THE OLD SOBRAON.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 161, 9 July 1926, Page 3

THE OLD SOBRAON.

END OF FAMOUS SHIP.

A FI.YER AMONG CLIPPERS

TWO ACRES OF CANVAS,

(By FRANCIS YEW.)

In Sydney there is a League of Ancient Msfriners, the members of which have qualified to be of the company of shellbacks by actual working experience at sea. That some of them secured their discharges by signing on for the sixtymile run from Sydney to Newcastle (return by rail) is beside the question. Just now the Ancients are disturbed ' by the threat that the old Sobraon, now i lying in Rose Bay, with her bottom heavily barnacled, is to be burned or sunk, the naval authorities having decided to get rid of her. "Man's ingratitude to man ,, is nothing to their ingratitude to the ships that have served them—unless it is to the sailormen who sailed the ships. But Jack sings a different chanty. He loves an old ship, and he hates to hear of her destruction, i much as the lover of a horse for its :on the old Sobraon, and the suggestion that this good servant of man should be slaughtered when it has grown beyond the stage of hard work. Therefore it is that the ancient sailormen of Sydney, now settled in snug quarters ashore, are perturbed at the I sentence of death which has been passed on the old Sabraon, and the suggestion !is made that the great old-timer should ;be handed over to them to establish a jolly old floating club in. What nights they would have! What tales of the sea would be told within the inspiring wooden walls of the old clipper! What memories would be awakened by this association! A Chequered Career. They still call her the Sobraon in the circle of the old windjammer men, but for years she has been officially dubbed the Tingira, and as she swung to her anchors at Rose Bay there were few of the present generation who knew her by any other name, or who knew her chequered career. For chequered it has been —and some of the checks have been decidedly black. During almost twenty years she was in a sinister manner reminiscent of the days of which we hate to be reminded —the days when convict ships came to Port Jackson —for she was the home of some prime young devils in her role of a floating reformatory. Doubtless there are many eminently ■ respectable middle-aged men in Sydney to-day who can hear resounding down the corridors of time the voice of a I father—"l'll have you put on board the | Sobraon, my lad, if you don't behave | yourself better." I hear it myself! , But there were bright days, too, in the history of the Sobraon. She was a ship among ships in the famous clipper era, boasting companions such as the Cutty Sark, under Captain Moody; the great Thermopylae, under Captain Mathieson; the John o' Gaunt under Captain Donnan; the Abergeldie, under Captain Duthie; and the Red Jacket, under Captain Johnson—"Old Bill Johnson." All great sailers these, notably the Cutty Sark, the Thermopylae and the Red Jacket but the Sobraon was with the best of them, and she licked the Cutty Sark in one run out, going fairy-like along the Trades, and speeding almost as fast as the wind that filled her full two acres of sails along the Roaring Forties, to make Sydney Heads in 73 days after leaving London.

Sailing Seventeen Knots. With cabin passengers paying high fares and competition keen, fast voyages were the aim of the masters of the day, and it was "carry on,' , with all sail set, even to the royals in the strongest winds, and they will tell you to this day, if you obtain admission into the select company of the old shellbacks, how the Sobraon logged as much as 17 knots an hour. And 17 knots —it may be mentioned for the information of the landsman—equals over 19 good land miles. There are comparatively few steamships can do that even in these days. The Sobraon was launched at Aberdeen sixty years ago. She was a composite ship—the largest ever built —and her timbers were of that grand ship material, teak. There is living in the backblocks of New South Wales to-day, it is said, the man who was foreman carpenter at Hall's shipyards when the Sobraon was put together, and a writer in a Sydney paper says that if he comes to town when "the burning of his old love" is being carried out, the executioners had better give him a wide berth. The name of this old-time shipbuilder is James Cameron, and it is related that "he took such pride in his job that he went to sea in the Sobraon as carpenter, and stayed there the whole of his seagoing career from 1566 to 1801. The names of some of the skippers of the old clipper are now those of wellknown Australian families —the Kyles and the Elmslies for instance. Kyle was the proud skipper who took the Sobraon on her maiden trip, when she was among the finest clippers of the day, and he was succeeded, after several voyages, by Elmslie, who was a R.N.R. man. The latter was in command for many years before retiring from the sea. The Sobraon had splendid provision for passengers and was a most popular ship. Her quarter-deck housing, to-day providing residence for a commander and oflicers of the Royal Australian Navy, ?till shows something of the old splendour of her accommodation.

A Floating "Reformatory."

From the glory of her place as a queen among clippers, the Sobraon fell to a. sad, if useful, place. She was purchased by the Xew South Wales Government and converted into a reformatory ship for bad boys. In those days before the spread of education, there were some very bad boys—mostly bad because of ignorance and lack of proper training—but, while some of the Sobraon boys were really reformed and later in life became good citizens, it is true, also, that many ! others became brutalised by vicious association and by flogging and other harsh treatment and that the only qualifications they earned in their floating home were those which later gained them admission to gaols ashore—in the earlier dayi of this reformatory, at any rate. There were some horrid tales told of the Sobraon and the mention of her name was quite enough to intimidate any but the most reckless Sydney boy with a tendency to take the wrong track. Aften twenty years of this depressing servitude, the Sobraon appeared ia another and more glorious role. New and better methods of reforming bad boys than herding them on board a ship in the harbour were adopted, and the once famous clipper was taken over by the Commonwealth Government and renamed the Tingira. Since then she has been used to train young Australians for the navy, in conjunction with a sea-going tender which made quarterly trips along the coast with the Young Idea. The training on the Tingira was very thorough, including schooling, seamanship and gunnery, and, with the cooperation of the tender, which gave tha youngsters experience of real sea conditions, including the handling of sail, she has turned" out some very fine young Australian Jacks—many of whom, by the way, were aboard the Sydney when she smashed the Emden off Cocos Island. And it does not seem right to the lover of a good ship that the old Sab-, raon 7 should be sunk or fired while her stout teak timbers are still watertight. Surely there will be some to save her from such a fate, so that she may survive for many years as an illustration of what was what in the days when real sailormen "went down to the sea" ia real ships.