Records of a School at Sea

by Annie Tummino, Interim Library Director and Archivist

One of my favorite things about working as the SUNY Maritime College Archivist is that our institutional records are incredibly unique. For the first 64 years of the school’s existence, from 1874 until the establishment of a campus at historic Fort Schuyler in 1938, students were educated entirely at sea. First on the square-rigged sloop-of-war St. Mary’s, then on the Newport (a sail-steam hybrid), and finally, on the first of several steam powered ships named the Empire State. As the first nautical school in the nation, Maritime College became the model for the subsequent maritime academies.

In the early days, the New York Nautical School (as Maritime College was then called) served as a public grammar school for the City of New York, with boys as young as 15 learning how to use sextants, unfurl sails, and tie knots, along with reading and arithmetic. The archival records provide vivid glimpses into the lives of these early students, who eschewed more traditional career paths in favor of a life at sea as Merchant Mariners. These young men endured strict disciplinary codes and long hours, but they also travelled the world and gained valuable skills for the labor market (not unlike today, though with women included).

It’s not surprising that the institutional records of the college were not systematically collected and preserved during the schoolship days, when the school had no land base. Thankfully, from the late 1940s onward, librarians such as Terrance Hoveter, Filomena Magavero, and Richard Corson actively solicited alumni, faculty, and staff for materials documenting the school’s early history. Due to these outreach efforts, several storage cabinets were filled to the brim with papers, logbooks, and artifacts. However, these materials remained largely unprocessed until 1974, when Carol Finerman, a graduate student in the Palmer School of Library Science, was hired to organize the records in conjunction with the college’s centennial. Luckily for me, Finerman made this work the centerpiece of her master’s thesis, a copy of which I found in the archives. The report has proven extremely useful as we move the archives forward.

Next, Jannette is working on the student files, which include include applications, correspondence, conduct books, admissions books, and progress registers. These records contain extensive genealogical data and provide insights into school curricula, policies, and administration. Stay tuned for updates and links to additional finding aids!

Related posts:

Medical practice management software, a modern health information technology, helps healthcare providers and medical organizations to automate their regular and routine administrative processes…

Yet the most beloved pencil often is the soft kind that yields to slight pressure to produce a better work. This type seldom is really sharp, but no one really cares. A pencil can make mistakes. The…

I am FINISHED!!! I edited the rest of the documentary together. I met with bro. Mawlam last week on what to change. I worked on fixing all the audio and filling right with left channel. I perfected…