WINDJAMMER GONE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 4 December 1940, Page 3

WINDJAMMER GONE

SUNK BY GERMAN RAIDER With the sinking by a German commerce raider in the North Atlantic of the three-masted steel barque Killoran, homeward bound, the fleet of the ' world’s last surviving windjammers is rc duced to fewer than a dozen still | actively engaged in trading. Of those, ! several which sailed under the GerI man flag are doubtless laid up, sunk, I or interned. The Killoran, owned by Captain Gustav Erikson, Mariehamn. visited Auckland last year. She arrived 74 days out from the Seychelles with a cargo of guano, and after discharge sailed for the Spencer Gulf to load wheat. She j wa s conspicuous for her fine flgurei head, one of the best examples of its kind on any of the grain ships, but now in Davy Jones’s Locker. It depicted a woman with flowing robes and j was painted in natural colours in a i j lively and artistic manner. The Killoran. so far from being, as j has been stated, the biggest sailing ship j afloat, was the smallest of the grain ! fleet; she was only 1817 tons gross, compared with the 3000 tons of the Priwall. Passat. Moshulu and tadua. and was -smaller in all her measurements, drawing 23 feet and being 261 feet long, 39 Teet in beam. Moshulu, the biggest of the Erikson fleet, at the beginning of the war. measured 335 feet long, 46 feet j beam, and drew 26 *eet. The Killoran was built at Troon, | Ayrshire, in 1900. She had an uneventful career for a sailing ship. In 1926. however, she escaped becoming a total loss only by the almost superhuman efforts of her crew. Bound from Newcastle to Callao by the sail--1 ing ship route, far south of New Zealand. she had been running down her easting for some' six weeks when, in a heavy blow, her foresail split. The loss of it made her almost unmanagei able: she yawed wildly, and was eventually pooped by a I sea, which j carried away her steering gear, wheel,! binnacle and helmsman, besides j severely damaging her deck fittings. ; The barque, now wholly out of con- | , trol, broached to and was laid down ! on her beam ends by the force of the gale. Her cargo of coal shifted and it j , took a long period of heart-breaking toil, in the black darkness of her battened hold, to shovel the coal to i weather and bring the ship to an even keel. Her complete suit of canvas was blown away. When they made port ' they were steering with a jury wheel rigged with capstan bars, by the aid of a lifeboat compass mounted on a "salt horse” keg. The Killoran was considered to be the prettiest of the Erikson fleet, with her lovely figurehead and graceful sheer-line. .