The Star of India is the world's oldest active ship. She
began her life on the stocks at Ramsey Shipyard in the Isle of Man
in 1863. Iron ships were experiments of sorts then, with most
vessels still being built of wood. Within five months of laying her
keel, the ship was launched into her element. She bore the name
Euterpe, after the Greek goddess of music.
Euterpe was a full-rigged ship and would remain so
until 1901, when the Alaska Packers Association rigged her down to a
barque, her present rig. She began her sailing life with two
near-disastrous voyages to India. On her first trip she suffered a
collision and a mutiny. On her second trip, a cyclone caught
Euterpe in the Bay of Bengal, and with her topmasts cut away,
she barely made port. Shortly afterward, her first captain died on
board and was buried at sea.
After such a hard luck beginning, Euterpe settled down and
made four more voyages to India as a cargo ship. In 1871 she was
purchased by the Shaw Savill line of London and embarked on a
quarter century of hauling emigrants to New Zealand, sometimes also
touching Australia, California and Chile. She made 21
circumnavigations in this service, some of them lasting up to a
year. It was rugged voyaging, with the little iron ship battling
through terrific gales, "labouring and rolling in a most distressing
manner," according to her log.
The life aboard was especially hard on the emigrants cooped up in
her 'tween deck, fed a diet of hardtack and salt junk, subject to
mal-de-mer and a host of other ills. It is astonishing that their
death rate was so low. They were a tough lot, however, drawn from
the working classes of England, Ireland and Scotland, and most went
on to prosper in New Zealand.
As for the Euterpe, she was sold to American owners in
1898, and in 1902, commenced sailing from Oakland, California to the
Bering Sea each spring with a load of fishermen, cannery hands, box
shook and tin plate. She returned each fall laden with canned
salmon. This went on until 1923 when she was laid up by her owners
the Alaska Packers. The Packers had changed her name in 1906,
dubbing her Star of India in keeping with their company
practice.
By 1923, steam ruled the seas. Sailing ships were obsolete and
scores were laid up in ports, including the Star of India.
What saved this particular ship from the knacker's torch was a
determined band of San Diegans, led by reporter Jerry MacMullen.
They scraped up $9,000 to buy the Star in 1926, and the following
year she was towed to San Diego. For the next three decades,
however, the Star languished; the depression and World War II
delayed her restoration to her days of glory. She began to assume an
increasingly tattered [appearance], with weepers of rust running
down her sides and Irish pennants fluttering gloomily in her
rigging.
In 1957, Captain Alan Villiers, a famous windjammer skipper and
author, came to San Diego on a lecture tour. He took one look at the
dilapidated Star and delivered a broadside to the local press,
lambasting the citizenry for doing nothing to save this gallant
ship. Things got better after that. Slowly, the nickels and dimes
trickling in turned to dollars. Skilled workmen along the waterfront
volunteered their services and the cheerful sound of hammers, saws,
and showers of sparks from welding torches replaced the silence of
decay aboard the Star.
Finally, in 1976, the fully restored Star of India put to
sea for the first time in fifty years, under the command of Captain
Carl Bowman. She sailed beautifully that day, to the applause of
half a million of her fans, ashore and afloat. The Star of India now
sails at least once a year making her the oldest active ship of any
kind in the world. She is sailed and maintained by a volunteer crew
that trains year-round, keeping not only the ship but also the
skills to sail her alive.
She has been called the
foremost symbol of San Diego, for ships like her were the original
sinews of our city's progress. Yet she is more than that-she is the
essence of a vanished age, a glorious time when men and women
voyaged under towers of masts and |
