Falls of Clyde is the last surviving iron-hulled, four-masted full-rigged ship, and the only remaining sail-driven oil tanker. Designated a U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1973, and National Historic Landmark in 1989, she is now a museum ship in Honolulu, but her condition has deteriorated. She is currently not open to the public. In September 2008, ownership was transferred to a new nonprofit organization, the Friends of Falls of Clyde, which intends to restore her. Efforts to raise $1.5 million to get the ship into drydock have not succeeded as of 2015. An additional $30 million may be needed to fully restore the ship. Falls of Clyde was built in 1878 by Russell and Company in Port Glasgow in Scotland, launched as the first of nine iron-hulled four-masted ships for Wright and Breakenridge’s Falls Line. She was named after the Falls of Clyde, a group of waterfalls on the River Clyde, and built to the highest standard for general worldwide trade, Lloyd’s Register A-1. Her maiden voyage took her to Karachi, now in Pakistan, and her first six years were spent engaged in the India trade. She then became a tramp pursuing general cargo such as lumber, jute, cement, and wheat from ports in Australia, California, India, New Zealand, and the British Isles. read more…
HMS Trincomalee is a Royal NavyLeda-classsailing frigate built shortly after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. She is now restored as a museum ship in Hartlepool. Trincomalee is one of two surviving British frigates of her era—her near-sister HMS Unicorn (of the modified Leda class) is now a museum ship in Dundee. After being ordered on 30 October 1812, Trincomalee was built in Bombay (todays Mumbai) by the Wadia family of shipwrights in teak, due to oak shortages in Britain as a result of shipbuilding drives for the Napoleonic Wars. The ship was named Trincomalee after the 1782 Battle of Trincomalee off the Ceylon (Sri Lanka) port of that name. read more…
The Mayflower was an English ship that famously transported the first EnglishPuritans, known today as the Pilgrims, from Plymouth, England to the New World in 1620. There were 102 passengers, and the crew is estimated to have been about 30, but the exact number is unknown. This voyage has become an iconic story in some of the earliest annals of American history, with its story of death and of survival in the harsh New England winter environment. The culmination of the voyage in the signing of the Mayflower Compact was an event which established a rudimentary form of democracy, with each member contributing to the welfare of the community. There was a second ship named Mayflower that made the London to Plymouth, Massachusetts voyage several times. read more…
Dar M?odzie?y (Polish: Gift of the Youth) is a Polish sail training ship designed by Zygmunt Chore?. A prototype of a class of six, the following five slightly-differing units were built subsequently by the same shipyard for the merchant fleet of the former Soviet Union. Her sister ships are Mir, Druzhba, Pallada, Khersones and Nadezhda. read more…
Moshulu (ex Kurt) is a four-masted steel barque built by William Hamilton and Company on the River Clyde in Scotland in 1904. The largest remaining original windjammer, she is currently a floating restaurant docked in Penn’s Landing, Philadelphia, adjacent to the museum ships USS Olympia and USS Becuna. Originally named Kurt after Dr. Kurt Siemers, director general and president of the Hamburg shipping company G. H. J. Siemers & Co., she was, along with her sistership Hans, one of the last four-masted steel barques to be built on the Clyde, (Archibald Russell was launched in 1905). Constructed for G. H. J. Siemers & Co. to be used in the nitrate trade, at a cost of £36,000, she was launched in 1904. Her first master was Captain Christian Schütt, followed by Captain Wolfgang H. G. Tönissen in 1908 who made a fast voyage from Newcastle, Australia, to Valparaíso with a cargo of coal in 31 days. Between 1904 and 1914, under German ownership, Kurt shipped coal from Wales to South America, nitrate from Chile to Germany, coal from Australia to Chile, and coke and patent fuel from Germany to Santa Rosalía, Mexico. read more…
Großherzogin Elisabeth is a 1909 German sailing ship built as the San Antonio, a replacement for the 1907 freighter San Antonio which had been lost in a collision at sea. read more…
The BAP Unión is a training ship of the Peruvian Navy. It is a four-masted steel hulled full rigged barque built in 2014 by Shipyard Marine Industrial Services of Peru, known as SIMA. In June 2015, the ship received its masts and propeller; and the interior fitout began in charge of contractors Acopafi and MO Contract. Also, according to an agreement between SIMA and Navantia, the ship was provided with an “Integrated Control System Platform, Navigation and Communications”. The ship’s name honors a Peruvian corvette that took part in the first stage of the 1879-1883 War of the Pacific as part of a naval squadron under the command of Miguel Grau, the most important hero of the Peruvian Navy. Like other similar ships, the Unión has been conceived not only for training purposes, but also to be a sailing ambassador for her home country. Due to its features and dimensions, it has been considered (as of the date it was commissioned) as the largest sail vessel in Latin America. read more…
Dhow is the generic name of a number of traditional sailing vessels with one or more masts with lateen sails used in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean region. Historians are divided as to whether the dhow was invented by Arabs or Indians. Typically sporting long thin hulls, dhows are trading vessels primarily used to carry heavy items, like fruit, fresh water or merchandise, along the coasts of Eastern Arabia (Arab states of the Persian Gulf), East Africa, Yemen and some parts of South Asia (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh). Larger dhows have crews of approximately thirty, smaller ones typically around twelve. read more…
The Dar Pomorza is a Polish full-rigged sailing ship built in 1909 which is preserved in Gdynia as a museum ship. She has served as a sail training ship in Germany, France, and Poland.
The ship was built in 1909 by Blohm & Voss and dedicated in 1910 by Deutscher Schulschiff-Verein as the German training ship Prinzess Eitel Friedrich, named for Duchess Sophia Charlotte of Oldenburg, wife of Prince Eitel Friedrich of Prussia. Her yard no. was 202, her hull was launched on the 12th of October 1909. In 1920, following World War I, the ship was taken as war-reparations by Great Britain, then brought to France, where she was assigned to the seamen’s school at Saint-Nazaire under the name “Colbert”. The ship was then given to Baron de Forrest as compensation for the loss of a sailing yacht. Due to the high costs of refurbishing the ship, she was sold in 1929. read more…
