 Star
of India
INFORMATION ABOUT THE STAR
OF INDIA:
The Star of India is the world's oldest
active ship. She began her life on the stocks at Ramsey
Shipyard in the Isle of Man in 1863. Iron ships were
experiments of sorts then, with most vessels still being
built of wood. Within five months of laying her keel, the
ship was launched into her element. She bore the name
Eateries, after the Greek goddess of music.
Eateries was a
full-rigged ship and would remain so until 1901, when the
Alaska Packers Association rigged her down to a baroque, her
present rig. She began her sailing life with two
near-disastrous voyages to India. On her first trip she
suffered a collision and a mutiny. On her second trip, a
cyclone caught Euterpe in the Bay of Bengal, and with her
topmasts cut away, she barely made port. Shortly afterward,
her first captain died on board and was buried at sea.
After such a hard
luck beginning, Euterpe settled down and made four more
voyages to India as a cargo ship. In 1871 she was purchased
by the Shaw Savill line of London and embarked on a quarter
century of hauling emigrants to New Zealand, sometimes also
touching Australia, California and Chile. She made 21
circumnavigations in this service, some of them lasting up
to a year. It was rugged voyaging, with the little iron ship
battling through terrific gales, "laboring and rolling in a
most distressing manner," according to her log.
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The life aboard was
especially hard on the emigrants cooped up in her 'tween
deck, fed a diet of hardtack and salt junk, subject to
mal-de-mer and a host of other ills. It is astonishing that
their death rate was so low. They were a tough lot, however,
drawn from the working classes of England, Ireland and
Scotland, and most went on to prosper in New Zealand.
As for the Euterpe,
she was sold to American owners in 1898, and in 1902,
commenced sailing from Oakland, California to the Bering Sea
each spring with a load of fishermen, cannery hands, box
shook and tin plate. She returned each fall laden with
canned salmon. This went on until 1923 when she was laid up
by her owners the Alaska Packers. The Packers had changed
her name in 1906, dubbing her Star of India in keeping with
their company practice.
By 1923, steam ruled
the seas. Sailing ships were obsolete and scores were laid
up in ports, including the Star of India. What saved this
particular ship from the knacker's torch was a determined
band of San Diegans, led by reporter Jerry MacMullen. They
scraped up $9,000 to buy the Star in 1926, and the following
year she was towed to San Diego. For the next three decades,
however, the Star languished; the depression and World War
II delayed her restoration to her days of glory. She began
to assume an increasingly tattered [appearance], with
weepers of rust running down her sides and Irish pennants
fluttering gloomily in her rigging.
In 1957, Captain
Alan Villiers, a famous windjammer skipper and author, came
to San Diego on a lecture tour. He took one look at the
dilapidated Star and delivered a broadside to the local
press, lambasting the citizenry for doing nothing to save
this gallant ship. Things got better after that. Slowly, the
nickels and dimes trickling in turned to dollars. Skilled
workmen along the waterfront volunteered their services and
the cheerful sound of hammers, saws, and showers of sparks
from welding torches replaced the silence of decay aboard
the Star.
Finally, in 1976, the fully restored
Star of India put to sea for the first time in fifty years,
under the command of Captain Carl Bowman. She sailed
beautifully that day, to the applause of half a million of
her fans, ashore and afloat. The Star of India now sails at
least once a year making her the oldest active ship of any
kind in the world. She is sailed and maintained by a
volunteer crew that trains year-round, keeping not only the
ship but also the skills to sail her alive.
She has been called
the foremost symbol of San Diego, for ships like her were
the original sinews of our city's progress. Yet she is more
than that-she is the essence of a vanished age, a glorious
time when men and women voyaged under towers of masts and
clouds of canvas. |
