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Official Number
96349 |
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Official Number
96349 |
CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGE |
The Alice A Leigh was a steel four-masted
barque built by the
Whitehaven
Shipbuilding Company, launched in September 1889. She had been built
at a cost of £25,943, but the shipyard had to pay a further £1,400
for tugs to set the vessel afloat after she grounded at her launch. This
cost contributed to the bankruptcy of the company, and the
Alice A.Leigh,
the largest sailing vessel built at Whitehaven, was also the last to be
built there. The barque had masts that were 161 feet tall, and carried
a jubilee rig, with no yards above double topsail and topgallant yards.
In all she carried 31 sails. She was owned by J.Joyce of Liverpool and
commanded by Capt.J.Belaya. In 1893 she came under the command of Capt.J.A.Rookes.
On the 11th September 1898, whilst being towed out of Dunkirk, the Alice A Leigh was in collision with the Rickmer Rickmers. She was taken to Gravesend and then was repaired at London, leaving on the 25th September for New York. Capt. Allan Davison commanded the vessel from 1900 until 1917. His wife went to sea with him and six children were born either at sea or at various ports around the World. The ship survived being dismasted in a typhoon, and in 1914 was saved from being sunk by a German submarine by the intervention of a French naval vessel. |
The Alice A Leigh was bought in 1917 by the New York & Pacific
Sailing Ship Company. In 1921 the barque was again sold, to G.Scales
of Wellington, New Zealand, and this time she was converted for use as
an oil barge. Renamed Rewa, she seems to have been laid-up for much
of the time until 1930 . On the 27th June 1930 her hull was sunk at Moturekareka
Island, Harauki Gulf, NZ, to act as a breakwater. The hull of the Whitehaven
barque is now a tourist attraction, local tour companies running boating
excursions to see "the pirate ship".
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