Schooner Te Vega

Operation Sail 1976: T/S Te Vega on the Hudson River.
History
Name:	Etak
Builder:	Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft Kiel, Germany
Launched:	1930
United States
Name:	Juniata IX-77
Namesake:	Juniata River
Operator:	US Navy
Acquired:	1942
In service:	11 August 1942
Out of service:	1 January 1945
Fate:	Sold to civilian
General characteristics
Type:	Gaff-rigged auxiliary schooner
Tonnage:	242
Length:	137 ft (42 m)
Beam:	28 ft 2 in (8.59 m)
Draft:	17 ft 5 in (5.31 m)
Propulsion:	Built with a 200-hp Winton marine diesel engine Replaced by a 400-hp English Mirrlees in the 1950s From the mid-1990s a 700-hp German MTU
Speed:	11 kn (20 km/h; 13 mph)

Te Vega is a two-masted, gaff-rigged auxiliary schooner. Originally launched as the Etak, she was designed by New York naval architects Cox & Stevens in 1929 for American businessman Walter Graeme Ladd and his wife, Catherine (“Kate”) Everit Macy Ladd. Etak ("Kate" spelled backwards) was built at the Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft shipyard in Kiel, Germany, and launched in 1930. During World War II she served the US Navy as Juniata (IX-77). She is among the largest steel-hulled schooners afloat.

The Etak has been renamed several times, her subsequent names being Vega, USS Juniata and Te Vega. She is currently Deva.

The ship has changed hands over fifteen times and has undertaken a variety of functions: private yacht, United States Navy patrol vessel during World War II, charter yacht in the West Indies and French Polynesia, research vessel for Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station, and school ship for seaborne prep school the Flint School. She is one of the many tall ships to have appeared in a feature film, the cinerama travelogue South Seas Adventure.

Some of the ship's more colorful owners have been Adolph Dick of the Dick sugar and banking family of New York; Hans-Wilhelm Röhl, co-owner of the Rohl-Connolly Co. (builder of the Port of Los Angeles breakwaters) and investigated in 1942 for pro-Nazi sympathies; aviation pioneer Thomas F. Hamilton; Crane Co. heir Cornelius Crane; renowned Honolulu-based skipper Omer Darr; Stimson Lumber Company scion Harold Miller; Dutch financier (and kundalini yoga teacher) Pieter Schoonheim Samara; and Calisto Tanzi, ex-chairman of the Parmalat group. In January 2006 she was sold to Italian fashion magnate Diego Della Valle (Tod's et al.).