A&M Maritime Academy wants bigger ship
For 12 years, cadets at Texas A&M University at Galveston have not exactly had a ship to call their own.
Since the departure of the Texas Clipper II in 2005, the school hasn’t had a training ship large enough to accommodate all of the 300 or so students enrolled in the Texas A&M Maritime Academy.
The Sea Aggies’ current training ship, the General Rudder, is small. The Rudder, which arrived in Galveston in 2012, can carry only about 50 students at a time.
Cadets need to sail a specified number of hours to earn a certification that will set them up for maritime careers, whether in the U.S. Coast Guard or aboard a merchant ship.
The university has in recent months launched a campaign to get a full-sized ship back on campus, said Col. Mike Fossum, the chief operating officer at Texas A&M University at Galveston.
The effort is about holding the federal Maritime Administration to its word to replace the Clipper, which was called back into federal service after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Fossum said.
The school already has gotten a resolution of support from Galveston County commissioners, and U.S. Rep. Randy Weber helped arrange a meeting between school administrators and the Maritime Administration.
“The Maritime Academy needs a ship that adequately fits the needs of our cadets,” Weber said. “Unfortunately, the current vessel simply does not. We are working closely with the U.S. Maritime Administration to get our Ags a proper vessel.”
No promises have been made, but Fossum — a former astronaut who was named the Galveston campus’ chief operating officer last year — said he thought the message was being heard in Washington.
The lack of a full-sized ship has had real effects on the school. For cadets to get the hours they need, the university has had to strike deals with other maritime academies. Galveston students have been sent to California, Maine and New York when extra spots are made available on ships in those states.
That plan can cause disruptions in students’ schedules and cost them more because they have to pay their own way to those places. It is inadequate to address the demand at the Galveston campus.
“We’re using the leftovers that the other state maritime academies have,” Fossum said. “They all have ships big enough to meet their training needs. We do not.”
This year, Texas A&M at Galveston reached a deal with the Massachusetts Maritime Academy to lease its training ship, the TS Kennedy. For the first time in years, a full class of Aggies is sailing together for the summer, Fossum said.
Strategies the school has used to provide students with the training hours they need aren’t sustainable, he said. During admission last fall, the school had to turn away 50 students from the Maritime Academy because it couldn’t promise to train them, Fossum said.
Also, 30 students who graduated from Texas A&M at Galveston this year didn’t have the required number of sea days to earn certifications from the Maritime Academy. They are completing their training this summer, Fossum said.
Along with the benefit to students, the university is making an argument that a new ship would be good for Texas and the Gulf Coast.
After Hurricane Harvey, which struck last August, 35 Federal Emergency Management Agency volunteers were stationed aboard the General Rudder. More were later stationed aboard two other training ships deployed to Texas from the Northeast after the storm.
A man died Sunday when an 18-wheel tanker truck and another vehicle collided, Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services reported.
The man, described as being in his 30s, was pronounced dead at the scene, medics said, and there were no other patients.
The crash occurred about 4:45 p.m. along the eastbound frontage road of U.S. 290 near Harris Branch Parkway in Northeast Austin.
Two men suffered potentially life-threatening stab wounds Saturday night in North Austin, according to Austin-Travis County EMS officials.
Medics responded to the incident in the 9100 block of Northgate Boulevard, the officials said. A man in his 30s and a man in his 20s were taken to Dell Seton Medical Center.