LAST OF THE CLIPPERS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXIII, 15 December 1925, Page 7

LAST OF THE CLIPPERS.

ONLY SIX ON THE REGISTER. Only six windjammers remain oil the British register—only six of all that fair fleet or talk ships that, twenty and thirty years ago, dared the Horn passage, sailed the China seas, ran their eastiqg down from the Capo to Sydney Heads in forty days, their royal-yards lashed below and their ballast dancing (writes R. F. \V. Rees, in the “Daily Mail”). Six of them—and they have all been afloat more than thirty years, Monkbarns, AAllliam Mitchell, Garthpool, Gartlmcil, Rewa, and Kilmallie. Those names awaken memories.

Tlie Moiikuarus, they tell me, is in Callo. AVheii last I saw her, twenty years ago, we signalled her a Happy New Year in Horn latitudes. And 1 remember the Kilmallie clearing Port Natal in ballast for Newcastle (N.S.AV.) Fine sliips, delicate of line, with raking masts and painted ports, teak tor their cuddies. But they were only cUpper 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 AN ynnstay, from which we flew greetings to the Monkbarns, aired her old ribs on a shoal at Iqu-que until the sea broke her up; but others were not so fortunate. Steam filched their livelihood from them, and unsentimental 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. AVe loved them. AA r e coaxed the ultimate knot of their speed out of them before we took, in a mizzen-royal. AVe scraped and oiled the bright work and polished the brasswerk as religious rites. Some time ago, in a. foreign port, J. 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 chanty 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 squalor could not hide her aristocracy. Her pride shone though 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!