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56-603: Moshulu is a four-masted steel barque , built as Kurt by William Hamilton and Company at Port Glasgow in Scotland in 1904. The largest remaining original windjammer , she is currently a floating restaurant docked in Penn's Landing , Philadelphia . Originally named Kurt after Kurt Siemers , director general and president of the Hamburg shipping company G. H. J. Siemers & Co. , she was, along with her sistership Hans , one of

112-452: A sloop already in service at the time. Endeavour happened to be a full-rigged ship with a plain bluff bow and a full stern with windows. William Falconer 's Dictionary of the Marine defined "bark", as "a general name given to small ships: it is however peculiarly appropriated by seamen to those which carry three masts without a mizzen topsail . Our Northern Mariners, who are trained in

168-707: A war prize , the USCGC Eagle , which the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London uses as a training vessel. The Sydney Heritage Fleet restored an iron-hulled three-masted barque, the James Craig , originally constructed as Clan Macleod in 1874 and sailing at sea fortnightly. The oldest active sailing vessel in the world, the Star of India , was built in 1863 as a full-rigged ship, then converted into

224-481: A barque in 1901. This type of ship inspired the French composer Maurice Ravel to write his famous piece, Une Barque sur l'ocean , originally composed for piano, in 1905, then orchestrated in 1906. Statsraad Lehmkuhl is in active operation in its barque form, stripped down without most of its winches and later improvements more aligned to the upbringing of future sailors both as a schoolship, training operations for

280-439: A keen interest in reducing running costs. As Newby notes, Erikson had to pay his crews as little as possible and he could not afford to insure ships, but he also had to maintain them at such a standard that they were rated 100 A1 at Lloyd's . From Newby's own description he was a formidable character: He was respected and feared as a man over whose eyes no wool could be pulled by the masters whom he employed to sail his ships, and

336-439: A shark but it bends the hook. The last pig, Filamon, is slaughtered and the crew eat so much pork that it wreaks havoc with their stomachs. Hopes of beating Parma's record of 83 days to Falmouth vanish as they believe the calms north of the line may have been too much for Moshulu . As she approaches Fastnet, the ship is approached by five men in a rowing boat to whom they give presents and they also receive some lobsters from

392-528: A smack. On June 10, 1939, Moshulu reaches Queenstown , 91 days from Port Victoria and, as Padua takes 93 days to reach Falmouth, they have won the Last Grain Race. On 27 June, the ship is warped with difficulty into Queen's Dock, Glasgow. Captain Sjögren, with whom Newby has had a stiffly formal relationship, asks him if he is coming again as he inks in his discharge as Ordinary Seaman, but Newby leaves through

448-410: A small vessel of coastal or inland waters, or a fast rowing boat carried by warships and normally reserved for the commanding officer. Somewhat later, a bark became a sailing vessel of a distinctive rig as detailed below. In Britain, by the mid-19th century, the spelling had taken on the French form of barque . Although Francis Bacon used the spelling with a "q" as early as 1592, Shakespeare still used

504-510: A square rig to the young greenhorn. The ship has a rough passage through the Irish Sea and ten days out they are passing Gibraltar . The ship's forecastle where the crew sleeps is overrun by bugs, including their beds, so they string hammocks (with practical jokers cutting the ropes they hang from). 24 days out, the ship picks up the Trade Wind and Moshulu is hit by a tornado. By now the crew

560-557: A surprisingly small crew—at minimum, 10—and while the usual crew was around 30, almost half of them could be apprentices. Today many sailing- school ships are barques. A well-preserved example of a commercial barque is the Pommern , the only windjammer in original condition. Its home is in Mariehamn outside the Åland maritime museum. The wooden barque Sigyn , built in Gothenburg 1887,

616-519: A temple, in which the sacred barques rested when a procession was not in progress. In these stations, the boats would be watched over and cared for by the priests. The Barque of St. Peter , or the Barque of Peter, is a reference to the Roman Catholic Church . The term refers to Peter , the first Pope , who was a fisherman before becoming an apostle of Jesus. The Pope is often said to be steering

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672-408: Is both easier to handle and better at going to windward than a full-rigged ship. While a full-rigged ship is the best runner available, and while fore-and-aft rigged vessels are the best at going to windward, the barque and the barquentine, are compromises, which combine, in different proportions, the best elements of these two. Whether square-rig, barque, barquentine or schooner is optimal depends on

728-457: Is discharging her cargo in York Dock. He meets some of the crew and they take him out on a drinking binge, but not before the second mate has ordered him "op the rigging". As the ship waits in port, he spends his time chipping away at the rust on the ship's hull but also befriends John Sömmarström, the ship's sailmaker, 58 years old, 43 of which have been at sea, who explains all the technicalities of

784-541: Is getting desperate for any food different from their staple menu and Newby shares his last can of peaches with another crewman, Kroner. On the 34th day, Moshulu crosses the Equator and, along with a bottle of Akvavit from the captain, the new crewmen undergo the initiation ceremony – their heads are covered in tar and red lead . It is at this stage that Newby almost kills himself by not attaching his bosun's chair correctly. He also has to undertake horrific jobs like cleaning

840-605: Is now a museum ship in Turku . The wooden whaling barque Charles W. Morgan , launched 1841, taken out of service 1921, is now a museum ship at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut . The Charles W. Morgan has recently been refit and is (as of summer, 2014) sailing the New England coast. The United States Coast Guard still has an operational barque, built in Germany in 1936 and captured as

896-464: Is to muck out the pigsties of four large pigs—"dose brodders of yours". Moshulu is prepared to meet the Southern Ocean and Newby at last experiences some real storms as the sea washes over the deck and the crew have to deal with flapping sails perched high up in the rigging. Newby manages to fall off the yard backwards, knocked off by 40 feet (12 m) of canvas, but fortunately becomes entangled in

952-616: The Falkland Islands , the crew start to realize they are making a record-breaking passage. The crew are now becoming famished, having to eat 'Buffelo' (boiled salt beef) the whole time cooked by the 'Kock'. However, life becomes easier with the return of the Trades but then Moshulu becomes becalmed. They finally cross the Line and are given a huge rum ration which they find difficult to get through, and spirits are lifted when they think they have caught

1008-566: The Moshulu was bought for $ 12,000 by Gustaf Erikson . On 14 March 1935, when the contract was signed, Captain Gunnar Boman took over the ship and sailed it to Port Victoria . Gustaf Erikson had her operate in the grain trade from Australia to Europe. During the period of Erikson's ownership the working language of the ship was Swedish, even though it sailed under the Finnish flag; the ship's home port at

1064-739: The Seneca language ) by the First Lady of the United States and wife of President Woodrow Wilson, Edith Wilson . Between 1917 and 1920, Moshulu was owned by the U.S. Shipping Board and carried wool and chrome between North America, Manila and Australia. From 1920 to 1935, Moshulu was in various private hands based in San Francisco . From 1920 to 1922, it was owned by the Moshulu Navigation Co. (Charles Nelson & Co.), San Francisco; in 1922, it

1120-530: The Barque of St. Peter. The Last Grain Race The Last Grain Race is a 1956 book by Eric Newby , a travel writer, about his time spent on the four-masted steel barque Moshulu during the vessel's last voyage in the Australian grain trade . In 1938 the 18-year-old Newby shipped aboard the four-masted barque Moshulu as an apprentice. His outbound passage from Europe to Australia

1176-484: The French term, which in turn came from the Latin barca by way of Occitan , Catalan , Spanish, or Italian. The Latin barca may stem from Celtic barc (per Thurneysen ) or Greek baris (per Diez ), a term for an Egyptian boat. The Oxford English Dictionary , however, considers the latter improbable. The word barc appears to have come from Celtic languages. The form adopted by English, perhaps from Irish ,

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1232-560: The French word as Egyptian hieroglyphs were first translated by the Frenchman Jean-François Champollion , were a type of boat used from Egypt's earliest recorded times and are depicted in many drawings, paintings, and reliefs that document the culture. Transportation to the afterlife was believed to be accomplished by way of barques, as well, and the image is used in many of the religious murals and carvings in temples and tombs. The most important Egyptian barque carried

1288-706: The Moshulu as she was towed from Brooklyn to the museum and played for the arrival ceremony on the Manhattan side of the river. She was later towed to the Penn's Landing waterfront in Center City, Philadelphia, where she is adjacent to the museum ships USS  Olympia and USS  Becuna in Independence Seaport Museum Other sources have it that The Walt Disney Company bought the ship but soon transferred it to

1344-713: The Norwegian Navy and generally available for interested volunteers. During the summer of 2021, it hosted "NRK Sommarskuta" with live TV everyday sailing all of the Norwegian coast from north to south and crossing the North Sea to Shetland. After this it will perform its first full sailing trip around world, estimated to take 19 months with many promotional events along the way. Scientific equipment has been installed in support of ongoing university studies to monitor and log environmental data. In Ancient Egypt , barques, referred to using

1400-706: The Specialty Restaurants Corporation. Since 2003 she is operated by SCC Restaurants LLC. Moshulu was made famous by the books of Eric Newby . At the age of 18 he was apprenticed aboard the Moshulu , joining the ship in Belfast in 1938 and sailing to Port Lincoln in Australia with a load of ballast stone in 82 days, a good passage for a windjammer . Moshulu took 4,875 tons of bagged grain on board in Port Victoria and began her return voyage to Ireland in

1456-554: The Wurzel Agency, has lost a lucrative cereal account and he decides to write to Gustav Erikson of Mariehamn for a place on one of his grain ships, having been inspired with tales of the sea by an old family friend, Mr Mountstewart. Much to his surprise, he is accepted by 'Ploddy Gustav', the owner of the largest fleet of square-rigged deep-water sailing vessels in the world at that time. After fitting himself out with heavy-weather gear, Newby makes his way to Belfast where Moshulu

1512-403: The age of nineteen he got his first command in the North Sea, and after that spent six years in deep-water sail as a mate. From 1902 to 1913 he was master of a number of square-rigged vessels before becoming an owner. By the 1930s, the grain trade from South Australia to Europe was the last enterprise in which square-riggers could engage with any real hope of profit, and then only if the owner had

1568-501: The coal-trade, apply this distinction to a broad-sterned ship, which carries no ornamental figure on the stem or prow." A 16th-century paper document in the Cheshire and Chester Archives and Local Studies Service notes the names of Robert Ratclyfe, owner of the bark Sunday and 10 mariners appointed to serve under the Earl of Sussex , Lord Deputy of Ireland . By the end of the 18th century,

1624-503: The crew go on a bender since they at last receive their measly pay. The ship sails on to Port Victoria and the crew have to offload the ballast on the outer-ballast grounds, working amidst the stench of two dead dog carcasses that the Belfast stevedores had kindly included. The ship finally leaves Australia on 11 March 1939 and Newby's new job, given to him by the First Mate who dislikes him,

1680-475: The dead pharaoh to become a deity. Great care was taken to provide a beautiful barque to the pharaoh for this journey, and models of the boats were placed in their tombs. Many models of these boats, that range from tiny to huge in size, have been found. Wealthy and royal members of the culture also provided barques for their final journey. The type of vessel depicted in Egyptian images remains quite similar throughout

1736-439: The degree to which the sailing-route and season can be chosen to achieve following-wind. Square-riggers predominated for intercontinental sailing on routes chosen for following-winds. Most ocean-going windjammers were four-masted barques, due to the above-described considerations and compromises. Usually the main mast was the tallest; that of Moshulu extends to 58 m off the deck. The four-masted barque can be handled with

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1792-471: The dock gates and never sees Moshulu again. Today steel, square-rigged sailing ships no longer trade the oceans of the world. Gustav Erikson of Mariehamn , Finland was the last man to own a great fleet of sailing ships and Newby relates that he never met any foremast hand who liked 'Ploddy Gustav'. Originally, as a boy of nine, he had gone to sea in a sailing vessel engaged in the North Sea timber trade. At

1848-848: The former book refers to the last grain race before the outbreak of World War II. The latter contains more than 150 of the photographs Newby took while aboard. In the 1974 American film, The Godfather Part II , the ship plays the role of the vessel that brought the boy Vito Andolini across the Atlantic from Sicily to New York in 1901. In the training montage sequence of the blockbuster 1976 film Rocky , Rocky Balboa , played by Sylvester Stallone , can be seen running past Moshulu while training for his heavyweight championship bout against Apollo Creed . For examples of other large sailing ships: 39°56′32″N 75°08′28″W  /  39.94234°N 75.14104°W  / 39.94234; -75.14104 Barque The word "barque" entered English via

1904-512: The four-masted steel barques Pamir and Passat (both former Flying P-Liners ) for that purpose, but before Moshulu was re-rigged, Schliewen went into bankruptcy. In 1953 Moshulu was sold to the Swedish Farmers' State Union ( Svenska Lantmännens Riksförbund ) of Stockholm, and again it was used as a floating warehouse beginning on 16 November 1953. In 1961, the Finnish government bought

1960-528: The heads (the lavatories) and doing backstern—washing up for the 20 occupants of the three forecastles. Tension rises as weather conditions worsen, and Newby finally fights Hermansonn, whom Newby is able to smash after ten minutes. Moshulu finally reaches port and the ship is loaded with 60,000 sacks (about 5000 tons) of grain - "wheat" in America, "corn" elsewhere - at Port Lincoln in South Australia and all

2016-788: The last four-masted steel barques to be built on the Clyde. Constructed for G. H. J. Siemers & Co. to be used in the nitrate trade, at a cost of £36,000, she was launched in 1904. Her first master was Captain Christian Schütt, followed by Captain Wilhelm H. G. Tönissen in 1908 who made a fast voyage from Newcastle, Australia , to Valparaíso with a cargo of coal in 31 days. Between 1904 and 1914, under German ownership, Kurt shipped coal from Wales to South America , nitrate from Chile to Germany , coal from Australia to Chile, and coke and patent fuel from Germany to Santa Rosalía , Mexico . On

2072-517: The last race of square-rigged sailing ships between Australia and Europe. The ship was seized by the Germans in 1940 when she returned to Kristiansand , Norway , again under the command of Captain Mikael Sjögren and with a cargo of wheat from Buenos Aires . She was derigged step-by-step in the 1940s, and, after having capsized in a storm close to shore at a beach in Østervik near Narvik in 1947, she

2128-608: The outbreak of World War I in 1914, Kurt was sailed to Oregon under the command of Captain Tönissen, then laid up in Astoria until being seized when the United States entered the war in 1917. She was first renamed Dreadnought ("one who fears nothing"), then, because there was already a sailing ship of that name registered in the US, she was renamed the Moshulu (which had the same meaning in

2184-491: The pale blue illimitable sky, cold and serene, made me deeply afraid and conscious of my insignificance. As they round Cape Horn , the crew have become bored by the desolation around them and engage in a tug-of-war competition from which Newby emerges victorious. They also kill a pig to celebrate Good Friday and they also spot another four-master—the Passat —whom they pass which makes Captain Sjögren happy. Having passed Cape Horn and

2240-689: The same etymology, being originally a folk song sung by Venetian gondoliers and derived from barca —"boat" in Italian, or in Late Latin. In the 18th century, the Royal Navy used the term bark for a nondescript vessel that did not fit any of its usual categories. Thus, when the British admiralty purchased a collier for use by James Cook in his journey of exploration, she was registered as HM Bark  Endeavour to distinguish her from another Endeavour ,

2296-476: The ship for 3,200 tons of Russian rye ; she was towed to Naantali , a town near Turku , and she continued to be used as a grain warehouse. In 1970, the ship was bought by the Specialty Restaurants Corporation, who rigged her out at Scheveningen in the Netherlands with replica masts, yards, and lines and towed her to South Street Seaport Museum , New York. The United States Coast Guard 3rd District Band rode on

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2352-399: The ship, as much as four times her entire length, or nearly a quarter of a mile. Newby goes aloft into the fore rigging: At this height, 130 feet up, in a wind blowing 70 miles an hour, the noise was an unearthly scream. Above me was the naked topgallant yard and above that again the royal to which I presently climbed ... the high whistle of the wind through the halliards sheaf, and above all

2408-676: The ship, such as changing from fair weather sails to storm sails and back again as storms rose and abated. The crew at the time was predominantly Finnish and Swedish , and nationality was a source of friction amongst them throughout the voyage. The journey was documented in Newby's books The Last Grain Race (1956) and Learning the Ropes: An Apprentice in the Last of the Windjammers (1999). The title of

2464-510: The spelling "barke" in Sonnet 116 in 1609. Throughout the period of sail, the word was used also as a shortening of the barca-longa of the Mediterranean Sea . The usual modern spelling convention is that, to distinguish between homophones , when spelled as barque it refers to a ship, and when spelled as bark it refers to either a sound or to a tree hide . " Barcarole " in music shares

2520-425: The spring of 1939. She reached her destination in 91 days, a faster passage than that of any of the other sailing ships making similar passages that year. During the voyage, Newby took part in all the work required to maintain the ship, such as constant chipping of rust, painting and polishing brass and copper and overhauling the standing and running rigging – all of this on top of the day-to-day tasks required to sail

2576-468: The term barque (sometimes, particularly in the US, spelled bark) came to refer to any vessel with a particular type of sail plan . This comprises three (or more) masts , fore-and-aft sails on the aftermost mast and square sails on all other masts. Barques were the workhorse of the golden age of sail in the mid-19th century as they attained passages that nearly matched full-rigged ships, but could operate with smaller crews. The advantage of these rigs

2632-552: The thousands of years the culture persisted. Barques were important religious artifacts , and since the deities were thought to travel in this fashion in the sky, the Milky Way was seen as a great waterway that was as important as the Nile on Earth; cult statues of the deities traveled by boats on water and ritual boats were carried about by the priests during festival ceremonies. Temples included barque shrines, sometimes more than one in

2688-688: The time, Mariehamn , is in Swedish-speaking Åland , an autonomous region of Finland. At the end of 1938, the ship left Belfast for Port Lincoln and Port Victoria, in South Australia, under the command of Captain Mikael Sjögren and with 18-year-old Eric Newby as an apprentice seaman; Newby went on to become a travel writer and wrote about his experiences of that voyage in the book The Last Grain Race (1956). Moshulu arrived in Queenstown ( Cobh , Ireland) on 10 June 1939, after 91 days at sea, winning

2744-405: The tremors they felt were passed down to the newest joined apprentice. Of such stuff discipline is made. A now out-moded word, but sailing ships do not stay afloat and make fast passages at the pleasure of a committee of seamen. On board, Moshulu was captained by Captain Mikael Sjögren, with a crew of twenty-eight, including officers, cook, steward etc. The work of handling large acreages of sail

2800-423: The weather rigging 5 feet (1.5 m) below the yard. The storm finally abates but not before it enters its most impressive phase. We were cold and wet, and yet too excited to sleep ... watching the seas rearing up astern as high as a three-storeyed house. It was not only their height that was impressive but their length. Between the greatest of them there was a distance that could only be estimated in relation to

2856-506: Was "bark", while that adopted by Latin as barca very early, which gave rise to the French barge and barque . In Latin, Spanish, and Italian, the term barca refers to a small boat , not a full-sized ship. French influence in England led to the use in English of both words, although their meanings now are not the same. Well before the 19th century, a barge had become interpreted as

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2912-611: Was demasted by a salvaging company to be re-erected, stabilized, and towed to Bergen in July 1948. The ship's hull was sold to Trygve Sommerfeldt of Oslo. A few months later, the ship was transferred to Sweden to be used as a grain store in Stockholm from 1948 to 1952. Then she was sold to the German shipowner Heinz Schliewen, who wanted to put her back to use under the name Oplag as a merchant marine training ship carrying cargo. Schliewen already used

2968-669: Was sold to James Tyson of San Francisco; and, in 1922, it was repurchased by Charles Nelson. The big four-masted barque ran in the timber trade along the U.S. west coast to Australia and South Africa from 1920 to 1928. After her last timber run to Melbourne and Geelong , Australia, in 1928, she was laid up in Los Angeles ; later on, she was kept in places in or near Seattle , Washington : Lake Union , Winslow on ( Puget Sound ), and Esquimalt in British Columbia , Canada , 100 nautical miles (190 km) north west of Seattle. In 1935,

3024-427: Was that they needed smaller (therefore cheaper) crews than a comparable full-rigged ship or brig -rigged vessel, as fewer of the labour-intensive square sails were used, and the rig itself is cheaper. Conversely, the ship rig tended to be retained for training vessels where the larger the crew, the more seamen were trained. Another advantage is that, downwind, a barque can outperform a schooner or barkentine , and

3080-557: Was very heavy, even for men and boys with strong constitutions. Bending a complete set of fair-weather canvas was no easy job, and sail changing was always done four times on a voyage as a ship entered and left the Trade Winds . In one period of twenty-four hours when the Pampero (a wind off the east coast of South America) was blowing, the port and starboard watches, eight men to a watch, took in, re-set, took and re-set again twenty-eight sails,

3136-475: Was via the Cape of Good Hope . His return was around Cape Horn . The Moshulu was at the time one of the largest sailing ships still transporting grain. While 1939 was arguably the last Grain race worthy of the name, as it was followed by World War II and the consequent near-total interruption of commercial shipping, commercial sailing ships still sailed the route after the war for two more years in 1948 and 1949. Newby finds out that his advertising agency,

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