Moshulu

The Moshulu at Penn's Landing, Philadelphia
History
Name	Moshulu ex Kurt
Namesake	Dr. Kurt Siemers (to Kurt)
Owner	G. H. J. Siemers & Co., Hamburg
Route	(GE) Europe to Chile and Newcastle, Aust. (US) Manila, Australia, Southafrica (FI) Australia to Europe grain trade
Builder	Alex. Wm. Hamilton & Co., Port Glasgow
Cost	£36,000
Laid down	1903
Launched	18 April 1904
Christened	18 April 1904 as the Kurt
Completed	June 1904
Decommissioned	1970
Maiden voyage	June 1904 via Santa Rosalía to Valparaíso
Reinstated	1935 as a cargo ship, 1975 as a restaurant
Homeport	Hamburg, San Francisco, Mariehamn, Philadelphia
Status	restaurant ship
General characteristics
Class and type	four-masted steel barque cargo ship, fl. warehouse, restaurant ship
Displacement	7,000 ts (1,700 ts ship + 5,300 ts cargo)
Length	Template:Ft to m (overall) Template:Ft to m (on deck) Template:Ft to m (btw. perpendiculars)
Beam	Template:Ft to m
Height	Template:Ft to m (keel to masthead truck) Template:Ft to m (main deck to masthead truck)
Draft	Template:Ft to m at 5,300 tons
Depth	Template:Ft to m (depth moulded)
Depth of hold	Template:Ft to m
Decks	2 continuous steel decks, poop, midshipbridge and forcastle decks
Installed power	no auxiliary propulsion; donky engine for sail winches, steam rudder
Propulsion	wind
Sail plan	4.180 m²; 34 sails: 18 square sails, 3 spankers, 13 staysails
Speed	17 knots (31.48 km/h)
Boats & landing craft carried	four lifeboats
Complement	max. 35
Crew	33 (captain, two helmsmen (1st & 2nd mates), 1 steward, 29 able seamen)

Moshulu (ex Kurt) is a four-masted steel barque built by William Hamilton on the River Clyde in Scotland in 1904, and currently a floating restaurant docked in Penn's Landing, Philadelphia.

History

Originally named Kurt after Dr. Kurt Siemers, director general and president of the Hamburg shipping company "G. H. J. Siemers & Co.", she was, along with her sistership Hans, the last four-masted steel barque to be built on the Clyde. Constructed for "G. H. J. Siemers & Co." to be used in the nitrate trade, at a cost of £36,000, she was launched in 1904. Her first master was captain Christian Schütt, followed by captain Wolfgang H. G. Tönissen in 1908 who made a fast voyage from Newcastle, Australia, to Valparaíso with a cargo of coal in 31 days.

Between 1904 and 1914, under German ownership, Kurt shipped coal from Wales to South America, nitrate from Chile to Germany, coal from Australia to Chile, and coke and patent fuel from Germany to Santa Rosalía, Mexico.

On the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Kurt was sailed to Oregon in command of captain W. Tönissen, then laid up in Astoria until being seized when the United States entered the war in 1917. She was first renamed Dreadnought ("one who fears nothing"), then, because there was already a sailing ship of that name registered in the US, she was renamed the Moshulu (which had the same meaning in the Seneca language) by Edith Wilson. Between 1917 and 1920, Moshulu was owned by the U.S. Shipping Board and carried wool and chrome between North America, Manila and Australia.

From 1920 to 1935, Moshulu was in various private hands based in San Francisco. From 1920 to 1922 owned by the "Moshulu Navigation Co. (Charles Nelson & Co.)", San Francisco, in 1922 sold to "James Tyson", San Francisco, and in 1922 purchased back by Charles Nelson. The big four-masted barque run in the timber trade along the U.S. west coast to Australia and Southafrica from 1920 to 1928. After her last timber run to Melbourne and Geelong in 1928 she was laid up in Los Angeles, later on in places in or near Seattle, Washington: Lake Union, Windslow (Puget Sound), and Esquimalt in British Columbia, Canada (100 sm north west of Seattle).

In 1935, the Moshulu was bought for $12,000 by Gustaf Erikson. On 14 March 1935, when the contract was signed, captain Gunnar Boman took over the ship and sailed it to Port Victoria. Gustaf Erikson had her run in the grain trade from Australia to Europe. In 1937, John Albright sailed on her as a young seaman.

The ship was seized by the Germans in 1940 when she returned to Kristiansand, Norway, with a cargo of wheat from Buenos Aires in command of captain Mikael Sjögren. She was derigged step by step in the 1940s and after having capsized in a storm close to shore in a beach near Narvik in 1947, she was demasted by a salvaging company to be re-erected, stabilized, and towed to Bergen in July 1948. The ship's hull was sold to Trygve Sommerfeldt, Oslo. A few month later the ship was transferred to Sweden to be used as a grain store in Stockholm from 1948 to 1952 when she was sold to the German shipowner Heinz Schliewen, who wanted to put her back to use as a school ship carrying cargo. Schliewen already used the four-masted steel barques Pamir and Passat (both former Flying P-Liners) for that purpose, but before Moshulu was re-rigged, Schliewen went into bankruptcy. In 1953 Moshulu was sold to the "Swedish farmers state union" ("Svenska Lantmännens Riksförbund"), Stockholm, and again used as a floating warehouse since 16 November 1953.

In 1961, the Finnish government bought the ship for 3,200 tons of Russian rye; she was towed to Naantali, a municipality of Turku, and used for warehousing.

In 1970, the ship was bought by the American Specialty Restaurants Corporation, rigged out in Holland with phony masts, yards and cables and eventually towed to South Street Seaport, New York. Other sources have the The Walt Disney Company, Disneyland Park, that bought the ship, but transferred it soon to the American "Specialty Restaurants Corporation".

Moshulu's fame through Eric Newby

Moshulu is famous through the books of Eric Newby. At the age of 19, he apprenticed aboard the Moshulu. He joined the ship in Belfast in 1938, sailing to Port Lincoln in Australia. They took grain on board in Port Victoria and sailed back in the spring of 1939 to Ireland, beating a number of other sailing ships.

The journey was documented in Newby's books The Last Grain Race (1956) and Learning the Ropes: An Apprentice in the Last of the Windjammers (1999), the latter being a book of photographs he took while aboard. The titles of the books, however, are misleading as the 1939 race was not the last grain race nor was Moshulu the last windjammer: two more grain races followed the race won by Moshulu, the last being held in 1949. Also, while windjammers exist and sail the seas to this day, the last windjammer carrying cargo was the Peruvian Omega (ex Drumcliff) which was in use until her loss in 1958; the Moshulu, in contrast, does not hold any record in being the "last" or "oldest" or "largest" ship of any kind.

Moshulu, like all grain ships, was undermanned. If a sailor became ill or injured, chances were slim that he would receive treatment on shore. When a man like Newby applied for a position in the crew, the captain had him climb to the top of the mainmast, pointing out that at sea he might have to climb it while it was swaying wildly. For many applicants that was enough; they were never seen again.

Moshulu today

The Moshulu was used in the movies Rocky and The Godfather Part II, as well as in the end scene of the movie Blow Out. The ship is now a fine dining restaurant at Penn's Landing, Philadelphia, where it is docked adjacent to the museum ships USS Olympia and USS Becuna.

See also

Four other Clyde-built tall ships are still afloat:

• Balclutha (San Francisco)
• Falls of Clyde (Hawaii)
• Glenlee (Glasgow)
• Pommern (Finland)

Further reading

• Newby, Eric, The Last Grain Race, Penguin Books, New York, N.Y., U.S.A., 1986. ISBN 0-140-09571-3 (pbk.)
• Newby, Eric, Learning the Ropes - An Apprentice in the Last of the Windjammers, John Murray, London 1999. ISBN 0-7195-5636-8

External links

• History of the ship from the restaurant web site