Of this fleet the first to get through was Thermopylae after several ineffectual attempts, but she was closely followed by her iron sister ship; clearing Java Head on 29th December after a delay of 14 days, the two sisters squared away for the S.E. trades, and left the fleet of 37 ships to wait patiently until the N.E. current slackened.
Salamis carried the trades to 32° S., and then made some fine running to the Australian Coast, her best day’s work being 336 miles. On 26th January, 1879, she arrived off Port Phillip Heads and anchored off Queenscliff to await orders. She was sent up to Sydney and loaded coal alongside the Cutty Sark. On 18th March Cutty Sark sailed for Shanghai with 1150 tons of coal, Salamis followed on the 20th with 1200 tons of coal. Unfortunately I have no details of the race across, except that Salamis made the run in 37 days. Both ships failed to get a tea cargo for the London market, and Cutty Sark went off to Manila, whilst Salamis went to Foochow, and took a tea cargo from there to Melbourne, which she reached in time to load wool home, after a very light weather passage of 64 days. After this unsatisfactory voyage Salamis was kept steadily in the Melbourne trade, with the exception of one passage to Sydney.
When the Aberdeen White Star sold their sailing ships, Salamis went to the Norwegians, who stripped the yards off her mizen mast and turned her into a barque. After several weary years of threadbare old age, the beautiful little clipper was finally wrecked on Malden Island in the South Pacific on 20th May, 1905.
The Colonial Barque “Woollahra.”
The pretty little barque, Woollahra, owned by Cowlislaw Bros., of Sydney, had a very fair turn of speed, and on more than one occasion showed up well against some of the crack ships in the trade. In her later years she used to run from Newcastle, N.S.W., to Frisco with coal. She came to her end on Tongue Point, near Cape Terawhite, New Zealand, whilst bound in ballast from Wellington to Kaipara, to load Kauri lumber for Australia. She was wrecked about half a mile from the homestead of a sheep station, the only habitation on the coast for miles. The captain and an ordinary seaman were drowned, the rest of her complement getting safely ashore. She went to pieces very quickly and there was not even an odd spar or deck fitting left a few months afterwards.
“Cassiope” and “Parthenope.”
Cassiope and Parthenope were actually sister ships though by different builders. They were both fine fast clippers of the best Liverpool type. Cassiope, however, had a short life, being lost with all hands in 1885, when bound to London with Heap’s Rangoon rice, under the well-known Captain Rivers. Parthenope was sold in her old age to the Italians and rechristened Pelogrino O. On the 31st July, 1907, she sailed with coals from Newcastle, N.S.W., for Antofagasta and never arrived.
“Trafalgar.”
D. Rose & Co.’s Trafalgar was a very regular Sydney trader. She went to the Norwegians and was still afloat, owned in Christiania, when the war broke out.
