Lord Shaftesbury

Official Number 93830

The Lord Shaftesbury was built by the Whitehaven Shipbuilding Company No. 2 in December 1888. She was a steel four-masted ship, owned originally by John Herron (the Lord Line).

The Lord Shaftesbury  later entered American ownership and was renamed Golden Gate, and was eventually reduced to a barque rig. She has been claimed to be the first sailing vessel to pass through the Panama Canal, which was opened to commercial shipping from the 3rd August 1914.

Like the Star of India, the  Lord Shaftesbury  eventually entered the fleet of  the Alaska Packers Company. She was laid up at Oakland Creek, California in the 1930's and suffered fire damage there. Eventually the ship was sold to Japanese interests for scrap about 1938-9. In the process of scrapping (at Government Island, Alameda ?) her masts were dynamited from the hull at the dock (see Source 3).
 

Sources :

1. Information from Derek Ellwood
2. There are some excellent photographs of the Lord Shaftesbury at the State Library of Victoria website (Multimedia Catalogue).
3. Information from Gene Barron, Maine, USA, who owns the hanging lamp from her saloon and donated (poor) photographs of her masts being dynamited to the San Francisco Maritime Musuem.
4. Record of American and Foreign Shipping 1895: names master as Capt.J.Cunningham, still registered in Liverpool and ship-rigged.