“Buccaneer Queen” out of San Pedro is another square-rigged ship. moored at Ports O’Call, California, is ninety feet long, eighteen feet at the base and carries a crew of five. Available for public cruises, she offers dining pleasure for fifty-eight dollars a couple. Minimum number of passengers is fifty-five, maximum is ninety. Cruise is for two and one half hours on the calm water of the Los Angeles and Long Beach Harbor. Prices are subject to change without notice. Passengers are required to be on the dock one-half hour prior to sailing..
I wanted to see sailing ships again so I went to Dana Point last week to revisit the Brig Pilgrim, gift from Denmark to the United States honoring Henry Richard Dana’s voyage around Cape Horn in 1835. A brig is a ship with two masts, square rigged, or rigged nearly like a full-rigged ship’s sail mast and foremast.
Vessel is exact replica of the original Pilgrim, a common sight in the 1850’s picking up lodes, at the various mission ports between San Francisco and san Diego. Here in El Embarcadero Cove , the ship took on board hides from Mission San Juan Capistrano. These “Leather dollars”,as they were called, were carried to the east coast and made into shoes, wallets, and women purses. Ship owners made good profit for a relatively small investment.
Barbie
from Loch
March 5, 1990
I fell in love in a biker bar
with a girl in chocolate hair.
It swept around her like a smoky fire
and woke up the beast in my lair.
Her bright eyes twinkled like brilliant stars
at the end of the moonless road--
they called to me like a siren song
to lay down my heavy load.
Tall she was like a square rigged ship
like a mast shrouded in clouds;
and she could dance like a foamy wave,
making Neptune cry out loud.
But the path of a ship is a bubble
and suddenly she was gone--
her chocolate hair and vanilla neck
are moments in my sad song.
This siren's memory seizes me
like cinnamon schnapps and a grin
which warm the body from the inside out
and settle a smile on your chin.
Her dancing hair drove my clouds away
and opened an azure sky;
and all I asked was a tall, thin ship
and two stars to steer me by.
Among all the women I've danced with
none are remembered so fair
as a girl who walked like a tall ship,
and had waves of chocolate hair.
And have you heard the story
Of Captain Sean McGrew,
Who sailed the mighty oceans,
In a square rigged wooden shoe?
His first mate was a salty dog
From east of Lilla Bay.
The ship's crew hailed from Lilligo,
In Lilliput, they say.
Then one sad day, he lost his ship,
His crew, and all his loot,
To a roguish band of pirates,
In a rapid sailing, chukka boot.
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