Fantome
 The Fantome in April 1993
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The Fantome was a charter sailor built in 1927 , which sank off the Honduran coast in October 1998 with a crew of 31 . She was originally built as a private yacht Flying Cloud for Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster .
history
Working hours
The Duke of Westminster had the ship built in 1927 as a Flying Cloud at the Ansaldo shipyard in Livorno . The four-masted barquentine was one of the largest ships of its kind in the world and could accommodate 128 guests. After ten years, the Duke sold the ship to Nelson B. Warden from Philadelphia, who had it equipped with two more powerful diesel engines. After an intermediate sale to H. J. P. Bomford, Sir A. E. Guinness, a member of the well-known brewery family , bought the sailor in 1937 and renamed it Fantome III . In 1948 Guinness died and in 1956 the ship went to the Greek shipowner Aristoteles Onassis , who had it converted by the Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft in Kiel . The yacht was later on for around 13 years in Germany, where its condition deteriorated significantly. In 1969 Mike Burke, the founder of the American sailing cruise line Windjammer Barefoot Cruises from Florida, bought the ship and had it towed to Skagen and then to Spain, where it was renovated and converted into a charter yacht for around six million US dollars.
Fall of the Fantome
On October 26, 1998, under the command of 30-year-old Captain Guyan March, the ship gave its last passengers in Belize City and then left port to avoid the approaching Hurricane Mitch . The following day the ship made one last contact with its shipping company Windjammer Barefoot Cruises in Miami Beach . The ship's command stated that she was about ten nautical miles south of the island of Guanaja off the Honduran coast and that she was caught in a storm with wind speeds of 100 knots and wave heights of up to 13 meters. A Coast Guard C-130 aircraft began a search over the sea area east of Honduras on Thursday evening, October 29, after the weather began to improve. The search continued on Friday and was supported by forces from the Honduran Navy. After six unsuccessful days of searching, it was canceled.
The sinking of the Fantome, with the loss of 32 lives, led the bereaved to file suits in a Miami court. In its negotiation, the latter made it clear that the expiry of the uninsured Fantome worth around 20 million US dollars under pressure from the shipping company Windjammer Barefoot Cruises represented a suicide mission for the crew and the ship in the given weather conditions.
literature
- Schäuffelen, Otmar: The last great sailing ships . Verlag Delius Klasing, Bielefeld 1994, ISBN 3-7688-0860-2 , p. 124/125 .
- Carrier, Jim: The Ship and the Storm . The last days of the luxury schooner Fantome. Malik Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 978-3-89029-228-1 .
Web links
- Page at SchoonerMan (English)