The Golden Hinde

1 May 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Tall ships, Museums, Exhibitions, Yacht of the Month Reading Time:  12 minutes

© Jose L. Marin/cc-by-2.5

© Jose L. Marin/cc-by-2.5

Golden Hind was a galleon captained by Francis Drake in his circumnavigation of the world between 1577 and 1580. She was originally known as Pelican, but Drake renamed her mid-voyage in 1578, in honour of his patron, Sir Christopher Hatton, whose crest was a golden hind (a female red deer). Hatton was one of the principal sponsors of Drake’s world voyage. A full-sized, seaworthy reconstruction is in London, on the south bank of the Thames.   read more…

The museum ship Seute Deern

1 November 2019 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Tall ships, Yacht of the Month Reading Time:  10 minutes

© Garitzko

© Garitzko

The Seute Deern (Low German for Sweet Girl) – originally Elisabeth Bandi, later Bandi and Pieter Albrecht Koerts – is a wooden bark and restaurant ship in Bremerhaven. The ship was declared a cultural heritage in 2005 as part of the overall German Maritime Museum. On August 31, 2019 Seute Deern sank in the Old Port.   read more…

The museum ship Amsterdam

1 August 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Tall ships, Yacht of the Month Reading Time:  10 minutes

© Malis

© Malis

The Amsterdam was an 18th-century cargo ship of the Dutch East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie; VOC). The ship started its maiden voyage from Texel to Batavia on 8 January 1749, but was wrecked in a storm on the English Channel on 26 January 1749. The shipwreck was discovered in 1969 in the bay of Bulverhythe, United Kingdom, and is sometimes visible during low tides. The wreck site is protected under the Protection of Wrecks Act since 1974.   read more…

The museum ship Nippon Maru

1 June 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Tall ships, Yacht of the Month Reading Time:  5 minutes

Nippon Maru Memorial Park © Captain76/cc-by-sa-3.0

Nippon Maru Memorial Park © Captain76/cc-by-sa-3.0

Nippon Maru is a Japanese museum ship and former training vessel. She is permanently docked in Yokohama harbor, in Nippon Maru Memorial Park. She was built by Kawasaki Shipbuilding Corporation in Kobe, and was launched on 27 January 1930 alongside her sister ship Kaiwo Maru.   read more…

The museum ship Falls of Clyde

1 May 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Tall ships, Yacht of the Month Reading Time:  15 minutes

© Alexandre/cc-by-sa-3.0

© Alexandre/cc-by-sa-3.0

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…

The HMS Trincomalee

1 April 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Tall ships, Yacht of the Month Reading Time:  6 minutes

Stern © geograph.org.uk - Ian Petticrew/cc-by-sa-2.0

Stern © geograph.org.uk – Ian Petticrew/cc-by-sa-2.0

HMS Trincomalee is a Royal Navy Leda-class sailing 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

1 March 2018 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Tall ships, Museums, Exhibitions, Yacht of the Month Reading Time:  16 minutes

Mayflower replica in Plymouth © flickr.com - Paul Keleher/cc-by-2.0

Mayflower replica in Plymouth © flickr.com – Paul Keleher/cc-by-2.0

The Mayflower was an English ship that famously transported the first English Puritans, 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…

The Dar Pomorza

1 July 2016 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Tall ships, Museums, Exhibitions, Yacht of the Month Reading Time:  10 minutes

© Artur Szeja/cc-by-2.5-pl

© Artur Szeja/cc-by-2.5-pl

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…

The USS Constellation

1 May 2016 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Tall ships, Museums, Exhibitions, Yacht of the Month Reading Time:  10 minutes

© 350z33/cc-by-sa-3.0

© 350z33/cc-by-sa-3.0

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…

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