Last week as part of the 4th of July festivities there was a tall ships festival. For the first time in 20 years the Coast Guard cadet training ship "Eagle" came to town. This ship was originally built as a Nazi training ship and was taken over as part of war reparations.

The Eagle is a three-masted sailing barque with 21,350 square feet of sail. It is home ported at the CG Academy, New London, Connecticut. It is the only active commissioned sailing vessel in the U.S. maritime services. She is one of five such training barques in world. Remarkably, her surviving sister ships include the Mircea of Romania, Sagres II of Portugal, Gorch Fock of Germany, and Tovarich of Russia.

Today's Eagle, the seventh in a long line of proud cutters to bear the name, was built in 1936 by the Blohm & Voss Shipyard, Hamburg, Germany, as a training vessel for German Navy cadets. It was commissioned Horst Wessel and served as a training ship for the Kriegsmarine throughout World War II.

Horst Wessel (1907-1930) was a Nazi party member, SA Stormtrooper and purported pimp who was killed fighting German Communists in 1930. Some months before he died, Wessel had written the verses to what would become the "Horst Wessel Lied" but it first gained popular currency when a choir of Stormtroopers performed it at his funeral. It was later recorded, and in 1931 it became the official anthem of the Nazi Party, played alongside Deutschland über Alles at all official occasions.

Much more info here

I do some work of the the coasties and they asked me to shoot some stuff for fun. Might sell a few shots for their office walls. Their guys were up in helos, I'm angling for that the next time... These were shot with my Nikon D80, using a Sigma 17-70 and 70-300. I used a polarizing lens on most of them, it was very hazy, hot and and humid.

Many more photos here