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Official Number
47617 |
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Official Number
47617 |
The Euterpe was a full-rigged ship built of iron at the Ramsey shipyard of Gibson & Co. on the Isle of Man in November 1863.
The Euterpe began her career with two voyages to India, both of which nearly lead to disaster. On her first trip she suffered a collision and a mutiny. On her second trip she was caught by a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal, and with her topmasts cut away, she was fortunate to make port. Soon afterwards, her first master died on board and was buried at sea. The Euterpe then made four more voyages to India as a cargo ship. In 1871 she was purchased by the Shaw Savill line and embarked on a quarter century of transporting emigrants to New Zealand, sometimes also stopping in Australia, California and Chile. She made 21 circumnavigations in this service, some of them lasting up to a year.
The Euterpe was sold to American owners in 1898 and registered at San Franscisco. In 1902 she commenced sailing from California to the Bering Sea each spring with a load of fishermen, cannery hands, box shook and tin plate. She returned each autumn laden with canned salmon. This carried on until 1923, when she was laid up by her owners, the Alaska Packers Association. The Packers had changed her name in 1906, dubbing her Star of India in keeping with their company practice of re-naming their vessels as "Star of ....." .Five years earlier they had rigged her down to a barque, her present rig.
The Star of India was laid up in 1923, then bought by a group
of people from San Diego in 1926. In 1976, the fully restored Star of
India put to sea for the first time in fifty years. She is owned by
the San Diego Maritime Museum and it is claimed that she is the oldest
sailing vessel still afloat.
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Photographs (taken 2004 at San Diego by György Ákos).
Sources :
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