Monday, April 11, 2005

Immortalized by Carl Sagan?

Maybe you remember the famous mini-series Cosmos by the noted astronomer Carl Sagan? Regina appeared in a couple of episodes of Cosmos. Carl Sagan and a film crew came aboard for a couple of days to use Regina as a background for some segments of the mini-series. Carl was accompanied by his wife, Ann Druyan, and they took a cabin across from my bunk.

For one of the episodes they filmed members of our crew climbing aloft and working the rigging. The second segment they filmed appeared in episode 11 "The Persistence of Memory". The segment was about whale communication. On one of the takes Carl Sagan is on the starboard side walking forward towards the camera. Behind him, in the background and out of focus I was coiling some rope, wearing a red hat and yellow rubber boots. By the next day Carl, his wife and the film crew were gone.

Over a year later, I finally got to see Cosmos on TV. I saw Regina again and watched for my blurry cameo. It didn't last very long and if you didn't look out for it, you missed it. Regina and I were immortalized. At least Regina was in focus.

4 comments:

Eduardo Cavicchioni said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Rafael -||---\o/---||- said...

Carl Sagan is the mentor

prime said...

This is how I became interested in this magnificent ship and it's stories. I was watching "Cosmos" again late at night (I'm a champion insomniac these days, ever since I finished my tours in Iraq with the Marines) and, while I've done a bit of catboat sailing for my merit badge in the Scouts and three turns on the SS Wright with the USMC - two work ups and one deployment at the start of the Iraq war, I kind of became a little bit obsessed! I'm pretty handy with the Google, so when after a few hours of searching I couldn't even figure out what had ultimately become of her, I figured "Hey, just ask."

So this is me asking...is there anywhere an interested party could find a short history of the Regina Maris, from laying of keel to whatever has become of her? The best place would be Wikipedia - which ironically has many photos of the grand ship under various states of sail, but no article on the ship itself. If someone were to put together such a history, I would be happy to start the article and we can work together on it from there.

This ship deserves to be remembered by the world. I hope someone sees this and agrees. Here's my message in a bottle - lets see what becomes of it.

gzak said...

Your message in a bottle has been received, and I'm happy to say she now has a very detailed article about her on Wikipedia.