This is a bit outside our usual purview, but I was quite blown away by this amazing documentary film shot by a young trainee on his first major voyage, from Hamburg to Chile on the famous four masted barque “Peking”. Irving Johnson, who went on to become a noted captain, set out to prepare himself for the rigors of sea and joined the crew of the Peking with a film camera in hand. Shortly after they left Hamburg, they encountered “The Storm of the Century” that sunk some 60 vessels. And then they hit another massive storm near Cape Horn, where two crew members were washed overboard (“Nobody talked about that afterwards”).
Johnson narrates his film, which gives an unparalleled insight as to what life was like on a tall masted sailing ship, encountering storms as well as just the daily routine, including handling some 135 ropes and all those giant sails. I can’t recommend it enough.
The Peking was built in 1911, a four masted steel-hulled cargo ship, one of the last of the kind. She was specifically designed specifically for the nitrate trade, hauling sodium nitrate, used for making fertilizer, gunpowder and other products, from Chile back to Germany.
She was taken by Italy after WW1 as reparations, but her owners bought her back in 1923, and continued sailing until 1932, when the synthesis of ammonia increasingly made sodium nitrate less valuable. In 132 she was sold for a pittance to an English charity, which used to to house orphan children and train some of them to be future sailors, allowing them to climb the rigging and such.
In 1974, the Peking was sold to New York’s South Street Seaport, where she was docked alongside the Wavetree, another tall masted ship. But the Peking did not get the renovation that she needed there, and her condition deteriorated to the point where she was at risk of being scrapped.
Instead she was donated to Hamburg in 2012, after Germany committed large sums for a total renovation and her future preservation. That was completed in 2020, and that’s how she looks now, at Hamburg’s Port Musuem.
That film is fantastic – truly a different era. Thanks for taking us on this journey!
Thanks Paul. Haven’t visited her since the 80s. She was in pretty bad shape. I never knew this part of her history. Good to see she was restored.
I’m glad Peking is still around and restored, I used to visit South Street in the mid 70s when the Peking had just arrived and was basically just moored next to the Wavertree which was being actively rebuilt.
These late 19th and early 20th century steel sailing ships were both the pinnacle of square rigged ship development and an evolutionary dead end since steam and diesel had overtaken sail except for low cost non perishable cargoes like nitrates and wool.
This is amazing; I’ve watched several videos of modern powered ships in storms or waves, some which are designed specifically for such harsh conditions, but never an old cargo-carrying sailing ship; i would have thought these would catch the wind and tip over easily, like the big satellite dishes I used to help install.
It sounds like at least one of the two men washed overboard was saved, but the captain wanted to keep the incident hushed because he had to briefly leave the ship to save him, and the captain is supposed to never abandon their ship.
I believe the incident of the captain jumping in happened on a previous voyage.
Thanks for recommending this — I have never been to sea, and little interest in sailing, but I found this amazing and fascinating. Both the filming and the narration were extraordinary.
Great film with even better narration. What I don’t quite get is how they only only had five paid professional sailors. Did all the other shipmen sail without pay only for the experience?
I’ve been fascinated by stories of “old sailing ships” as I called them as a child, all my life. The feats these men accomplished as part of their usual routine, seem beyond belief.
It’s also interesting to hear the voice of the narrator – men of that era all seem to sound alike; that matter-of-fact way they describe things that are not ordinary at all. I recall similar descriptions in the film here about the Dodge that journeyed all the way to Cape Horn in the early 1950’s, down South America.
Oh boy, that was a fascinating film! Truly the end of an era of seamanship.
I haven’t watched the full video – do they ever say how many crew were required? It seems like a very labour intensive operation. Plus I can’t imagine what the worker’s compensation payments would be now. A very risky operation by any measure.
The Captain of this ship must have been a hell of a man. This guy served under him and his viscous dog and he has nothing but praise for him. He is seen at 12:34 sewing sails with arms like Atlas. I think his balls were bigger than his arms. He’s lucky he even made it to sea considering he was doing headstands on top of rotted power line poles. Lots of guys from this era had the stories but this guy had the film to back it all up.
I sailed professionally in my mid-twenties. I experienced a couple of huge storms offshore, one in a sound, and two on one particular lake. I admire this man for coming back with the ability to discuss his experiences without using obscenities, and I admire his captain for the respect he earned from his crew.
Around the mast before the Horn – or is it the other way round?
What an incredible story! I sat transfixed through the entire movie. I can’t imagine that there are many people today who could/would endure such hardship as was experienced. Just imagine, one sail weighing a ton or more dry and being moved solely via human power! I really enjoyed this, Thanks!! 🙂
Incredible. The guy’s arms while sewing the sheets are bigger than my leg!
And that Captain Jurgen Jurs was the last captain to have his entire career in sailing ships from 1904-1938.
There’s a lot of seamen and whalers in my family tree, hard to comprehend how different my life is from theirs. Thanks for finding this!
Thanks Paul for posting this excellent first hand account of life aboard one of the last of the big sail rigged cargo ships. Captain Johnson’s visual documentation from another age is a treasure.