LAST OF THE WINDJAMMERS

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 19 December 1925, Page 11

LAST OF THE WINDJAMMERS

/ANLV six windjammers .remain on the British register—only six of 'all that fair fleet of tall.ships .that, twenty or thirty years ago, dared the Horn passage, sailed the China seas, ran their easting down from the Cape to Sydney Heads in forty days, their roval-yards lashed below and their ballast dancing (writes E. F. W. Reeves in the Daily .Mail). Six of them —and they have al! been afloat more than thirty years. Monkbarns, William Mitchell, Garthpool, Garthneil, Eewa, and Kilmallie. Those names awaken memories. The Monkbarns. they tell me, is in Callao. When last I saw her, twenty years ago, we signalled her a Happy New Year in Horn latitudes. And I remember the Kilmallie clearing Port Natal in ballast for Newcastle (N.S.W.). Fine ships, delicate of line, with raking masts and painted ports, teak for tneir fittings, and bird’s-cve panelling for their cuddies. But they were only clipper ships , among a crowd of clipper ships. Now they are the last six—upon the British register. Their sister ships—where are they? The old clipper Wynnstay, from which we flew our greetings to the Monkbarns, aired her old ribs on a shoal at Iqueque until the sea broke her up; but others were not so fortunate. Steam filched their livelihood from them, and un-

ONLY SIX ON BRITISH REGISTER

sentimental owners sold them at knackers’ prices to the Scandinavians and the Italians. It is sheer tragedy for a sailorman to think of those old clipper ships afloat under an alien dominance. We loved them. * We coaxed the ultimate knot of their speed out of them before we took in a mizzen-roval. We scraped and oiled the bright work and polished the brasswork as religious rites. Some time ago in a foreign port I saw a British clipper ship that had fallen on evil days. An alien flag hung at the peak. She was going to. her moo > ings, but no voice was raised in a merry chanty as the hands tramped round the capstan.. Her sails .were bundled on to the yards, her decks filthy, her paintwork patched and peeling. Her brass fittings were covered with black paint. .Even her yards were not trimmed. That squalor could not hide her aristocracy. Her pride shone through her shoddy dress. Nothing could disguise the grace of her, the sweep of the sheer, the tapering beauty of her spars. But to a sailor it was as though a captive queen were being hounded through mean streets in rags. Most of our old clippers have been left to that fate. Of all the proud fleet only'six are left. Dip to the six!