Elissa (ship)

Last updated

Elissa-ship.jpg
Elissa
History
Flag of the United States.svgUnited States
NameElissa
OperatorGalveston Historical Foundation
Builder
Launched27 October 1877
Identification
Fate Training ship
General characteristics
Tonnage431  GRT 409  NRT
Length141 ft (43 m)
Beam28 ft (8.5 m)
Draft10 ft 6 in (3.20 m) .
Sail plan
Capacity430 tons cargo
Elissa
Relief map of Texas.png
Red pog.svg
Elissa
Usa edcp relief location map.png
Red pog.svg
Elissa
LocationGalveston Historic Seaport,
Galveston, Texas
Coordinates 29°18′34″N94°47′37″W / 29.30944°N 94.79361°W / 29.30944; -94.79361
Built1877 (1877)
ArchitectAlexander Hall & Sons
Architectural styleThree-masted Barque
Website 1877 Tall Ship Elissa
NRHP reference No. 78002930 [1]
Significant dates
Added to NRHP21 March 1978
Designated NHL14 December 1990 [2]

The tall ship Elissa is a three-masted barque. She is based in Galveston, Texas, and is one of the oldest ships sailing today. Launched in 1877, she is now a museum ship at the Galveston Historic Seaport. She was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1990. The Texas Legislature designated Elissa the official tall ship of Texas in 2005. [3]

Contents

History

The foremast of the Elissa Elissa-foremast WL.jpg
The foremast of the Elissa

Elissa was built in Aberdeen, Scotland as a merchant vessel in a time when steamships were overtaking sailing ships. She was launched on 27 October 1877. The vessel was named for the niece of Henry Fowler Watt, Elissa's first owner, [4] though according to his descendants the ship was named for the Queen of Carthage, Elissa (more commonly called Dido), Aeneas' tragic lover in the epic poem The Aeneid .[ citation needed ]

Elissa also sailed under Norwegian and Swedish flags. In Norway she was known as the Fjeld of Tønsberg and her master was Captain Herman Andersen. In Sweden her name was Gustav of Gothenburg. In 1918, she was converted into a two-masted brigantine and an engine was installed. She was sold to Finland in 1930 (owned by Gustaf Erikson to 1942) and reconverted into a schooner. In 1959, she was sold to Greece, and successively sailed under the names Christophoros, in 1967 as Achaeos, and in 1969 as Pioneer. In 1970, she was rescued from destruction in Piraeus after being purchased for the San Francisco Maritime Museum. However, she languished in a salvage yard in Piraeus until she was purchased for $40,000, in 1975, by the Galveston Historical Foundation, her current owners. [5] In 1979, after a year in Greece having repairs done to her hull, Elissa was first towed to Gibraltar. There, she was prepared for an ocean tow by Captain Jim Currie of the New Orleans surveyors J.K. Tynan International. The restoration process continued until she was ready for tow on 7 June 1979.[ citation needed ]

Elissa has an iron hull, and the pin rail and bright work is made of teak. Her masts are Douglas fir from Oregon, and her 19 sails were made in Maine. She has survived numerous modifications including installation of an engine, and the incremental removal of all her rigging and masts.[ citation needed ]

Elissa made her first voyage as a restored sailing ship in 1985, traveling to Corpus Christi, Texas. In Freeport the crew was joined by seventh grader Jerry Diegel and Betty Rusk, his history and English teacher, after Diegel won an essay contest on the history of the Elissa. [6] A year later, she sailed to New York City to take part in the Statue of Liberty's centennial celebrations. When she's not sailing, Elissa is moored at the Galveston Historic Seaport in Galveston. [7] Public tours are available year-round-provided she is not out sailing. The ship is sailed and maintained by qualified volunteers from around the nation.[ citation needed ]

The tall ship Elissa Elissa-Sailing-Ship.jpg
The tall ship Elissa

In July 2011, the U.S. Coast Guard declared Elissa to be "not seaworthy." [8] The Coast Guard inspection in 2011 revealed a corroded hull. The tall ship is inspected twice every five years, said John Schaumburg, museum assistant director. The 2011 inspection uncovered the worst corrosion since the tall ship was rebuilt in 1982, he said.[ citation needed ] Texas Seaport Museum raised the $3 million that paid for hull replacement and other long-overdue maintenance projects, finishing in January 2013. The museum also replaced the 22,000 board feet of Douglas fir decking and building new quarterdeck furniture out of high quality teak. Elissa returned to sailing once again in March 2014. She runs a series of daily sails for a period of two to three weeks out of her home port of Galveston each spring.[ citation needed ]

Elissa remains one of the world's oldest sailing hulls still in operation. [9] The oldest is the coasting schooner Lewis R. French, launched in 1871 in Christmas Cove, Maine. She still sails as part of the windjammer fleet out of Camden, Maine.[ citation needed ]

Honors

See also

Citations

  1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. 2 November 2013.
  2. "Elissa (Bark)". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Archived from the original on 13 November 2009. Retrieved 3 July 2009.
  3. Hatch, Rosie (Ed.) (2022). Texas Almanac 2022-2023. Austin, Texas: Texas State Historical Association. p. 23. ISBN   9781625110664.
  4. Delgado, James P (8 January 1990). "Elissa" (PDF). National Register of Historic Places. Washington DC: National Park Service. p. 8 of 16. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
  5. "Galveston Historical Foundation" . Retrieved 30 August 2012.
  6. Wolff, Henry (31 March 1989). "A Trip On Elissa". Victoria Advocate . Retrieved 22 December 2014.
  7. "Elissa (1980)". Texas Archive of the Moving Image. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
  8. Rice, Harvey (11 July 2011). "Galveston's tall ship Elissa no longer seaworthy". Houston Chronicle . Retrieved 25 July 2011.
  9. "Galveston Historical Foundation | #galvestonhistory".
  10. "State symbols". Texas State Library. Retrieved 10 June 2010.

Related Research Articles

<i>Star of India</i> (ship) A museum ship harbored in San Diego, USA

Star of India is an iron-hulled sailing ship, built in 1863 in Ramsey, Isle of Man as the full-rigged ship Euterpe. After a career sailing from Great Britain to India and New Zealand, she was renamed, re-rigged as a barque, and became a salmon hauler on the Alaska to California route. Retired in 1926, she was restored as a seaworthy museum ship in 1962–3 and home-ported at the Maritime Museum of San Diego in San Diego, California. She is the oldest ship still sailing regularly and also the oldest iron-hulled merchant ship still afloat. The ship is both a California Historical Landmark and United States National Historic Landmark.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brig</span> Sailing vessel with two square-rigged masts

A brig is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: two masts which are both square-rigged. Brigs originated in the second half of the 18th century and were a common type of smaller merchant vessel or warship from then until the latter part of the 19th century. In commercial use, they were gradually replaced by fore-and-aft rigged vessels such as schooners, as owners sought to reduce crew costs by having rigs that could be handled by fewer men. In Royal Navy use, brigs were retained for training use when the battle fleets consisted almost entirely of iron-hulled steamships.

USS <i>Edson</i> Forrest Sherman-class destroyer

USS Edson (DD-946) is a Forrest Sherman-class destroyer, formerly of the United States Navy, built by Bath Iron Works in Maine in 1958. Her home port was Long Beach, California and she initially served in the Western Pacific/Far East, operating particularly in the Taiwan Strait and off the coast of Vietnam. Her exceptionally meritorious service in 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin was recognized with the first of three Navy Unit Commendations. During the following years she was shelled by North Vietnamese land forces, and apparently received friendly fire from the US Air Force.

<i>Falls of Clyde</i> (ship) 1878 sail-driven oil tanker

Falls of Clyde is the last surviving iron-hulled, four-masted full-rigged ship, and the only remaining sail-driven oil tanker. She was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1989, but deregistered in 2024 due to her condition. Hawaii is seeking proposals to scrap the ship. She is currently not open to the public.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Strand Historic District</span> Historic district in Texas, United States

The Strand Historic District, also known as the Strand District, in downtown Galveston, Texas (USA), is a National Historic Landmark District of mainly Victorian era buildings that now house restaurants, antique stores, and curio shops. The area is a major tourist attraction for the island city and also plays host to two very popular seasonal festivals. It is widely considered the island's shopping and entertainment center. The district includes properties along the south side of Harborside Drive and both sides of The Strand and Mechanic Street from 20th Street westward to 26th Street.

<i>Charles W. Morgan</i> (ship) American whaling ship built in 1841

Charles W. Morgan is an American whaling ship built in 1841 that was active during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Ships of this type were used to harvest the blubber of whales for whale oil which was commonly used in lamps. Charles W. Morgan has served as a museum ship since the 1940s and is now an exhibit at the Mystic Seaport museum in Mystic, Connecticut. She is the world's oldest surviving (non-wrecked) merchant vessel, the only surviving wooden whaling ship from the 19th century American merchant fleet, and second to USS Constitution, the oldest seaworthy vessel in the world. Charles W. Morgan was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966.

<i>Peking</i> (ship) Steel-hulled four-masted barque

Peking is a steel-hulled four-masted barque. A so-called Flying P-Liner of the German company F. Laeisz, it was one of the last generation of cargo-carrying iron-hulled sailing ships used in the nitrate trade and wheat trade around Cape Horn.

<i>Moshulu</i> Sailing ship built in 1904

Moshulu is a four-masted steel barque, built as Kurt by William Hamilton and Company at Port Glasgow in Scotland in 1904. The largest remaining original windjammer, she is currently a floating restaurant docked in Penn's Landing, Philadelphia, adjacent to the museum ships USS Olympia and USS Becuna.

<i>Glenlee</i> (ship) 1896 steel-hulled three-masted barque

Glenlee is a steel-hulled three-masted barque, built as a cargo ship at Port Glasgow under that name in 1896 for Glasgow owners. With later owners she was named Islamount and Clarastella. From 1922 she was the sail training ship Galatea in the Spanish Navy. Since 1993, carrying her original name, Glenlee has been a museum ship at the Riverside Museum on Pointhouse Quay, Glasgow, known as The Tall Ship at Glasgow Harbour.

<i>Wawona</i> (schooner)

Wawona was an American three-masted, fore-and-aft schooner that sailed from 1897 to 1947 as a lumber carrier and fishing vessel based in Puget Sound. She was one of the last survivors of the sailing schooners in the West Coast lumber trade to San Francisco from Washington, Oregon, and Northern California.

<i>Bowdoin</i> (Arctic schooner) US historic schooner built in 1921

Bowdoin is a historic schooner built in 1921 in East Boothbay, Maine, at the Hodgdon Brothers Shipyard. Designed by William H. Hand, Jr. under the direction of explorer Donald B. MacMillan, the gaff-rigged vessel is the only American schooner built specifically for Arctic exploration. She has made 30 trips above the Arctic Circle in her life, three since she was acquired by the Maine Maritime Academy as a sail training ship in 1988. She is currently owned by the Academy, located in Castine, Maine, and is named for Bowdoin College.

<i>Lettie G. Howard</i> Schooner

Lettie G. Howard, formerly Mystic C and Caviare, is a woodenFredonia schooner built in 1893 in Essex, Massachusetts. This type of craft was commonly used by American offshore fishermen, and is believed to be the last surviving example of its type. She was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1989. She is now based at the South Street Seaport Museum in New York City.

<i>L. A. Dunton</i> (schooner)

L. A. Dunton is a National Historic Landmark fishing schooner and museum exhibit located at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut. Built in 1921, she is one of three remaining vessels afloat of this type, which was once the most common sail-powered fishing vessel sailing from New England ports. In service in New England waters until the 1930s and Newfoundland into the 1950s. After a brief period as a cargo ship, she was acquired by the museum and restored to her original condition.

<i>Emma C. Berry</i> (sloop)

Emma C. Berry is a fishing sloop located at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut, United States, and one of the oldest surviving commercial vessels in America. She is the last known surviving American well smack. This type of boat is also termed a sloop smack or Noank smack. The Noank design was imitated in other regions of the United States.

<i>Wapama</i> (steam schooner)

Wapama, also known as Tongass, was a vessel last located in Richmond, California. She was the last surviving example of some 225 wooden steam schooners that served the lumber trade and other coastal services along the Pacific Coast of the United States. She was managed by the National Park Service at San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park until dismantled in August 2013.

<i>Grace Bailey</i> (schooner)

Grace Bailey, also known for many years as Mattie, is a two-masted schooner whose home port is Camden Harbor, Camden, Maine. Built in 1882 in Patchogue, New York, she is one of four surviving two-masted wooden-hulled schooners, once the most common vessel in the American coasting trade. She was one of the first ships in the fleet of historic vessels known as "Maine windjammers", which offer cruises in Penobscot Bay and the Maine coast, entering that service in 1939. She last underwent major restoration in 1989–90. She was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1992.

<i>Wavertree</i> (ship) United States historic place

Wavertree is a historic iron-hulled sailing ship built in 1885. Now the largest wrought iron sailing vessel afloat, it is located at the South Street Seaport in New York City.

<i>Cora F. Cressey</i> United States historic place

The Cora F. Cressey was a five masted 273 feet (83 m) wooden-hulled freight schooner operating in the coasting trade along the east coast of the United States. Built in 1902, it served in that trade until 1928. After serving for a time as a floating nightclub, its hulk was towed to the Keene Narrows in Bremen, Maine, where it was scuttled to serve as a breakwater for a lobster operation. Despite its deteriorating condition, the hulk is one of the largest surviving wooden hulls in the United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.

<i>Regina Maris</i> (1908) American sailing ship

The American sailing ship Regina Maris was originally built as the three-masted topsail schooner Regina in 1908. She was a 144-foot (44-meter), wooden, completely fore-and-aft–rigged sailing ship with three masts. She was re-rigged in 1963 as a 148-foot (45-meter) barquentine. Regina Maris could reach a speed of up to 12 knots, especially on a half-wind course or with a fresh back-stay breeze.

SB <i>Centaur</i> British wooden Thames sailing barge

SB Centaur is a wooden Thames sailing barge, built in Harwich, Essex, England in 1895. She was used to carry various cargoes, mainly grain, for the next 60 years. During the First World War she carried food and coal to the French Channel ports. During the Second World War Centaur was damaged when sailing to assist with the Dunkirk Evacuation. She did war work for the duration of the conflict.

References