Day Of Sail Has Gone For Ever

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 16, Issue 28, 4 December 1950, Page 5

Day Of Sail Has Gone For Ever

The barques Pamir and Passat have been sold to a Belgian buyer for breaking up. Not only is the day of sail over for large vessels, but soon there will not be any left at all. As long ago as 1930 there were only about 30 big square-rigged ships in commission and ready for the sea. At that time there were no more than half that total actually at sea. Of those 30, half were Finnish owned—the property of one man, Captain Gustay Erikson. In July, 1926, there were six big deepwater sailing ships under the British flag. In 1930 there were only one, and just before World War II there were none.

The war put the British Empire in control of two of these large sailing ships, the Pamir and Lawhill. The first was seized as a prize at Wellington in 1941. After a complete refit she began a series of voyages across the Pacific with a New Zealand crew. Trading to San Francisco, she was said to have made a profit of £30,000 in war-time. The Lawhill was seized off South Africa in 1941. She sailed nearly 200,000 miles, carrying 55,000 tons of cargo, and is said to have shown a profit. Some three years after the end of the war these ships were restored to their owners.

Beautiful as these ships are, trade goes to the faster craft, the steamers. Even before World War II it was difficult to sell a large sailing ship. An American schooner, the Robert R. Hind, of San Francisco, fetched £65 as she lay in Sydney Harbour. A cinema company bought another for next to nothing to be blown up at sea. Yet there is no better form of motion than that on a sailing ship, and certainly there is no better sight than a large sailing ship setting out to sea or entering harbour —she belongs to the sea and the winds as a steamer never can. But the time has come when children born today will never see one of these craft or appreciate their existence. Is there no millionaire anywhere to save some of these ships for the sea or build a really scientific modern version?