Devitt & Moore’s “Collingwood.”

Collingwood was Devitt & Moore’s first venture into the Melbourne wool trade. She was one of the early Aberdeen built iron clippers, and thoroughly looked her part. Though she made no very remarkable passage, her voyages were very regular, and it was not often that she missed the wool sales. You could not wear out these early iron ships, and the Collingwood has the distinction of being on the “Ships’ Roll of Honour in the Great War,” being sunk by a German submarine on 12th March, 1917, whilst under Norwegian colours. The story is of the usual kind. The officers and crew of the U-boat were drunk with champagne and cognac obtained from the French ship Jules Gommes, which they had sunk two hours previously. The crew of the Collingwood were given ten minutes only to get clear of the ship. The captain, being a neutral, naturally wanted his papers examined for contraband, but the German U-boat commander sneeringly told him that there would be time enough to examine them when the submarine got home, and so one more was added to Germany’s long list of crimes, and the famous old flyer sank beneath the waves after 45 years of honest service.

“Hesperus” and “Aurora,” the First Iron Ships of the Orient Line.

In 1873-4 Robert Steele & Co., the celebrated builders and designers of some of the fastest and most beautiful tea clippers, built two magnificent iron clippers for the Orient Line. These were the Hesperus and Aurora, sister ships.

“HESPERUS.”

From a lithograph.

[Larger image] (241 kB)

The Aurora unfortunately was destroyed by fire on her first homeward passage, through spontaneous combustion of her wool cargo. This occurred on 9th August, 1875, in 40° N., 35° W., and she was finally abandoned in flames with fore and mainmasts gone.

The Hesperus, her sister ship, is I, believe, still afloat. Steele put some wonderful workmanship into the building of these ships, everything was of the best; deck fittings were all of picked teak, with enough brass to outshine a steam yacht. Besides being a very comfortable ship for passengers, Hesperus soon proved herself a hard ship to keep with. But like most of the big passenger clippers of the seventies she did not race home, but made a comfortable passage via the Cape. This ship, in fact, was never hard driven, or she would have had many more fine passages to her credit.