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The Colonial Clippers

Chapter 234: “Hinemoa.”
By Basil Lubbock
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About This Book

The author provides a detailed chronicle of the fast sailing clippers that served the Britain–Australia routes, dividing coverage between emigrant passenger ships and wool clippers. It combines technical descriptions, sail plans and illustrations with passage records, captains’ logs, ownership and commercial practices, notable races and 24-hour runs, and accounts of accidents, fires and final fates. Anecdotes and measured statistics illuminate everyday life aboard, steerage conditions, and changes in routing and shipbuilding, while lists of best passages and vessel biographies trace the operational history and later careers of many prominent clippers.

“LADY JOCELYN.”

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The Pretty Little “Ben Venue.”

A regular trader to New Zealand in the seventies was Watson’s pretty little Ben Venue, an iron main skysail-yarder of 999 tons, launched by Barclay, Curle in 1867. Under Captain McGowan, she made the very fine average of 77 days for her outward passages, her best homeward being 72 days to the Lizards from Lyttelton in 1879. I have already described her loss in May, 1882.

“Hinemoa.”

The distinction of being the only sailing ship specially built for the New Zealand frozen meat trade belongs to the splendid steel four-mast barque, Hinemoa, built by Russell, of Greenock, in 1890. She measured 2283 tons, 278.1 feet length, 41.9 feet breadth, 24.2 feet depth. Like many of Russell’s carriers she possessed a very fair turn of speed, especially off the wind, and has the following fine passages to her credit.

1894 Downs to Melbourne 77 days
1901 Newcastle, N.S.W., to Frisco 60 „
1902 Frisco to Old Head of Kinsale 101 „

Hinemoa was built at a time when “sail” was making a final effort to hold its markets against the steam tramp. That effort was a truly gallant one, and but for the fact that the windjammer possesses a charm and fascination totally lacking in steam, and has ever been enthroned in the hearts of all lovers of the sea, masts and yards would not have lasted longer in the Mercantile Marine than they did in the Royal Navy.

That there were still sailing ships used commercially in 1914 goes to prove that the most stony-hearted, matter-of-fact business man was ready to sacrifice his pocket for a sentiment, a sentiment indeed which many may find hard to define, yet which has forged the links in the chain of nations which represent the present British Empire.

To sail and the sail-trained seaman more than to any other cause do we owe our nation’s greatness. By sail were our homesteads kept safe from the enemy; by sail were our new coasts charted; sail took the adventurous pioneers to the new land, and sail brought home the products of these new lands to the Old Country and made her the Market of the World.

This book is an attempt to preserve in written form what the fading memory is fast forgetting—the Glorious History of the Sailing Ship.

As o’er the moon, fast fly the amber veils,
For one dear hour let’s fling the knots behind,
And hear again, thro’ cordage and thro’ sails,
The vigour of the voices of the wind.
They’re gone, the Clyde-built darlings, like a dream,
Regrets are vain, and sighs shall not avail,
Yet, mid the clatter and the rush of steam,
How strangely memory veers again to sail!

APPENDIX