windjammer

Four-masted barque Herzogin Cecilie, an archetypal windjammer

A windjammer is a type of large sailing ship with an iron or for the most part steel hull, built to carry cargo in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Windjammers were the grandest of merchant sailing ships, with between three and five large masts and square sails, giving them a characteristic profile.

The name 'windjammer' is a humorous allusion to their ability to "jam" (i.e. stop or block) the wind with their sails.^[1][2]

In general, they displaced several thousand tonnes and were cheaper than their wooden hulled counterparts for three main reasons: steel was stronger and thus could enable larger ship sizes and considerable economies of scale, steel hulls took up less space and allowed for more cargo to be carried, and were cheaper to maintain than a wooden hull. The usual cargo capacity was 2,000 to 5,000 tonnes. Windjammer cargo in general was bulk, e.g. lumber, coal, guano or grain.

The most common windjammer rig was the four-masted barque; the ultimate refinement of aerodynamic study and thousands of years of sea-faring experience. The barque rig can outperform the schooner rig, can sail upwind better than full-riggers, and is easier to handle than full square rig.

The largest windjammer ever built was the five-masted full-rigged ship Preussen, which had a displacement of 11,600 tonnes. She was also one of the fastest, regularly logging 16 knots (kn) average speed on transatlantic voyages.

Windjammers are sometimes confused with clippers, but there are significant differences between them. Whereas clippers are optimized for speed; windjammers are optimized for cargo capacity and ease of handling. Most clippers were of composite construction, full rigged and had a cargo capacity of less than 1,000 tonnes; windjammers are of steel construction, usually barques by their rig, and have far greater cargo capacities. The clippers had already begun to disappear when windjammers emerged.

Windjammers were mainly built from the 1870s to the 1890s, when steamships began to outpace them economically, due to their ability to keep a schedule regardless of the wind. Steel hulls also replaced iron hulls at around the same time. Sailing ships could hold their own on ultra-long voyages such as Australia to Europe. Since they were faster than steamers, did not require bunkerage for coal nor freshwater for steam, they were able to compete with steam ships, which usually could barely do 8 kn. Many of the famous windjammers sailed under the Finnish flag during at least some part of their careers. Ship-owner Gustaf Erikson of Mariehamn, Åland Islands, Finland, was famous for his windjammer fleet during the inter-war years.

The largest windjammer in existence, four-masted barque Moshulu, the ship on which Eric Newby, the writer of Last Grain Race sailed. She is today a restaurant ship at Philadelphia, PA, United States.

Typically, windjammers are equipped with semi-mechanized rigging, steel profile masts and yards and steel cables as running rigging where plausible. Since the windjammer hull is hydrodynamically optimized for good hydrodynamics because of sail handling, they were (and still are) capable of sustained high cruising speeds; most four-masted barques were able to cruise at 15 kn on plausible winds, some logged 18 kn regularly and Herzogin Cecilie is known to have logged 21 kn.

The crew of a windjammer was surprisingly small; they could be operated with as small a crew as 14, and a typical crew could be master, mate, boatswain (bosun), 15 seamen and 5 apprentices. The crew roster of Pamir on her last commercial voyage around Cape Horn in 1949 under the Finnish flag listed a total crew of 34:

Master

4 Officers (1st, 2nd, 3rd Mate and Bosun)

14 Able-Bodied Seamen

5 Ordinary Seamen

5 Deckboys

4 Cook/Assistant Cook/Steward/Assistant Steward

1 Donkeyman (Mechanic)
.

From 1916 to 1917, Imperial Germany operated a windjammer, the SMS Seeadler as one of the last sailing ships used in war.

Windjammers were used commercially (though recognised as a dying breed) until the 1950s. They occupied something of a niche in the transport of goods from remote ports where coal and water were not available, such as parts of Australia (carrying wool or grain) and remote Pacific islands (harvesting guano). Windjammers were also used particularly for the transport of South American nitrates. The windjammers usually followed the clipper route around the world, carrying different cargoes on each leg of their route or more frequently sailing in ballast. The last leg from Australia to Europe, where the usual cargo was grain, was the source of The Great Grain Races as the ships' masters attempted to sail the leg as fast as possible — usually from the wheat ports of South Australia’s Spencer Gulf to Lizard Point at the Cornwall coast and on to the harbor of destination in Britain or continental Europe.

The largest windjammer in existence is the four-masted barque Moshulu, today a restaurant ship in Philadelphia, PA, USA. She won the Great Grain Race once, 1939, under the Finnish flag. The largest windjammer in sailing service is a Russian school ship, the four-masted barque Sedov. The last windjammer in original layout is the Pommern, today a museum ship at Mariehamn. She won the Great Grain Race twice, 1930 and 1937.

A few windjammers among other Tall Ships can still be seen at international maritime events: SAIL Amsterdam, the Kiel Week and Hanse Sail.

Famous windjammers

See also

• Tall ship

Sources

Look up windjammer in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

1. ^ Dictionary.com: windjammer
2. ^ Merriam-Webster: windjammer

• http://www.fortjefferson.com/shipwrecks/windjammer.htm
• http://www.austehc.unimelb.edu.au/tia/442.html
• http://www.abc.net.au/rn/hindsight/features/capehorners/the_cape_horners.pdf
• Stark, William F. The Last Time Around Cape Horn. The Historic 1949 Voyage of the Windjammer PAMIR. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003. ISBN 0786712333
• Villiers, Alan. Voyaging With The Wind: An Introduction to Sailing Large Square Rigged Ships. London: National Maritime Museum, 1975.