From tramp to grand lady

Tall ship James Craig

Australia’s oldest working tall ship, the Sydney Heritage Fleet’s three-masted iron barque James Craig , is celebrating its 150th year. Jane Dargaville traces its ups and downs, from its varied career to an epic restoration after decades as a forgotten hulk in Tasmania.

James Craig leads a parade of sail up Sydney Harbour on 18 February 2024 to celebrate its 150th year. Also pictured are (from left) Sydney Heritage Fleet vessel Lady Hopetoun and tugs Engage Rascal and Currawong. Image Michelle Bowen Photographer

James Craig was found by those who sailed on it to be a ship of grace and agility

In the ‘golden age of sail’, the going was as tough for the vessels as it was the men and boys who sailed them

BUILT IN SUNDERLAND,

ENGLAND, and launched on 18 February 1874, James Craig is one of only four surviving 19th-century barques worldwide still sailing and the only one that regularly goes to sea. Maritime historians rank James Craig of high importance, but the ship’s rich and colourful story is as much about the remarkable adventure of its 30-year restoration as it is about its place in global commercial shipping in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Today, James Craig is a vessel of relative leisure, employed by the Heritage Fleet to take members of the public sailing and as a static museum at its berth alongside the Australian National Maritime’s Wharf 7 at Pyrmont, providing an insight into life at sea on a square-rigger. But the ship’s early history was not so sedate, with high-seas tales of wild weather, birth, death and runaways. It suffered damage from gales on several occasions and endured the ignominy of being used as a hulk, the first time for copra in Port Moresby before World War I, and in the late 1920s for coal in remote Recherche Bay in Tasmania.

Originally named Clan Macleod, James Craig was first owned by Glasgow merchant and ship owner Thomas Dunlop, who paid £11,375 (equivalent to $3.12 million today) for its construction. In 1883, Dunlop sold the vessel to Canadian shipping baron Sir Roderick Cameron. In 1900, it was bought by New Zealand merchant and ship owner Joseph James Craig, who renamed it after one of his sons.

Barque-rigged ships differ from full-rigged sailing ships by having a mizzen mast with fore-and-aft sails. They were popular among ship owners in the mid-tolatter half of the 19th century because they needed fewer crew and were therefore cheaper. Sailing ships of the time ranged from tea clippers and passenger ships built for speed, to slower, full-bodied cargo carriers. James Craig lay between the two, with graceful lines and good cargo capacity. It was found by those who sailed on it to be a ship of grace and agility. Celebrated mariner and author Alan Villiers, who crewed on James Craig in 1920, wrote that it ‘looked a thoroughbred ... tacked like a yacht and ran like a greyhound’.

On its first voyage, James Craig carried a crew of 17, plus Captain William Alexander and his wife, although by the time it reached its destination of Callao, Peru, the manifest had increased by one after Mrs Alexander gave birth at sea. Towards the end of its days as a cargo ship, James Craig was sailing with crew numbers as low as 10. Life on board was hard in the ‘golden age of sail’, and the going was as tough for the vessels as it was the men and boys who sailed them.

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By 1899, the ship had rounded Cape Horn 23 times

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Imported from the United States, ‘Light of the Age’ kerosene was a regular cargo aboard James Craig. Image Sydney Heritage Fleet Collection

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Men aloft, probably towards the end of the ship’s trading life. Image Sydney Heritage Fleet Collection

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James Craig after spending 40 years abandoned in Recherche Bay, Tasmania. Image Lindsay Rex

Captain Leslie T Palmer, who in 1921 was an able seaman on James Craig , wrote:1

In her early days under the ‘Clan’ flag she was engaged in what must have been one of the toughest trades possible for a comparatively small ship, deep laden with coal from the Bristol Channel out and copper ore from Chile home to the US – at least twice and sometimes three times a year off Cape Horn.

On its third voyage, sailing through Australian waters en route to Otago, New Zealand, 24-year-old mate William Morris of Glasgow was washed overboard and lost.

In the early Clan Macleod years, James Craig was a typical tramp ship of the day, voyaging the globe and loading whatever cargo was on offer at ports from which it had discharged. By 1899, the ship had rounded Cape Horn 23 times.

Under Cameron’s ownership, it became a regular trader between the US east coast and New Zealand or Australia, bringing 17,000 cases of ‘Light of the Age’ kerosene as well as general cargo, and returning with wool, flax and/or kauri gum.

By 1900, James Craig was no longer competitive over long distances, but the ship found a new niche in the fleet run by Auckland shipowner JJ Craig transporting timber from New Zealand to Australia and returning with Newcastle coal. In 1911, Craig sold the vessel to the British New Guinea Development Company, and it spent the next seven years as a hulk. With a shortage of ships after World War I, James Craig was reprieved when it was bought by Henry Jones & Co, and taken to Sydney for re-rigging. For several years it carried heavy cargo to and from south and east coast ports, and across the Tasman to New Zealand. Soon, though, there was a glut of shipping, and James Craig’s commercial days were coming to an end.

On its final trade voyage, James Craig left Port Adelaide, South Australia, on 21 December 1921, laden with calcine bound for the Risdon zinc works in Hobart, Tasmania. On board was teenage runaway Maurice Mulcahy, who became the ship’s last crew member to live long enough to see its restoration, and Murray Geeves, 15-year-old cabin boy, who later wrote about the final passage up the Derwent River:2

The volunteer labour of hundreds of individuals went into the ship’s salvage and decades-long restoration

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James Craig is now a familiar and beloved sight in and around Sydney. Image Sydney Heritage Fleet Collection

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Drone view of wellwishers aboard James Craig during the 150th anniversary parade of sail.

Image Karen Tan

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Forty years on, a man named Alan Edenborough journeyed to Recherche Bay, the final stretch legged through rugged bush, sent by a small community maritime museum (now the Sydney Heritage Fleet) to assess what they had heard was a ‘recoverable wreck’ of a tall ship. Edenborough’s mission was urgent because the Sydney group knew the prestigious San Francisco Maritime Museum was also interested in the vessel.

Every sail set … James Craig stormed past the Domain under a cloud of snowy canvas tossing her head, not knowing this was her Swan Song.

As we neared Risdon, sail was being taken in until we reached the mooring point. With Capt Purdon at the wheel, topsails were backed and slowly and gracefully, the James Craig turned in the river and settled alongside the pier, not knowing her work days were over.

… There were rumours we were set for a voyage to South Africa. Nothing came of it. Our cargo unloaded, we dropped down the river to Hobart, cleaned ship and then we were told she was to be taken to Recherche Bay ‘to go into moth balls’. We younger ones were very disappointed.

… One morning a tugboat took us in tow and it seemed to me the ship had lost heart and took no more interest as to her destination. Some time in late afternoon, we reached Recherche Bay, gathered our gear and left her. We were sad to leave her, deserted and forsaken. It was the end of an era.

Recherche Bay is a sheltered, wide, shallow, muddybottomed inlet near the southernmost tip of Tasmania. In the early 1900s, the area fostered an ultimately unsuccessful coal mining industry. James Craig had been bought by the local Catamaran Coal Mining Company and hulked down to store coal, but not long afterwards the mine closed and its equipment, including James Craig , was sold to Hobart scrap metal dealer John Hood. For several years, James Craig languished on a mooring until one day the mooring chains broke in a storm and the ship drifted ashore.

For decades, it sat bow high and stern low securely in a bed of mud, which helped to preserve its iron hull. Apart from occasional vandalism the ship’s hull was largely intact, and Edenborough returned to Sydney with a thumbs up. The salvage and decades-long restoration that followed make a tale of epic proportion, literally. Indeed, books have been written about an operation that cost $18 million in capital spending, raised mainly from donations, and an estimated $100 million in the volunteer labour of hundreds of individuals, whose passion, commitment and hard work have delivered Australia a very special maritime heritage legacy, the barque James Craig

1 Personal records of Leslie T Palmer, Sydney Heritage Fleet archives.

2 Personal records of Murray Geeves, Sydney Heritage Fleet archives.

Author Jane Dargaville is a volunteer with Sydney Heritage Fleet.

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