by Betsey Jackson Patterson
Captain Richard P. Bailey, was Master of the full- rigged sailing ship HMS ROSE for ten years. Capt. Bailey’s father, Richard P. Jackson, was lost at sea in July 1950 off Provincetown in his 44-foot fishing vessel out of Wellfleet, just six weeks before his son was born. His great-great-grandfather, Richard Rich Freeman of Wellfleet owned 14 schooners and clipper ships that sailed as far as China.
Capt. Bailey said that when he was a little boy, he had always admired the paintings we had of these old ships and someday dreamed of being the captain of one. Richard’s mother remarried several years later, and Richard’s last name was changed to that of his stepfather.
The ROSE is a replica of a British frigate from America’s colonial era. She was built in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia in 1970 utilizing original 18th century plans obtained from the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England. The ship was built to celebrate the impending bicentennial, but because the project was under-capitalized, the ship spent the first ten years of her life as a dockside attraction in Newport, Rhode Island.
The original ROSE was built in Hull, Yorkshire, England in 1757 and played an active role in both the Seven Years War and the American Revolution. It was the direct cause of the founding of the U. S. Navy in 1775. During the Revolutionary War, the ROSE sailed to New York in 1776 as part of an attacking fleet of 300 vessels.
She successfully squelched a thriving smuggling business in Newport, Rhode Island. Her career ended in 1779 in Savannah, Georgia where she was ordered sunk across the mouth of the harbor preventing the invading fleet from getting close enough to bombard the city.
The ROSE is a 179-foot, full-rigged ship–three masts with square sails on each one for a total of 17 sails. The sails are polyester made from recycled plastic soda bottles and car fenders using a process developed by DuPont. The ship has 24 cannons, a draft of 13 feet and a main mast of 130 feet. In 1984 the ROSE was purchased by Kaye Williams and moved to her current home base, Captain’s Cove, Black Rock Harbor, Bridgeport, Connecticut. In 1990 the ROSE sailed on a 6,000-mile educational and ambassadorial voyage through the Great Lakes and the Midwest by way of Nova Scotia and the St. Lawrence Seaway.
In 1991 ROSE embarked on her longest season. Sailing from April until a few days before Christmas, she visited twenty-six East Coast cities while displaying an original draft of the Bill of Rights. Sponsors of the ten-month educational project were the NYNEX Corporation and the Federal Commission for the Bicentennial of the Constitution.
Late in the summer of 1991 the ROSE became the first and only Tall Ship in America to be certified by the Coast Guard under the provisions of the Sailing School Vessels Act. In November 1991 the ROSE was honored as “Tall Ship of the Year” by the American Sail Training Association.
published: Kinfolk, Fall/Winter 1992
The story was selected from the Kinfolk by Robert Greene and featured at the 2024 Rich Family Reunion
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