Hamburg (barque)

Last updated
History
Canadian Red Ensign 1868-1921.svg Canada
Name:Hamburg
Owner: Ezra Churchill & Sons (George and John Churchill), Hantsport, Nova Scotia
Port of registry: Windsor, Nova Scotia
Builder: E. Churchill & Sons Yard, John Fox Davidson, master builder, Hantsport
Laid down: February 1886
Launched: September 29, 1886
Maiden voyage: New York to Liverpool, December 1886
Out of service: Cut down to barge 1908. Hulked 1925.
Identification:
  • Code Letters KJHW
  • ICS Kilo.svg ICS Juliet.svg ICS Hotel.svg ICS Whiskey.svg
Fate: Upper hull burned 1936
General characteristics
Tonnage: 1743 Gross Tons
Length: 216.2 ft (65.9 m)
Beam: 43 ft (13 m)
Depth: 24 ft.
Decks: 1 deck plus orlop beams
Propulsion: Sail
Sail plan: Three Masted Barque

Hamburg was a three masted barque built in 1886 at Hantsport, Nova Scotia. She was the largest three masted barque ever built in Canada . [1]

Contents

Background

Hamburg was one of the last of over a hundred large sailing vessels built by the Churchill family of Hantsport, led by Ezra Churchill. The barque was named after Hamburg, Germany, continuing a Churchill family tradition of naming ships after ports where they often sought cargoes.

Career

The barque's captain for almost her entire career was Andrew B. Coldwell. Hamburg worked mostly Atlantic trades but also made several long Pacific voyages, rounded Cape Horn many times and made one circumnavigation of the world in 1891. She called at her namesake port of Hamburg, Germany in 1895. She was converted to a gypsum barge in 1908 and served 17 years carrying gypsum under tow from the Minas Basin to New York. Her working career ended in 1925 when she was beached at Summerville, Hants County, Nova Scotia, just across and downriver from the site of her launch at Hantsport. In 1936, her massive wooden hull was burned to the waterline, leaving her lower hull partially covered and preserved in river silt.

Legacy

Hamburg's surviving hull offers a rare surviving example of the structure of a wooden sailing ship from Canada's Golden Age of Sail. The vessel's history is presented at the nearby Avon River Shipbuilding Museum at Newport Landing and at the Churchill House Marine Memorial Room in Hantsport. A lower mast from Hamburg is preserved at the Age of Sail Heritage Centre in Port Greville, Nova Scotia while one of her massive iron bollards is on display at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Related Research Articles

Flying P-Liner ship type

The Flying P-Liners were the sailing ships of the German shipping company F. Laeisz of Hamburg.

Minas Basin

The Minas Basin is an inlet of the Bay of Fundy and a sub-basin of the Fundy Basin located in Nova Scotia, Canada. It is known for its extremely high tides.

HMCS <i>Sackville</i> (K181) former Royal Canadian Navy warship

HMCS Sackville is a Flower-class corvette that served in the Royal Canadian Navy and later served as a civilian research vessel. She is now a museum ship located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the last surviving Flower-class corvette.

Iron-hulled sailing ship

Iron-hulled sailing ships represented the final evolution of sailing ships at the end of the age of sail. They were built to carry bulk cargo for long distances in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They were the largest of merchant sailing ships, with three to five masts and square sails, as well as other sail plans. They carried lumber, guano, grain or ore between continents. Later examples had steel hulls. They are sometimes referred to as "windjammers" or "tall ships". Several survive, variously operating as school ships, museum ships, restaurant ships, and cruise ships.

<i>Peking</i> (ship) Historic German 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.

Hantsport Community in Nova Scotia, Canada

Hantsport is a Canadian community located in Hants County, Nova Scotia. It is administratively part of the Municipality of the District of West Hants.

Ezra Churchill : Nineteenth-century industrialist, investing in shipbuilding, land, timber for domestic and foreign markets, gypsum quarries, insurance companies, hotels, etc. As a politician he held positions in the Nova Scotia legislature and was appointed a Canadian Senator for the Province of Nova Scotia. Churchill was also a Baptist lay preacher.

<i>Bluenose II</i>

Bluenose II is a replica of the fishing schooner Bluenose, was commissioned by Sidney Culverwell Oland and built in 1963 as a promotional yacht for Oland Brewery. Sidney Oland donated the schooner to Nova Scotia in 1971 and it became Nova Scotia's sailing ambassador.

<i>Baron of Renfrew</i> (ship)

Baron of Renfrew was a four-masted barque of 5,294 gross register tonnage (GRT), built of wood in 1825 by Charles Wood in Quebec, Canada. She was one of the largest wooden ships ever built, although she was a disposable ship built for a one-way voyage to transport timber to England and did not complete a single voyage before breaking up.

<i>Picton Castle</i> (ship) Sail Training Vessel

Picton Castle is a fully certified and registered Cook Islands tall ship whose mission is deep-ocean sail training and long distance education voyages. Picton Castle is perhaps best known for her World Circumnavigations, though she has visited the Great Lakes twice, sailed numerous times on tours of the East Coast of the Americas, completed a Caribbean Voyage and in 2008 sailed to Europe, Africa and the Caribbean on a Voyage of the Atlantic. In 2012 she sailed for the South Pacific. Picton Castle's unofficial home port in Canada is Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, but she is formally registered in the Cook Islands and subject to that country's regulatory regime.

<i>Potosi</i> (barque) German trading ship built in 1895

Potosi was a five-masted steel barque built in 1895 by Joh. C. Tecklenborg ship yard in Geestemünde, Germany, for the sailing ship company F. Laeisz as a trading vessel. As its shipping route was between Germany and Chile, it was designed to be capable of withstanding the rough weather encountered around Cape Horn.

<i>William D. Lawrence</i> (ship)

William D. Lawrence was a full-rigged sailing ship built in Maitland, Nova Scotia, along the Minas Basin and named after her builder, the merchant and politician William Dawson Lawrence (1817–1886).

Kingsport, is a small seaside village located in Kings County, Nova Scotia on the shores of the Minas Basin, famous at one time for building some of the largest wooden ships ever built in Canada.

Kings County was a four-masted barque built in 1890 at Kingsport, Nova Scotia on the Minas Basin. She was named to commemorate Kings County, Nova Scotia and represented the peak of the county's shipbuilding era. Kings County was one of the largest wooden sailing vessels ever built in Canada and one of only two Canadian four-masted barques. At first registered as a four masted full rigged ship, she was quickly changed to a barque after her June 2 launch. More than three thousand people from Kings and Hants counties attended the launch. She survived a collision with an iceberg on an 1893 voyage to Swansea, Wales. Like many of the large wooden merchant ships built in Atlantic Canada, she spent most of her career far from home on trading voyages around the world. In 1909, she returned to the Minas Basin for a refit at Hantsport and loaded a large cargo of lumber. In 1911 she became the largest wooden ship to enter Havana Harbour when she delivered a cargo of lumber and was briefly stranded. She was lost a few months later on a voyage to Montevideo, Uruguay when she ran aground in the River Plate. Too damaged to repair, she was scrapped in Montevideo where her massive timbers were visible for many years.

Summerville, Nova Scotia human settlement in Canada

Summerville is a small community in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, located in The Municipality of the District of West Hants in Hants County. As of 2015, the population of Summerville was estimated to be 248.

<i>Glooscap</i> (ship)

Glooscap was a full-rigged sailing ship built in 1891 at Spencer's Island, Nova Scotia in the Minas Basin of the Bay of Fundy. The ship was named after Glooscap, the spiritual hero figure of the Mi'kmaq people. Glooscap was the culmination of several decades of large-scale ship building in the small village of Spencers Island. She was the last square rigger built along the Parrsboro Shore and the largest ship ever built in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia. She circled the world in her first year of operation, carrying freight to Liverpool, Cape Town, Australia, and New York City. She made frequent subsequent voyages to the Pacific. Although built in the twilight period of the Age of Sail, Glooscap earned good profits for her owners shipping freight around the world for two decades under the command of two noted captains, the brothers George T. Spicer and Dewis Spicer of Spencers Island. Glooscap was converted to a gypsum barge in 1914. The ship is featured in exhibits at the lighthouse museum in Spencer's Island and at the Age of Sail Heritage Centre in Port Greville.

Churchill House, Hantsport Municipal and Marine Museum in Hantsport, Nova Scotia Canada

Churchill House is a historic house and community centre located in Hantsport, Nova Scotia. The house was built in 1860 by noted Hantsport shipbuilder Ezra Churchill as a gift for his son John Wiley Churchill. The well-preserved example of an Italianate house today serves as a museum and community centre owned by the non profit corporation Hamtsport Memorial Community Centre.

<i>Canada</i> (1891) full rigged ship built in 1891

Canada was a full rigged ship built in 1891 at Kingsport, Nova Scotia on the Minas Basin and was the largest sailing ship operated in Canada when launched in 1891. Canada was built and owned by Charles Rufus Burgess of nearby Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Despite the decline in wooden shipbuilding, Burgess saw that there was still potential for very large wooden sailing ships to make profits in the twilight days of the wooden sailing ship era. He had built the barque Kings County, the previous year, the largest four-masted barque ever built in Canada. Burgess planned to make Canada to be the largest sailing ship ever built in Canada, but damage, during harvesting, to a timber intended for the keel caused her length to be trimmed by ten feet making Canada slightly smaller than the ship William D. Lawrence built in 1874. However, as the William D. Lawrence had been sold to Norwegian owners and renamed in 1883, the ship Canada still claimed the honour of being the largest sailing ship under the Canadian flag at the time of her launch. Between 75 and 150 men were employed in building the ship. Canada was designed by master builder Ebenezer Cox who was in charge of the Burgess Shipyard in Kingsport where he had built ships since the 1860s and was regarded at the time to have built more ships than any man in Canada. The construction cost $111,000. Her interior included a finely outfitted captain's cabin, finished in walnut, ash and rosewood with a full dining room, office and bathroom. Her launch at noon on July 6, 1891 attracted 5,000 people from all across Western Nova Scotia, brought by multiple special trains run by the Cornwallis Valley Railway. It was regarded as the biggest event in the history of the village. A tug took the completed hull of Canada from the launch at Kingsport to Saint John, New Brunswick where the masting, rigging and outfitting was completed at the Customs House Wharf. Her immense size attracted hundreds to the Saint John waterfront to see Canada depart on September 1, 1891 for her maiden voyage, carrying with a cargo of lumber worth $144,109 bound for Liverpool, England. Classed A1 by Lloyd's Register for 14 years, Canada made several fast passages between South America and Australia. However by 1900, the ship was facing stif competition for cargoes from the growing numbers of general cargo steamships. Canada was converted to a gypsum barge in 1910, carrying gypsum from Windsor, Nova Scotia to Staten Island, New York for the Gypsum Transportation Company of New York. She was towed a final time from New York to Portland, Maine in 1926 where she was broken up.

Founded in 1836, Frieze and Roy was a shipping, shipbuilding and trading firm located in Maitland, Hants County, Nova Scotia, Canada. The firm was integral to the success of Maitland as a hub of shipbuilding in mid-to-late 19th century Nova Scotia. Its founder, David Frieze is regarded as one of the founding fathers of the community. The firm helped expand and develop local infrastructure, laying the groundwork for Maitland's most famous shipbuilder, William Dawson Lawrence.

Maid of England was a sailing barquentine built in Gross Coques, Digby County, Nova Scotia in 1919 by Omer Blinn. Maid of England was the last square-rigged cargo vessel built in Maritime provinces of Canada. Maid of England was owned by F.K. Warren for nine years, and then later abandoned at sea in 1928.

References

  1. "Life and Times of Hamburg, a Nova Scotian Barque", Darrell Burke, Maritime Life and Traditions, No. 23 Summer 2004, pages 28-39.

Coordinates: 45°05′52.18″N64°10′56.36″W / 45.0978278°N 64.1823222°W / 45.0978278; -64.1823222