The James Craig Story
This article by Jeff Toghill, written in 1978, vividly describes the story of the James Craig up to that time.
A painting by David Wenban showing the vessel as she would
have been soon after launch as the Clan Macleod.
In the eyes of a sailor, sailing ships are beautiful, and none more so than the stately windjammers which for decades were the umbilicus of new worlds such as Australia, isolated from the centers of old world civilisation by thousands of miles of ocean. These floating 'clouds of canvas' have been eulogised by poets, painters and seamen for their remarkable beauty, reaching a zenith in the latter half of the nineteenth century with the advent of the tea and wool clippers.
The James Craig.
A photo of her under sail taken in
the early part of the 20th Century.
This is the only known photograph of her under way.
Ironically, these magnificent ships, representing the ultimate in both beauty of line and technical development, were to usher in the end of an era. As the turn of the century approached, the ugly but economical steam ships gradually replaced the billowing white sails with black clouds of coal smoke. Man, in his desire for speed, relegated to the past an era of romance and beauty that had never been seen on the world's oceans before and will almost certainly never be seen again.
The hull of the James Craig laying scuttled
in Recherche Bay, Southern Tasmania
Australia, like so many of the developing nations of that time, owes her very existence to those tall ships and the rugged men who manned them across some of the most ferocious waters on the globe. It is to our discredit that to date (1978) not one of the ships which populated and providored this country has been retained in working order. Only now, when most have long since gone to the happy sailing ground in the sky, have a few consciences been stirred and attempts made to recover some of this magnificent past and preserve it for our future generations. Alas, it is almost too late! Only two relatively small ships remained on this coastline in a condition which permitted restoration. The Rona, now the Polly Woodside, has been restored in Melbourne to a static museum piece, and the James Craig, the last iron barque on these shorelines, is in the process of restoration in Sydney. Strangely, these two noble ships knew one another in the course of their working lives, both being engaged in the trans-Tasman and coastal trade as well as in world trade.
The James Craig alongside South Street Wharf New York
(now restored as a maritime museum)
during her period on the New York to New Zealand run.
Happily, the James Craig is a true representative of iron ships of the Clipper era of the 1870s and 1880s. Although she herself was not engaged in the Clipper trade, she is a pure example of the 'workhorse' barques which plodded solidly around the Cape of Good Hope and the Horn carrying lifeblood cargoes such as coal, salt, cotton goods and machinery from the United Kingdom to a rapidly developing Australia. Indeed, a more typical example of this type of vessel--so important to this country in those formative years--could not have been found had one been given a choice. In addition to her world-wide journeyings, she also served in local waters and finally concluded her working years under the ownership of an Australian firm.
©Jeff Toghill, 1978 (Jeff Toghill was part of the salvage team)
All rights reserved.
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Last modified on Wednesday, 25-Aug-2010 15:33:48 EST
