The Tribune

BY ERIC WIBERG

Captain William and Augusta May Pond began teaching students afloat in Boston in the 1920s, continuing to Florida and the Bahamas into the 1950s. Their varied sailboat fleet included classic yachts on their second lives: Polaris, Indra, Gulnare, and the Morning Star, aboard which they took young men through The Bahamas on extended cruises. They were rescued by Marion ‘Joe’ Carstairs, and US Coast Guard planes and boats. In 1942, during the invasion of the region by 115 German and Italian enemy submarines or U-boats, Captain Pond said “the Bahamas cruise continued in spite of the war – we found the part of five months relatively safe among the many islands.”

A Connecticut and Harvard man, Pond told Time Magazine that “any boy this side of imbecility can be prepared to enter college.” He went to Phillips Exeter Academy, and on graduating from Harvard in 1926 founded the Pond School to prepare students to enter and survive university. He and newlywed Augusta May purchased the 35-foot sailing yawl Gulnare to merge sailing and teaching, finding that the students “liked it so well that they asked their parents for enough money to sail down the Maine coast. When all returned a month later to pass their College Boards with flying colors.” Soon they bought Indra, and in 1933 sailed south. William was skipper and educator, and Augusta oversaw health and the galley, supported by Martin, a Jamaican cook.

At 72 ft, Indra was a vastly greater responsibility – and cost. The Ponds borrowed $6,000 from a parent, and in November 1936 the yacht was arrested in Florida. Pond said: “I am not going to disappoint these boys, [even] if I have to take them back north by bus and get another boat.” In 1937 the Ponds sold Indra to buy Polaris, built by famed designer Nat Herreshoff in 1903 as Irolita; she was 70 ft long, 15.5 ft wide, and 6 ft 7 in deep. Her owner in 1933 she was Ted Zickes of Cleveland, who owned a shipyard on the Great Lakes. Zickes is cited in Haziel Albury’s My Island Home as among the first to set up winter homes in Man-o-War Cay, and had a colorful maritime history. On December 8, 1937 Polaris left Florida on the couple’s fifth annual cruise with daughter, Katherine.

Polaris crossed the Gulf Stream and Bahama Banks, and was entering the Tongue of the Ocean when they ran aground on the Joulters Cays, north of Andros. Unable to work themselves free, Pond issued a radio mayday. T. Daniel Albury, the wireless operator on Whale Cay, owned by heiress Carstairs, heard the transmission. Albury’s son Steven says he had worked for Batelco. Polaris’ distress brought US Coast Guard airman Lieutenant F A Erickson to the scene, and when he landed off Whale Cay he was met by a woman “clad in men’s clothing:” the war veteran Carstairs. She and Albury joined Erickson on a flight to the Ponds on Polaris, where the situation was deemed manageable, though the wooden boat was leaking badly. A Coast Guard patrol boat was sent from Fort Lauderdale and the students returned to Florida aboard her for repairs. In the US, Jamaica, and Bahamas, headlines read: “Betty Carstairs Emerges from Her Hiding When Nearby Yacht Needs Aid.”

In the summer of 1939, the Ponds bought their crown jewel: the 98-foot steel schooner Morning Star, launched in the Adriatic in 1927 as Dorello III. This eye-catching and powerful yacht was 98 ft long, 17 ft wide and 10 ft deep, and they immediately set to work fitting her out. Students were issued t-shirts emblazoned with a star with the word Morning written through it in curved script. In December, 1941 they sailed from Baltimore to Miami, continuing the curriculum “despite the war and its attendant hazardous conditions at sea.” By mid-January, Morning Star was on the way to Nassau. In case they sighted an enemy submarine they were ordered to transmit “submarine sighted” to Bahamian authorities.

It was a tight ship which “shines like a new ice-cream cart,” wrote a journalist. “In addition to the regular prep-school curriculum, the students, who also act as crew, study and practice celestial navigation, and of necessity keep a sharp lookout for hostile enemy submarines.” As a routine, Morning Star did not get under way until the morning’s lessons had been learned. The day began at 6:30 am with a plunge into the ocean. Breakfast was served at 7:30 am, lunch at 12:30 pm, and dinner at 5:30 pm. Pond said “the idea is to produce a group of integrated and alive youngsters who, in the spring, can pass their college boards, if that is what they want. Or can live in daily contact with their equals, and not lose their bearings.”

Discipline was unusual but effective. During one cruise, the crew went to the Governor’s Ball and managed to “get tight,” or drunk. As punishment, Pond dictated a letter that each of them was forced to write to their parents. Though he never mailed the letters, shore-side drinking was curbed. Pond’s idyll came crashing down on 13 May, 1942, when Morning Star returned to Miami after five months of cruising from Grand Bahama, Abaco, Inagua, to Crooked, Acklins, and beyond. With the United States at war, most of his crew of young American men volunteered for military duty. Overnight, the Pond’s personnel and client base evaporated, their business model crushed – or paused.

Pond felt he and Augusta did well preparing his pupils for the rigors of wartime. In the Nassau Tribune, he wistfully said that “one result of the cruise is that most of the boys have decided to go into the service, or to officer-candidate training schools. Their experience will be of great service to them.” The US Navy claimed the Morning Star, refit and commissioned her as USS Forbes, IX-90. Converted to a staysail schooner, she later set a new record for the Trans-Pacific Race in 1949, for which her exploits are legendary. Then, on 17 June, 1963 hard-pressed to start a Trans-Atlantic race in Newport, Morning Star left Panama on her final voyage. They didn’t make it, due to currents. Two days later, just after midnight, they ground on the reef on Providencia Island, off Nicaragua. Rescued by local fishermen, each crew salvaged a silver goblet.

Captain and Mrs. Pond intended to ride out World War II in the Bahamas, but the war scattered their students and shuttered their school. The couple moved to Florida, where they continued education and later trading by sea from their base on the west coast. The high tide of their success would always be sailing Morning Star through the Bahamas. And for this writer no vessels and owners popped up in so many different contexts as the Ponds and Morning Star, yet until Harvard University generously shared their alumni updates, it remained an extraordinarily difficult tale to unravel. Those boys and their floating headmaster contributed to the maritime history of The Bahamas and no doubt, like William, Augusta May and Katherine Pond, they returned.