The full-rigger was awesomely silent as she ghosted regally beneath the photographers and onlookers gathered atop the Seawolf Park pavilion.
The group on the pavilion was also silent, save for the gentle clicking of their cameras. Then the setting sun emerged from behind the clouds and spotlighted the queen in gold, eliciting a reverent gasp from the watchers.
The scene was one of unreal contrast: The trim little ship with her glorious white cloud of sail and spider's web rigging did not belong in the same world as the smoke-belching freighters that dwarfed her as she passed, nor the ferryboats laden with Detroit's latest.
You held your breath and stood perfectly still, as she took shape from a wisp on the horizon, feeling that the slightest movement would cause the silent vision to dissolve like a mirage on a hot asphalt road.
But as she rounded the bend into the Galveston channel proper, turning full broadside, the mirage suddenly solidified and became real. Then, an uncontrollable grin twisted your face, and you had to suppress a genuine urge to whoop for joy.
For a sailing ship such as the Radich is unequivocally the most beautiful object man can, or ever has, or ever will, make. There is not an angle from which the craft does not appear the essence of grace.
And as she docks, the imagination soars. Her masts and yards towering over the dull gray warehouse are a scrimshaw carving come to life.
You look hard, and squint your eyes, and you can almost -- not quite, but almost -- catch a glimpse of a whole jungle of yards, and masts, and ratlines, and furled topgallants and royals, foresting the entire port area, as the commerce of another era bustles in oxcarts and diamond-stacked steam locomotives.
Indeed, as she is made fast, her mooring lines hove taut not by a droning winch but by a complement of her young crew of cadets straining at a capstan, as the mate barks orders through a brass megaphone, the sense of timelessness gains a firm foothold.
This is not her time, hers is an era ended long ago. Yet at the same time, she does not seem out of place.
Tied at a concrete wharf beside the most modern diesel tugs and pilot boats, Radich still does not seem "lost" in time, like a horse-drawn buggy on a busy freeway would. Indeed, far from being obsolete, the time of the Christian Radich and others like her may only be dawning.
In an age of scarce and expensive energy, the oil-burning steamers or the diesel-driven vessels are becoming more and more expensive to operate. Freight rates are constantly increasing to cover higher and higher fuel costs.
There are experiments now under way to see if a modern version of the windjammer can successfully compete with steam and motor vessels. There is talk of a new breed of ship, using the winds for power, with fiberglass sails that are electrically raised and lowered like window shades.
No, the Radich's visit to Galveston may turn out to be more of a herald than an echo.
Rather than being one of the last matriarchs of an extinct species, she may be the mother of a new age of sail. Perhaps it might be more appropriate to view the Radich in the light of an optimistic future for the shipping industry, rather than through tears of sorrow for bygone glory.
