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Christmas at Sea....1897
Throughout the years, Christmas aboard whether seagoing or inland, has brought different traditions and different conditions. In common though, it is a day away from home and family.
In an article written in the Seamen's Church Newsletter, "The Lookout" in 1939, Captain Felix Riesenberg recalls the first Christmas he ever spent at sea:
"It was back in 1897, and I was at a very tender age. I was aboard a beautiful wooden ship, the A.J. Fuller, and we were beating our way around the Horn. We spent the day shifting the heavy sails. That night, a tired lot of men sat down to supper. The cold salt beef, the hard bread and the can of tea came from the galley in their usual order. Plum pudding! Christmas! The thoughts of loved ones far away and of those distant homes that perhaps were remembering some of us on the broad bosom of the deep waters, came as a pang. All of us, I believe, felt this.
For a moment or two silence ensued; then the mess cook burst through the fo'c'sle door with a big surprise.... "Pie, boys! Pie!" He shouted, depositing tin plates on the fo'c'sle deck, for we dined on the deck as a table. It was made from of doubtful origin, and the tea looked like twigs and leaves swept up somewhere."
Capt. Riesenberg had just graduated from the New York Nautical School earlier that year and the A.J Fuller was his first job at sea. He went on to a long and colorful career at both sea and ashore.
Capt. Riesenberg became superintendent of his alma mater, The New York Nautical School from 1917 to 1919 and again from 1923 to 1924.
The New York Nautical School is today called "Maritime College" and is part of the State University of New York (SUNY) system. Present day "cadets" are still taught the "Riesenberg Saying" which goes something like this "The sea is selective, short at recognition of effort and aptitude but fast in the sinking of the unfit."
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