The USCGC Eagle arrived in Portland Wednesday evening, passing under the St. Johns Bridge after traveling up the Columbia and Willamette rivers from Astoria. The 295-foot sailing vessel — a steel-hulled, three-masted barque — is now docked at Waterfront Park, where it joins eight other ships as part of the Portland Rose Festival’s Fleet Week.
Since being taken from Germany after World War II, the Eagle has trained generations of Coast Guard officers. Built in 1936 as the Horst Wessel and seized by the United States as a war reparation, the ship was renamed the Eagle and now serves as a hands-on training platform for cadets. It remains one of the last operational square-rigged sailing ships in the world — and the only one still in active U.S. military service.
This year, the Eagle is a centerpiece of Fleet Week, a Portland tradition dating back to 1907.
