A SAILING SHIP'S NAME

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 38, 14 February 1930, Page 14

A SAILING SHIP'S NAME

Jt is a legend of the sea that you may do what you like with a steamship; change her name, alter her, so that her own builder would not know her—but you must not do this with; a sailing ship, for she has a soul.; • This is the tragedy of the man who did, and of the fato that befell his fleet of windjammers. The war had not ended long before Sir William Garthwaite, owner of the Garth Line, a man. with a love of the sea in his blood, bethought himself that:so long as there were oceans there would be room for the sailing ship. _ So he bought up six of the finest windjammers with wonderful records of service in the Cape Horn trade, but he renamed them all, and to-day not one of them exists. The last of the line, the four-masted barque Garthpool, was wrecked off the west coast of Africa a few weeks ago.

"Her end was what I would have wished," said Sir William Garthwaite to a •'"Sunday Express" representative; "she went down under her own colours on a voyage—not sold to a foreigner or handed over to the shipbreakers." "Garthpool, Garthwray, Garthforce, Garthneil, Garthsmaid, Garthgarry . . . one by one they have gone. One struck an iceberg, another was wrecked on an island, a third was dismasted and battered to a hulk in a' typhoon, yet another had to be abandoned after a cruel buffeting in mountainous seas. It. is true that I rechristened them, gave them s all the prefix "Garth," for I loved them. A sailing ship has a soul, a beauty all her own. The captain of the Mauretania told me once that he could always tell a man trained in sail. And now they have gone, for the Garthpool was not only the last of her type, but the last deep-sea windjammer in British ownership." . '