PHILADELPHIA – Have plans to travel to the City of Brotherly Love this weekend? If so, and you’re a Coast Guard member, veteran,or simply love tall ships, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Eagle will be open for tours through Sun., March 20.
The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Eagle, America’s Tall Ship, arrived Fri., March 18 at Penn’s Landing, here, according to a release.
The Eagle will be open for free, public tours Friday until 6 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m.
Philadelphia is the first port visit for the Eagle this year, as the Coast Guard celebrates the 75th anniversary of its construction in Hamburg, Germany, in 1936.
The Eagle is the largest tall ship flying the Stars and Stripes and the only active sailing square-rigger in U.S. government service. The Eagle originally served as a training vessel for the German Navy in the late 1930s. Since 1946, the Eagle has sailed each summer in support of United States Coast Guard officer training programs, providing an unparalleled at-sea leadership and professional development experience for future officers of the U.S. Coast Guard.
The 75-year-old Eagle is a 295-foot, three-masted barque, with more than 23,500 square feet of sail and six miles of rigging.
The Eagle paid a visit to Coast Guard Training Center in Cape May in the mid-1960s, prior to sporting the orange and blue Coast Guard shield.
