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 Euterpe, after the Greek goddess of music.
Euterpe was a full-rigged ship and would remain so until 1901, when the Alaska Packers Association rigged her down to a barque, 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, "labouring and rolling in a most distressing manner," according to her log.
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.
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