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This is Gwen Outen.
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And this is Bob Doughty withEXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. Today we tell about the SanFrancisco Maritime National Historical Park. This unusual nationalPark celebrates the great harbor of San Francisco, California. Italso celebrates the men and women who sailed the ships that madethis harbor famous.
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Our story begins long ago inOctober, seventeen-sixty-nine. A group of Spanish explorers havecome north from Mexico. They are moving slowly up the coast of theterritory of California. The governor of California, Gaspar dePortola, leads the group.
The men and horses are tired. It has been a long trip. Governorde Portola decides to rest for a few days. But he still wants toexplore the area. He orders a young man to take some soldiers andsearch to the north for a few kilometers. The young man is JoseFrancisco Ortega.
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On the morning of November second, seventeen-sixty-nine, Ortegaleads his small group of soldiers up a hill. What they see from thetop of the hill makes them stop. There, below them, is a body ofwater. They are looking at a huge bay. Its waters seem to stretchfor many kilometers to the north, south and east. The waters arevery calm.
When the small group of soldiers reports to Governor de Portola,they are excited. They tell him of a huge natural harbor. A Spanishreligious worker reports the harbor is so large it could hold all ofthe ships of Europe.
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Six years after the huge bay was discovered, the Spanish ship SanCarlos is sailing north along the coast of California. Juan Manuelde Ayala commands the ship. As the little ship sails along thecoast, one of the crew reports to de Ayala. He says there is a hugeopening in the land mass several kilometers wide.
De Ayala orders the San Carlos to sail carefully into theopening. A crewmember reports the water in the opening is more thanone-hundred-twenty meters deep. Slowly the little ship enters thehuge natural harbor.
For more than a month, de Ayala and his crew will sail theirlittle ship around the huge bay. They make maps and study the area.They discover the bay is more than eighty kilometers long and fromthree to nineteen kilometers wide. On September eighteenth,seventeen-seventy-five, the San Carlos leaves the great bay. The SanCarlos was the first ship to enter what would become San FranciscoBay.
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The Spanish exploration was the beginning of the history of SanFrancisco harbor. That long history is celebrated at the SanFrancisco Maritime National Historical Park.
The park’s main visitor center andmuseum is only a few hundred meters from the waters of the greatharbor. The main building and the surrounding area are part of thehistory of the city and its link with the Pacific Ocean. It is amemorial to the great ships and those who sailed them.
The Maritime National Park was designed to tell the story of thehuge harbor. It also tells of the importance of the bay to the cityof San Francisco, the state of California and the United States.
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The visitor center holds many objects linked to the past of thegreat harbor. There are small ships, ship equipment, and hundreds ofbeautiful old photographs. Many of the photographs from abouteighteen-forty-nine show thousands of sailing ships surrounding thecity of San Francisco. This is when gold was discovered inCalifornia. Thousands of people came looking for gold and wealth.
Many visitors also stop to look at a large painting of a hugesailing ship. The painting shows the ship fighting against an angryocean. Blue and green waters break against the side of the ship. Menhigh up in the ship’s masts are trying to control the sails. It is apainting of a ship named the “Balclutha” The ship was built inScotland in eighteen-eighty-six.
Visitors learn that the Balclutha fought storms around the tip ofSouth America on its first trip. It reached the harbor of SanFrancisco after one-hundred-forty days at sea. It carried a cargo ofcoal from Britain.
Visitors who look at the paintingcan go out the front door of the visitor center and see the realBalclutha. The Balclutha is the largest of almost one- hundred shipsand boats that are part of the Maritime National Park.
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People walking near Fisherman’s Wharf often do not believe theireyes when they first see the Balclutha. Almost everyone stops andlooks at the huge ship. Many people take photographs.
The Balclutha is more than ninety-one meters long. The three tallmasts that once carried its sails reach forty-four meters into thesky. It seems to be an object from the past that has arrived inmodern San Francisco.
The great ship looks almost new. Several years ago, more thanone-million dollars was spent to repair and paint the Balclutha.Now, more than two-hundred-thousand people a year visit the ship.The visitors learn how the Balclutha once traveled the worldcarrying cargo. They can see a photograph of the first crew of theBalclutha. That crew sailed it into San Francisco harbor with acargo of coal more than one-hundred years ago.
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The Balclutha is perhaps the most popular ship with visitors tothe Maritime Park. However they can also visit several others ships.These are also very important to the history of the great harbor.But not all of these ships are open to the public. One that is openis a small steam-powered workboat that was built innineteen-oh-seven.
This small boat is named the Hercules. The Hercules is a tugboat.Until nineteen-twenty-four it pulled ships around the harbor. Itpulled huge amounts of wood from trees from the city of Seattle,Washington in the north all the way to Panama. And it moved cargofrom place to place within San Francisco harbor.
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Another boat popular with visitors is the Eureka. It was built ineighteen-ninety. It is the largest wooden ship still floating today.The Eureka was a ferryboat. It carried people and cars across SanFrancisco bay. It did this until the Golden Gate Bridge and theOakland Bay Bridge were built.
The C.A. Thayer is another sailing ship. It carried wood fromtrees along the Pacific Coast from the state of Washington toCalifornia. Later it was used as a fishing boat. Until recently itwas used as a floating classroom for school children.
Children stayed the night on the C.A. Thayer. They attendedclasses about living and working on a ship. They learned how hardthe work was and how dangerous it could be.
In December, two-thousand-three, the C.A. Thayer began a periodof repairs that is expected to last two years. The rebuildingproject will replace as much as eighty percent of its wooden parts.While the work is being done, visitors can still see the ship. Theycan watch the work as the ship is rebuilt.
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A much smaller sailing ship is called the Alma. Sailors calledthis kind of ship a scow. It usually had only two crewmembers andperhaps a boy who was learning how to work on a boat. The Alma wasthe kind of small ship used during the California Gold Rush. Itdelivered cargo across the great harbor and up rivers. Ships likethe Alma carried almost everything — bricks, salt, lumber, grain,food. The little ships could carry as much cargo as a large moderntruck.
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The San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park also has avery unusual looking museum. It is a large building that almostlooks like a ship. The museum is filled with interesting equipment.One room has been made to look like a ship’s radio room.
Radio operators show visitors how the equipment was used. One ofthe most interesting objects in the museum is a small sailboat onlylarge enough for one person. It is only five-and-one-half meterslong. The little boat is named Mermaid. In nineteen-sixty-two,Japanese sailor Kenichi Horie sailed the Mermaid alone across thePacific Ocean from Japan to San Francisco. No one had ever done sucha thing before.
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From the top of the building, visitors can watch the ships of theworld sail in and out of the great harbor. Visitors to the SanFrancisco Maritime National Park learn that the history of theharbor is important to the past. And the work of San Franciscoharbor continues into the future.
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This program was written by Paul Thompson. It was produced byMario Ritter. This is Bob Doughty.
VOICE ONE:
And this is Gwen Outen. Join us again next week for anotherEXPLORATIONS program in VOA Special English.