Tall ship boasts of Jewish crew member
By ALAN SMASON, Exclusive to the CCJN
With her dirty blonde hair trussed in a long, braided ponytail, her T-shirt and her strong Ashkenazic features, Inbal Newman could easily be mistaken for a camp counselor at a Jewish summer camp. She has a remarkable air of self-confidence and of being totally at home in her own space. But this is a place few others have enjoyed or will ever experience.
Inbal Newman aboard the tall ship Picton Castle moored along the Mississippi River. (Photo by Alan Smason)
When the four tall ships came into New Orleans this past weekend to help usher in the tricentennial celebrations, Newman and her shipmates aboard the Barque Picton Castle, were there to take part in the series of tours and training afforded them by the city and the non-profit organization Tall Ships New Orleans.
Hundreds of locals and tourists alike welcomed the Picton Castle and the other three tall ships, which were the Osterscheld from the Netherlands and the two American entries – the Elissa out of Galveston, Texas and the Oliver Hazard Perry from Newport, Rhode Island.
Based in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, the Picton Castle is a 179-foot, three-masted, barque-rigged ship and Newman is poised to be on its seventh world cruise, once repairs are affected here in New Orleans. Several of the temporary crew members are students from the New Orleans Military and Maritime Academy. Until the tall ship departs on April 29, they are taking part in training as part of their tracks towards maritime careers
But Newman is on a much different career track. In fact, she is trained as a graphic artist, hardly the kind of credentials that would establish her as an invaluable member of a tall ship crew.
Working as a volunteer onboard the ship, the 26-year-old is interested in traveling and seeing exotic ports of call from the unique vantage point aboard the Picton Castle. Tall ships like these have largely disappeared in the modern maritime world, but they are a romantic, albeit slow, mode of transport she is looking forward to enjoying.
The tall ship Barque Picton Castle with crew member Inbal Newman. (Photo by Alan Smason)
How she came to be part of this crew is an interesting tale. She is the granddaughter of Holocaust-era survivors on both sides of her family.
“It kinda makes sense that I am here now, doing my thing (and) wandering. Their families were also immigrants from other places,” she confesses.
Her father’s family roots extended back to Ukraine and Czechoslovakia, but he was uprooted by the war. Weakened by typhus he was rescued by the Allies at Dachau, but his health was so tenuous that he was sent to England to recover and convalesce. When he did regain his health, he was a man without a country and was given a choice to settle in any country that was a member of the United Kingdom. He chose Canada. That’s how her paternal grandparents eventually met in Halifax in the Great White North.
Newman’s parents hailed from both North and South America. While her father was from Canada, her mother’s family left Poland in the early 1930s’s in search of a better life in Argentina. The two met and fell in love as students at Hebrew University in Jerusalem “around late 1977 or early 1978.” He did not speak Spanish and she had only a halting command of English. So, the two conversed in Hebrew during their courtship. The couple lived for a time in Israel in the late 1970s and early 1980s until they opted to move to the United States, where they have lived ever since. He worked as a mathematics professor, while his wife, who had studied psychology and sociology, took on work with an airline as a travel agent. Both of her parents recently retired.
Inbal Newman at last week’s Tall Ships New Orleans event. (Photo by Alan Smason)
After moving from Israel to the United States, Newman’s parents lived for a time in Mequon, Wisconsin, a small town located north of Milwaukee that was noted for its Chabad House. Her parents wanted an observant Jewish home and experience. Two older brothers came about before Newman’s arrival in 1991.
Her name, Inbal, is Hebrew for a clapper, like what might be found in a pealing bell. This is an acknowledgment of her parents’ connection to Jewish culture, but also the name of a famous ballet troupe from Israel. It’s an unusual name, but one that she treasures.
A quick learner, Newman moved to New York after graduating from high school and soaked up the culture there while attending to her studies. She worked in New York for eight years and during that time became interested in the tall ships that regularly sailed or were moored near the Financial District.
“I was working in Manhattan at the South Street Seaport Museum, which has original tall ships, working vessels,” she explained. “They have some that are not going out; they just stay at the dock. They have some that go out on sails in New York harbor; they go out in front of the Statue of Liberty.”
She learned how to coil ropes and how to tie off the sheets, or sails. When she mastered one skill, she would be taught another. Eventually, she worked on the Pioneer, one of the ships that sailed into New York Harbor regularly. “You learn from the very bottom,” she continued. “When you show them, like I know how to curl this line, they’ll say ‘Okay, we’ll show you how to do this.'”
While aboard the Pioneer as an unpaid volunteer, her love for sailing increased. It was there she met two fellow crew members, one of whom became the Picton Castle’s chief mate and the other who works as a lead seaman.
One of the tall ships moored at Woldenberg Park. (Photo by Alan Smason)
After returning from a trip aboard the Picton Castle, the two met up with Newman at a restaurant in New York. The two offered Newman a chance to go on the world cruise, which included the trip to the Gulf Coast – Pensacola – and the event last weekend in New Orleans with the other tall ships.
“They’re paid crew,” she noted. “I’m just here for fun. I go where the ship goes.”
She is planning on using funds she has saved to pay for the trip, but since the ship has a fully functioning kitchen and galley, she doesn’t have to pay for food and her lodging on board is more than adequate. Meanwhile, she gets to see the world from a perspective few will ever see all while keeping several of her graphics art clients.
Newman uses the Internet and emails to communicate with the outside world.
“I come from a family of wanderers,” she noted. “They’re all moving around all the time, either unintentionally like my grandfather or in the case of my grandparents, or like my parents deciding to move to Israel and then deciding to move to the States.”
Newman stated that her parents were idealistic “hippie-types” with a Zionist mentality when they were living in Israel, a country she has visited twice, once with her parents and then later on a Birthright trip as a 20-something.
“I feel like them also,” she concluded. “I have roots in all of these places, but I also want to go out and see the world.”
