LAST OF THE CLIPPERS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 25, 29 December 1925, Page 5

LAST OF THE CLIPPERS.

ONLY SIX WINDJAMMERS REMAIN. Only six windjammers remain on the lintisU register, states a writer in an overseas paper—-only six of all that, lair fleet of tail ships that, twenty or tUirty years ago, dared the Horn passage, sailed the China seas, ran their casting clown from the Cape to Sydney Heads in forty days, their royal-yards lashed below and tueir ballast dancing. fcjix of them—and. they have all been afloat more than 3U years. Monkbarns, William Mitchell, Garthpool, Carthneil, Rewa and Kilmallie. Those names awaken memories.

The Monkbarns, they tell me, is in Callao. When last 1 saw her twenty years ago, we signalled her a a Happy New lour in Horn latitudes. And l remember the Kilmallie clearing Fort Natal in ballast for Newcastle (N.S.W.) Fine ships, delicate in line, with raking masts and painted ports; teak for their fittings, and bird’s eye 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 Iquiquc until the sea broke her up; but others were not so fortunate. Steam filched their livelihood from them, and unsentimental owners sold at knacker’s 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-royal. 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 moorings, but no voice was raised in a merry chantey as the hands tramped around 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 squalour 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!