Coast Guard's Tall Ship to Make North Shore Visit, Open for Tours

The U.S. Coast Guard’s tall ship is planning to make a stop on the North Shore for Labor Day weekend.

The Barque Eagle is scheduled to arrive in Gloucester on Friday, at 1:30 p.m. as part of its 2014 cadet summer training deployment.

The Eagle will be open for free public tours on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Americold’s terminal in Gloucester Harbor, at 1 Rowe Square off Rogers Street next to Cruiseport Gloucester.

All weekend is the Schooner Festival in Gloucester, with 24 ships taking part in a parade of sail on Sunday. Other Schooner Festival events include a lobster bake, boat parade and fireworks on Saturday.

After leaving Cape Ann, the Eagle will head to Yorktown, Va., and then Baltimore with the fall officer candidate classes, according to a story on military.com. In Baltimore, the Eagle will take part in the 200th anniversary of Francis Scott Key’s writing of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” according to military.com.

The Eagle is the largest tall ship flying the stars and stripes and the only active square-rigger in U.S. government service, according to the Coast Guard. It is 295 feet long.

The ship was constructed in 1936 by the Blohm and Voss Shipyard in Hamburg, Germany, and originally commissioned as the Horst Wessel by the German Navy. It was taken by the United States as a war reparation after World War II.

It has more than 23,500 square feet of sail and six miles of rigging and has served as a classroom at sea to future Coast Guard officers since 1946. It offers an at-sea leadership and professional development experience.

Currently, there are 135 cadets from the Coast Guard Academy aboard as part of a 13-week summer deployment that includes stops at nine port calls in four countries, with four different groups of cadets and officer candidates training onboard.

A permanent crew of eight officers and 50 enlisted personnel maintain the ship and guide the cadets through an underway and in-port training schedule.