RETURN OF THE WINDJAMMERS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 19 July 1924, Page 13

RETURN OF THE WINDJAMMERS

A SAILING FLEET. Blow, bullies, blow, For Californ-i-o So runs the old chantey c-liorus which has been volleyed forth by the crew of many Cape Horners since the American clippers with their hard-ease skippers and their bucko mates came roaring to the Golden Gate in the days of the ’49 gold rush, down to the time when the ’Frisco grain fleet gathered together the last of the splendour of sail. It seemed a little while ago as if that song had been heard for the last time. And now ’Frisco is to have her windjammers once more —’Frisco, of so many sailing ship associations, whose harbour has been for years all but deserted by the tall beauties of the seas. Mr James D. Rolpli, Mayor of that city, and one of its foremost shipping men, is about to inaugurate a service of sailing vessels between California and the Far East. Four ships are to form, the nucleus of the venture, the number to be increased should it prove successful. Of these, one is a new wooden barquentine built in America during the war, such as has been a familiar sight in the Port of London .just lately; the others have much more interesting associations. The Annie M. Reid was formerly the Howard D. Troop. By all accounts she was just such a tough ship as her name would lead a.ll experienced old shellback to expect. But she could sail! She once made the passage from Sydney to Falmouth with grain in 82 days—and grain, be it remembered, is a very different proposition from the wool with which most of the'crack passages from Australia were made. The James Rolpli was originally the British full-rigged ship Celtic Monarch, built by Rovden, of Liverpool, for Messrs Hugh Jones and Co. of that city, and although she was never in the clipper class —she was built too late for that—she was a good example of the fine steel and iron barques and fullriggers which the last 20 years of the last century produced in considerable numbers. She was laid up at ’Frisco before the war, but the scarcity of tonnage and high freights combined to send her to sea again. The slump' laid her up once more, and now she is yet again to come out of her retirement as part of the new fleet of windjammers. The third of the trio, the Golden Gate, is also an ex-Britisli ship; old sailors will remember her as the Lord Shaftesbury, under which name she lias loaded grain in days gone by at the port whence she is now to sail as the Golden Gate.