 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Moshulu" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(February 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
 Moshulu atPenn's Landing, Philadelphia | |
| History | |
|---|---|
 German Empire | |
| Name | Kurt |
| Namesake | Dr. Kurt Siemers |
| Owner | G. H. J. Siemers & Co., Hamburg |
| Route | Europe to Chile and Newcastle, Australia |
| Builder | William Hamilton & Co., Port Glasgow |
| Cost | £36,000 |
| Laid down | 1903 |
| Launched | 18 April 1904 |
| Christened | 18 April 1904 |
| Completed | June 1904 |
| Maiden voyage | June 1904 viaSanta Rosalía toValparaíso |
| Homeport | Hamburg, |
| Fate | Seized by the US as enemy asset |
 United States | |
| Name | Moshulu |
| Route | (US) Manila, Australia, South Africa |
| Acquired | 1917 |
| Out of service | 1928 |
| Homeport | San Francisco |
| Fate | Sold to Finland, 1935 |
 Finland | |
| Name | Moshulu |
| Route | Australia to Europegrain trade |
| Acquired | 1935 |
| Decommissioned | 1970 |
| Out of service | 1940 |
| Reinstated | 1935 as a cargo ship, 1948 as a grain store |
| Homeport | Mariehamn, Naantali |
| Fate | Capsized and demasted 1947, sold to the United States, 1970 |
| United States | |
| Name | Moshulu |
| Acquired | 1970 |
| Reinstated | 1975 as a restaurant |
| Homeport | Philadelphia |
| Status | Museum ship/restaurant ship |
| General characteristics | |
| Class & type |
|
| Displacement | 7,000 ts (1,700 ts ship + 5,300 ts cargo) |
| Length |
|
| Beam | 46.9 ft (14.3 m) |
| Height | |
| Draft | 24.3 ft (7.4 m) at 5,300 tons |
| Depth | 28 ft (8.5 m) (depth moulded) |
| Depth of hold | 26.6 ft (8.1 m) |
| Decks | 2 continuous steel decks, poop, midshipbridge and forecastle decks |
| Installed power | no auxiliary propulsion;donkey engine for sailwinches, steam rudder |
| Propulsion | wind |
| Sail plan | 4.180 m²; 34 sails: 18square sails, 3spankers, 13staysails |
| Speed | highest recorded: 17 knots (31 km/h) |
| Boats & landing craft carried | four lifeboats |
| Complement | max. 35 |
| Crew | 33 (captain, 1st & 2nd mate, 1 steward, 29 able seamen)[citation needed] |
Moshulu is a four-masted steelbarque, built asKurt byWilliam Hamilton and Company atPort Glasgow inScotland in 1904. The largest remaining originalwindjammer, she is currently afloating restaurant docked inPenn's Landing,Philadelphia.
Originally namedKurt afterKurt Siemers, director general and president of theHamburg shipping companyG. H. J. Siemers & Co., she was, along with her sistershipHans, one of the last four-masted steel barques to be built on the Clyde. Constructed for G. H. J. Siemers & Co. to be used in thenitrate trade, at a cost of £36,000, she was launched in 1904. Her first master was Captain Christian Schütt, followed by Captain Wilhelm H. G. Tönissen in 1908 who made a fast voyage fromNewcastle, Australia, toValparaíso with a cargo of coal in 31 days.
Between 1904 and 1914, under German ownership,Kurt shippedcoal fromWales toSouth America, nitrate fromChile toGermany, coal fromAustralia to Chile, andcoke andpatent fuel from Germany toSanta Rosalía,Mexico.
On the outbreak ofWorld War I in 1914,Kurt was sailed toOregon under the command of Captain Tönissen, then laid up inAstoria until being seized when theUnited States entered the war in 1917. She was first renamedDreadnought ("one who fears nothing"), then, because there was already a sailing ship of that name registered in the US, she was renamed theMoshulu (which had the same meaning in theSeneca language) by the First Lady of the United States and wife of President Woodrow Wilson,Edith Wilson. Between 1917 and 1920,Moshulu was owned by the U.S. Shipping Board and carried wool and chrome between North America,Manila and Australia.
From 1920 to 1935,Moshulu was in various private hands based inSan Francisco. From 1920 to 1922, it was owned by the Moshulu Navigation Co. (Charles Nelson & Co.), San Francisco; in 1922, it was sold to James Tyson of San Francisco; and, in 1922, it was repurchased by Charles Nelson. The big four-masted barque ran in the timber trade along the U.S. west coast to Australia andSouth Africa from 1920 to 1928. After her last timber run toMelbourne andGeelong, Australia, in 1928, she was laid up inLos Angeles; later on, she was kept in places in or nearSeattle,Washington:Lake Union, Winslow on (Puget Sound), andEsquimalt inBritish Columbia,Canada, 100 nautical miles (190 km) north west of Seattle.
In 1935, theMoshulu was bought for $12,000 byGustaf Erikson. On 14 March 1935, when the contract was signed, Captain Gunnar Boman took over the ship and sailed it toPort Victoria. Gustaf Erikson had her operate in the grain trade from Australia to Europe. During the period of Erikson's ownership the working language of the ship was Swedish, even though it sailed under the Finnish flag; the ship's home port at the time,Mariehamn, is in Swedish-speakingÅland, an autonomous region of Finland.
At the end of 1938, the ship left Belfast forPort Lincoln and Port Victoria, in South Australia, under the command of Captain Mikael Sjögren and with 18-year-oldEric Newby as an apprentice seaman; Newby went on to become a travel writer and wrote about his experiences of that voyage in the bookThe Last Grain Race (1956). Moshulu arrived in Queenstown (Cobh, Ireland) on 10 June 1939, after 91 days at sea, winning the last race of square-rigged sailing ships between Australia and Europe.
The ship was seized by the Germans in 1940 when she returned toKristiansand,Norway, again under the command of Captain Mikael Sjögren and with a cargo of wheat fromBuenos Aires. She was derigged step-by-step in the 1940s, and, after having capsized in a storm close to shore at a beach in Østervik nearNarvik in 1947, she was demasted by a salvaging company to be re-erected, stabilized, and towed toBergen in July 1948. The ship's hull was sold to Trygve Sommerfeldt of Oslo. A few months later, the ship was transferred to Sweden to be used as a grain store in Stockholm from 1948 to 1952. Then she was sold to the German shipowner Heinz Schliewen, who wanted to put her back to use under the nameOplag as a merchant marine training ship carrying cargo.[1] Schliewen already used the four-masted steel barquesPamir andPassat (both formerFlying P-Liners) for that purpose, but beforeMoshulu was re-rigged, Schliewen went into bankruptcy. In 1953Moshulu was sold to the Swedish Farmers' State Union (Svenska Lantmännens Riksförbund) of Stockholm, and again it was used as a floating warehouse beginning on 16 November 1953.
In 1961, theFinnish government bought the ship for 3,200 tons of Russianrye; she was towed toNaantali, a town nearTurku, and she continued to be used as a grain warehouse.
In 1970, the ship was bought by the Specialty Restaurants Corporation, who rigged her out atScheveningen in the Netherlands with replica masts, yards, and lines and towed her toSouth Street Seaport Museum, New York.[2] The United States Coast Guard 3rd District Band rode on the Moshulu as she was towed from Brooklyn to the museum and played for the arrival ceremony on the Manhattan side of the river.[citation needed] She was later towed to the Penn's Landing waterfront in Center City, Philadelphia, where she is adjacent to the museum shipsUSS Olympia andUSS Becuna inIndependence Seaport Museum Other sources[which?] have it thatThe Walt Disney Company bought the ship but soon transferred it to the Specialty Restaurants Corporation. Since 2003 she is operated by SCC Restaurants LLC.[2]
Moshulu was made famous by the books ofEric Newby. At the age of 18 he was apprenticed aboard theMoshulu, joining the ship inBelfast in 1938 and sailing toPort Lincoln in Australia with a load of ballast stone in 82 days, a good passage for awindjammer.Moshulu took 4,875 tons of bagged grain on board in Port Victoria and began her return voyage to Ireland in the spring of 1939. She reached her destination in 91 days, a faster passage than that of any of the other sailing ships making similar passages that year.
During the voyage, Newby took part in all the work required to maintain the ship, such as constant chipping of rust, painting and polishing brass and copper and overhauling the standing and running rigging – all of this on top of the day-to-day tasks required to sail the ship, such as changing from fair weather sails to storm sails and back again as storms rose and abated.
The crew at the time was predominantly Finnish andSwedish, and nationality was a source of friction amongst them throughout the voyage.
The journey was documented in Newby's booksThe Last Grain Race (1956) andLearning the Ropes: An Apprentice in the Last of the Windjammers (1999). The title of the former book refers to the lastgrain race before the outbreak of World War II. The latter contains more than 150 of the photographs Newby took while aboard.
In the 1974 American film,The Godfather Part II, the ship plays the role of the vessel that brought the boyVito Andolini across the Atlantic from Sicily to New York in 1901.[3]
In the training montage sequence of the blockbuster 1976 filmRocky,Rocky Balboa, played bySylvester Stallone, can be seen running pastMoshulu while training for his heavyweight championship bout againstApollo Creed.[citation needed]
For examples of other large sailing ships:
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
39°56′32″N75°08′28″W / 39.94234°N 75.14104°W /39.94234; -75.14104
