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Wartime windjammers
The last days of a great sailing fleet
Few people today would be aware that during the Second World War (1939–45), 27 large sail-driven ships were still carrying much-needed cargoes around the world. Wartime secrecy prevented detailed records of shipping movements being published after 1939, and much of the information that author and artist Robert Carter OAM has gained comes by word of mouth from the crews of the vessels engaged in this strange anachronism.
Trade Wind, Robert Carter, 1999. Passat survived World War II and is now preserved in Lubeck, Germany. All images Robert Carter
The first two years of the war saw a huge tonnage of Allied shipping sunk by German U-boats and raiders
IN THE TWO DECADES BEFORE WORLD WAR II, Australia played a major role in prolonging the viability of sailing ships by providing grain as their cargo – albeit at a low freight rate, but earning enough for a dwindling group of these ships to remain in business, and attracting most of the world’s remaining sailing ships to Australia. The Grain Fleet
Almost all of these ships were Finnish, and largely owned by one man, Gustaf Erikson of Mariehamn. This is the principal town of the Åland Islands, situated in the Gulf of Bothnia, midway between Sweden and Finland. They were Finnish territory, but their inhabitants’ language and culture are Swedish. In 1939 the grain fleet consisted of 14 vessels: four-masted barques Viking, Pamir, Passat, Moshulu, Lawhill, Olivebank, Pommern, Archibald Russell (all Finnish), Abraham Rydberg (Swedish), Kommodore Johnsen and Padua (both German) and Winterhude, Killoran and Penang – three barques owned by Erikson. Deep-laden with wheat or barley, they began departing from Spencer Gulf, South Australia, from February 1939. The last departure was that of Killoran, in July 1939. Apart from Killoran (see below), they all arrived and discharged their grain in UK and Irish ports just prior to the war. Moshulu was the first to arrive, on 10 June. She was ordered to Glasgow to discharge, then joined Pamir (see below) in Gothenburg, Sweden. In October 1939, she obtained a charter to load maize at Buenos Aires for Aalborg, Denmark. On her return journey, within sight of her destination, she was captured by the German Navy and taken to Farsund in Norway, where she was interned and rigged down and became a store ship. Abraham Rydberg discharged at Ipswich during June 1939 and returned to Gothenburg. She left again for Australia on 3 September 1939, the day that war broke out, then traded between South American ports and the US throughout most of the war. Olivebank, after discharging at Barry, Wales, sailed for Mariehamn. On 8 September 1939 she struck a mine off Jutland and sank within minutes, settling on the bottom with her upper masts above water. The master, Captain Carl Granith, and 13 of the crew went down with their ship. Six others survived by clinging to the masts and were picked up by a Danish trawler several days later. Archibald Russell discharged at Hull, England, and was laid up there during the war, being used as a store ship. She was rigged down so that her masts would not provide a navigation marker for the Luftwaffe. After the war she was broken up. After Winterhude discharged at Barrow, England, Erikson chartered the ship to the Norwegian government as a granary but she was claimed by Germany when they invaded that country, and was used as a floating barracks for part of their occupation troops. After the war she was broken up. Penang was sent to sea in 1940 and loaded guano in the Seychelles for New Plymouth, New Zealand. She then sailed to Port Victoria, South Australia, and loaded her last grain cargo. She was torpedoed by U-Boat U140 in December 1940 off the coast of Ireland, with the loss of all hands.
Killoran, after discharging her grain cargo in Cork, Ireland, in January 1940, was chartered to take a coal cargo from Cardiff, Wales, to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Here she loaded sugar and maize for Las Palmas but was intercepted by the German raider Widder. The crew was taken prisoner and Killoran was sunk by an explosive charge. Pommern, Viking and Passat returned to their home port of Mariehamn where, apart from short voyages around the Baltic, they stayed until war’s end.
01 In Carrick Road, Robert Carter, 1999. Olivebank struck a mine six days after World War II was declared.
02 A Fine Quartering Wind, Robert Carter, 1999. Lawhill sailed through two world wars without encountering the enemy and was affectionately referred to as ‘Lucky Lawhill’ by the grainship seamen.
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Pamir arrived at Southampton, England, on 12 June 1939. After unloading, she proceeded to Gothenburg to lay up. In May 1940 she secured a charter to load grain at Montevideo. On the way the charter was cancelled and after a short lay-up at Bahia Blanca, Argentina, secured a charter to load guano in the Seychelles for New Plymouth, arriving there in December 1940. She then returned to the Seychelles for another cargo of guano, leaving Assumption on 2 June 1941. She arrived in Wellington, New Zealand, on 29 July 1941. It was an unfortunate quirk that Finland found itself at war with Russia in 1940, when Russia and Germany were allies. This made it an enemy of the Third Reich, resulting in the sinking of Killoran and Penang and the capture of Winterhude and Moshulu. Six months later Germany was at war with Russia and paradoxically Finland was considered by the Allies to be an enemy country by virtue of a non-aggression pact it had signed with Germany. Pamir was seized by the New Zealand government as a war prize. Under the management of the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand, Pamir made four Pacific voyages between Wellington and San Francisco and two to Vancouver during hostilities, sailing more than 96,000 nautical miles. After the war Pamir made another voyage to Vancouver, one voyage to Sydney and one to the UK. Lawhill arrived at Glasgow on 2 August 1939 and after discharging, sailed on to Troon to lay up. In May 1940 she sailed in ballast to Montevideo for orders. These sent her on to the Seychelles to load guano for Auckland. From here she sailed to Port Victoria to load grain for East London, South Africa. She arrived at East London on 22 July 1940, where the South African government claimed her as a war prize. From then on she traded between South Africa and Australia throughout the war, taking cargo to and from Australia 10 times. She loaded jarrah sleepers for the South African railways at Bunbury and brought cocoa beans to Hobart for the Cadbury Factory, canned fruit from the IXL factory in Hobart to Sydney and coke from Newcastle to Port Adelaide. She also rounded Cape Horn four times. In 1944 Lawhill arrived in Sydney Harbour with a cargo of cocoa beans, and again in 1945 with canned fruit. Somewhat better equipped than the other wartime windjammers to deal with the enemy, she had two 20-millimetre Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns mounted on the poop and Carley life rafts attached to her main and jigger shrouds, plus she was issued with twelve .303 rifles. Kommodore Johnsen and Padua arrived back in Germany in July 1939 and were sent to the Baltic, where they were more or less out of harm’s way. They maintained their roles as cargo-carrying training ships, bringing timber cargoes from Estonia.
01 The Last Rounding, Robert Carter, 1999. Pamir sailed more than 96,000 nautical miles during hostilities but fell victim to a hurricane in 1957.
02 Off the New South Wales South Coast, 1941, Robert Carter, 1999. Kaiulani was the last commercial sailing ship under the American flag.
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American sailers
The first two years of the war saw a huge tonnage of Allied shipping sunk by German U-boats and raiders. There was also a large tonnage of war materials that had to be carried to the UK. Freight rates soared; many laid-up ships were put back into service, including a handful of sailing ships. In San Francisco, there were still some of the laid-up Alaska Packers fleet plus a few that had seen service in the Robert Dollar fleet. Several well-known sailers were among them, including the mighty Daylight, a one-time sailing oil tanker owned by the Anglo American Oil Company. Re-rigged, four of them made voyages during the war years; Daylight was re-rigged as a four-masted barquentine and given an auxiliary engine, and took munitions to Cape Town to be uploaded into convoys headed for North Africa. The Star of Scotland was re-rigged as a six-masted schooner and took a load of timber from Grays Harbour to Cape Town in January 1942. She then loaded coal for South America but was sunk by the U-boat U159 in November 1942.
The four-masted barque Mary Dollar, ex Hans, was re-rigged as a six-masted schooner and renamed Tango. In April 1942, she took a timber cargo to Durban, where she loaded coal for South America. Her activities are unrecorded after this but she was purchased by a Portuguese shipowner and broken up in Lisbon in 1948. Most notable of these reincarnations was the barque Kaiulani. One of only 13 steel sailing ships ever built in the United States, she was built in 1899 for the Hawaii trade. Kaiulani was chartered to take a timber cargo to Durban. Here she loaded cordite explosive, destined for Sydney. The Japanese submarine attack in Sydney Harbour prompted her master, Captain Wigsten, to head for Hobart. She was then towed to Sydney but her crew set sails to help the tug along.1 It was in Sydney that Kaiulani’s fate was sealed. She was bought by the US Army for use as a store ship. Rigged down, she was towed to Milne Bay, New Guinea.
Vigilant and Commodore were two other American sailing ships that made wartime voyages. Both four-masted schooners, Vigilant was built in 1920 and Commodore in 1921. In the 1930s both were bought by Hawaiian interests and traded between Honolulu and Puget Sound, USA. In 1939 Vigilant was bought by a Canadian company and renamed City of Alberni. In 1940 she brought 1,650,000 super feet of Douglas fir to Sydney. Over the next three years she made voyages between the USA and Honolulu. In 1946, renamed Condor, she took a cargo of rice to Greece, when she caught fire and became a total loss. Commodore continued to voyage between Honolulu and Puget Sound in the 1930s, sometimes in consort with Vigilant. In 1941 Commodore actually sailed within miles of the Japanese fleet on its way to attack Pearl Harbor.
01 01 Off the West Coast, Robert Carter, 1988. Padua before the war, carrying nitrate from Chile. This painting hangs in the Bremerhaven Maritime Museum, Bremen, Germany. 02 Entering Independencia Bay, Robert Carter, 2019. The prophetically named Omega was the last commercial sailing ship, working until 1958.
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The fate of the Grain Fleet
Of those Grain Fleet ships that survived the war, only six remain today: Kommodore Johnsen, Moshulu, Padua, Passat, Pommern and Viking. Lawhill was kept in trade until 1949, then finally broken up. Moshulu became, and still languishes as, a floating restaurant in Philadelphia, USA. Pamir and Passat both survived the war and competed in the last grain race, from Port Victoria, South Australia, to the UK, in 1949. Both later became cargo-carrying training ships. Pamir was lost in Hurricane Carrie in 1957 along with all but six of her 80 crew. Passat is now preserved in Lubeck, Germany. Pommern was given to the town of Mariehamn by the Erikson family, and is on display at Mariehamn Maritime Museum in the Åland Islands.
Viking became a hotel and conference centre at Gothenberg, Sweden. Kommodore Johnsen and Padua, claimed by the Russians in 1945, were converted to training ships. Renamed Sedov and Kreuzenstern respectively, they are still active today in this role.
1 Described in detail in Robert Carter, Windjammers – The Final Story, Rosenberg Publishing, Sydney, 2004, ISBN 1877058041.
Robert Carter is a writer, marine artist and sailing ship historian. He has interviewed and corresponded with more than 400 surviving crew members of the world’s last large commercial sailing ships to record and illustrate stories from the final 50 years of the sailing ship era. This article is edited from his self-published monograph Wartime Windjammers – Sailing ships during World War II (2019; ISBN 237000063563). To order copies of his books or sailing ship prints, visit robertcarter.com.au
South American sail
On the other side of the world from Australia, the world’s sailing ships found two cargoes of fertiliser that kept them trading until the 1930s: nitrates from Chile and guano from Peru. The four-masted barque Priwall was often part of the Grain Fleet, but in 1941 was sent from Germany to Chile to load nitrates. She was claimed as a war prize, renamed Lautaro and became a cargo-carrying training ship. She made voyages to San Francisco with nitrates. In 1945, with 3,200 tons of nitrate on board, she caught fire and became a total loss.
Omega ex Drumcliff, a four-masted barque, and the barques Maipo and Tellus under the Peruvian flag and operated by the Cia Administradores del Guano Ltd, were employed transporting guano from offshore islands to the South American mainland. They survived World War II and were the last large sailing ships in trade – Maipo and Tellus until 1955 and Omega until 1958. Guaytecas, Calbuco and Nelson were three other sailing ships hauling guano and nitrates on the west coast of South America. All three made voyages to Europe during the war.
Tijuca, a barque registered in Buenos Aires, spent the pre-war years running supplies to the whaling station at South Georgia. During the war, she traded between Buenos Aires and Cape Town with freight and passengers. There were numerous, smaller, wooden sailing vessels, such as schooners and ketches, in use around the world during the war, particularly in the Baltic. Tasmania and South Australia still had a few trading ketches. The auxiliary topsail schooner Huia from New Zealand was regularly seen in Sydney Harbour during and after the war.
