ROMANCE OF SAIL

Evening Star, Issue 21286, 15 December 1932, Page 13

ROMANCE OF SAIL

ERIKSON, THE SEA KING ARMADA OF " WINDJAMMERS " THE GRACE HARWAR’S VOYAGES. A twentieth century Viking recently arrived at London from a tiny port in the Aland Islands, Finland, called Mariehamn. He owns the most romantic, most unusual fleet of ships in the world to-day, twenty deep-sea_ sailing ships, the only, armada of windjammers left in existence. He is Captain Gustaf Erikson. One of Captain Erikson’s fleet is the famous Grace Harwar, the last full-rigged ship in active service on the Seven Seas, which slipped into the Victoria dock, London, last ship home in this year’s windjammer “ grain race ” from Australia. It took the Grace Harwar, which visited Auckland early this year, 132 days t° sail from Port Victoria to Falmouth, in which time one could have got there and back again by steamer, but she kept her reputation and delivered her 3,000 tons of grain. But what a voyage 1 FI.VE WEEKS ROUND CAPE HORN. Said the mate, a slim young Finn, with sailor’s blue eyes and feet turned out from constant walking of tilting decks: “ Wo had a pretty good passage. Yes, a little trouble with the northeast winds round the Horn.” A little trouble! It took the Grace Harwar five weeks to fight her way round Cape Horn, and the seas rose up and washed her decks, tearing at the brave sea veteran. Five weeks round the Horn! Last month she went to sea once more, black paint on her hulls to hide the scars of the Horn’s fierce teeth. Off again, this time to Australia, or maybe South America, or maybe . . . In the words of a young man in the Fenchurch street office of Captain Erikson's London agents, the Grace Harwar will be “ seeking.” Wherever there is cargo she will go, the wind in her white canvas. The newspapers always chronicle the arrival of the grain race windjammers after their stormy and perilous battles with the Atlantic, says the ‘ Sunday Chronicle,’ but nobody can chronicle the arrival of the man who owns them, for ho arrives unnoticed and unheralded. Yet his is the greatest romance of all. He loves romance. He is working hard in London directing his beloved windjammers, finding cargoes for them, keeping an eye on stores, painting, ropes, and the hundred other details of his life work. LOVE FOR SAILING SHIPS. Captain Erikson looks after his fleet personally, in the way that the shipowners of old used to do. No boards of

directors, .administrative staffs, and red tape about tho Erikson Line. Up in Marichamu he has a tiny office, one assistant, and one typist. From there he casts his eye over the waters of the world and keeps his sailing ships sailing. The Herzogin Cecile, the Archibald Russell, all tho famous sailing ships left afloat are his. Gustaf Erikson is a short, sturdy, blue-eyed man, sailor! One thing dominates his life—his love for sailing ships. “ 1 will never be a steamship owner,” ho says. “ When the sailing ships go 1, go.” Captain Erikson has devoted his whole life to the sea and the lovely white-winged windjammers. A man who knows and loves the windjammers, Mr A. J. Villicrs—who writes glorious books about the Cape Horn battles and had a hand in tho making of the film ‘ Windjammer ’ aboard the Grace Harwar—described Erikson as “ a sea cook who became a sea king.” Which is a true saying. Gustaf Erikson went to sea at tho ago of nine as a cabin boy, which is what all the heroes of adventure stories did. That was over fifty years ago. At thirteen he was a cook. A year later ho had risen to able seaman. Three years later he was lording it as a bos’n. At an ago when our young men are leaving school he was a mate, and at nineteen ho was the master of a North Sea , trader. A sailer, of course. CREATION OF THE FLEET. In the year before the war Captain Erikson did something which set shipping circles talking. He became a sailing ship owner. He bought a small, old, wooden windjammer out of the money he had been able to save. In those days it was reckoned a crazy thing to do. But Erikson had his own views and his own methods. In his thirty-odd years afloat he had learned everything there was to learn about sailing ships and their management. He does everything himself. He attends to the business side of shipping, freights, rates, cargoes, charter party terms. He controls the crows. He surveys his ships when they can got to their home port. Erikson discovered old-timers in strange places and added them to his fleet. Ships once tho pride of the British merchant navy wont to him at almost scrap prices, but he did not turn thorn into coal hulks; ho sent them to sea again. The Grace Harwar was such a ship. She was Clyde built in 1889, and the name London was painted on her counter in those days, when she was helping to make the British Empire.

LAST OF THE FULL-RIGGED SHIPS. Steamers drove the Grace Harwar off the oceans, and she languished until she went to Erikson twenty-two years ago. To-day, with some scroll work at her bows and her three masts carrying a fine spread of canvas, she is a sight to stir you. Tho last of the full-rigged ships, with some forty roundings of Capo Horn to her credit and millions of miles written up to her account. How do these old ships find work? The daily consumption of bread is one of their main hopes; in other words, the Australian grain tx'ade. One of the men whose job is to secure cargoes for the Erikson ships described how terribly difficult the task is to-day. Tho ships get occasional cargoes of guano from South America, now and again a freight of coal for a port in South-west Africa, or else a cargo of patent fuel from the Bristol Channel for South America. Some times there is timber from the Baltic. But very often one of these windjammers will sail 25,000 miles in ballast, or, in landlubber language, empty. But Captain Gustaf Erikson carries on. He will occupy a proud place in the history, of the sea.