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Last Tall Ships, The By Georg Kahre w/ dust jacket
Last Tall Ships By Georg Kahre
Introduction By Hrh The Duke Of Edinburgh
Edited By Basil Greenhill
Hardbound With Dustcover
208 Pages
Copyright 1948, 1977 FIRST American EDITION,
Contents
Forward by Edgar Erikson
List of Illustrations
Introduction by HRH The Duke of Edinburgh
What this book is about - by Basil Greenhill, 15
Author's note to the First Edition, 33
Chapter 1 Aland's Seafaring Traditions, 34
Chapter 2 To Sea, 52
Chapter 3 Tjerimai, 67
Chapter 4 Ventures and Gains, 86
Chapter 5 The World Wide Abandonment of Sail, 101
Chapter 6 The Last Sailing Fleet, 138
Chapter 7 The Wheat Trade, 158
Chapter 8 The Headquarters, 179
Chapter 9 Epilogue, 188
Appendix 1 List of Sailing Vessels in Gustaf Erikson's Fleet, 196
Appendix 2 List of Books for Further Reading, 200
Index. 202
Introduction
byHRH The Duke of Edinburgh
From the moment the first primitive steam engine hissed and spluttered into action the days of ships driven by wind and sail were numbered. In the end it took well over a hundred years before engines replaced sail throughout the world in all but the smallest cargo carrying ships, the Arab Dhow probably outlasting all the others. In Europe it was the builders and owners of merchant ships in the little known, and otherwise not particularly significant, Finnish Aland Islands, who have the distinction of operating ocean-going merchant ships under sail longer than anyone else. The whole idea that this little community of sea-going farmers in the Baltic should be engaged in international maritime trade at all seems wildly improbable and why they should have succeeded with sailing ships for so long, where others failed, is even more surprising.
This book gives the whole remarkable and romantic history of this aberration and it also provides a fascinating record of what was, and to certain extent still is, an astonishing social and economic success story.
There have been several other instances of relatively small communities becoming exceptionally successful and prosperous as trading and business enterprises. Each had their own key to success, but what they all seem to have had in common, apart from the human qualities of honest hard work, shrewd common sense and the willingness to cooperate, was an economic system which gave full play to these qualities and actively encouraged the natural enterprise and will to adventure of their people.
I was fortunate enough to visit Mariehamn during the State Visit to Finland in 1976. The great figure of the barque Pommern dwarfs in height the much larger modern ships which now use the modest harbour; it only needs a little imagination to picture the scene as it must have been barely 50 years ago. I wish this book had been available before that visit.
What This Book Is About
The three -masted wooden square-rigged sailing ship was probably the most important vehicle in human history. Its invention in the shadows of the fifteenth century opened up the world to the economic and political domination of northern Europe. By its use particularly by Captain James Cook, RN, in the eighteenth century the final limits of the habitable world were determined and the first outlines of the world trade patterns of the Industrial Revolution were laid down.
Although the square-rigged vessel's monopoly was under very gradually increasing threat from the developing schooner rigs from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards, the three-masted square-rigged sailing vessel was an important factor of the industrial expansion of the nineteenth century. This dominance lasted until about 1870, when the capabilities of the wooden three-masted square-rigged vessel were outrun by the industrial conditions it had played such a part in creating. Smaller square-rigged sailing ships were increasingly replaced by schooners. Increasingly important economies of scale demanded larger vessels than the ordinary medium-sized and big wooden three-master, and although many wooden vessels relatterly rigged with four masts, rapidly took over their work on the world's trade routes.
Between 1880 and 1909, on the east coast of North America big four-masted wooden schooners were built by the score. These vessels up to a certain size and in certain trades, were perhaps the most efficient merchant sailing ships ever built. Later, five and six masters were also constructed in considerable numbers.
But steamships developed and by 1885, the compound-engined steel screw steamer had reached such a degree of efficiency and economy that it was steadily and with increasing rapidity replacing the big sailing ships in general world trades which were demanding larger ships than the largest practical sailing vessels. At the beginning of the present century, with the Pommern of 1903 - now magnificently preserved at Mariehamn - to which many references appear in this text, and the Kurt, later Moshulu, and the Mozart and Beethoven of 1904, the Archibald Russell of 1905, and the Sunlight and the Rendova of 1906, the building of large steel merchant sailing vessels ceased in Britain. The three-masted P T Harris, launched at Appledore in 1912 for the home trade, and the three-masted Gestiana, built at Porthmadog in 1913 for the salt fish trade with Newfoundland and the slate trade with Germany marked the end of the launching of wooden merchant schooners in the United Kingdom.
The building of wooden square-rigged vessels of the classic pattern had ended long before.
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