The Peking is a steel-hulled four-masted barque – the sister ship to the Passat and Padua (today Kruzenshtern). A so-called Flying P-Liner of the German company F. Laeisz, it was one of the last generation of windjammers used in the nitrate trade and wheat trade around the often treacherous Cape Horn.
Eking out meager existence on routes difficult to serve by steam ships that required vast amounts of coal, these tall ships and the sailors sailing them were the last of their breed. Sailed in the traditional way with few labor saving devices or safety features, her sailors worked four hours on and four hours off 24 hours a day for the entire length of the voyage, sometime for more than a hundred days in a row.
In 1932, she was sold for £6,250 to Shaftesbury Homes. She was first towed to Greenhithe, renamed Arethusa II and moored alongside the existing Arethusa I. In July 1933, she was moved to her new permanent mooring off Upnor on the River Medway,where she worked as a children’s home and training school. She was officially “opened” by HRH Prince George on 25 July 1933. During World War II she served in the Royal Navy as HMS Peking.
The Peking was retired in 1975 and sold to Jack Aron, for the South Street Seaport Museum in New York City, where she is still moored. In need of extensive repairs, the ship will return to Hamburg no later than May 6, 2012, as a gift from the city of New York. It will be transported aboard another vessel to the Maritime Museum there.
In November 2015 the ‘Maritim Foundation’ purchased the ship for US$ 100. Peking is intended to become part of the German Port Museum (Deutsches Hafenmuseum) at Schuppen 52 in Hamburg for which € 120 million of federal funds would be provided. She was taken to Caddell Dry Dock, Staten Island, on September 7, 2016, to spend the winter. On July 17, 2017, she was docked, and two days later, she was transported, at a cost of some €1 million, on the deck of the semi-submersible heavy-lift shipCombi Dock III across the Atlantic, arriving on July 30, 2017 at Brunsbüttel. On August 2, 2017, she was transferred to Peters Werft located at Wewelsfleth for a three-year refurbishment at a cost of € 38 million. The restoration included review of rigging, double floor steelplates, dismounting and remount of all masts, docking in dry-dock, renewal of the steel structure, removal of the cement that filled the lower three and a half metres (11 ft) of the hull, painting, wood work and overall refurbishment. The ship spent two times about two years in dry dock. Peking was refloated on September 7, 2018 with Primer paint Hull. Teak was reinstalled on deck. The ship was transferred on September 7, 2020 to the German Port Museum.
