Beginning in 2008 I began
the task of reconstructing each of the voyages of the Semester at Sea program
(including those of the University of the Seven Seas, World Campus Afloat,
etc.). The official count is 115th
voyages (through Spring of 2014) … but I have serious doubts about that count
and that is the subject of this posting.
Lost Voyages of Semester
at Sea!!
All I really wanted to
know, out of a sense of curiosity, was where the program had and hadn’t been
(ports of call and countries) since I first sailed way back in the Spring of
1966. I had come across old yearbooks on
the MV Explorer one evening while on the May of 2008 Enrichment Voyage and that
simple question became a six-year journey.
A glass of wine and a laptop and the beginnings of a database of the
various voyages from the Fall of 1963 forward was born.
I soon discovered that
much of the information regarding the early voyages was simply not
correct. It appears, and I’m only
guessing (although I do have copies of the original work sheets), that in 1992
— as the program approached its 30th Anniversary — someone got the notion
that it would be a good idea to reconstruct a history of the program to that
point.
They had moved from
Chapman College to the University of Colorado to the University of
Pittsburgh. Records, materials and
brochures were either lost or in storage.
The first researcher
turned to yearbooks that had been collected over the years and tried to piece
together the early voyages. I went down
the same road and discovered that the yearbook staffs were wildly uneven in
their approach to documenting their voyages.
There were also printing
errors, with 8 and 16-page forms sometimes being printed out of order. They were pasted up and sent off for printing
and the students who prepared them scattered to the four winds.
Some even made the
yearbook their own personal documentation of their experiences … if the ship
went to London for four days and they spend the time in Edinburgh, then the
ship magically went to Edinburgh.
It was a good starting
point. But the best method to piece
together the various voyages was to actually ask students from each voyage
where they went and when were they there.
What changes were made? What
happened?
Personal logs, letters
home, Helms and pack rats, like me, who kept everything from their voyage have
helped me to flush out the original 1992 “backbone” research. Former students have sent me tons of stuff
and have been helpful in filling in the gaps.
I also got permission to
spend two days in Charlottesville to plow both the archive that is maintained
in a set of files in the conference room at the offices of Semester at Sea in
Charlottesville. A former librarian
from the University of Pittsburgh has done an excellent job in establishing
these files for each voyage … she drives down from Pittsburgh to
Charlottesville from time to time, on her own dime, to work on the archive (I
wish I knew her name).
During my stay there I
was also given access to the storage facility about three miles away and was
able to retrieve additional materials which I copied and then placed the
originals in the appropriate voyage files in the archive.
Of note, I also found the
original daily newsletters from the original 1926 student voyage. They had access to an off-set printing press
and produced an amazing voyage newspaper … I turned this find over to Dean Mike
Zoll for safekeeping in the archives. I
believe that all of the students who sailed on this experimental voyage are now
no longer with us … but the history of their voyage is there in print.
Lastly, once the first
draft of what I thought the voyages looked like was prepared I began
circulating “the book,” along with two full notebook binders with copies of all
the materials I had assembled for each voyage (in chronological order), for
alumni to review on the Semester at Sea-sponsored alumni voyages.
This book quickly became
marked up with fresh news, bunkering ports, last minute changes in itineraries
and then I met alumni Holly Beth Hinnrichs-Dahms, who examined the book and
informed me that she had sailed on voyages not listed in the book.
Holly is quite the
traveler … a bug she caught while a student sailing on the Spring 1967 voyage
aboard the Ryndam. On this night she
wore a vest to the alumni reception aboard the MV Explorer that was covered
with country patches for every place she has visited from that voyage
onward. Every inch was covered!
She told me that she had
sailed on summer voyages during the early 1970s. I had information on these, but they didn’t
fit anywhere and details were very sketchy, so I did not include them in the
book.
A follow-up exchange of
emails after the alumni voyage eventually led me to Dean Martha Madden, who had
served as “visiting Dean of Students” on the Spring 1970 voyage aboard the
Ryndam. She had collected materials for these summer
voyages and was kind enough to copy everything she had and then forward those
copies to me.
The first of these
“missing voyages” took place during the Summer of 1972. The SS Universe did a “Pacific Swing” during
the summer, departing Los Angeles on June 18th with stops in Hawaii,
Fiji, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, The Philippines and ending in Hong Kong on
July 31.
Classes were offered, for
“transfer credit” to upper-division undergraduates and graduate students. There were 13 faculty members along with a
dozen staff members and roughly 60 students.
This World Campus Afloat program shared the ship with other paying passengers.
The Helm was published on
a daily basis and a small yearbook was published featuring the ports of call
and other ship-board activities, including Neptune Day (see pages below).
Two legs were planned,
but only enough students were signed up for the first leg … the ship completed
the second leg back to Los Angeles with regular paying passengers (and arrived
back in time for the Fall 1972 voyage departure), while the students, faculty
and staff flew home from Hong Kong.
I have the ports of call,
the departure date and arrival date, but lack the actual port call dates
(although I can approximate those based on sailing distances and patterns from
previous voyages). For now I am marking
this as Voyage 17A, but haven’t included any of the ports of call or nautical
mileages in the databases.
Once Dean Madden’s
package arrived, I was able to do a bit of detective word using the Semester at
Sea 2011 Alumni Directory. The thought occurred to me that there might be students that were listed in the yearbook for this
Summer 1972 Voyage who also sailed on other voyages.
Sure enough there were a
few alumni and they were contacted by email and those that replied (thus far)
have confirmed that they sailed on this voyage and received course credit for
doing so (the location of personal logs, letters and Helms are a work in
progress). I also was able to track
down one of the professors (very young at the time), who also confirmed his
participation in the program and the classes he taught on the ship.
Here is the yearbook from
the Summer of 1972 Voyage. At the end
are faculty and students … if anyone can provide further information on the
details of this World Campus Afloat voyage it would be greatly appreciated.
