“Turakina” ex-“City of Perth.”
I have left the Turakina to the last, as she deserves a longer notice, being one of the most beautiful little iron ships that ever left the ways. She was built of extra thick plates and launched in May, 1868, for Smith’s famous City Line to Calcutta.
The following interesting account of her in her early days appeared in the Nautical Magazine in 1917:—
I sailed in this vessel when she was three years old, under Captain Beckett, a native of Saltcoats, Firth of Clyde. Captain Beckett would have no foreigners or negroes sail with him, either as officers or sailors, and he was one of the most upright and good-living men I ever sailed under, and I went to sea first in 1858. His policy was the same for the men as for the cabin, with plenty of good food, no allowance, sufficient without waste, and plenty of work to keep the scurvy out of the bones, as the sailors said.
We left the Clyde at latter end of September, 1871, with a general cargo for Calcutta. We soon got out of the St. George’s Channel, and got all the studding sail gear rigged ready for the first favourable wind, and that occurred in lat. 43° N., long. 14° 15′ W. We then set topgallant, royal, topmast, and square lower stunsails, watersails, ringtail and ringtail watersail, Jamie Green and save-alls every place where a sail could be set; wind N.W. but gradually increasing to a gale.
However we kept everything on her. On the second day after everything had been set, about 11 a.m., we sighted a ship ahead of us; by 2 p.m. we were up alongside of her. She was a New York full-rigged ship from the Tyne for California.
The American captain asked us where we were bound from and where bound to. The whole of his crew came and looked at us, and her master cried to our captain that we were the prettiest sight he had ever seen. Our ship was going fully 17 knots when we passed her, and in three hours we had left her completely out of sight.
I have been in many ships in my time, but never one to equal her for speed. She was built by Connell, on the Clyde, and she was certainly that firm’s masterpiece. She was iron, and one of the most beautiful models you could look at in the water. The Thermopylae was the largest of the China clippers. She was 948 tons, but the City was 1189 tons. She was a far more powerful ship. I have been in many cracks, but I never saw anything that could look at her in a strong breeze, and as for running in a heavy gale she would run before the heaviest gale that ever blew.
