Albatross (ship, 1920)
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The Albatross , originally Albatros and now called Alk , was a sailing ship that was built in 1920 by the state shipyard in Amsterdam (Netherlands). 1960 to 1961, a private school for American teenagers was carried out on the ship, who in addition to teaching, sailed the ship to the Caribbean. On the way back from the Caribbean, the Albatross sank , with six people - including four of the young people - perishing. The owner and master assumed the cause of the sinking to be a white gust , but later investigations also suggested that the final stability was too low (ability of a sloping ship not to overturn ).
The Albatross' Last Voyage was the basis of Ridley Scott's highly fictionalized 1996 film White Squall .
history
The ship was rigged as a two-masted schooner and designed for a ship's crew of 19 people. The Albatros , later Alk , sailed the North Sea for almost two decades before it was bought by the German government at the time in 1937. Twelve years later, after the end of the Second World War, the Albatros was bought by Royal Rotterdam Lloyd in 1949 to use it as a training ship for officer training . Its compact size made it ideal for this task, as the twelve officer cadets could be specifically instructed in this way by the instructors and the professional seamanship (a total of six seamen ). During the Dutch ownership , the Albatros primarily sailed the North Sea and rarely made further trips to Spain and Portugal.
The American aviator, writer and sailor Ernest K. Gann (* 1910, † 1991) finally bought the Albatros in 1956, converted it to a brigantine and changed its name to Albatross according to the English spelling . As such, she sailed the Pacific for almost three years. In 1959 the Ocean Academy Ltd. by Dr. Christopher B. Sheldon and his wife Dr. Alice Strahan Sheldon, based in Darien , Connecticut , took the ship to use it again as a training ship. In the following years, the Sheldons planned a training program in the form of a private school on board. Up to 14 students were integrated into everyday life on board as fellow sailors and at the same time taught on board in regular school subjects while they would sail from the Bermuda Islands to the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific ( Galapagos Islands ). Usually one-day excursions should also take place from the ports called.
In the fall of 1960, the Albatross left for the first training voyage. On May 2, 1961, the ship was hit by a gust about 125 nautical miles west of the island group of the Dry Tortugas - during the crossing from Progreso in Mexico to Nassau in the Bahamas - and sank almost instantly. In the accident, the teacher Alice Sheldon, the Smut George Ptacnik and the students Rick Marsellus, Robin Wetherall, John Goodlett and Chris Coristine drowned. Christopher Sheldon, who was on deck when the gust arrived, considered it to be the particularly controversial weather phenomenon of a white gust , i.e. a very strong gust that occurred without any visible signs. Critics of this point of view point to possible stability problems due to the design, rigging and sail area as well as its relatively low ballast. After that, it might not have taken an extreme gust of wind to capsize the Albatross (e.g. Parrott, 2000 ).
Follow and reception
The survivors such as the student Charles Gieg and the English teacher Richard E. Langford worked on their experiences in appropriate books.
Although the Albatross had not sailed under the US flag, her loss caused the US Coast Guard to revise the requirements for the construction and stability of sailing training ships. The new rules were summarized in the "Sailing School Vessels Act" of 1982.
The last voyage of the Albatross was filmed in 1996 by Ridley Scott under the title White Squall .
literature
- Parrott, Daniel: Tall Ships Down - the last voyages of the Pamir, Albatross, Marques, Pride of Baltimore and the Maria Asumpta . McGraw Hill, 2003. ISBN 0-07-139092-8 .
- Charles "Chuck" Gieg, Felix Sutton: The Last Voyage of the Albatross. Duel, Sloan and Pearce, New York 1962.
- Richard E. Langford: White Squall: The Last Voyage of Albatross. Bristol Fashion, 2000, ISBN 1-892-216361 .