Faculty
Maritime Studies Professor Mary Malloy
Mary Malloy quickly set the tone of Maritime Studies S-193. “She opened her first class by singing a song,” recalls Kett Murphy, 20, a student. “It was a very refreshing change from everything. It shocked us into attention.”
It was through music that Mary came to Maritime Studies. Music was Mary’s life until well into college, as she pursued a career as a classical violinist. In 1976, while an undergraduate, Mary traveled to Ireland and fell in love with traditional music. Upon her return to the states, Mary jettisoned the classical music and joined a traditional Irish band, playing violin and singing sea songs.
At a gig at the San Francisco Maritime Museum, Mary met her husband, Stuart Frank, now director of the Kendall Institute at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. The pair started their own band, and have performed traditional sea music for 25 years all over North America, Europe, Australia, and Japan. Mary plays violin and sings while Stuart plays guitar, squeeze boxes, and accordion. “It was from playing those songs, which were actually used to get the rhythm of work on shipboard, [that] I got interested in maritime history,” says Mary.
In 1991, while working on her Ph.D. in American civilization at Brown University, Mary first started teaching at SEA; the next year, she was hired full time (currently Mary’s working three-quarter’s time, and teaching a course at Harvard). In the 14 years she’s been with SEA, Mary’s teaching has evolved from looking at a very broad picture of seafaring to a narrower concentration on the place to which the students will be traveling. And of course, music is a part of the syllabus, as Mary and Stuart perform, usually at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. “Mary is a treasure. “Her playing her music was an amazing thing,” says Kett Murphy. “It brought the past alive.”
On one trip Mary took with the Seamans, she saw her doctoral thesis on trade between New England and the Northwest coast came alive. En route from Sitka to Tacoma, the Seamans sailed the route American trade ships had traveled two centuries before. At a stop at a tiny village in British Columbia, Mary was taken back 200 years, to the time when, at the very same spot, two American ships had had violent encounters with the native Haida Indians. “It was a moment,” she says, “that absolutely captured my imagination.”
Despite teaching more than 50 different Maritime Studies classes, Mary, an upbeat woman with a sing-song voice, remains energized. “It continues to astonish me. Each class is different from any other class, each has its own unique personality,” she says. “And because I’m gearing things for the specific cruise tracks, that is the thing that makes for the constant change.”
In Foxboro, Mary’s four-bedroom Queen Anne Victorian house is a maritime and music museum of sorts. She and her husband collect sheet music and other ephemera related to Grace Darling, an English maritime heroine of the 19th century. The couple also has more than 600 figurines playing the concertina or the accordion, from all over the world. Says Mary of the latter with a laugh: “The stupidest collection in the world.”
Mary recently finished two books she’s now trying to get published: a novel about a historian who solves mysteries by historical research and a biography of American sea captain Samuel Hill. With so many interests, however, teaching never takes a back seat, even to students long gone. Jason Greer, 25, of Montana, an alum of S-185 and a fledgling writer, says Mary took him under her wing and continues to encourage his writing through regular communication. “By far and away,” says Greer, “she has invested in my talents and education beyond any teacher. She is engaging, charismatic and passionate.”
Chief Scientist Chuck Lea
Chuck Lea, a bear of a man known as much for his signature pony tail as his sharp wit and loquacious manner, spoke recently about what has kept him enthused about teaching at SEA for 20 years. "Each time you do it," says Lea, a chief scientist, "It’s like a new adventure."
On one cruise north of the Gulf Stream, Chuck watched in awe as a large shark chomped away at the ship’s log while he was lecturing. "I could hardly believe it. I was looking aft on the Westward and I’m ‘yap, yap, yap,’ and I saw this big fin, just like on TV, flip around, come out of the water and flop onto the other side, right out there where the log was," he recalls. "And the log stopped spinning and I said, ‘God, the shark ate the log.’ "
A downside these days to his SEA life is juggling fatherhood with going off to sea. “It wasn’t any fun saying good bye for six weeks before, but it is a lot less fun with kids,” he says. “You miss the actual kid. We know this is how it will be as long as I do the job, and I’m not planning my escape.”
On the upside, Chuck, 53, holds a nine-month position, affording him more time than most dads have with their kids. “His big hobby when he’s home is playing with the toddler, particularly digging together in the yard,” says Bette, 35, a stay-at-home mom who was working on her Ph.D. at Northeastern University until the birth of James.
A native of Bow Mar, Colorado, Chuck majored in organismic biology at the University of Colorado in Boulder. In 1974, after serving five months on active duty in the Army learning how to shoot artillery in Oklahoma, Chuck headed to Texas A&M for his doctorate in oceanography. “I really enjoyed my invertebrate biology course and there were lots of swell invertebrates in the ocean,” he says. “Going to sea fed that adventure guy part of me.”
In graduate school, he discovered deep-sea squid. “I fell in love,” he says. “What isn’t there about the squid? What more could one want from an organism? They are neat to look at, in all different varieties, strange shapes, doing all sorts of things we can only imagine.”
In 1984, as Chuck’s graduate school days studying squid distribution across the ocean finished up, he landed a job with SEA. “One of the things that always and continues to be fun is that each class is like an experience that has a beginning, a middle, and an end to it—a complete unit of experience,” says Chuck. “With SEA, you plug in with the students and you’re going flat out with the students. “You try to get them to think and learn and you’re learning about them.”
His wife has fond memories of Chuck’s teaching style, noting that some classmates likened him to a silverback gorilla, the leader of the pack you don’t mess with. “I thought he was very intelligent and very funny; he has a very sharp wit,” recalls Bette of her 1990 cruise with Chuck on C-113. “His lecturing is immediately engaging, and he is one of the best lecturers I’ve ever had.”
Abigail Keene, an alum of S-184, admits that while students certainly respect Chuck, he is extremely approachable. “I was so impressed. There was no question he wouldn’t help me with, he never hesitated,” says Abigail. “The greatest thing about Chuck is his ability to make any situation funny and comfortable and that was wonderful, to have someone who would always make me laugh but also someone I respected.”
Over the years, Chuck learned another lesson about his job with SEA: time stands still. “I’ve done, like, 35 SEA Semesters and they average about 2,800 miles. You can look at it and say, holy cow, I could have driven that in a couple of days,” he says. “When you’re doing all those miles at four knots, that’s what makes it weird and interesting.”
Captain Phil Sacks
It was a summer’s night north of Bermuda, with winds as high as 60 knots and seas of 50 feet. As the Westward made her way through the storm, the chief mate was slammed by a wave and hurtled into the wheel, snapping it in half. Captain Phil Sacks quickly took charge. For the first time in his almost 25 years with SEA, Phil required students to stay below, as waves of eight feet broke across the side of the stern. With conditions too dangerous for the crew to rig emergency steering, Phil oversaw the safe navigation to Bermuda on only a half wheel.
One mate that night was Steve Tarrant, now an SEA captain. “I drew a lot of strength and experience from Phil on that trip,” says Steve. “He was just a solid leader. I really respected his style. He had a clear plan.”
Says Phil of the storm, one of the worst he’d experienced: “You do what you have to do, you can’t worry about it.”
Since his first cruise in 1979 with W-49, Phil’s journey of some 100,000 miles across the oceans with SEA has taken him through wildly exciting storms, memorable conversations at the rail, and just about every job one can have: mate, captain, engineer, marine superintendent. He’s been a part of the design and construction of the Seamans and the Cramer, as well as the refit of the Westward. He credits the new challenges of each job as part of the reason he’s stayed with SEA so long.
“People think I’m living a dream and on vacation all the time,” says Phil, 52, currently a captain. “I wouldn’t trade what I’ve done for anything. I’ve been incredibly lucky—I couldn’t have imagined anything better. Somehow the ocean and salt water has been in my blood. The ocean has always been my soul place.”
This sailing life springs from a non-sailing upbringing. Phil grew up on Long Island, in a family where no one sailed. After graduating from Brown with a degree in art and psychology, the lure of sailing drew Phil to Maine, where he apprenticed to a wooden boat builder and learned how to sail. “I wanted to sail and travel while I was considering other careers,” he says.
While in Maine, Phil built himself a house and honed his sailing skills. Eventually, he ended up captain of a yacht based out of Falmouth. It was during this time, in 1979, that he first learned of SEA. At the time, SEA was housed in a few rooms in the basement of a church in Woods Hole, with a small handful of administrators. As the years passed, SEA greatly expanded both on land and at sea.
“It’s not as different now as you might think,” says Phil. “The overall experience is that it is still difficult to be at sea. It’s a challenge, and the reward that people take away from the program is immense.”
From 1979 through 1983, Phil worked as a contract mate and engineer. After a hiatus of a few years, he returned. “I thought I’d stay two years for the expansion and it’s been 18 years,” he says. For the younger captains coming up the ranks, Phil’s longevity is invaluable. “For me he’s continuity,” says Tarrant. “He also represents enormous amounts of experience and knowledge.”
In the last two decades, Phil’s grown roots in Falmouth. Single, he owns a two-bedroom house in Sippewissett, with a stream running 20 feet from his home. Yet this avid traveler is rarely there: when not sailing with SEA, Phil can be anywhere in the world, mountaineering, surfing, or taking extended bike trips. The itinerant lifestyle, he admits, might be a factor in his not yet having a family; being out at sea or away for more than half the year takes a toll on relationships.
Another truth about his life’s course, of spending so much time out at sea, is that it’s kept him young. Says Phil: “If you decide not to grow up, you don’t grow up.
Chief Scientist Kara Lavender
It’s a good thing Chief Scientist Kara
Lavender doesn’t make snap judgments.
Here’s how she remembers the cruise for
her SEA job interview from Key West to
the Bahamas : “I was sick as a dog my first
day, it was pouring rain and I was
freezing, laying on the deck. I was
miserable, I thought, ‘I’ll do any other job
than this.’ But the next day the seasickness
passed, we had a few days of nice weather
and by the time I got off I thought, ‘This
is great.’ I realized I wanted to work at
SEA.” She was hired.
Kara, 31, with a PhD in physical
oceanography from Scripps, combines
teaching at SEA with researching currents
in the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution lab of Breck Owens. It was
while doing post-doc work at WHOI a
few years ago that Kara considered SEA.
“I’ve always wanted to teach,” says Kara,
“and this seemed like a really good opportunity
because I would be in the classroom
and at sea doing research.”
Brenna Mahoney, 21, is a Cornell
senior and was a student of Kara’s
on S-189. Brenna recalls rising around 3 a.m. after just two hours sleep to
deploy a trawl for her project on copepod
migration; to Brenna’s disbelief, Kara got
up to help. “She was so full of energy on
the boat, so bubbly,” says Brenna. “When
she brought up the Tucker trawl she said,
‘I think your hypothesis is correct! There
you go!’ It’s nice to know she was excited
about it because I was. It’s obvious that
she loves what she does.”
A native of Chappaqua , NY , Kara
majored in math at Duke. She didn’t grow
up visiting the ocean, but during her
junior year, Kara studied at Duke’s marine
laboratory. “I knew at some level I wanted
to be at the ocean,” says Kara. As a senior,
she discovered physical oceanography,
combining her love of math with the sea.
Kara headed off to Scripps, studying
large-scale currents.
While on land, Kara enjoys kayaking,
running, cycling, and
hiking. In July, Kara and a friend
backpacked the 93-mile Wonderland trail
encircling Mt. Ranier , climbing and
descending 23,000 feet in 11 days.
One thing that keeps Kara energized
are unique SEA moments. “Watching
students see their first dolphins or
whales or amazing sunset, you just see
this kind of raw ‘Wow, look at that.’ This
kind of teaching is so unique, you’re
experiencing it.”
Chief Scientist Jeff Schell
From childhood, Jeff Schell was
intrigued by the ocean. But growing up in
an Ohio farm town, he only imagined the
sea, via a picture book of 20,000 Leagues
Under the Sea . “It seemed to be the great
unknown. I had no frame of reference so
my imagination ran wild. I associated
adventure and mystery with oceanography,”
recalls Jeff, who didn’t experience the ocean
until his mid-teens. “Even before I saw the
ocean, I wanted to be an oceanographer. I
imagined Jacques Cousteau, a bunch of
scuba diving in tropical locations.”
Jeff, 35, did indeed become an
oceanographer, learning along the way that
scuba diving in tropical locales is usually not
part of the job. At Holy Cross in Worcester ,
MA, where he was captain of the soccer
team, Jeff stood out with his thesis on
salamanders. “On the weekends, while
everyone did something else, I collected
salamanders in the marshes,” says Jeff. “That
was the closest I got to oceanography.”
Jeff got closer still by earning a master’s
in oceanography at Stony Brook, studying
zooplankton distribution. At the same
time, he worked as an assistant SEA
scientist, doing 13 trips, his first in 1994.
“Oddly enough, I wasn’t drawn because
of the sailing, I was drawn because of the
science, and the teaching model SEA
uses,” he says. “It is a wonderful
environment to teach in.”
At SEA, Jeff quickly became known as
a stand-out teacher. “He provides so much
to the program,” says Academic Dean
Paul Joyce, a chief scientist on cruises with
Jeff. Says Captain Phil Sacks of S-192:
“He is a constant ball of energy,
enthusiastic about everything.”
In 1997, Audrey Meyer, then the
academic dean, gave Jeff an offer he never
forgot. “She said to me, ‘If you just had
your PhD, we’d sign you up to be our
chief scientist,” he says. So he earned his
doctorate at the University of Wisconsin in an intense four years, studying
freshwater zooplankton diversity. “As far
as my goal to come back, it never
wavered,” he says.
In September, 2003, Jeff attained his
goal. Hired as chief scientist, he turned in
his dissertation and three hours later drove
out to Woods Hole. The first song on the
car radio was ‘Walking on Sunshine.’ “I
discovered SEA in the early ’90s, and here
I am, 10 years later and I felt like I was
walking on sunshine, heading for Woods
Hole,” Jeff says. The trip wasn’t all
sunshine, however, as his Blazer broke
down three times along the way, each
breakdown requiring a repair. “But
eventually,” he says, “I made it.”
Jeff recently made another memorable
trip. “There’s a hazing ceremony for
sailors their first time across the equator,
and all of the students chipped in to haze
him,” recalls Captain Sacks. “You had to
crawl through a gauntlet of food and
rotten fish on deck. He was laughing, he
took it all in good fun.”
While ashore, Jeff lives in Woods Hole
and plays soccer in a competitive soccer
league. An avid reader, his tastes range from
fiction to essays on the environment. “For
the longest time getting here was my goal.
And then I found myself asking, ‘What’s
next’?,” says Jeff. “I now know I need to
become the best teacher I can be. And that
goal may be the more difficult to attain.”
Captain Steve Tarrant
Last February, while the Robert C.
Seamans anchored off French Polynesia ,
the class of S-191 befriended some native
dancers. The locals came aboard and
performed a dance while emitting
grunting, growling noises. Captain Steve
Tarrant was “sitting there, transfixed. He
was blown
away,” recalls
Chief Scientist
Jan Witting. As
the dancers
spoke no
English, Steve –
known for his
love of singing,
particularly sea
shanties – used
body language
to discern how
to imitate the
sounds. “He
did learn to
grunt with a
certain degree
of proficiency,”
says Witting,
laughing. “He’s
just a gregarious person and can jump into
a group of people and interact.”
Steve proved that on his first trip with
SEA in 1997, as third mate. “He is a good
leader,” recalls Phil Sacks. “It was very
stormy and as someone who was new and
inexperienced, he was very dependable.”
Steve also had a lot to learn. “I was bewildered,” he recalls in a telephone
interview from a phone booth in a village
on Vancouver Island during a port stop of
S-194. “I had been a mariner for many
years but I hadn’t gone through any
formal training. And it was the biggest
boat I was ever on.”
Steve, 38, a native of Norwalk , CT ,
grew up near Long Island Sound. His
father passed on a great love of the sea to
his son, who raced sailboats growing up.
After college, Steve delved into a plethora
of jobs involving both the sea and
teaching: lobsterman on Long Island
Sound while teaching emotionally
disturbed high school kids; mate/educator
on an Alaskan ecotourism boat; education
director of Sound Waters, which uses an
80-foot schooner to teach appreciation for
Long Island Sound; captain for a Hawaiibased
sailing program that rehabilitated
juvenile delinquents. “His commitment to
the students is 100 percent,” says Witting.
“He’s a selfless person.”
Steve continued up the ranks of SEA
before becoming full-time faculty in 2003,
all the while continuing work on other
vessels and spending up to nine months a
year at sea. “One of the things I love about
SEA is the sense of community and
teamwork that develops,” he says. “I like
sailing, the teaching and the whole
communion I feel when the breeze is
blowing pretty good and you have this
machine to harness this energy. That’s pretty spiritual.” Earlier this year, he
worked in Antarctica on a research vessel.
Still single, Steve relishes his itinerant life. “I
like to move around, I like to see stuff,” he
says. “Life is a smorgasbord and you have
to go out and eat it.”
