Semester at Sea: The Lost Voyage of Summer of 1972

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 115^th 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 30^th 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 18^th 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.