The Barque of Saviors

"The Barque of Saviors" is the history of the sail-training ship Eagle's passage from the Nazi Navy to the U.S. Coast Guard. She was built at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in 1936 and christened Horst Wessel in the presence of Adolf Hitler. At the end of World War Two she was found in bomb-gutted Bremerhaven, stripped of her rigging and serving as shelter for defeated and starving German sailors. In 1946, the steel square-rigger was rechristened Eagle. That year, the Coast Guard's Capt. Gordon McGowan and his crew sailed Eagle through a hurricane to New London with the help of enlisted German sailors. She has been training Coast Guard officers and petty officers ever since. Author Russell Drumm was able to track down the ship's original logs to help tell the powerful story of this proud sailing ship now in her 75th year.