Viking under the Danish flag, between 1906 and 1929 | |
History | |
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Denmark | |
Name | Viking |
Owner | A/S Den Danske Handelsflaadens Skoleskib for Befalningsmænd, Copenhagen |
Builder | Burmeister & Wain, Copenhagen, Denmark |
Cost | DKK 591,000 |
Launched | 1 December 1906 |
Maiden voyage | 19 July 1907 |
In service | 1907 |
Out of service | 1915 |
Identification | IMO number: 5618148 |
History | |
Denmark | |
Name | Viking |
Owner | Det Forenede Dampskibs-Selskab A/S, Copenhagen |
In service | 1915 |
Out of service | 1929 |
History | |
Finland | |
Name | Viking |
Owner | Gustaf Erikson, Mariehamn, Finland (1929-1950) |
In service | 1929 |
Out of service | 1950 |
History | |
Sweden | |
Name | Viking |
Owner | City of Gothenburg, Sweden (1951-present) |
In service | 1950- |
Status | Floating hotel [1] / museum |
General characteristics | |
Type | Barque |
Tonnage | |
Displacement | ~6,300 t (6,201 long tons; 6,945 short tons) |
Length | |
Beam | 13.9 m (45 ft 7 in) |
Height | 55.5 m (182 ft 1 in) (foremast above deck) |
Draught | 7.33 m (24 ft 1 in) |
Depth of hold | 8.1 m (26 ft 7 in) |
Sail plan |
|
Speed | 15.5 knots (28.7 km/h; 17.8 mph) |
Capacity |
|
Notes | Anchor weight : 3 t (3 long tons; 3 short tons) each |
Location | Gothenburg, Sweden |
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Coordinates | 57°42′46″N11°57′55″E / 57.7128°N 11.9654°E |
Viking, (BarkenViking in Swedish ("the barque Viking")), is a four-masted steel barque, built in 1906 by Burmeister & Wain in Copenhagen, Denmark. She is reported to be the biggest sailing ship ever built in the Nordic countries. In the 21st century her sailing days have drawn to a close, and she is now moored as a floating hotel in Gothenburg, Sweden.
By the turn of the 20th century, ship production had almost completely switched to steamships. However, sailing ships were still preferred for crew training. [2] Viking was originally built as a sail training ship for the rapidly growing Danish merchant fleet. At that time, seaworthiness and cargo capacity were given top priority. The ship was launched on December 1, 1906 and was christened Viking in the traditional manner by the Crown Princess, later Queen Alexandrine, of Denmark.
In July 1909, Captain Niels Clausen logged the ship's top speed of 15.5 knots (28.7 km/h; 17.8 mph) at the Roaring Forties, i.e. latitude 40°-50°, with daily distances of 250-275 nautical miles.[ citation needed ] She was then on her way home fully loaded with wheat from Port Pirie on Spencer Gulf in South Australia.
On 25 February 1917, she was sighted and boarded by the German commerce raider Seeadler. Unusually, the Germans then allowed her to proceed because being Danish, she was a neutral ship. This was something of a lucky escape, because within weeks Germany would return to unrestricted marine warfare, a policy that would have meant the ship's definite sinking.
In 1929, the Åland shipowner Gustaf Erikson bought the ship for £6,500, which then sailed under the Finnish flag. [3] She was now part of his Åland fleet of tall ships. Erikson had a worldwide reputation as a great sailor. In 1931, Viking was fitted out for passengers, who could join the voyages for 25 shillings per person per day.
After several circumnavigations, Viking unloaded her cargo of wheat in Cardiff in the summer of 1939 and then sailed to her home port of Mariehamn, which she entered on July 14. [4] She was then fitted out for her next long voyage, but World War II meant that she remained in port for several years. Viking was towed, along with Passat and Pommern , to Stockholm in July 1944 to be used as a grain silo for the Swedish State Food Commission. In December the following year they were returned to Åland.
She participated in several of the Great Grain Races from Port Victoria, South Australia to Falmouth, Cornwall. Viking won the Grain Race of 1948. David James was an apprentice on her voyage around the world in 1937-38, which is described in his biography. [5] David Robb Muirhead (1921–78) wrote a diary and took photos of his voyage on the Viking as a working passenger in 1948, which records are held in the State Library of South Australia.
She was part of Erikson's fleet until 1950. Viking was about to be scrapped in the late 1940s, but was eventually saved by the Swedish government in 1950 and moored in Gothenburg.
A suspension bridge, Älvsborg Bridge, built in 1966, has effectively locked the ship in, since the masts are taller than the bridge. It is unlikely she ever will sail the open seas again. In January 2021 she was partially demasted to be able to pass under Älvsborg Bridge. Early on January 24, 2021 she was towed to Falkenberg by tug boats Svitzer Thor and Svitzer Bob.
There are only ten four-masted barques and one four-masted full-rigged ship (the Falls of Clyde ) in existence, and only five of these still sail ( Sedov , Kruzenshtern , Sea Cloud I , Nippon Maru II , Kaiwo Maru II ). A few more are still afloat and berthed in various harbors ( Peking (Hamburg), Moshulu (Philadelphia), Passat (Lübeck, Germany), Pommern (Mariehamn, Finland), Nippon Maru (Yokohama, Japan), and Viking).
Viking came to Gothenburg in Sweden permanently in 1950, as a home for various shipping organizations, and later became a school of seamanship. Today it is moored at Lilla Bommen as hotel "Barken Viking". The owner of the hotel is ESS Hotell AB.
Finnish artist Lena Ringbom-Lindén, one of a few females on board a ship at that time, sailed on Viking on one of its voyages to Australia. She wrote of her experience in two books, Flicka på skepp ("Girl on Ship") and Skeppet och Lena ("Lena and The Ship").
Another Finn, Gunnar Eklund, the founder of the Viking Line, worked as an apprentice onboard Viking. He earned his master's certificate onboard Pamir.
Viking's cargos:
Mariehamn is the capital of Åland, an autonomous territory under Finnish sovereignty. Mariehamn is the seat of the Government and Parliament of Åland, and 40% of the population of Åland live in the city. It is mostly surrounded by Jomala, the second-largest municipality in Åland in terms of population; to the east, it is bordered by Lemland. Like the rest of Åland, Mariehamn is unilingually Swedish-speaking and around 82% of the inhabitants speak it as their native language.
The Flying P-Liners were the sailing ships of the German shipping company F. Laeisz of Hamburg.
Pamir was a four-masted barque built for the German shipping company F. Laeisz. One of their famous Flying P-Liners, she was the last commercial sailing ship to round Cape Horn, in 1949. By 1957, she had been outmoded by modern bulk carriers and could not operate at a profit. Her shipping consortium's inability to finance much-needed repairs or to recruit sufficient sail-trained officers caused severe technical difficulties. On 21 September 1957, she was caught in Hurricane Carrie and sank off the Azores, with only six survivors rescued after an extensive search.
Lawhill was a steel-hulled four-masted barque rigged in "jubilee" or "baldheaded" fashion, i.e. without royal sails over the top-gallant sails, active in the early part of the 20th century. Although her career was not especially remarkable, save perhaps for being consistently profitable as a cargo carrier, in the 1930s Richard Cookson went on board and extensively documented Lawhill's internals and construction, which was later published in the Anatomy of the Ship series.
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.
Passat is a German four-masted steel barque and one of the Flying P-Liners, the famous sailing ships of the German shipping company F. Laeisz. She is one of the last surviving windjammers.
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.
Pommern, formerly Mneme (1903–1908), is an iron-hulled sailing ship. It is a four-masted barque that was built in 1903 at the J. Reid & Co shipyard in Glasgow, Scotland.
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.
The Last Grain Race is a 1956 book by Eric Newby, a travel writer, about his time spent on the four-masted steel barque Moshulu during the vessel's last voyage in the Australian grain trade.
Gustaf Adolf Mauritz Erikson was a ship-owner from Mariehamn, in the Åland islands. He was famous for the fleet of windjammers he operated to the end of his life, mainly on the grain trade from Australia to Europe.
Herzogin Cecilie was a German-built four-mast barque (windjammer), named after German Crown Princess Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1886–1954), spouse of Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia (1882–1951). She sailed under German, French and Finnish flags.
The Tall Ships Races are races for sail training "tall ships". The races are designed to encourage international friendship and training for young people in the art of sailing. The races are held annually in European waters and consists of two racing legs of several hundred nautical miles, and a "cruise in company" between the legs. Over one half of the crew of each ship participating in the races must consist of young people.
Grain Race or The Great Grain Race was the informal name for the annual windjammer sailing season generally from South Australia's grain ports on Spencer Gulf to Lizard Point, Cornwall on the southwesternmost coast of the United Kingdom, or to specific ports. A good, fast passage Australia-to-England via Cape Horn was considered anything under 100 days.
Parma was a four-masted steel-hulled barque which was built in 1902 as Arrow for the Anglo-American Oil Co Ltd, London. In 1912 she was sold to F. Laeisz, Hamburg, Germany. During the First World War she was interned in Chile, and postwar was assigned to the United Kingdom as war reparations. She was sold back to Laiesz in 1921. She was sold in 1931 to Ruben De Cloux & Alan Villiers of Mariehamn, Finland. Following an accident in 1936, she was sold and hulked at Haifa, British Mandate of Palestine, now Israel, for two years before being scrapped.
Ponape was a four-masted steel–hulled barque which was built in 1903 in Italy as Regina Elena for an Italian owner. In 1911 she was sold to Germany and renamed Ponape. In 1914 she was arrested by HMS Majestic and confiscated as a war prize by the Admiralty. She was renamed Bellhouse In 1915 she was sold to Norwegian owners. In 1925, she was sold to Finland and again named Ponape serving until she was scrapped in 1936.
The Port Victoria Maritime Museum is a maritime museum located in South Australia, located on the west coast of the Yorke Peninsula in Port Victoria. It is housed in a cargo shed that was brought out from the United Kingdom in kit form in 1877 and completed in January 1878. Household goods for the early settlers in the town and surrounding farmlands were brought by steamers from Port Adelaide and stored in the cargo shed until the settlers’ homes were completed.
The Åland Maritime Museum is a museum in Mariehamn in Åland, Finland. It is located in the western part of the town on the sea on Hamngatan, about 1 km (0.62 mi) at the other end of Storagatan. Along with Ålands Museum, it is the most important museum in the islands and a monument to the history of Åland as holder of the world's largest fleet of wooden sailing ships. The foremost exhibit is a four-masted barque named Pommern, built in Glasgow in 1903, which is anchored behind the museum. The museum designed building is built like a ship's prow cutting into the land. It has been called the "kitsch museum of fishing and maritime commerce."
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