FAMOUS SHIP FOR SCRAP

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 24 August 1935, Page 8

FAMOUS SHIP FOR SCRAP

LAST OF DEEP SEA SAILERS. RECORD OF HARD WORK. (From Our Own Correspondent-—By Air Mail.) LONDON, July 27. Grace Harwar, a steel full-rigged ship of 1810 tons gross, lias arrived at Rosytli, where she will be broken up after 46 years at sea. Besides being the last full-rigged merchant ship in the world, she was the oldest of the big sailing vessels engaged in the Australian grain trade. She was launched on the Clyde in 1889 by those famous builders of sailing ships, W. Hamilton and Co., for an equally well-known owner, William Alontgomery, of London. In 1918 Montgomery sold her to Finland and three years later she was purchased by Captain Gustaf Erikson, of Mariehamn, and with another ex-British ship, the Lawhill, formed the nucleus of what to-day comprises the world’s last fleet of deepwater sailers.

Few ships can claim a better record of hard work. She has been blown ashore, frozen ups. in the Baltic ice, almost completely washed out iri a Cape Horn gale, -run down by another sailing ship, and in collision with a steamer. She has ridden out a hurricane and was once succoured by a British liner when, becalmed 1 after 115 days at sea, all supplies were exhausted. Finally she traded unscathed throughout the war. Still she sailed on. 100 A 1 at Lloyd’s to the end, and her last round voyage was the best she ever made under the blue and white ensign of Finland. Leaving Copenhagen last autumn she reached Port Lincoln, South Australia, in 89 days, having sailed outward in ballast to load the grain which she subsequently carried home from Port Broughton to Falmouth in 98 days.