SHIP TUSITALA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 236, 5 October 1937, Page 5

SHIP TUSITALA.

ON A WORLD CRUISE.

MAY CALL AT AUCKLAND.

WORLD'S LARGEST OF KIND.

Sailing ships are enjoying the "Indian summer" of their life. Scant cargo space offering throughout the world for increasing shipments has for a time brought them back into the regular sea lanes; their rarity has been appreciated by a number of seafarers and lovers of the sailing ship, and a few of the last of them have been recommissioned for

world cruising. In February last year the tiny fullrigger Joseph Conrad came to Auckland; then the barque Winterhude with guano from the Seychelles; a few weeks ago the barquentine Cap Pilar brought about near North Head under full sail; this summer the barques Pamir and Penanoare expected. Of them all, neither the Joseph Conrad nor the Cap Pilar originally intended visiting Auckland—because they were cruising.

For that reason it is widely hoped in Auckland that the great American fullrigger, largest of her class in the world, and for the past five years laid up in an obscure basin in New York City, the Tusitala, will come to this port within the next few months, for she is also cruising. And cruise ships invariably fail to stick to their schedules.

She Was a Clipper. A venerable ship, the iron Tueitala has borne three other names—Sophie, Sierra Lucena and Inveruglas. Under the last name she was. known as a wool clipper, sailing under the Red Ensign. Built in Greenock in 1883, by R. Steele and Company, the Tusitala, which is of 1748 tons gross, is at present owned by the Ship Tusitala, Inc., New York. For many years the Tusitala traded from New York through the Panama Canal to the Philippine Islands ,from which she brought cargoes of sugar, but for economy reasons, she was laid up. lAlways, however, she has been excep-

tionally looked after, and for years it was the ambition of countless American boys to make a voyage in the old Tusitala. The living conditions aboard were recognised as being the best in present-day sailing ships.

Incidentally, the Tusitala is one of the few vessels afloat which might rightly be termed a ship, meaning that she is square-rigged on every mast. She is certainly the largest ship, the previous record in that respect being held by the Grace Harwar, which some years ago went to the breakers. Other full riggers are the Joseph Conrad and the Seven Seas, neither of which is a trader, the Xorwegian training ship Sorlandet, the German Schulschiff Deutschland and a few small vessels in the Baltic timber trade. A Venerated Name. Bearing as she does the name Tusitala, which was applied to Robert Louis Stevenson by the natives of the South Seas, it is fitting that she should cruise through these waters in the declining years of her life. It is improbable that I any other sailing craft at present in America, lest they be the Joseph Conrad or the Seven Seas, will ever make deepwater passages again.

About the coasts of the United States there are several square-riggers—at Alameda. San Francisco, are the remnants of the famous Alaska Packers' fleet, one by one being sold to Japanese breakers; at Saucilito, further up the harbour, the rotting hulk of what was once a proud Down Easter; in San Diego, the Star of India, now a museum ship; in Seattle, rows of lofty ships manned solely by water rats and an ancient keeper; on the Atlantic coast the same. They have had their day.

Hence the Tuaitala will almost certainly be the last of her kind sailing southern seas beneath the Stars and Stripes.