America's Tall Ship Was Built for the Nazis

The golden eagle figurehead on the bow of America's most famous training ship used to hold a swastika.

Built for Hitler's Navy

The ship now known as USCGC Eagle was built in 1936 at the Blohm+Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany.

Launched as the Horst Wessel, she became the flagship of the Kriegsmarine's sail training fleet, teaching future German naval officers to handle a square-rigged ship.

Adolf Hitler visited the ship in 1938 and sailed aboard her for about an hour.

When World War II began, she was pulled from training duty, armed with anti-aircraft guns in 1942, and used to ferry German refugees in the war's final months.

A Prize of War

When Germany surrendered in 1945, the Allies split up its four sail training ships as reparations.

The United States won the Horst Wessel in a drawing of lots against the Soviet Union and Britain.

In June 1946, a crew of six US Coast Guard officers and 55 enlisted sailors sailed her from Bremerhaven to New York, helped along by her former German captain and crew, who taught the Americans how to handle the traditional rigging.

The delivery voyage nearly ended in disaster when the ship ran into a hurricane in the Atlantic.

She was commissioned USCGC Eagle on May 15, 1946.

America's Tall Ship

Since that voyage, Eagle has trained cadets from the US Coast Guard Academy every year.

About 600 cadets train aboard her annually, and her commanding officer, Captain Kristopher Ensley, has said that over 80 years, that adds up to thousands of Coast Guard officers who began their careers on her deck.

She is now the second-oldest commissioned ship in the US military, behind only the Navy's USS Constitution.

Leading the 250th Birthday Parade

On July 4, 2026, Eagle led the International Parade of Sail through New York Harbor as part of Sail250, a celebration of America's 250th anniversary.

Dozens of tall ships from more than 20 nations followed her past the Statue of Liberty and up the Hudson River, in what organizers called the largest maritime gathering in US history.

The ship that once trained sailors for a regime America went to war against now leads its birthday party.