A BIG SAILER

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 55, 7 March 1922, Page 2

A BIG SAILER

THE NEW KOBENHAVN.

Those to whom" the decline of the square-rigged sailing vessel has seemed to mean the passing of much of the romance of the sea may take heart of grace from the completion at the Leith. shipyard of Ramage and Ferguson of the great five-master Kobenhavn," says a writer in-an American newspaper. Of 5000 tons deadweight capacity, she compares well in point of size with the gen-1 oral run of steam cargo-carriers, being the largest, sailing ship ever built in the British dominions. The German Potosi, R. C. Rickmers, and Preussen were larger in some respects, but none of them carried so great a spread of sail as the Kobenhavn's 56,000 square feet. Her length is 390 feet, her beam 49 feet, and her depth 28^ feet. Her masts rise to a height of 190 feet, and her mainyard 'has a span of no less than 90 feet. To see her tremendous spars towering above the dock-sheds, with her intricate network of standing and running rigging, induces thoughts of the wonderful sight a modern seaport would have been had the sailing ship been able to develop along the lines indicated by its up to the invasion of the seas by steam. Imagine twenty or thirty such ships as the Kobenhavn gathered together at one time, in place of a like number of stumpy-funnelled, pole-masted steamers, and you have an idea of what, under such conditions, Liverpool, London, San Francisco, or Portland would have looked like. ■ ■

In the old days, of course, a ship like the Kobenhavn—had. one existed—would have required a crew of at least 100 to work her properly, instead of the 45 she accommodates in the roomy deck-house which takes the place of the traditional "foc's'le". quarters. She has, however, an abundance of labour-saving machinery, including motor -winches for weighing anchor, and for the braces and halyards. Moreover, for ttse in calms she has a motor engine of 600 horse-power, which will do away with all the bracing of yards to catch the slightest puff of wind jiv doldrum weather, which every old-time ebell-back remembers so well.

Though technically an auxiliary, the , Kohenhavn, has nothing in her appearance to suggest that, she is other than a real old-style square-rigger, nor are the little touches of adornment lacking which characterised the. work of the old shipwrights. A handsome carved and gilded scroll-work surrounds her name on f her counter, and as figurehead she carries an imposing effigy of a viking Warrior in full .panoply. The building of this beautiful vessel is '.f'lrtheA testimony to the belief stiU very largely held that a training in sail is, if not actually essential, at any rate desirable for ships' officers. Her owners, the East Asiatic Company of Copenhagen (after which, port sho is of course named), intend her primarily as a training ship for cadets. Her career will be interesting to follow, since should she prove commercially a success, the result may well be a return to the seas of an element of beauty which had seemed to be rapidly becoming a thing of the past.