tall ships : a guide to sailing ships around the world

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED

TALL SHIPSTALL SHIPS

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A GUIDE TO SAILING SHIPS AROUND THE WORLDA GUIDE TO SAILING SHIPS AROUND THE WORLDPUBLISHED BY

Editor • Nicholas Leach, Art Editor • Mark Hyde, Author • Max Mudie, Proofing • Natasha SingletonzPublished by Kelsey Publishing, Cudham Tithe Barn, Berrys Hill, Cudham, Kent TN16 3AG, tel 01959 541444, www.kelsey.co.uk.

Printed by William Gibbons & Sons Ltd, West Midlands© 2015 All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part is forbidden except with prior permission in writing from the publisher.

The publisher cannot accept responsibility for errors in articles or advertisements. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher. ISBN 978-1-909786-76-9

Sagres at sunset, start of the Cutty Sark Tall Ships race, 1995.

TALL SHIPSA guide to sailing ships round the world

Max Mudie

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED

4 I Ships Illustrated I Tall Ships

THE AUTHoRMax MudieAuthor Max Mudie is a British photographer; he first sailed on a tall ship in 1987 and has been sailing, and photographing them, ever since. His images are used worldwide, in books, in calendars and on stamps. Outside of this he also photographs cars, houses, weddings and conferences. His images are online at tallshipstock.com.

AcknowledgementsTo my parents Colin and Rosemary, and Frank Scott, for fact checking, and for their encouragement over many years; Ron Dadswell, OBE for the author’s photo; and to Arthur Saluz for the drawing of Cutty Sark.

For Miles, with much love

Lord Nelson in the Bahamas in 1989: the first tall ship photograph taken by the author, using a manual Nikon with 50mm lens and transparency film.

Frigate, barquentine and full rigged ship: Shtandart, Loth Lorien and Sorlandet after the race start, Stavanger 2011.

Ships Illustrated I Tall Ships I 5

Contents

ContentsPart One Rigs, rigging and races ........ 6What is a tall ship, and how to decide what rig it has, the tall ships races and why sail training makes it all work.

Part Two The biggest tall ships ..........12The only five-masted ship Royal Clipper, the big Russians Sedov and Kruzenshtern, the Japanese Kaiwo Maru II and Nippon Maru II and two ‘nearly’ sisterships.

Part Three National ships ... 24Tall ships that are 100m or longer. The ship-rigged vessels include six sisterships all built in the 1980s,

Part Four Military barques ... 36Sisterships from the Blohm + Voss yard and the South American barques that they inspired, such as USCGC Eagle, Cuauhtémoc and Gorch Fock (II).

Part Five Big national ships .............. 43More full ship-rigged tall ships, including the Clipper Stad Amsterdam class, Danmark and Gloria.

Part Six Civilian tall ships ... 52Ships that did not start their lives as tall ships and the world’s biggest mixed ability vessel, including Christian Radich, Gulden Leeuw and Sørlandet.

Part Seven 60m and under ................. 69Big brigs, and four barques that define what sail training is all about, including the STA’s schooners and brigs.

Part Eight 50m and smaller ............................. 84Barquentines including Morgenster, Pelican, Tre Kronor and Spirit of New Zealand, and a bark that is not a barque.

Part Nine The small fleet .... 94The fleet of vessels 40m and under, including Shtandart, Royalist and two freshwater brigantines, Pathfinder and Playfair, that are perfect for match racing.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


PART ONERigs, rigging and races

What is a tall ship? Poet John Masefield is probably to blame: his poem ‘Sea Fever’ contains the most

widely known use of the phrase ‘tall ship’. The poem was written at the end of a century that had started with Nelson and ended with clipper ships and the steam-driven iron hulls.

In perhaps its purest sense a tall ship is square rigged: a vessel carrying square sails. The key to a square-rigger is that one or more horizontal yards rigged on the ship’s mast and across the ship each carry a squaresail, which is not really a square but does have four

corners, the upper two of which are lashed to the outer ends of the yard.

The square sail goes back to the trireme of Roman times and the Viking longship. It is a rig that has evolved to a point where it cannot really be improved on. To see this evolution, the story can be told through a number of replicas and recreations. Firstly, the Cogs of the Hanseatic league, with a single mast and single squaresail, sailed from the tenth century as cargo carriers and were also used as warships. Then the ships of the Tudor era, such as John Cabot’s Matthew; this was a caravel redonda with three masts and two squaresails on the main. The evolution continues through Mayflower and the ability of shipbuilders to fasten planks and make bigger wooden frames,

which led to an increase in size. The ships of the line, HMS Victory and HMS

Trincomalee, have a shape and rig familiar to modern tall ship sailors. By the middle of the nineteenth century wooden cargo vessels, such as Dunbrody, also carried a barque rig which had settled in shape and layout through trial and error. Iron-hulled clippers, such as Cutty Sark, had the running rigging coming down to deck level to pinrails in a pattern that is standardised. Any sailor from HMS Victory or Cutty Sark would find the layout of a modern tall ship pretty familiar. It is only the change from wooden masts – stepped so that each mast is actually three poles joined together – to steel and aluminium made as single tubes that is the major difference.

Kogge replica Roland von Bremen: launched in 2000 and based in Bremen, and pictured at Sail Bremerhaven in 2005.


Tall Ships

Matthew, a replica 15th century caravel redonda, was launched in 1996 in Bristol and is owned by The Matthew of Bristol Trust; she is seen off Penzance in 1996.

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Cutty Sark, one of the most famous tall ships ever.

On modern tall ships, the sails are made from modern materials, like Dacron, and the ropes may be plastic, although they still look and work the same. The defi nition of a tall ship as ‘any traditionally-rigged vessel’ is therefore a misnomer. Square rig especially has reached a point where the Kevlar sails or carbon fi bre spars of modern yacht racing are not actually an improvement.

ABOVE A square sail as shown on Christian Radich.

Since almost all of the tall ships fl eet are dedicated to sail training, the exact defi nition of tall ships has been split. The annual tall ships races, organised by Sail Training International, consider any vessel over 35ft involved in sail training as a tall ship. So a tall ship is a vessel with square rig or one that is used for sail training.

Dunbrody, replica of a 19th century emigrant ship, was launched in 2000, and can be seen in New Ross, Ireland. She is pictured here under sail off Milford Haven in 2006.

ABOVE Götheborg, replica of a Swedish East Indiaman originally built in Stockholm in 1738.

RigsThe key to tall ship rigs is the square sail which is lashed to a horizontal spar, called a yard. Even without the square sails set, the yards on a tall ship are the key to its rig: • If it has three masts or more, and has squaresails on all masts, then it is ship rigged, also known as a full(y)-rigged ship; if it has two masts and square sails on both it is a brig.• If it has three masts or more, and square sails on all but the rear (mizzen) mast, it is a barque.• If it has three masts or more and square sails on only the front (fore) mast it is a barquentine; if it has two masts and square sails only on the foremast, it is a brigantine.• If it has two masts or more, and the fore mast is shorter than the other masts and no squares, it is a schooner.• If it is a schooner and seems to have one or more squaresails on the foremast, it may be a topsail schooner, but this depends on what fore and aft sails are set aft of the mainmast.


Tall Ships

RiggingVery few sails are set fl ying, in other words without some control. To set a jib or staysail you need to haul on a halliard. To allow this to happen the downhaul has to be released and the sheets have to be tended, so that if the sail is suddenly fi lled with wind it does not fl og uncontrollably.

For a squaresail you have to release the buntlines and clewlines that have gathered it up under the yard and haul down on the sheets, which apart from the lowest sail – the course – run down to the outer end of the yard below the sail you are setting, in to the mast and down to deck. If it is a hauling yard, and has to be raised to stretch the sail, then the

halliard which runs from the middle of the yard up the mast and then down to deck has to be hauled tight and often to take any tension out of the system; while this is being done, the lee brace has to be eased.

While all of the bits of rope used so far are to set or furl the sail, the braces change the angle of a squaresail to the wind. They run aft from the end of the yards and either to the mast behind or down to deck. And so ‘bracing stations’ is when you need most of your crew, your trainees and all of your watches on deck, many to haul the braces, possibly on the leeward side, and some to let the braces out, under control, on the other side.

ABOVE Lanyards rigged between deadeyes, tensioning the shrouds on the 19th century Dunbrody replica, which was launched in 2000 and is a static museum ship based in New Ross, Ireland, owned by The Dunbrody Trust.

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Particularly with sails set, the yards have to come round together, ‘like a barn door’, otherwise too much strain may break bits of the rig, or even pull the clews out of a squaresail. Tacking, or wearing, on a tall ship with square sails, which in a yacht involves some steering and maybe two sheets being hauled in, is done in sequence and with careful timing so that parts of the rig push the ship one way and other parts cause leverage in the opposite direction.

The ships in this book are selected by size, from largest to smallest, determined by extreme or sparred length, which includes bowsprit and jibboom (the bit attached to the bowsprit). Whereas most other ships are defi ned by hull length, extreme length better expresses the size of the rig carried by tall ships.

Tall Ship racesSince the fi rst tall ships race in 1956, widely seen as a one off , the desire to bring ships together and race them has grown, as has the size of the fl eet that takes part. It has been an annual race since 1964, typically taking in four ports in a race-cruise-race series. From 1973 until 2003 the races were sponsored by Berry Brothers and Rudd through their Cutty Sark whisky brand.

ABOVE Dutch brig, barque and topsail schooner: Europa just ahead of Wylde Swan and well ahead of Morgenster, at the race start, Lerwick, 2011.


The event has been organised by the International Sail Training Association, and, from 2002, by Sail Training International. Three days in port (during which there is a crew parade through the streets) are followed by a parade of sail and a race start. The diff erent sized vessels and varied rigs are able to race each other thanks to a Time Correction Factor. This is multiplied against the elapsed time each ship has been racing and is intended to level the playing fi eld.

The fl eet is split into four classes: the big square riggers and schooners are class A; classes B, C and D comprise much smaller vessels not carrying square sails, except for the odd topsail schooner, down to 35ft Bermudan-rigged yachts. For the purposes of racing, any vessel that is involved in sail training and has half of its crew under 25 can be a tall ship.

The ‘sail training’ aspect is the essence of why there are still tall ships sailing today. Sail training is not really about formally teaching people to sail – it is about teamwork. For the big naval and merchant marine academy ships, it is about teaching men and women who will spend their careers in high tech bridges how the sea acts and ships react.

It is about adventure – taking people, and especially young people, away from the comfort zone of smart phones and eight hours of uninterrupted sleep in a bed that does not

Tall Ships

Statsraad Lehmkuhl, Alexander von Humboldt, Grossherzogin Elisabeth and

Christian Radich off Belgium, 2010.

move, looking after and and cleaning a ship, working the sails and coexisting in a microcosm of society. It is also about self esteem and self confi dence – an amorphous, woolly concept that is hard to pin down, but means that after even a week anyone (especially those under twenty-fi ve) who has sailed a tall ship has a

better understanding of how capable they are as a person, which in a quiet yet powerful way is an amazing benefi t to society. Sail training is why there is such a large and diff erent fl eet in the 21st century, and why the big ones, the square-riggers with all their ropes to pull and big climbing frames to play on, are so popular.

Light winds keep the eet together at the race start off Copenhagen, 2013: Morgenster, Christian Radich and Mir.

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PART TWOThe biggest tall ships

BELOW Sedov was launched in 1921 and is owned by Murmansk State Technical University. She is based in Murmansk and is pictured in Falmouth Bay in 2008 taking part in the Funchal 500 Regatta.

Perhaps the biggest misconception made when looking at the modern fl eet of tall ships that sail the world is that they are replicas of old vessels or ships built for movies such

as ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’. While this fi lm franchise has indirectly raised the profi le of the tall ships of the world, it has done nothing to remove the idea that all tall ships are pirate galleons (or old museum ships) and nothing else. But nothing could be further from the truth, as there is an enormous variety of tall ships as shown in this book. But perhaps the most amazing thing about the modern fl eet is how many of the ships sailing are actually sisterships, or near- or half-sisters.

Kruzenshtern, built in 1926, is owned by the Baltic Fishing Fleet State Academy, based in Kaliningrad; she is seen racing off the Belgian coast in 2010.


K aiwo Maru II and Nippon Maru II are the biggest sisterships operated by one organisation. Originally four-

masted barques, they were launched in 1930 and 1931 for the Nautical Training Institute of the Ministry of Education. Re-rigged and recommissioned in 1952, Nippon Maru was retired in 1984 and Kaiwo Maru fi ve years later: they are both now fl oating museums in Kaiwo Maru Park, in Imizu, Toyama, Japan.

Their replacements are operated by the National Institute for Sea Training (NIST), which gives sea training to personnel in the Japanese shipping industry and to others from South East Asia. Nippon Maru II has won the Boston Teapot Trophy three times (1986, 1989 and 1993), and Kaiwo Maru II four times. Kaiwo Maru II measures 110.09m overall, 89m between perpendiculars, and 13.8m in beam. She has a sail area of 2,760m2.

The 1989-built Kaiwo Maru II crossing the start line off Kagoshima during Sail Osaka 1997. She is owned by the National Institute for Sea Training, and her homeport is Tokyo.

ABOVE Nippon Maru II entering Osaka harbour 1997. Built in 1984, she is owned by the National Institute for Sea Training, and her homeport is Tokyo.

Kaiwo Maru II and Nippon Maru II

Kaiwo Maru II gurehead.

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Royal Clipper

The biggest tall ship in active service is not a sail training vessel but the sailing cruise ship Royal Clipper. She

is unique in being the only five-masted ship in the tall ship fleet. She is owned by Star Clippers of Monaco and was originally to be a cruise ship for Polish miners named Gwarek. The hull of this vessel was taken over to become Royal Clipper.

The man behind this luxury tall ship is Star Clippers CEO Mikael Krafft. His love of tall ships began as a young boy when he sailed his open boat to the Aland Islands to see Pommern, a four-masted barque, famous as a Flying P-liner cargo carrier and a museum ship since the end of World War II.

Royal Clipper has roller furling square sails, operated mechanically from deck (a system pioneered at the end of the 19th century), although, to show passengers the traditional way, the course sails are furled with clewlines and buntlines, which bunch the sail up under the yard. She takes up to 227 passengers, sailing mainly in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. Her crow’s nest platform on the mast is furnished with a comfortable settee.

Royal Clipper is the only five-masted ship to be built since Preussen, which was the largest of the Flying P Liners (see Kruzenshtern). Star Clippers also owns and operates two elegant four-masted barquentines, Star Clipper and Star Flyer.


The biggest

Royal Clipper was built in 1989, is owned by Star Clippers Cruises in Monaco, and

homeported in Barbados; she is seen sailing off Guadeloupe in 2002.

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SedovCurrently the biggest sail training vessel

is the Russian four-masted Sedov. She and Kruzenshtern, only 3m shorter,

are not sisterships as such, but their rigs and their histories are very similar. They are both Windjammers, the last of the big cargo carrying tall ships.

Sedov was built for the Bremen-based company F.A. Vinnen as Magdalene Vinnen II, her predecessor having been transferred to Italy as reparations after World War I. This second ship was launched in 1921 and was designed to take cadets as well as cargo. From the start she had a 128hp diesel engine making her an auxiliary barque. She carried cargo consisting of coal, wheat and timber.

In 1936 she was sold to North German Lloyd and renamed Kommodore Johnsen, sailing with a full complement of cadets. At the end of World War II she was transferred to Russia, being one of many German tall ships to be used as reparations to other countries.

She served as a training ship for the Russian Navy, then as an oceanographic research vessel, and was subsequently placed in the reserve fleet, sailing infrequently in the 1970s. She returned to fully active service in 1981 after a refit. She is owned by the Murmansk State University of Technology and trains officers for the Russian Fishing Fleet.

For most of her life in sail training, Sedov sailed with a white hull, which made her stand out from Kruzenshtern which had a black hull and gunports. However, in 2005 the hull was painted black so she could play the part of Pamir in a movie; this was the sistership to Kruzenshtern/Padua which was lost in a storm in 1957. Her hull has stayed black ever since.

Sedov is one of a few tall ships with Jarvis brace winches. Kruzenshtern is another, as is the new Shabab Oman II. Most ships have braces, which are lines from the deck up the end of the yard used to turn or brace the yard to the wind direction. On ships as large as Sedov, the weight of the lower yards, the course and topsails, and the sails on them, can be handled by a winch amidships at deck level.

Sedov, with a white hull, ahead of Kruzenshtern, taking part in the Cutty Sark Tall Ships Race off Stavanger in 1997.

Sedov in Falmouth Bay in 2008.


Sedov in Falmouth Bay in 2008.

The biggest

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Kruzenshtern

Kruzenshtern was launched in 1926 as Padua. She was the last of a dozen Flying P liners, the cargo

sailing ships with names beginning with P operated by the F. Laeisz Shipping company. Fast ships with large cargo capacity, they plied the nitrate trade from South America and then carried grain. In an age when steam ships might have thought to have held sway, the quick transportation of 3,000 tonnes of cargo without stops for expensive coal or to refi ll with water to make steam was still economically viable.

Like most of the German tall ships to survive World War II, Padua went as reparations to the Soviet Union, where she was renamed. She did little for fi fteen years after the war, but was refi tted and had engines added and in

RIGHT Kruzenshtern, built in 1926, off Stavanger for the race start, 2011.

OPPOSITE Kruzenshtern with a good breeze, pictured off the Devon coast, during the Torbay to Santander race, 2005.

BELOW Kruzenshtern with sails set off Devon, 2005 She is owned by the Baltic Fishing Fleet State Academy, and is based in Kaliningrad.

1961 worked for the Academy of Sciences undertaking hydrographic survey work. In 1965 she was transferred to the Ministry of Fisheries and used to train fi shery offi cers. Another refi t brought her new engines in 1972 and her current paint scheme. She raced internationally in 1974 and was at Op Sail in 1976.

She is an impressive ship: her large sail plan gives her a lot of power and in her heyday she recorded a 24-hour run covering over 350 miles. At any tall ships race she may seem to hang back at the start, but once she starts to move she does not seem to stop, pushing on when smaller competitors are shortening sail. Three of the Flying P sisterships still exist, as museum vessels: Pommern in Mariehamn, Peking in New York and Passat in Travemünde.


The biggest

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Juan Sebastian de Elcano

The biggest ship built specifically as a sail training vessel is the Spanish four-masted topsail schooner Juan

Sebastian de Elcano. Her rig was designed by Englishman Charles Nicholson, designer of many famous J-class racing yachts, and she was built in 1927 by the Echevarrieta y Larrinaga shipyard Cadiz, Spain. She was originally to have been called Minerva, but a Royal decree changed her name to that of the famous fifteenth century explorer Juan Sebastian de Elcano, who served with Magellan and ended up commanding his expedition that circumnavigated the world.

Juan Sebastian de Elcano makes six-month training voyages with midshipmen from the Spanish Navy and has made ten round-the-world voyages in total. Like many national, military sailing vessels in service, she is also a ‘floating embassy’ and a ‘small part of the homeland’ for Spanish citizens living abroad.

She is a frequent winner of the Boston Teapot Trophy, which is awarded by Sail Training International for any sail training

vessel that covers the greatest distance in twenty-four hours. Juan Sebastian de Elcano has won it an impressive eight times.

The use of sail training for Spanish Navy midshipmen goes back to the 19th century and the masts of ‘Elcano’ are named after four previous training vessels – Blanca, Almansa,

Asturias and Nautilus. Juan Sebastian de Elcano was not the only sail training vessel used by the Spanish Navy: from 1922 until 1969 they operated the barque Galatea, which was built in Glasgow in 1896 as Glenlee and is now back in Glasgow, preserved as a museum ship and open to the public.

ABOVE Juan Sebastian de Elcano in very light winds, and little sunshine, with everything set in a very busy Parade of Sail, Cadiz, 2000. At 113m in length, she is one of the largest tall ships in the fleet.

Juan Sebastian de Elcano in the Parade of Sail, Alicante, 2007.


The biggest

Juan Sebastian de Elcano, based in San Fernando, taking part in the Parade of Sail in Lisbon, 2012.

Juan Sebastian de Elcano, built in 1927 and owned by the Spanish Navy (Real Armada Española), in

light winds off Bermuda, 2000.

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Esmeralda

Esmeralda is the sistership to Juan Sebastian de Elcano although, technically, she is not an exact sister. In

1946 the Spanish Navy set out to replace Juan Sebastian de Elcano. The ship, which was to be named Juan de Austria, was delayed by financial problems and then by an explosion in the shipyard which damaged the hull.

The Chilean Navy was looking for a sail training ship and, in a deal to cover the cost of imported goods from Chile, the vessel was completed and launched as Esmeralda, her naming marked not with champagne but with a bottle of sherry. The difference between the two sisters is that Juan Sebastian de Elcano is a topsail schooner while Esmeralda is classified as a barquentine. They both have square sails on the foremast, but Esmeralda does not have a boom and gaff attached behind the foremast, and only sets staysails between that and the mainmast.

Esmeralda is the sixth vessel to carry the name. The first was a Spanish frigate captured in 1820 by Chilean Admiral Lord Thomas

Cochrane. The current Esmeralda is known as La Dama Blanca (‘the white lady’) and her figurehead is a Chilean condor. The Chilean Navy’s motto Vencer o Morir (Conquer or Die) is engraved on the ship’s wheel. Her commander’s pennant is a metre long for every 1,000 miles sailed under his command.

Many of the orders given on deck – the sail

handling and hauling of sheets – are spread by the use of whistles, rather than shouted commands. Esmeralda is currently the biggest in the fleet of tall ships operated by South American Navies, but will be overtaken by the four-masted barque La Unión, which is being built in Peru and, at 115.5m in length, is going to be 2.5m longer.

Esmeralda in Halifax harbour in 2000, on her way to the start line

and the race to Amsterdam.

Esmeralda at the start of the Columbus Regatta, off Cadiz, 1992, one of 28 tall ships crossing the line.

The biggest

Esmeralda was built in 1953 for the Chilean Navy (Armada de Chile), and is based in Valparaiso; she is seen leaving Halifax harbour for the race to Amsterdam, 2000.



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MirMir is the second largest of six

sisterships designed by designed by Polish naval architect Zygmunt

Choreń and weighs 2,385 tonnes. She measures 109.2m by 13.9m and has a draught of 6.3m. The main mast is 52m high and, along with the other masts, supports a total sail area of 2,771m2.

Mir is a little longer than her eldest sister and her yards brace around a bit further (there is a common misunderstanding about square rig that it does not allow a vessel to sail to windward like a yacht does). Most tall ships sail up to sixty degrees off the wind, but anything that allows the squaresails to brace even further improves this, and therefore there is less need to throw in a tack and add time to passage making.

Mir heading for Santander in 2005.

PART THREENational ships

National ships

Mir slowly getting away from Falmouth as the sun sinks.


Mir has a reputation in the tall ships race fleet as a fast vessel. She won the 1992 Columbus Regatta and her fastest speed is reckoned to be ninteen knots. One of the mysteries of modern tall ship racing is how so many different size ships with different rigs can compete against each other. But each vessel has a Time Correction Factor: this is a complex and secret formula that should even the odds. And yet Mir is, unofficially, the fastest ship in the fleet.

Mir is owned by the Admiral Makarov State Maritime Academy in St Petersburg which trains seamen for the Russian merchant marine fleet, and she is operated by the Academy as their main training vessel.

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Dar Mlodziezy

Dar Mlodziezy (Gift of Youth) was built to replace Dar Pomorza (Gift of Pomerania),

a full-rigged ship built by Blohm + Voss in 1909 as Prinzess Eitel Friedrich (sistership to Statsraad Lehmkuhl) and transferred to Polish ownership in 1929. Dar Mlodziezy was built in Gdansk and launched in 1981. Part of the money used to build her was raised by Polish primary school children.

She belongs to Gdynia Maritime University, and has competed in nearly every Tall Ships race since 1982. She even made it to Australia for the bicentennial in 1988; during the voyage there her run of 1,241 miles won her the Boston Tea Pot trophy. She has also participated in Sail Osaka in 1983 and 1997, and to America and back in the Columbus regatta in 1992.

In a fleet where three-masted tall ships with white hulls and rounded sterns proliferate, she and her five sisters can be recognised by their distinctive square transoms.

ABOVE Dar Mlodziezy in a good stiff breeze off Lisbon, ahead of her sister Mir, racing for Cadiz


National ships


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Soviet sisters

As well as Mir, four other sisterships were built for the Soviet Union: Druzhba in 1987, Pallada and Khersones in 1988,

and Nadezhda in 1989. Druzhba, which has a white hull, is owned by the Odessa Maritime Academy in the Ukraine and is listed as being ‘under repair’. She is still manned but very much alongside and not in active service.

Khersones, named after the city on the north coast of the Black Sea, is owned by Kerch Marine Technical Institute, also in the Ukraine. Pallada is owned by the Far Eastern State Technical Fisheries University in Vladivostok and operates mainly in the Pacifi c.

Nadezhda, which has a white hull with a thin blue line at the top, is the sailing training ship of the Admiral Nevelskoy Maritime State University, and is also based in Vladivostok.

As well as sail training, her main task is as a ‘fl oating university’ is to carry out research into the climate of the North Western Pacifi c, monitor climate change, and train researchers in environmental monitoring.

All six vessels were designed by Polish Naval Architect Zygmunt Choren, the proprietor of the naval architectural fi rm Choreń Design and Consulting, who is the most prolifi c provider of tall ships in the modern fl eet.

Khersones off the Belgian coast.

Nadezhda, off the German coast.

Pallada at dawn in the Paci� c, 1997


National ships

Nadezhda (1989), owned by Admiral Nevelskoy Maritime State University and homeported at Vladivostok, departing after Sail Bremerhaven in 2005.

Pallada was built in 1988, and owned by the Far Eastern State Technical Fisheries

University in Vladivostok; she was pictured at sunrise in the Paci� c, in light winds

during Sail Osaka, 1997.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


ABOVE Cadets aloft as Libertad comes alongside in Amsterdam, for Sail Amsterdam 2000.

LibertadThe biggest ship-rigged tall ship in the

South American military fleet is the Argentinian Navy’s ARA (Armada

de la República Argentina) Libertad. Her gestation evolved from a keel-laying in 1953 to her launching in 1956, commissioning in


National ships

1960 and maiden voyage in 1963. She replaced the training ship Presidente Sarmiento, which was built in Birkenhead in 1897 and is now a floating museum in Buenos Aires.

If tall ships and the crews that sail them are about anything, then that is pride. And while the big military ships as floating ambassadors are about being a showcase for their nation – and you only have to see the large ensigns used when entering or leaving port to realise the power of this demonstration – then the pride in their ship and their achievement is seen in the cadets who man the yards.

She sails with twety-four officers and 187 crew, as well as 150 cadets. She underwent a ‘midlife upgrade’, which took three years, in 2004. She carries four three-pounder cannons, which are used for saluting, and make her one of the most well-armed tall ships in the fleet. She has won the Boston Teapot Trophy (awarded by Sail Training International for the longest run in 124 hours) a record nine times.

Libertad in very light airs at the race start after Toulon, 2007.

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Amerigo VespucciAmerigo Vespucci is a striking ship: with

her high topsides and hull stripes she looks like third rate, a powerful ‘two-

decker’ frigate from the age of Nelson (HMS Victory is a first rate ‘three-decker’). Indeed, after the 2005 International Fleet Review she was the most obvious ship to use in the son et lumiere re-enactment of Trafalgar off Southsea, near Portsmouth

Built in 1930 and launched in 1931, she carries up to 200 officer cadets on a typical three-month cruise, with a permanent crew bringing her total complement to 480. Her hull is riveted, her figurehead – of Amerigo Vespucci – is bronze, and there is a lot of gold leaf on her bow and across her stern.

She has had three mottos: ‘Per la Patria e per il Re’ (for the Fatherland and for the King) changed to ‘Saldi nella furia dei venti e degli eventi’ (Firm in the fury of the winds and events) after the war, and now her motto is ‘Non chi comincia ma quel che persevera’ (not who starts but what perseveres) – not he who begins but he who perseveres. Like HMS Victory in the Royal Navy, she is the oldest ship in commission in the Italian Navy, the Marina Militare.

She had an older sistership, Christoforo Colombo, which was launched in 1928 and taken by the Soviet Union as war reparations in 1945, being scrapped in 1972 at Odessa. Where some tall ships are sleek, or merely functional, Amerigo Vespucci is impressive, a magnet for crowds in any race port and almost more impressive alongside than under sail.

ABOVE Amerigo Vespucci in the Mediterranean, 2007.

Amerigo Vespucci with almost everything set except the courses, Cadiz 2000.


National ships

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


Statsraad Lehmkuhl

The biggest and oldest of the three Norwegian schoolships in use today, Statsraad Lehmkuhl was launched as a

school training ship for the German merchant marine in 1914 as Grossherzog Friedrich August. She was owned by the German Sailing School Association, who also owned Prinzess Eitel Friedrich (which became Dar Pomorza – see Dar Mlodziezy above) and Großherzogin Elisabeth (which is now a museum ship in Dunkirk named Duchesse Anne).

After the war Statsraad Lehmkuhl was passed to the British as reparations and in 1921 the ship was bought by former cabinet minister Kristoff er Lehmkuhl (Statsraad means cabinet minister). She was owned by the Bergen Schoolship Foundation until 1967, when she was bought by shipowner Hilmar Reksten. The oil crisis of the early 1970s meant she stayed alongside in Bergen from 1973 until 1978; she was then donated to the Statsraad Lehmkuhl Foundation.

Statsraad Lehmkuhl sails with Merchant Navy cadets and often enters the Tall Ships races when they are in Northern waters, accompanied by the two other smart, white-hulled Norwegian schoolships, Sorlandet and Christian Radich. She is reckoned to sail very well in strong winds, having twenty-two sails and a sail area of 2,206m2, achieving a top speed of eighteen knots during one Atlantic crossing. She measures 98m (sparred length) by 12.6m, with a maximum height of 48m.


ABOVE Statsraad Lehmkuhl off Stockholm, 2007.

MAIN PIC Statsraad Lehmkuhl after a delayed race start, and as the sun

sinks, 2010.

National ships

The Blohm + Voss shipyard in Germany has produced some of the fi nest tall ships in the world fl eet, and the barques that have been built there have infl uenced the military barques of South

America which have been built in the Spanish yard Astilleros Celaya. The story starts with the loss of one ship and the creation of another that after a long career is now retired. The German Navy Segelschulschiff (sailing schoolship) Niobe capsized in 1932 and was replaced by Gorch Fock, the fi rst of fi ve sister and half-sister ships.

This barque was built in 1933 for the German Navy and completed in only 100 days from keel laying to launching. Like most of the German tall ships that survived World War II, she was transferred as reparations and Gorch Fock went to the Soviet Union, becoming Tovarisch. In her case this required some eff ort, as the Germans had scuttled her at the end of the war, and she had to be raised and refi tted before she could be taken over. She sailed until the 1990s, ending up under the Ukrainian fl ag when lack of investment and maintenance led to her internment in Newcastle. She was moved to Stralsund, where she is now a museum vessel.

The German Navy went on to build two further half-sisters to Gorch Fock, with an ‘improved’ design that was seven metres longer: Horst Wessel in 1936, and a year later Albert Leo Schlageter. In 1938 they built Mircea for Romania, closer in size to the original Gorch Fock. A fi fth hull, for a vessel to be named Herbert Norkus, was launched, but was never completed. In late 1945 her hull was fi lled with munitions, towed out to sea and scuttled, but her unused masts and spars remained in store until they were fi tted to the new Gorch Fock in 1958.

Cuauhtémoc Biggest of the South American barques

is Cuauhtémoc from Mexico. The interesting thing to note about the

four barques from that continent is that although they look the same, and carry the same rig, each newer barque is a little bit bigger than its predecessor. So Cuauhtémoc, built in 1982 and 90.5m long, is the biggest of the foursome. She is named for the Aztec

emperor who was killed by the invading Spanish.

Cuauhtémoc was a participant in Velas Sudamerica 2010, which marked the bicentenaries of Argentina and Chile. This saw a fl eet of eleven tall ships, including all South American military vessels, sail from Rio de Janeiro to Vera Cruz in Mexico by way of Cape Horn, making it the biggest collective rounding in history. Eight of the fl eet repeated the regatta in 2014.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


PART FOURThe military barques

Cuauhtémoc after the sun has set off the Norwegian

coast, Bergen, 2008.

Eagle

The barque USCGC Eagle (WIX-327) is a 295ft vessel used as a training cutter for future offi cers of the United

States Coast Guard. She is the only active commissioned sailing vessel, and one of only two commissioned sailing vessels along with USS Constitution, in American military service. She was built in Germany as Horst Wessel; her keel was laid on 15 February 1936; she was launched on 13 June, completed on 16 September and commissioned on 17 September. She has somewhat unusual origins in that Rudolf Hess made a speech at her launch in the presence of Adolf Hitler, and Horst Wessel’s mother christened the new ship with a bottle of champagne.

Horst Wessel served as the fl agship of the Kriegsmarine sail training fl eet, but was decommissioned in 1939 at the outbreak of World War II, then serving as a docked training ship in Stralsund for the marine branch of the Hitler Youth until her recommissioning as an active Navy sail training vessel in 1942. After the war she was one of the three German sisterships taken as war reparations, and Horst Wessel went to the US Coast Guard, who had used Danmark during the war. Eagle is now based in New London, Connecticut.

A new trainee on a tall ship can fi nd the complex rig and the numerous bits of rigging daunting: one of the more useful books for that new sailor is the ‘Eagle Manual of Seamanship’. Although this is particular to USCG Eagle, because most tall ships and

especially barques are laid out in a similar format, this is a very useful book. Eagle has deployed each summer with cadets on board as part of their Academy curriculum. Eagle has a standing permanent crew of seven offi cers and 50 enlisted members; on training missions, she takes on a variety of temporary crew and sails with an average complement of 12 offi cers, 68 crew, and up to 150 trainees.

Like many tall ships of her age, Eagle has been refi tted and modernised several times over the years. In the late 1970s she was upgraded with a new engine and generators, air-conditioning and fresh water showers. As ‘America’s Tall Ship’, she has represented the USA at the 1976 and 1986 Opsail events in New York, the Australian Bicentennial in 1988, the Columbus Regatta in 1992 and the Trafalgar Bicentenary in 2005.


Military Barques

Eagle off Bermuda, racing her sistership Mircea.

Eagle’s � gurehead.

Sagres IISagres II was launched as Albert Leo

Schlageter on 30 October 1937 at Blohm + Voss in Hamburg for Nazi Germany’s

Kriegsmarine. She was damaged by a mine during the war, then allocated to the USA as reparations, but they had no use for her, so she ended up being sold to Brazil in 1948, and was renamed Guanabara. When the Brazilian Navy decided to cease sail training in 1960, she was laid up and her future looked bleak.

However, Portuguese diplomat Dr Pedro Teotónia Pereira (post-war ambassador to Brazil and then to the US and the UK) believed in sail training under square rig. He was one of the architects of the fi rst tall ships race in 1956, which was intended to be a friendly competition between cadets on the remaining sail training ships and seen possibly the last race of such ships.

The winner of that race was the Portuguese Navy vessel Sagres, originally built as the Rickmer Rickmers in 1896. Pereira had been pushing for Portugal to have a ‘new’ schoolship, so in 1961 the Portuguese Navy took the opportunity to buy Guanabara, renaming her Sagres. The original Sagres became the stores hulk Santo Andre, until in 1983 she was purchased by the City of Hamburg, and became a museum ship there under her original name.

Sagres is the home of Prince Henry, fi fteenth-century Portuguese sailor and explorer, known later as Henry the Navigator and on whom the fi gurehead on Sagres II is modelled.

ABOVE Sagres II leaving Belfast after the Tall Ships Atlantic Challenge has ended, 2009.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


Sagres II leading the parade of sail on the Tagus, 2012.

Gorch Fock (II)In 1956 West Germany joined NATO and

formed the Bundesmarine; two years later they launched Gorch Fock, an impressive

sail training vessel built by the Blohm + Voss yard, which had completed many of her sisterships.

The reason why so many navies use tall ships for training, apart from imparting the skills of teamwork to sailors and offi cers who may spend most of their career surrounded by electronics, is that when it comes to representing a nation and navy in a foreign port, it is easier and friendlier to use a tall ship than a grey-sided warship.

You only have to see the smart young cadets of Cuauhtemoc in ceremonial uniform and

small sword marching in a crew parade to understand this. Rumour has it that when the possibility of disposing of Gorch Fock was once raised, it was German diplomats who lobbied to keep her. Her port visits provided better national PR opportunities than any number of embassy receptions.

Her wooden albatross fi gurehead has been lost a number of times. It was originally made of wood, but the current one is carbon fi bre. Because the original Gorch Fock is back from being Tovarisch, the current name holder is often known unoffi cially as Gorch Fock II.

The 1958-built Gorch Fock measures 81.2m by 12m, with a draught of 5.2m, and has a displacement of 1,760 tons. She also carries an auxiliary six-cylinder diesel engine of 1,220kW (1,660hp) giving a speed of 13.7 knots.

Gorch Fock surrounded by spectators, Cadiz, Tall Ships 2000.


Military Barques

Simon Bolivar, part of a � eet of twenty-eight class A tall ships, at the start of the Columbus Regatta, Cadiz, 1992.


SHIPS ILLUSTRATED

Simon BolivarVenezuela’s barque Simon Bolivar was

built in 1978, launched in 1979 and commissioned into the Navy in 1980.

She is the third in her ‘class’ although she is 6m bigger than her sister Gloria (1967) and 4m bigger than Guayas (1976). Her offi cial role is ‘to train cadets, future offi cers of the Navy and to project the image of Venezuala in all the ports you visit’.

She took part in the big regatta of 1984 (Puerto Rico-Bermuda-Halifax-Quebec), 1986 Operation Sail in New York and the 1992 Columbus Regatta; she has also participated in both Velas Sudamerica regattas for the buques escuala (school ships) of all the South American Navies. She is named for the South American soldier who helped free Venezuela from the Spanish, and her offi cial designation is ARBV Simon Bolivar (BE11).


Military Barques

Mircea leaving Bermuda and racing to the USA.

MirceaMircea was the last Blohm + Voss

barque built before World War II. She spent much of the war as a

static schoolship but was taken by the Soviets in September 1944. After extensive lobbying by the Romanian government, she reverted to Romanian Navy ownership in May 1946.

She returned to her building yard in Hamburg in 1966, surviving a massive storm in the Bay of Biscay en route, for refi t and modernisation. She has, with a break in the 1990s, stayed in service ever since. She represented Romania at the 1976 US bicentennial celebrations, where she was in company with all her sister vessels.

In 2007 she was in the Tall Ships Atlantic Challenge, during whcih she raced her

sistership USCG Eagle. Her motto is ‘Serve the Navy, serving the motherland’ (Servesc marina, servesc patria). She is named after Mircea, a Prince who helped resist a Turkish invasion in the fourteenth century.

GuayasEcuador’s national tall ship Buque

Escuela Guayas – Besgua – was built in 1976, nine years after and 2.5m

longer than Gloria. Tall ships are small, self contained communities at sea – a ‘voyage of instruction’ lasts many months and being a tall ship sailor brings daily contact with a rig and a way of sailing that is built on tradition. Some traditions are old – the Crossing the Line ceremony at the equator is taken very seriously - and some are special to the ship itself: each day on Guayas they say a special prayer, written on her first trip from the Canaries to Guayaquil. And in 2001 they created a toast to be raised at the completion of each voyage.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


Flying a large national ensign, Guayas heads

for the start line off Alicante, 2007.


ParT FIVEThe big national ships

When Masefield was writing his poem it is possible that the tall ship he was thinking of was a clipper ship - the fast cargo

carrier that had just finished a fifty-year burst of popularity. The public imagination was fuelled by paintings of the clippers Taeping and Ariel racing home with a cargo of tea, with a ‘bone in their teeth’, everything set; stories of captains padlocking the sheets so sail could not be shortened even if the wind increased added to the mythology.

The clippers were long, thin ships in comparison to the thick warships of Nelson’s day. The way to get an idea of the shape of a ship is to divide the hull length by the beam.

Cutty Sark is nearly six times as long as she is wide. Alan Villiers, tall ship sailor and writer, said: ‘To sailors, three things made a ship a clipper. She must be sharp-lined, built for speed. She must be tall-sparred and carry the utmost spread of canvas. And she must use that sail, day and night, fair weather and foul.’ This chapter looks at some of the clipper ships that are currently in service.

The city of Amsterdam loves tall ships. Every five years they hold Sail Amsterdam, which attracts a large fleet moored on both sides of the Amstel, usually a fleet larger than that in the annual STI races and if you want to compare tall ships this is the place to be.

The idea of a tall ship as flag ship for the city was raised during the 1995 event. And the design for such a vessel was started by Gerard Dykstra in 1997. Building on the new ship

began in early 1998 and in November work started on a sistership, Cisne Branco, destined for the Brazilian Navy.

In December 1998 the hull of Stad Amsterdam was moved to the Maritime Museum of Amsterdam where her fitting out and rigging was carried out in public view and with the help of a social employment project. Her sea trials were in May 2000 and she was ready for Sail Amsterdam in August of that year. During this time she was beaten to completion by her sistership which was handed over in February 2000 – Stad Amsterdam took two years and five months, Cisne Branco a year and two months. Stad Amsterdam is one of a number of ship-rigged vessels, which start at 78m in length and also one of only three clippers currently operating in the worldwide fleet.

National ships

Stad Amsterdam, completed in 2000, is owned by Rederij Clipper Stad Amsterdam,

homeport Amsterdam, and is pictured at the start of the North Sea Regatta, off

Hartlepool, 2010.


SHIPS ILLUSTRATED

Cisne Branco, built in 1999 and owned by the Brazilian Navy (Marinha do Brasil), ahead of Pogoria, after sunset off Bergen, 2008.

Cisne Branco seen in very light airs after leaving Copenhagen in 2013,

ahead of Eendracht and Shabab Oman.


Stad Amsterdam and Cisne BrancoStad Amsterdam is a mixture of traditional

and modern: she has deadeyes and lanyards instead of rigging screws securing her

shrouds, but she is made of modern materials. She has spacious teak decks laid over steel, and outwardly she looks like a 19th century vessel, but below decks she is more luxurious. Like many tall ships, she switches between sail training with younger crews and more sedate cruising.

As a national cadet ship, Cisne Branco has less of the luxury and the woodwork. Nearly forty years after handing the Blohm + Voss barque Guanabara to Portugal, the Brazilians have another sail training ship, used for instruction of cadets from the Brazilian Naval School and the Academy of the Merchant Marine. Cisne Branco means ‘White Swan’ and this vessel is the third Navy training vessel to carry the name, her predecessors being smaller yachts.

National ships

Racing away from Stavanger, Stad Amsterdam (2000) has her

stunsails set on the foremast.


SHIPS ILLUSTRATED

The 1932-built Danmark after the race start off Lerwick, 1999.


National ships

DanmarkThe Dane’s involvement in sail

training has included two vessels named Georg Stage as well as the

five-masted barque Kobenhavn. The latter vessel was used for naval training until she was lost without trace in 1928 when en route from Buenos Aires to Australia. At 130m, she would have been in the same category as Royal Clipper in terms of size.

In 1933, with sea training controlled by parliament, the Danish built the three-masted full rigged ship Danmark. She sailed with 120 cadets and attended the World’s Fair in New York in 1939, together with Norway’s Christian Radich. In the uncertain times before the war, the Danish

government kept her in the USA until after the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, when she was offered to the US Coast Guard.

Danmark spent the war in US waters, being used to train over 5,000 cadets, and there was a move to purchase her until Horst Wessel was offered for free instead and so Danmark returned to Denmark. She is an elegant, timeless vessel, one of the few tall ships with a small discreet funnel forward of the mizzen mast, but even her liferaft cluster does not detract from her stylish looks.

ABOVE Danmark is owned by Skoleskibet Danmark Søfartsstyrelsen, homeport Copenhagen; she is seen in the Parade of Sail off La Coruna, 2006.

ABOVE Inside a traditional ship can be found a very modern control room.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


The yards or booms they are rigged on are stowed on top of the existing yards and run out when needed. The sails themselves are not carried aloft but have to be sent up, with the sail quite often laid out on deck and then ‘fl own up’ and sheeted into the yard. Many Dutch vessels seem to use them, such as Wylde Swan and Europa. Stad Amsterdam and Cisne Branco have them on the fore and main masts, but Shabab Oman has them on the foremast only.

Shabab Oman IIIn 2014 the Royal Navy of Oman replaced

their three-masted barquentine Shabab Oman (see Chapter 7) with a much larger

Stad Amsterdam-class full-rigged ship, which was also called Shabab Oman. Although she is 5m longer than her (half) sisters, she has the same rig but with a split topsail on the mizzen mast, and she does have brace winches.

Maybe the best thing about the ‘Clipper Stad Amsterdam’ class is the stunsails. Actually spelt studdingsails, they are pronounced ‘stun’, in the same way that the ‘op’ is not used when speaking of topgallants. Stunsails are light weather sails, although classic pictures of clippers racing for home show them used in fi ercer weather.

ABOVE The famous Jarvis brace winch, an ‘Improved Means for Bracing the yards in Square-rigged Ships’ that was patented in 1891.


National ships

GloriaGloria should probably have been

included in the previous chapter, but, as well as being the fi rst of

the South American barques, she is also the smallest. ARC Gloria was built in 1967 to join Libertad and Esmeralda in the South American fl eet. Like the other South American barques, she is infl uenced by Blohm + Voss designs, and the only obvious diff erence is that she has a bridge. There is a story, possibly to be taken with a pinch of sea salt, that in the 1960s the Colombian defence minister gave the Admiral who was pushing for a tall ship a piece of paper on which he had written ‘vale por un velero’ (valid for one tall ship) and his signature, as an informal agreement to proceed. The barque was built in the Spanish yard Celaya in Bilbao.

Gloria at the race start off Lerwick in 2011.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED

Norway’s Sorlandet in windy conditions, race start off Latvia, 2003.

All the really big tall ships are run by navies and merchant marines (apart from Royal Clipper), and are described in the fi rst fi ve parts of this book. These are vessels that

train uniformed young men and women who will go on to motor vessels and warships. As national vessels they act as fl oating ambassadors, able to present a nation in a softer, friendlier way than any warship. But at about 70m in length are a series of vessels run by various businesses and charities.

The tall ships of this size make up the majority of the fl eet, and at the 70m mark are tall ships that started their lives as cargo vessels, fi shing boats or even lightships. There are still Navy tall ships at this size, even down to 40m, but this is the size of most of the ‘civilian’ tall ships. The number of trainees or voyage crew on each trip is smaller and quite often the trips are shorter on these.

Two weeks is a good period of time to master the running, rigging and sails of a tall

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


PART SIXCivilian tall ships

ABOVE Palinuro with yards manned, in the Parade of Sail, Santander, 2002.

Sorlandet at the race start off Antwerp in

2010, ahead of Shabab Oman and Georg Stage.

Palinuro ahead of the other Italian Navy training ship,

Amerigo Vespucci.

ship and to bond as a crew. The fi rst day on a tall ship can be daunting and unfamiliar, a bit like the fi rst day at a new school, but it is remarkable how quickly a mixed group of strangers can acclimatise.

In a few days they will know the routine, each other’s names, and will have started to master the intricacies of tall ship sailing. It is very diffi cult to describe what exactly sailing on a tall ship is like. It is diff erent from any

other adventurous activity, even cruising or racing on a yacht: indeed, it is fun to take yachtsmen who have mastered triangular fore and aft sails and show them how the sailing machine that is a square-rigger actually works.


Civilian tall ships

ABOVE Fireworks in Bergen, with Santa Maria Manuela and Christian Radich in foreground.

ABOVE An Admiralty pattern anchor ‘catted’ to deck level on Christian Radich.

Christian RadichSo where does the money to build a tall

ship come from? Christian Radich was a Norwegian businessman and

fan of sailing ships who died in 1899 leaving money to build a tall ship, but only after his wife had died. She passed away in 1916; the money from the estate had grown but it was not committed to build a ship, named after its benefactor, until 1935, when the keel of the full-rigged ship Christian Radich was laid.

Completed in 1937, Christian Radich went to the World’s Fair in New York in 1939, along with Denmark’s Danmark. She returned to Norway and was taken by the Germans when they invaded and used as a submarine depot ship. She was found, capsized, at the end of the war. This should have been the end of her, but she was rebuilt and put back into service at a cost of £70 000.

She was in the first tall ships race in 1956 and has been a regular competitor ever since. She was at the US bicentennial event in 1976 and the 1992 Regatta Columbus across the Atlantic and back. She starred in the Cinerama film ‘Windjammer’ in 1958 and was one of the tall ships in TV’s ‘The Onedin Line’. Since 2000 she has been owned by Skoleskipet Christian Radich and has expanded her role to include the charter market and trips with Norwegian Navy cadets.

Christian Radich’s masthead pictured

at the Tall Ships race Hartlepool,

August 2010.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


Christian Radich at the race start off Stockholm.

Christian Radich sailing towards the setting sun, 2010.


Civilian tall ships

In the same year that Christian Radich was commissioned, 1937, the Danish Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries built a motor

ship called Dana. She was used for research into marine biology in both Danish and international waters, until being sold in 1984, after which she was used as an offshore support ship having been lengthened by 9m in 1980. She was sold again in 2000 and then became a training ship for the Danish Nautical College taking young seamen to sea.

In 2007 her current owners, P&T charters, converted her into a three-masted topsail schooner, bringing her into operation in 2010, and named her Gulden Leeuw. She is currently being used for the Canadian Class Afloat programme run by West Island College International, and is described as having ‘the magnificent ambiance of the 1930s, with simple, functional forms and rich materials, often hand-crafted, decorative and luxurious’.

Modern civilian sail training is not used to train people as seamen, but the experience itself is character-building. Class Afloat combines this with normal classroom education. Their mission is to interpret the theme from the United Nations 1984 International Youth Year of ‘participation, development, and peace’. The Netherlands-flagged Gulden Leeuw is the floating classroom for a voyage, which typically takes in more than twenty ports across four continents over eight months.

Gulden Leeuw was designed by the renowned naval architects KHMB Y&S Design/Korner and was converted by the Balk Royal Shipyard at Urk, Netherlands. She measures 70.1m by 8.6m, and carries 1,400m2 of sail with a 40m high mast.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


Gulden Leeuw

ABOVE Gulden Leeuw in grey and windy weather off Lerwick, 2011.

RIGHT Gulden Leeuw in Norwegian waters, near the front of the fleet and racing side by side with Wylde Swan.

Palinuro


Palinuro off northern Spain, with all her sails set.

Civilian tall ships

The Italian barquentine Commandant Louis Richard was built as a schooner in Nantes, France in 1934 and

used by the French as a fi shing vessel; she worked in the busy cod fi shing grounds off Newfoundland. In 1948 she was sold, her name changed to Jean Marc Aline and she was rerigged as a barquentine.

In 1951 the Italian Navy, having lost one

of their large schoolships to the Russians, bought her to use in sail training and she entered service in July 1955. She was renamed Palinurus after the helmsman of Aeneas’ ship in Virgil’s Aeneid, and became one of fi ve other Italian Navy ships to be given the name. The motto of Nave Palinuro is ‘Faventibus Ventis’, meaning ‘by the favour of the winds’.

In 1937, while Christian Radich and Dana were being built, two four-masted schooners were also under construction in

Lisbon. Most tall ships were either designed as sail training vessels or converted from another use. Many start life as motor fishing boats and Santa Maria Manuela and her sister, Creoula, were both built as fishing schooners for the Portuguese White Fleet and carry the same rig today as they did when fishing.

In the 1930s these vessels would sail for the Grand Banks off the Canadian coast and send small dories away to fish for cod. The catch would be gutted and then salted on board the big four masters before being stored and eventually brought back to Europe.

Creoula continued fishing until 1973 and was then decommissioned and left alongside

Santa Maria Manuela and Creoulauntil 1979. Plans to make her into a fishing museum were changed when it was found that her hull was still in good condition, and so she re-entered service as a training ship for the Portuguese Navy. Measuring 68.64m in length and regularly setting eleven fore-and-aft sails with a total area of 1,130m2, Santa Maria Manuela continued operating until 1993 and was then due to be scrapped. However, she was saved in 2007 and entered service as a sail training vessel in 2010.

A third sistership, Argus, was built in 1938 and, from 1975 until 2007, was part of the Windjammer Barefoot sailing holiday fleet, named Polynesia. In 2009 she returned to Portugal and is being restored to service as a sail training vessel, with the intention that she join her two sisters under her old name.

LEFT AND BELOW Santa Maria Manuela racing for the first time after restoration, off Hartlepool taking part in the North Sea Regatta.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


Creoula at the Tall Ships race start off Plymouth in 1994.

Creoula taking part in the parade of sail, on Lisbon’s river Tagus in 2012.


Civilian tall ships

Alexander Von Humboldt II

The new Alexander Von Humboldt II racing off Copenhagen in 2013.

BELOW Alexander von Humboldt II at the race start off Bergen, 2014.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


The second ‘Alex’ was built to replace the fi rst (see p.64), and retains the distinctive green hull

of her predecessor. Built by Brenn- und Verformtechnik (BVT) in Bremen, the three-masted steel barque was launched in May 2011 and was formally named on 24 September 2011. Like most second ships, she is bigger than the vessel she replaced. She works in the North Sea and Baltic during the summer and spends winters in the Canaries or Caribbean. The intention is that she voyages for up to 340 days a year with the balance given over to maintenance. She is owned and operated by Deutsche Stiftung Sail Training (the German Sail Training Foundation), and sets twenty-four sails with 1,360m2 (14,600ft2) of sail area.

SørlandetSørlandet is the third of the Norwegian

schoolships and is the world’s oldest working full-rigged ship. She was built

in 1927 – without an engine – and used to train Norwegian seamen. She was captured by Germany during the war, used as a prison, sunk by bomb damage, refloated, had her rig removed and then was used as a depot ship.

Like Christian Radich, Sørlandet was restored to her original role after the war and competed in many of the early tall ships races. In 1974 she was taken out of service for three years, but was then given to the town of Kristiansand. Since then she has sailed with crews from the Norwegian Navy, attended the 1986 Centenary of the Statue of Liberty in New York and in 2010 served as a floating classroom for Class Afloat (see Gulden Leeuw). She is operated by Stiftelsen Fullriggeren Sørlandet and known as ‘the pearl of Norway’.

Sørlandet and the rest of the fleet sail into the sun

off the Belgian coast.

Sørlandet at race start after four days in Stockholm, 2007.


Civilian tall ships

TenaciousTenacious is the largest UK-flagged tall

ship, the largest wooden ship and only the second tall ship designed and built

for mixed abilities. Like her predecessor, Lord Nelson, she is fitted with wheelchair lifts, a speaking compass and Braille signage, but above all the philosophy is that, in all her operations both on and below decks, everyone will be involved in every aspect. Even the galley is wheelchair accessible.

A special ‘shorewatch’ programme allowed mixed ability volunteers to work alongside shipwrights during her construction. The keel was laid in June 1996, and she was named by her patron the Duke of York in April 2000.

ABOVE Stowing the heavy clew of the course sail.

ABOVE Sunset in the Caribbean, and just before handing sail, on board Tenacious.

Tenacious during sail trials in the Solent, 2000. She

takes turns with Lord Nelson participating in the annual STI Tall Ships races. In the winter she is either in the Canaries or working the Caribbean from Antigua.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


Gunilla The Swedish barque Gunilla sails the world as a fl oating

classroom, very much like the Class Afl oat programme, combining the teamwork

needed to sail a tall ship with formal education. She takes forty-four Swedish pupils aged between sixteen and nineteen years old typically on a two-month voyage; her mission is

not just educational but also involves cultural exchange. She was built in Sweden as a cargo vessel in 1940 and is operated by Öckerö Seglande Gymnasieskola.

Her hull is covered in epoxy so at fi rst glance she may look as though she is made from glass fi bre but inside (especially in her bar) the large laminated wooden knees, which connect the main deck to the inside of the hull, can be seen. She has high topsides and, in case of emergency, an aircraft-type infl atable slide down to her liferafts.

Like Lord Nelson, her jibs and staysails and upper squaresails are rollerfurling. She is bigger than Lord Nelson but takes the same number of voyage crew, forty, half of whom may have some physical disability, including up to eight using wheelchairs. A ‘buddy’ system pairs each disabled sailor with an able-bodied watchmate. Part of the ethos of involving everyone includes assisted climbs aloft with the use of a special frame which enables the hauling up of wheelchair users to the fi rst top or platform.

Tenacious off the Belgian coast.

Gunilla at race start at sunrise, French coast in 1999.


Civilian tall ships

Alexander Von Humboldt

The ‘green machine’, as Alexander Von Humboldt is known, was built in 1906 and for eighty years was used as

as the lightship Reserve Sonderburg. From 1920 to 1945 the ship was home ported at Kiel-Holtenau and served in many locations, mainly along Baltic shores, as well as in the North Seas. She was retired in 1986. having been replaced by automated light buoys at the various locations she served.

To survive as a light vessel you need to have a good ‘sea kindly’ hull, which is why, at the end of her active life, she was a good choice to convert into a three-masted barque. Her rig was designed by Zygmunt Choren, designer of Royal Clipper and the Dar Mlodziezy class, with steel masts and aluminium yards. A sailing ship’s sail trial is always a good time to test a ship, and she made ten and a half knots in a force seven. She was christened in May 1988 and, between then and being taken out of service, she sailed over 300,000 miles.

Her distinctive colour scheme came from two sources: the green sails because of initial sponsorship from the Beck’s brewery; the hull because of her association with Bremerhaven and the Rickmer Rickmers shipping company, whose ships sailed with green hulls. In October 2011 she was taken out of service for DSST and replaced by the newly-built Alexander von Humboldt II. She was sold on for possible use in the charter-cruise market in the Bahamas, but in early 2013 she returned to Europe and is now back in Bremen being used as a floating hotel and restaurant.

ABOVE RIGHT Alexander von Humboldt crossing the line with every sail set.

RIGHT Alexander von Humboldt at the beginning of a tall ships race off the Belgium coast.

FAR RIGHT Alexander von Humboldt at the Race start in Falmouth, 1998.

BELOW Alexander von Humboldt’s crew working aloft on the fore course yard.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


Capitan Miranda

While most of the rest of the South American navies have ships and barques, Uruguay has the schooner

Capitan Miranda. She was built at the Spanish Sociedad Española de Construcción Naval shipyard at Cádiz in 1930 as a hydrographic research and survey ship and was used to chart the coast and waters off Uruguay. Although she had two masts, bowsprit and sails, with her funnel and wide bridge she was more motor than sailing vessel in appearance.

She continued in her research and survey role until 1976, when it seemed that she might

be scrapped. But instead she was refitted, the old masts were replaced with three aluminium ones and she was converted into a sail training vessel. She re-entered service in October 1978. She was named after Captain Francisco Prudencio Miranda (1868-1925), a Uruguayan marine geographer

She has taken part in many regattas and tall ships races, including the Columbus Regatta in 1992, the Australian Bicentennial in 1988 and both the Velas Sudamerica regattas in 2010 and 2014. She underwent a major refit in 1993. Her operational number is ROU 20.

Capitan Miranda with enough breeze to fill her sails and ruffle her ensign, in the middle of the fleet off Falmouth.


Civilian tall ships

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED



Wylde Swan

As with Alexander von Humboldt, it took a long time for Wylde Swan to become a topsail schooner. She was

built in 1920 in Germany as a steam trawler named Bromberg and went to Norway after the war, having many subsequent owners (and names), before being sold in 2001 to Willem Slichting, the man behind Swan fan Makkum. She was converted to her present rig in 2010 and first raced in 2011.

Like many of the vessels in the Dutch part of the fleet, she carries stunsails which means her ‘summer’ rig has a sail area of 1,130m2. She is a fast ship, while her traditional looking exterior is paired with a modern interior. She is a regular competitor in the annual Race of the Classics, where teams from Dutch universities race Dutch tall ships across to eastern England and back during the Easter break.

ABOVE Wylde Swan ahead of the fleet off Stavanger.

lEft Wylde Swan sailing away from Belgium.

Civilian tall ships

Italia

Italia is the world’s biggest brigantine, measuring 61m by 9.2m overall. She was built in Gdansk, being launched in 1993

under a Dutch flag as Swan Fan Makkum. In 2007 she was sold to the Italian Navy and renamed Italia. She is operated by the Italian Navy and Yacht Club Italiano. She retains her magnificent swan figurehead.

As Swan, her top three square sails roller furled under the yard, which looks like a modern invention but was in use at the start of the 20th century (French topsail schooners Belle Poule and Etoile have the same system, as does Wylde Swan). Under her new ensign, all of Italia’s square sails are furled the ‘traditional’ way, with buntlines and clewlines.

Italia racing for the first time and in the

Mediterranean, with an Italian ensign.

ABOVE Italia’s majestic swan figurehead is a throwback to her original designation.

ABOVE Italia at sunrise and with very little wind to fill her sails, which total 1,300m2.

RIGHT Her first race as Italia, and chasing the wind to get across the start line.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


STA schooners and brigs


PART SEVENTall ships 60m and under

Ten years after the fi rst tall ships race in 1956, an event which was widely seen to mark the end of the era of

square-rigged sail, there began an expansion in civilian sail training: in 1966 the Sail Training Association in the UK launched its purpose-built tall ship, Sir Winston Churchill, and two years later a sister ship, the Malcolm Miller. They often sailed and raced with an all-girl crew on one vessel and all boys on the other. The schooners were identical except for their sail numbers, TS K1

and TS K2, and the shape of their deckhouse doors (Malcolm Miller’s were square).

In 2000 both schooners were replaced. Using two steel hulls originally intended to be brigantines in the charter market, the STA completed them but rigged as brigs. The fi rst, Stavros S. Niarchos, was named after the man who had supported that fi rst tall ships race. The second, Prince William, was named in 2001. In 2007 she was laid up and in 2010 sold to the Pakistani Navy and renamed Rah Naward.

TSYT brigs Prince William and Stavros S. Niarchos.

As one of the few organisations to operate sister vessels (Toronto Brigantine and Los Angeles Maritime Institute (also brigantines) are two others), the STA (now Tall Ships Youth Trust) used to hold an annual match race with their brigs.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


NiagaraThe American brig Niagara is

a replica of the relief fl agship of Commodore Oliver Hazard

Perry, who defeated the Royal Navy at the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813. The original Niagara survived into the 1980s but in poor condition, and a few of her timbers were incorporated in the current vessel.

She is 60m in extreme length but a third of that is made up of her bowsprit. She is also a snow or snow brig; the spanker is attached to a small vertical spar behind the main mast. The wood used is mainly Douglas fi r and yellow pine. She is the offi cial fl agship of Pennsylvania and operates from Erie Maritime Museum. Her mission is twofold: as an ‘interpreter’ of the Battle of Lake Erie, and as a sailing school vessel.

The brig Niagara at the start of the race from Halifax to

Amsterdam, 2000.

Eendracht off Hartlepool in the North Sea Regatta, ahead of

Oosterschelde but behind Stad Amsterdam.


Eendracht

The Eendracht story begins with Stichting het Zeilend Zeeschip (the Sailing Seaship Foundation), which

was founded in 1938 and launched its fi rst vessel, a topsail schooner, in 1974. That schooner, the fi rst Eendracht, proved too small and in 1989 was replaced with a larger three-masted schooner built in the Damen yard (which would also produce the Stad Amsterdam sisters). The fi rst schooner was sold to Clipper Deutsches Jugendwerk zur See and continues to operate as a sail training vessel.

She is big and heavy, but with all her sails set and a good force three or four will pick up and go with top speed of about sixteen knots, with the topsails coming off when wind speed reaches about force six. Eendracht, like many tall ships, balances her sail training work with chartering in the Canaries and Caribbean in the winter. There are big Lewmar winches to wind the halyards when setting sail and, if there are not enough people on deck, some power can be discreetly switched on to help.

The name Eendracht means ‘unity’, thus refl ecting the teambuilding message behind the vessel. I once asked a Latvian trainee on board about tall ships and sail training and what it all meant, and she replied: ‘It is an investment in good emotion’, one of the better descriptions of what the modern fl eet is all about.

Eendracht sailing away after Sail Den Helder.

60m and under

Dewaruci and Jadran

KRI Dewaruci (KRI means Naval Ship of the Republic of Indonesia, Dewaruci is a god of the sea) is owned by the

Indonesian Navy. She was built in Germany in 1953. She is one of the ‘friendly’ tall ships. Her deckworks are covered in carvings and her crew are often seen drumming alongside the ship in race ports and in the crew parades.

She has a sister or near sister in Yugoslavia’s Jadran, built in the same German yard but twenty years earlier. Jadran started life in the Yugoslav Royal Navy, was captured by the Italians and renamed Marco Polo in 1941, lay abandoned in Venice in 1943, returned to Yugoslavia and repaired in 1947 and then continued in service until 1992. She is now used as a training ship by Montenegro. She is rigged as a topsail schooner and the differences between her and Dewaruci – as with Esmeralda and Juan Sebastian de Elcano – are the way sails are attached aft of the foremast, and Dewaruci is slightly bigger.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


Dewaruci racing in 2010.

Jadran at the Trafalgar 200 Fleet Review in 2005.


BelemThe French barque Belem was

built in Nantes in 1896 as a merchant ship. She sailed with

a crew of just thirteen men carrying cocoa beans, rum and sugar cane to France from South America. In 1914 she was bought by the Duke of Westminster to use as a luxury yacht, being sold to Ernest Guinness in 1921 and renamed Fantome II. During World War II she was kept in the Isle of Wight and, after Guinness’s death in 1949, was bought by Vittorio Cini in 1951 and renamed Giorgio.

She was used by the Centro Marinaro to train merchant seamen and undertook her last ‘cruise’ in 1967, being then laid up until purchase by the French in 1978, renamed Belem and operated by the Belem

Foundation as a civilian training ship. She was restored in Paris,

and after sea trials in 1985 returned to active service.

She does not race much, but did take part in

the Statue of Liberty 100th anniversary

in 1986.

60m and under

Fryderyk Chopin

Fryderyk Chopin is another design from the Polish naval architect Zygmunt Choren, and measures 55m by 8.5m.

She was built in Gdansk and launched in 1992, just in time to take part in the Columbus Regatta, in which she came third in her class. She sailed for four years with Class Afl oat students, from 1992 to 1996.

She is probably the biggest brig in the fl eet, and her tall stack of sails is quite distinctive and makes her quite fast; she is one of those tall ships that seems to be handled like a yacht when racing. Her home port is Szczecin, and she also carries a 520hp diesel engine.

Fryderyk Chopin at dusk, after departing Bergen 2014.


SHIPS ILLUSTRATED

Europa half way on her round the world tour, off Melbourne, 2013.

ABOVE Europa in blue skies as she catches a decent breeze off the Devon coast, 2005.


EuropaEuropa was built in 1911 in

Hamburg, Germany as Senator Brockes and used as a light

vessel. She ‘retired’ in the 1980s and was slowly converted into a barque, entering service as a sail training vessel in 1994. She is one of those tall ships that always seems to be sailing. She crossed the Atlantic both ways in the Tall Ship 2000 event; she was on the American Great Lakes in 2003.

In 2012 she sailed around the world in company with two other Dutch vessels – Oosterschelde and Tecla – taking in the Fleet Review in Sydney in October 2013 and then back home around the Horn. She has spent many winter seasons in Antarctica, sailing amongst the icebergs and penguins. She sails with many nationalities on board, typically eight or ten and sometimes a record 14. In tall ships race ports when the parade of sail can see many ships with engines on and a token set of sails, she will sail with everything set.

She is one of the few ships to carry a skysail, the squaresail above the royal, and like many Dutch ships, she also has stunsails. She is named for one of the Greek god Zeus’s many loves. Her original fi gurehead, damaged by an iceberg, has been replaced and now features the maiden Europa as well as the bull that Zeus disguised himself as in order to seduce her.

60m and under

Tarangini

The Indian Navy has two sail training barques, the first of which is INS Tarangini, which is Lord Nelson’s half

sister. Tarangini was built by Goa Shipyard Ltd and was launched in 1995, having been designed by Colin Mudie, designer of STS Lord Nelson. Tarangini’s hull is the same as that of her half-sister, but instead of a flat, wheelchair accessible bowsprit, she has a straight, pole type bowsprit. Her squaresails are all ‘traditional’, so she has no roller furling topgallants or royals, and her jibs and staysails are hanked on.

However, her layout on deck and below is very different, with accommodation for sixty-one crew including forty-five cadets. Since her commissioning in 1997, she has sailed around the world, raced on the Great Lakes next to Europa in 2003, was at the Trafalgar 200 Fleet Review in 2005 and Sail Boston in 2007. She was joined by an identical sistership, INS Sudarshini, in 2012. In 2013 they both escorted their older sister, Lord Nelson, into Kochi during the latter’s round-the-world voyage.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


ABOVE Cadets aloft on Tarangini during the Parade of Sail, Bremerhaven.

ABOVE Tarangini in the Bay of Bengal, 1997.

Shabab Oman

The interest in civilian sail training and the use of tall ships for ‘adventure’ gathered pace in the 1970s and 1980s.

In Scotland, the Outward Bound Sea School replaced their schooner Prince Louis II, with space for twenty-four cadets. with the topsail schooner Captain Scott (thirty-six cadets). Following the idea that the building of character did not just happen aboard a tall ship, she was used as a centre for land-based expeditions and as part of the Duke of Edinburgh’s award scheme.

In 1977 she was sold to Oman and renamed Shabab Oman (meaning ‘Youth of Oman’), and in 1979 she became RNOV Shabab Oman as part of the Royal Navy of Oman. Her hull went from being black to white and in 1984 she became a barquentine. In a fleet where many ships have white hulls and white sails, she is distinctive in having the Omani National symbol – a khanjar over crossed swords in red – on her course, upper topsail and both of her fore and aft gaff topsails.

As a floating ambassador, she has taken part in many of the tall ships races in the northern hemisphere. She is known as a friendly ship, often in port hosting breakfast on her foredeck for the crews of other tall ships. Proof of this is that she has won the International Friendship Trophy many times, an award voted for by the other tall ships in the race. She has been replaced by Shabab Oman II (see p.48) and is set to become a museum vessel in Port Sultan Qaboos, near Muscat.


Racing for the last time.

Shabab Oman off the Devon coast, 2005.

BELOW The figurehead on Shabab Oman.

60m and under

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


Picton CastlePicton Castle was built as a

Welsh motor fishing trawler in 1928. She fished, carried

cargo and, during World War II, worked as a minesweeper. She was bought, in Norway, in 1993 by Captain Dan Moreland and motored to New York and then moved to Luneberg in Canada. She was rigged as a barque and, since 1997, has made five round-the-world voyages. She is one of those ships that always seems to be voyaging and is rarely in her home port.

Pride of Baltimore II

Pride of Baltimore II is a replica of a Baltimore clipper, the type of topsail schooners that America used in the war

of 1812 with Britain. These fast vessels had a large sail area and were used for carrying light cargoes and then as privateers to fight the Royal Navy. This schooner is a replacement for the first replica, which was built in 1977 but was lost in a squall in 1986.

The second vessel is larger, has two auxiliary engines instead of one, and watertight bulkheads below. No reproduction can be completely historically accurate and still meet modern safety rules but Pride, like HMB Endeavour, looks like and sails like the part. Pride’s mission is ‘to promote historical maritime education, foster economic development and tourism and represent the people of Maryland’.

Picton Castle with the fleet racing for New Zealand 2013.

ABOVE Pride of Baltimore II off Boston during Tall Ships 2000.

ABOVE Pride of Baltimore II ahead of the fleet off Bermuda, 2009.


60m and under

Lord Nelson

Lord Nelson was the first tall ship designed (by Colin Mudie) and built for mixed ability crews. Of the forty

voyage crew (who pay to sail), up to twenty may be disabled and up to eight of those may be in wheelchairs. Like Tenacious, which is also run by the Jubilee Sailing Trust, she has wheelchair lifts, flat decks and, below, corridors and watertight doors wide enough for wheelchair access.

Research showed that wheelchairs tip over at just over twelve degrees, so Lord Nelson’s hull shape means she will heel to about ten degrees and then become quite ‘stiff’. This means wheelchairs do not have to be lashed down (although there are discreet bits of track on the bridge and elsewhere to do this if the weather is a bit lively). And for all the additions that she has, there is the underlying belief that everyone can sail and take part, making her a popular ship.

For a long time she took part in Tall Ships’ races without actually racing, but is now a regular competitor and raced across the Atlantic and back in the Tall Ships 2000

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


ABOVE Lord Nelson punching into the ocean swell off Sydney, 2013.

ABOVE Lord Nelson at sunset off the French coast, 21 October – Trafalgar Day.

Lord Nelson sailing south to the Canary Islands, off the Portuguese coast.


regatta. One of her Captains coined the phrase ‘we work at the speed of the slowest person’, to emphasise that everyone took part in sail setting and handling. This might seem a restriction, but at any tall ships race start all ships’ crews work backwards from the time when they want all sails to be set. On board Lord Nelson it may take a little longer, but tall ships are not racing yachts and the evolutions are much more sedate.

In 2014 she returned from a twenty-three-month journey around the world, which saw her visit South Africa, India, Australia and come round Cape Horn, before taking a trip into the Antarctic.

60m and under

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


Georg StageThe original Georg Stage was

given to the Georg Stages Minde Foundation by Captain Frederik

Stage in 1882; both ship and organisation were named for his late and only son. In 1934 the vessel was sold to writer and sailor Alan Villiers and sailed on a two-year around-the-world voyage. In 1936 she was sold again and used as a private yacht.

In 1939 she was used as a training ship by the US Maritime Commission until 1945. Two years later she was transferred to Mystic Seaport where she remains, a fl oating exhibit, and in company with Charles W. Morgan, the last surviving wooden whaling ship.

The second ship named Georg Stage was built in Denmark in 1934. She is the smallest full-rigged ship in the fl eet. She is also operated by Georg Stages Minde and is based in Copenhagen. The Foundation’s purpose is to give young people who want to go to sea their fi rst experience on board a dedicated school ship.

ABOVE Georg Stage after the race start off Stavanger, 1997.

BELOW Georg Stage off the Belgian coast, 2010.


OosterscheldeOosterschelde was built in 1918,

launched as a schooner, and used as a sailing cargo vessel.

Over the years she was modernised and the rig removed. Her restoration began in 1990 and she re-entered service as a topsail schooner in 1992. In 1996 she circumnavigated the world, taking part in Sail Osaka in 1997. In 2012 she sailed in company with Europa and Tecla and went around the world again.

Oosterschelde racing with Wylde Swan, Hartlepool in 2010.

60m and under

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


PART EIGHTTall ships 50m and smallerMorgenster

Morgenster was built as the herring lugger Vrouw Maria SCH 324 for the fi shing company den Dulk.

She was constructed by the Boot shipyard in Alphen, had a motor fi tted in 1928 and was refi tted and lengthened by 7m in 1947. She continued to be used for fi shing after the war and also served time as a radio ship. In 1993 she began her transformation into a brig and a sail training vessel, and since 2008 she has been used for private charter as well as sail training following extensive repairs and maintenance work. She is based in Den Helder, Holland.


Endeavour barkIn 1768 Lieutenant James Cook

commanded the collier Earl of Pembroke, renamed HM bark Endeavour, for a

scientifi c expedition to the Pacifi c Ocean. He rounded Cape Horn, reached New Zealand in September 1769 and then on to the East Coast of Australia. He returned home in July 1771.

A replica of his ship was completed in 1994 and this vessel recreated Cook’s voyage to New Zealand and Eastern Australia in 1995, before setting out for a circumnavigation of

the world, which was repeated in 2002-05. She is now one of the exhibits at the National Maritime Museum in Sydney, combining her roles as static display and active tall ship.

The word ‘bark’ in the title is somewhat confusing, in the same way ‘ship’ is also a type of rig. Bark or barque only became descriptive of a type of rig in the nineteenth century and before that was used by the Royal Navy to describe non-warships, such as ships of exploration.

Endeavour looks and feels traditional; on deck, and at sea, when the Captain says, ‘the engines are off , welcome to the eighteenth century’, crew and passengers really do step back in time. When she is on round-the-world tours, she goes from an active sailing vessel to a stationery exhibition vessel, with her cabins on display in very short order.

The modern section below these cabins – the ‘twentieth century’, with galley and engine room – has carved on a bulkhead the words ‘be excellent to each other’. This is important not for a Keanu Reeves movie, but more that, in terms of sail training, few phrases encompass so well what these ships are about.

ABOVE Down below on board Endeavour.

50m and under

ABOVE ORP Iskra at race start off Stavanger, 1997. ABOVE Pogoria: at the race start off Leith, 1995.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


Pogoria, Iskra and Kaliakra

Before Polish designer Zygmunt Choren designed Dar Mlodziezy and her sisters, he created the barquentine

Pogoria and her two sisters. Pogoria was built in 1980 in Gdansk for the Polish Steel Workers Union. Her current owner is the Sail Training Association of Poland.

Her slightly larger sister, Iskra II, was built in 1981 and commissioned into the Polish Navy in 1982; she is a successor to the awooden schooner, also called Iskra, that sailed as a training ship between 1927 and 1977. Iskra means ‘spark’ in Polish and reflects her mission to spark a love of the sea in all those who sail on her.

Kaliakra was built for the Bulgarian Navy in 1984 and is used for training Naval Cadets from the Nikola Vaptsarov Naval Academy in Varna. She originally had four yards on her foremast, but this was increased to five in 1992, which is the same number as her sisters. All three have been regular participants in the Cutty Sark and STI Tall Ships races.

Kaliakra after the race start, Falmouth, 2008.


Tre Kronor

The wooden brig Tre Kronor was built in Sweden between 1997 (keel laying) and 2008

(maiden voyage). She is a recreation of the brig Gladan, which was built in 1857 as a cargo and supply ship before being used by the Swedish Navy for sail training. The name is carried on by one of their two topsail schooners. The wooden brigs of this era were considered to be the pinnacle of design and construction before the onset of iron hulls and steam. Tre Kronor’s hull is planked with oak over oak frames and her deck is Siberian larch. She is based in Stockholm and sails mainly in the Baltic.

50m and under

Spirit of New Zealand racing off

Sydney, 2013.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


Spirit of New Zealand

The Spirit of Adventure Trust was set up in 1972 to help young New Zealanders ‘develop qualities of

leadership, independence and community spirit through the medium of the sea’. Their fi rst vessel was the topsail schooner Spirit of Adventure, which was used between 1973 and 1997. Their second ship, Spirit of New Zealand, was built in Auckland and commissioned in 1986.

A typical Youth Development voyage for 15-19 year olds lasts ten days and uses the ship as a base for other water and shore-based activities. One trip a year is the Inspiration Voyage for young people with physical disabilities. She can take up to forty trainees; her accommodation below includes a teaching and instruction space with banked up seating right in the stern.

Pelican

Pelican is another conversion; she is unique in being the only mainmast barquentine in the fl eet, being

three-masted with squaresails only on the mainmast. This rig is designed to mimic the sail plans of the polacca xebec rig used in the Mediterranean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when Barbary pirates took on the Royal Navy with fast, manoeuvrable vessels. On Pelican the

massive lateen sail of the xebec is replaced by a large jib, a staysail, a gaff -rigged foresail and a main staysail. If you squint at her rig when she is sailing, you can trace an imaginary triangle back from the bowsprit over the top of her sails. A shortened forestay on the mainmast means her square sails can brace around quite far.

She was built in 1948 as an arctic trawler named Pelican and worked in that trade until 1967. She was renamed Kadett and

used as a coaster. And from 1995 until 2007 she was remodelled and refi tted and given her present rig. It was originally intended that she would be used for sail training in the summer and undertake charter work in the Caribbean over the winter. Many of her cabins are designed to change from four berth to two berth and most of their bathrooms actually have baths inside. She is usually based at Weymouth, where she is well known.


ABOVE Pelican’s � gurehead.

RIGHT Pelican sails into the sunset off the Norwegian coast.

BELOW Pelican sailing for the � rst time, in Weymouth bay.

50m and under

Soren Larsen

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


Soren Larsen was built, in Denmark, by Soren Larsen & Sons, in 1949. She worked as a cargo carrier up

until 1972 and in 1978 went into private ownership. She was the star of the ‘Onedin Line’, a BBC drama that included quite a few tall ships. In 1982 she was chartered for three years by the Jubilee Sailing Trust (see Lord Nelson) to test the concept of mixed ability sailing, disabled and able-

bodied working a tall ship together. In 1987 she was the fl agship of the First Fleet Reenactment that saw a fl eet of eight tall ships sail from the UK to Australia. They joined tall ships from around the world to celebrate Australia’s bicentennial, and the handover of Young Endeavour. Soren sailed in the Pacifi c until returning home in 1991, by way of Cape Horn and in company with the brigantine Eye of the Wind. She took part in the 1992 Columbus Regatta. In 1993 she was back in the Pacifi c and in 2011 joined the Sydney Harbour Tall Ships Fleet, doing day sails and charters.


Young Endeavour

Young Endeavour is possibly the only tall ship given as gift by one government to another: she was the offi cial gift

from Great Britain to Australia in 1988 on the occasion of the bicentennial (200 years since the fi rst fl eet had arrived in Australia and the founding of the fi rst European colony). She was built in Lowestoft to a design by Colin Mudie, designer of Royalist and Lord Nelson.

To get her to Australia involved an epic delivery voyage south through the Atlantic and around the Cape of Good Hope; she was crewed by trainees, half from the UK and half from Australia, and all chosen by way of a rigorous selection process. She was handed over in Sydney in January 1988. In September 2013 she met up with Lord Nelson, saluting her as she sailed past off Melbourne, the reverse of what had happened off Cowes, Isle of Wight twenty-six years earlier, and their fi rst meeting since then.

She is ‘owned’ by the Australian Navy but operated by the not-for-profi t organisation Young Endeavour Youth Scheme, and sails with young Australians. She came back to the northern hemisphere to take part in the Columbus Regatta in 1992, and in 2015 was back in the UK after attending the Gallipoli commemorations in Turkey.

She is a smart vessel; her topsides, painted ‘Britannia blue’ by special permission, are so well fi lled and shiny that they could be mistaken for glass fi bre. One of the features of a voyage on Young Endeavour is ‘Command Day’, when the permanent Navy crew step back and let the trainees run the ship. They elect their own Captain and offi cers and for twenty-four hours decide on the programme for the ship and how she is sailed.

50m and under


SHIPS ILLUSTRATED

Tunas Samudera

STS Young Endeavour’s sister ship is the Malaysian Navy’s KLD Tunas Samudera, built by the same yard as Young

Endeavour and launched in 1989 and named by Queen Elizabeth II and the King of Malaysia.


Eye of the Wind

Eye of the Wind is one of those ships that took a long route to her present role. Built in Germany in 1911 as a

topsails schooner, she sailed with cargo to South America, was sold to Sweden, derigged and used as a coaster, and almost destroyed by fi re in 1969. She was saved in 1973, moved to England, restored and rigged as a brigantine, a task which took four years.

In 1979 she was part of Operation Drake. This was a round-the-world voyage involving ‘Young Explorers’ aged seventeen to twenty-four from twenty-seven diff erent nations in scientifi c exploration and research under expedition leader Colonel John Blashford-Snell. She has been used in the fi lms ‘Blue Lagoon’, ‘Savage Islands’ and ‘White Squall’ in which a very realistic model was used to recreate the sinking of Albatross in 1961.

In 2001 she transferred to private ownership in Denmark and in 2009 was bought by a German company to be used for group travel, charters and management training. In 2014 she took part in the Falmouth-Greenwich regatta and was once again fl ying a British Red Ensign.

Eye of the Wind in the Parade of Sail, Falmouth 2014.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


PART NINEThe small fleet 40m and underGladan and Falken

The Swedish Navy operates two topsail schooners, Gladen and Falken, which were built in 1947

as replacements for the full-rigged ships Jarramas and Najaden. Apart from the sail numbers (and the name on the topsides near the helm), the only way to tell them apart is that Gladan’s boottop (the paintwork on the hull just above the waterline) is red and Falken’s blue.

Gladen

Falken.


Enterprize

The wooden topsail schooner Enterprize is a replica of a schooner

by the same name built in 1829 which was sailed from Tasmania in 1835 with the settlers who founded the city of Melbourne. The keel of the replica was laid in 1991, and it was completed at the Old Ports and Harbour Yard in Williamstown. The vessel was launched on 30 April 1997 at Hobson’s Bay, having been completed for a cost of $2.5 million. Enterprize undertakes a mixture of educational daysails and longer trips. She is based in Melbourne at the Polly Woodside Maritime Museum, and was the fi rst square-rigged commercial sailing ship to be built in Melbourne in 120 years.

Windeward Bound

The schooner Windeward Bound was launched in Hobart in 1996 and is based on a Boston schooner from 1848.

The hull is constructed of 5cm hardwood strip planks, over epoxy-laminated Douglas

fi r frames, spaced 38cm apart. The stem, sternpost and keel are of epoxy-laminated Tasmanian blue gum and the decks are of huon and New Zealand kauri pines. She is rigged with four squaresails, three headsails, three staysails between the masts, a gaff mainsail and gaff topsail, making twelve sails in all. In 2002 she recreated the circumnavigation of Australia by Captain Matthew Flinders 200 years earlier.

The small fleet

Lady Nelson

The wooden brig Lady Nelson was launched in Tasmania in 1988; she is a replica of a brig sent to Australia from

London in 1800 for exploration in the colony of New South Wales. She is owned by the Tasmanian Sail Training Association.

Lady Nelson on the River Derwent, Hobart, 2013.

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


Kapitan GlowackiThe Polish brigantine

Kapitan Glowacki was built in 1944 and used as

a patrol cutter by the German Navy. She went as reparations to Poland in 1945 and was rigged as a gaff ketch. She sailed under the name Henryk Rutkowski (a Polish communist executed in 1925) and was given her brigantine rig in 1984. She was renamed Kapitan Glowacki after the fall of communism in Poland and is now owned by the Polish Yachting Association.

Shtandart is a replica of the fl agship that Tsar Peter the Great built in 1703. In order to create a new Russian Navy to protect trade in

the Baltic, Tsar Peter had studied shipbuilding in England. He returned with knowledge and experts and began building ships, of which the twenty-eight-gun frigate Shtandart was his fl agship.

The modern recreation of this fl agship (for which there were no existing plans) began in 1988, following much research into the vessel’s design and construction. The keel was laid in 1994 and, where possible, the work was undertaken using traditional methods: the planks for the hull had to be steamed so that they would bend and then fi tted before they cooled. She was named in 1998 and launched in September 1999.

She may be one of the smaller ships in the fl eet but she is also one of the most distinctive, being an early eighteenth century vessel halfway between the caravels and the more recognisable rig of HMS Victory of fi fty years later. To the modern tall ship sailor, the lateen sail on her mizzen mast needs to be shortened and chopped to become today’s spanker sail; her squaresails are quite deep, she has a spritsail under her bowsprit which has disappeared from modern use, and she has no staysails or jibs.

Shtandart waiting for the breeze off the Belgian coast, 2010.

Shtandart


RoyalistThe British brig Royalist was

named by HRH Princess Anne in 1971 and for forty-three years

served as the fl agship of the Sea Cadets. She was designed by Colin Mudie and built in Cowes, Isle of Wight. She took up to twenty-four cadets from the age of thirteen, which is younger than most other tall ships where trainees usually have to be sixteen or over. With a rig and sails light enough to be used by such young sailors, she is easy to tack and wear. It was not uncommon for her to be seen tacking to and fro in the Solent, on her way back to her home port of Gosport. She took part in tall ships races where for a while she

was in class A2, which was for the smaller tall ships and where she was in company with the Irish brigantine Asgard II. Her nicknames were ‘puddle jumper’ and, because she had the same white-on-black painted gunports, ‘baby Kruzenshtern’. Because she only drew 2.8m, not much more than most yachts, she could make it into anchorages and marinas which the bigger tall ships could not navigate.

She is to be replaced by another very similar brig called TS Royalist but 2.5m longer than the original. The question of what to do with a tall ship when she fi nishes her career is a hard one: in Royalist’s case she was moved to Antwerp in January 2015 and scrapped.

ABOVE Royalist in fog but with a breeze, Torbay, 2006.

The small fleet

SHIPS ILLUSTRATED


Pathfinder and Playfair in a match race in freshwater.

The Toronto brigantines Pathfinder and Playfair, based in Ontario, are possibly the only tall ship sisters to sail

mainly in freshwater. They are identical to St Lawrence II, built in Kingston in 1953 for use by Canadian Sea Cadets. Pathfinder (white hull) was launched in 1963 and Playfair (blue hull) in 1974 and was commissioned by HM Queen Elizabeth II, who has only christened one other tall ship, KLD Tunas Samudera.

Pathfinder and Playfair are fast, manoeuvrable vessels, and can come about in their own length without losing much speed. Like Royalist, they are small enough to get into harbours and anchorages that bigger vessels cannot. To quote one Captain, ‘the brigantine rig is very engaging . . . to bring out her liveliness requires many hands all working together. It is a complicated machine with which to become familiar. We are able to put twenty-eight people on these 60ft ships and

keep all of them busy.’ When match racing, Playfair and Pathfinder are small enough to tack like yachts, and even in light airs pick up and run like bigger ships in stronger breezes.

There are plans to involve older sister St Lawrence II in some races, something which would be that rare event: identical tall ships racing together, ‘in class’, which of course something only sisterships can do.

Pathfinder and Playfair Playfair.

Pathfinder.

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