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…
USS Constellation, constructed in 1854, is a sloop-of-war/corvette and the second United States Navy ship to carry the name. According to the U.S. Naval Registry the original frigate was disassembled on 25 June 1853 in Gosport Navy Yard in Norfolk and the sloop-of-war/corvette was constructed in the same yard using material salvaged from the earlier ship. Constellation is the last sail-only warship designed and built by the Navy. Despite being a single-gundeck “sloop,” she is actually larger than her frigate namesake, and more powerfully armed with fewer but much more potent shell-firing guns. The sloop was launched on 26 August 1854 and commissioned on 28 July 1855 with Captain Charles H. Bell in command. She remained in service for close to a century before finally being retired in 1954, and preserved as a museum ship in Baltimore, where she remains today. read more…