Balclutha (ship)
.JPG) |
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
The Balclutha (ex Pacific Queen ex Star of Alaska ex Balclutha ) is a full ship built in Scotland in 1886 and is now a museum ship in the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park in the United States .
history
The Balclutha was built in 1886 for Robert McMillan from Dumbarton on the Clyde . The name of the ship, which was made of steel at the shipyard Charles Connell & Company in Glasgow , is derived from the Scottish Gaelic term Baile Chluaidh and means "city on the Clyde", the old name of Dumbartons. The maiden voyage led around Cape Horn to San Francisco . The ship subsequently carried out voyages with grain, rice, wool or guano as cargo and passed Cape Horn seventeen times (see Cape Hornier ).
The ship was under the British flag until 1899, then the Hawaiian flag until 1902 and then, after a sale to the San Francisco shipping company Pope & Talbot, the American flag. Pope & Talbot used the ship in charter of the Alaska Packers' Association with a crew of up to 300 men in the salmon voyage. The trips to Alaska began in April, where salmon was caught and canned until September . After a grounding on Sitkin Island near Kodiak Island , the ship suffered a serious water ingress, whereupon the damaged vessel was sold to Alaska Packers for US $ 500 . This hid the Balclutha , renamed it on May 16, 1904 in Star of Alaska and continued to use it in the salmon trip. In 1911 the poop deck was extended to the main mast to create more space for the crew. These journeys were continued until 1930 and then put on in Alameda until 1933.
In 1933 Frank and Rose Kissinger bought the ship for $ 5,000 and used it as a floating film set under the name Pacific Queen . It also served as a home for both of them. It had a silver paint, red masts and yards and was therefore a very conspicuous appearance that often drove up and down the American Pacific coast. From 1939 to 1941 she was on the east of Fisherman's Wharf at Pier 41 near the Embarcadero in San Francisco, but had to clear space for war ships. It was placed on a spot in the mud flats after Sausalito and slowly deteriorated. After World War II, her owners moved it to Long Beach, as a place on the Embarcadero was not awarded, and was exhibited as the "Last of a Race". In 1951 it was relocated to Sausalito, where Frank and Rose Kissinger (she was one of the few women in the United States to hold a captain's license) began restoration work. When Frank Kissinger died in November 1952, the ship was in poor condition on the benches at Sausalito. It was there that Karl Kortum, director of the San Francisco Maritime Museum, discovered the ship and bought it from Rose Kissinger in 1954 for $ 25,000. The ship was then renamed and restored in Balclutha . Today it is part of the "San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park" on Hyde Street Pier to the west of Fisherman's Wharf .
literature
- Otmar Schäuffelen: The last great sailing ships . Delius Klasing publishing house, Bielefeld 1994, ISBN 3-7688-0860-2 .
Web links
Coordinates: 37 ° 48 '35.1 " N , 122 ° 25' 20.9" W.