steamed over from England 1969-1970 by officers of the maritime museum.



The beloved tug had many daring and amusing jaunts on San Francisco Bay, with one long trip to Lost Isle, on the San Joaquin River near Stockton, CA. This ugly duckling was loved by those volunteers and families who made her operational. Her notoriety was such that the captain of the Queen Elizabeth 2 gave the tug a commemorative crystal when that great liner made her first visit to San Francisco in April 1978.



About that time the author was the West Coast liaison for Sea History magazine, the publication of the National Maritime Historical Society in Peekskill, NY. The tug was retired when the maritime museum was later turned over to the National Park Service.



The book closes with the author's lively account when, in June 1980, he was guest aboard the U.S. Coast Guard square-rigger Eagle, when she sailed, with scuppers awash, from Boston's OpSail to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands.



From the introduction by Peter Stanford, President Emeritus of the NMHS..."The book's title, In Bristol Fashion, is the seaman's universal expression of the highest mark for a job done in true seamanly fashion - a well-earned tribute to the people from varied walks of life who saved an abandoned treasure, to a spirit that shines through this book."