More than an hour into the Sail4th 250 Parade of Sail, U.S. Coast Guard vessels ordered the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater out of the federal security zone — telling Captain Rory Kane the reason was the sloop's banners. The USCG has issued no public statement 14 days later.

The Hudson River Sloop Clearwater was more than an hour into its role as designated escort vessel for the Portuguese tall ship NRP Sagres when two U.S. Coast Guard vessels pulled alongside and ordered it out of the Sail4th 250 Parade of Sail on July 4. When Captain Rory Kane spoke with Coast Guard personnel vessel-to-vessel, he was told the reason: the sloop's banners.

Clearwater had two flying — "Save the Clean Water Act" and "Indigenous Rights, Racial Justice, Climate Solutions." It was given no option to lower them and continue. A detail of USCG, U.S. Navy, and NYPD vessels escorted the sloop south of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. There were 48 people aboard: 29 passengers and 19 crew and volunteers.

Executive Director David Toman and Captain Kane published a joint statement and formal press release on July 6, titled "Protecting Clean Water Is Not Political." The organization, based at 724 Wolcott Ave. in Beacon, says neither the participation agreement it signed with Sail4th 250 nor the Captain's Handbook distributed to all participating vessels prohibited banners. Clearwater had already sailed July 3 in the Class B Tall Ships Parade as an invited participant. As of the release date, Sail4th 250 organizers had offered no direct explanation. The U.S. Coast Guard, now 14 days out from the incident, has not issued a public statement.

The removal sits uneasily against Clearwater's 55-year record of flying messages on the Hudson. The sloop launched in 1969 under Pete Seeger's aegis as a vessel of environmental advocacy. At Operation Sail 1986, during the Statue of Liberty rededication parade, it displayed "Peace on Earth, And Sea, and Sky" and a banner of solidarity with the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior, bombed and sunk in Auckland Harbor the year before — the same type of national maritime celebration, different banners, no removal.

Toman and Kane said compliance was the only responsible call. "The safety of the 29 passengers, 19 crew members and volunteers came first, as always," the statement reads. Once past the Verrazzano, the crew hauled seine nets and taught harbor ecology in Gravesend Bay, doing, as the statement put it, what Clearwater has always done.

The timing added weight to the organization's argument. On July 3 — the day before the parade — Westchester County Department of Health issued an advisory urging residents in eight communities, including New York City, to avoid all recreational use of the Hudson River after a power failure at the Yonkers Sewage Treatment System released wastewater into the river. County Executive Kenneth Jenkins' office closed Phillips Manor Beach Club until further notice and warned against any water contact from Yonkers to Sleepy Hollow. Clearwater cited the overflow directly in its statement, arguing that the policies named on its banners are not abstractions but immediate threats to the water the sloop has navigated for more than half a century.

Since the incident, Toman and Kane wrote, Clearwater has heard from "longtime members, first-time supporters, fellow mariners, environmental organizations, musicians, elected officials, and those who learned of Clearwater through this news." None of those officials had been named on the record as of the July 6 statement.