The Photo That Changed My Life

Et Cetera

FIRST-PERSON

NATHANIEL PHILBRICK

The award-winning author of In the Heart of the Sea, Mayflower, and the new Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution plumbs the depths of an old picture

"This picture of a tiny Sunfish sailboat, just ahead of a massive squarerigged tall ship, appears on an old poster that still hangs in the basement of my father's house on Cape Cod. The poster has always spoken to me. As I look back on it now, I see that it presaged much of what was to come—how, after a youth as a Sunfish racer, I was destined to return to the ocean, this time as a writer of history who told tales of the sea.

"And, oh, what a backstory the photo has! It was taken in 1976 as a fleet of more than a dozen tall ships gathered in the waters off Bermuda for the start of a race to New York. With a photographer in a chase boat, sailor Rick Wonson bravely steered his vessel onto the bow wave of the biggest ship of them all, the 375-foot Soviet bark Kruzenshtern, which blared its horn angrily. Soon after the picture was taken, two tall ships collided in the heavy sea traffic, blocking Wonson's path. As fate would have it, the photo boat's crew moved in swiftly and plucked Wonson and his Sunfish from the ocean. And in so doing, they saved the life of the daring helmsman in the photo that changed mine."

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