U.S. Coast Guard tall ship once part of Hitler’s navy sails into Victoria for visit

The U.S Coast Guard Barque Eagle tall ship arrives in Victoria, B.C., on Tuesday, July 15, 2025. The Barque Eagle is the tallest ship in the U.S. and serves as the training vessel for the U.S. Coast Guard Academy during the summer months. The ship, built in 1936 in Germany and originally a German Navy training vessel, is approximately 90 metres (295 feet) long and nearly 46 metres (150 feet) tall. It will be open for public tours until Thursday while docked in Victoria. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

When Deleon Guerrero last visited Victoria in 2023, he arrived by car as part of a family road trip from Oregon.

On Tuesday, he sailed into Victoria as a Cadet on board the U.S. Coast Guard Barque Eagle as a Canadian navy vessel saluted America’s only active square-rig tall ship with an arch of water streaming into the clear blue sky.

The ship, which is almost as long as an American football field and as tall as a 15-storey building, has been Guerrero’s home since June 13, when he and 150 other Coast Guard Academy cadets boarded the vessel in Astoria, Ore. to join her 60 permanent crew members.

Guerrero was among the cadets leading media through the ship for a tour before it docked on Tuesday following its overnight arrival from Seattle.

Seen from a distance, it conjures up images of a distant era, when ships travelled the oceans with no source of power other than the force of the wind. Painted in the distinctive white and red colours of the U.S. Coast Guard, its three masts reaching into the air.

The sense of history also permeates when one squeezes through the officers mess, past photos of four former U.S. presidents — Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, then vice-president Lyndon B. Johnson, and Bill Clinton — during their visits on board.

Old photos of Kriegsmarine cadets and blue prints in German also point to the dark origins of the vessel. Built in Hamburg after the Nazis had come to power, it entered service in 1936 as a training vessel bearing the name of Horst Wessel, a former member of the Sturmabteilung, whom the Nazis mythologized following his death in 1930.

The United States claimed the vessel as a war prize after the Second World War, sailing it from Germany across the Atlantic in 1946. Small elements of this past are still visible in a few spots, including the wooden steering wheel on the aft-deck as the brass ring lining the wheel still bears the vessel’s original name.

For Guerrero, Tuesday’s tour was also a chance to share a part of his family history, as one of his aunts graduated from the Coast Guard Academy in 2004. That history, coupled with growing up on Saipan, the largest of the Northern Mariana Islands, an unincorporated U.S. territory in the South Pacific, all contributed to Guerrero’s decision to join the Coast Guard, rather than the U.S. Navy.

“We are just guarding the coast, while the navy actually goes out,” he said. “So, at least for my morals, I’d rather protect instead of fight. So, I don’t want to go out and be very aggressive, and the coast guard does align with my morals and values in terms of defending and just saving those who are caught in a sticky situation.”

Third-Class Cadet Olivia Spada from Huntington, N.Y., agreed. “The Coast Guard is a very humanitarian mission,” she said. Like Guerrero, she also has a family connection. Her older brother is training at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy to become an officer.

Despite the Eagle’s impressive size, quarters are tight for Spada and her fellow cadets, with more males than females. Spada shares a sleeping area with 12 other female cadets.

The quarters were even closer when Rear-Admiral Charles Fosse sailed with the vessel as a cadet in the late 1980s, he said.

Fosse now commands the Thirteenth Coast Guard District headquartered in Seattle, but still thinks fondly of his time on board the Eagle.

“It brings back a lot of great memories, and you make friendships and bonds that never break,” he said. “We still talk about the time we had together.”

Forging this sense of camaraderie is among the goals of the Eagle, said Commander Kristopher Ensley, who assumed command of the vessel three weeks ago, after having served as the ship’s operations officer and navigator from 2012 to 2014.

“We are introducing them (cadets) to seamanship, saltwater navigation, engineering, and most importantly, we are teaching them how to assess risk and be team players, and those skills are invaluable for the rest of their time as cadets, but also as an officer.”

Ensley did not sail on the Eagle when it last visited Victoria in 2008.

Much has changed since then, and perhaps nothing more so than the relationship between Canada and the United States amid unprecedented trade tensions between the two countries and threats of annexation by U.S. President Donald Trump.

“Yeah, I can’t speak to the politics,” Ensley said, when asked to comment on the tensions. “I drive ships for a living. I am a Coast Guard military officer. What I can is that we have a close and integral working relationship with our Canadian partners.”

Ensley added that the Canadian Coast Guard has welcomed his ship and crew with open arms.

“Beyond the cadet training, our secondary mission, is to foment America’s partnerships, to help fertilize those partnerships, and the Canadian Coast Guard is a huge partner with the U.S. Coast Guard, and we are excited to be here to help build that partnership a little bit further down the road.”

The ship is open to free public tours July 16 and July 17.

Cadets will get shore leave during their time in Victoria and for Guerrero, it will be a chance to compare and contrast the city from his last visit. But for most crew members, including Ensley, it will be their first time in the B.C. capital.

“I hear the people are friendly,” Ensley said. “I’m beyond excited to bring Eagle to Victoria.”

This report by Wolfgang Depner, The Canadian Press, was first published July 15, 2025.