An Educational Adventure

The schooner Adventure has a history to match that of her home port of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Gloucester has long been the heart of the fishing industry in the North Atlantic, and fishermen have set off from the harbor in search of catch and profit since time unknown. The town provides a convenient port for boats aiming at Georges Bank and the Grand Banks, 100 miles and 1,000 miles off shore into the North Atlantic, respectively.

Adventure, a gaff-rigged knockabout schooner, launched in 1926 to fish the then teeming Grand Banks. She and her crew of more than two dozen men fished the Grand Banks until 1953, when new, massive international trawlers with the capacity to catch and store tons of fish staked their claim to the North Atlantic fishing grounds. All told, Adventure took home $4 million of cod and halibut over her career. She was the most profitable ship of her time, she was the ultimate evolution of the fishing schooner, and when she was retired, Adventure was the last American dory fishing trawler left in the Atlantic.

The retired fishing ship became a tourist ship in 1954 and spent the next three decades ferrying vacationers up and down the Maine coast. Then, in 1988, the Adventure returned home: She was donated to the people of Gloucester to be preserved as a tall ship, and to be used to educate the public about the role of fishing in American history. The non-profit group Gloucester Adventure, Inc., was formed in 1988, the ship was named a National Historic Landmark in 1994, and today, Adventure is under the steady hand of a Brooksian, Captain Stefan Edick '80.

Edick has loved to sail since his childhood. His grandfather, he says, "taught every kid in the neighborhood how to sail down in Cape Cod," and Edick was quickly hooked. "I had already developed a deep affection for the ocean," he continues, "and I think what struck me was the independence and self-reliance element of sailing." He loves, he says, the idea that sailing requires a knowledge base — for example, an understanding of the points of sail — and also a healthy dose of bravery and faith in your own abilities.

Despite his love of sailing, Edick's becoming a professional sailor was, he says, "quite a happy accident." Edick spent most of his college career at Yale University studying

Victorian British history, but he found himself drawn to the study of Mandarin Chinese by the end of his time in New Haven. His studies, he says, were pulling him to Asia, and he wanted to go abroad. He found work managing a restaurant in Philadelphia while he was pursuing opportunities in Asia, and it's during this interim period that his life came knocking. He found an opportunity to work with and develop a volunteer guild that maintained and sailed a historic ship.

"And I got hooked," he says. "Before long, I put my life into a couple of sea bags and put to sea to see what it was like. I fully intended to do it for a couple of years, and there was certainly an urge to fit in adventure before life became too settled. But, here we are, more than 25 years later."

Edick received his first captain's license in 1996. Since then, he's held command of a dozen "traditional vessels" — an umbrella term that refers to historic vessels but also to modern reproductions of historic vessels that are rigged in traditional fashion. In total, he's sailed more than 200,000 miles to 26 countries on four continents. The draw of traditional sailing and sailing ships is twofold, Edick explains. First, he sees an inherent values system in sailing that matches his own internal values. Second, he finds meaning, service and purpose in programs of education under sail.

"First, sailing ships are communities," he says. "They're communities of purpose. Every single person on board a sailing ship has an important role to play, and the values system is based on hard work and personal responsibility, and on compassion and consideration for shipmates. And, I suppose, on a predisposition to problem solving. Captaining one of these ships is like continually solving a multiple- variable equation in real time."

Second, Edick finds purpose in the idea of "education under sail" — programs that teach seamanship and sailing skills, but that also "teach the sort of things that come as byproducts of being part of a cohesive community with a common purpose," he says. "It teaches communication, leadership and responsibility. And generally, in this day and age, it's something that people pursue to explore their own capacities," Edick explains. Many programs of education under sail are also academic in nature; they explore a topic that is relevant to the ship or the voyage's route.

Adventure hosts educational programming on the history of dory fishing and on the history of the local fishery. "I think that this sort of experiential education, and the sort of education that involves the outdoors and the ocean is even more essential to maintain in an era when our lives are overrun by technology," Edick asserts. "Students today are information-rich, but they come to school experience-poor."

Edick points to his own time at Brooks when he's asked what inspired him to take up his unique career as an educator. "The education part ties, in many ways, to the relationships and inspiration I received from many of the teachers who were at Brooks during my time there," he says. He points to faculty stalwarts such as Tom Burgess, Mark Shovan and Bill Poirot, among others. "You couple that with the sense of service that was promoted and embodied by [former school minister] George Vought," he concludes. "Teaching, and the impact that good teaching could have on someone's life, was very much present in my mind when I took up teaching on the water."